A shudder ran round the room.
‘Just what I expected myself. Last week old Mrs. Grey broke her leg. She would not go to our new surgeon, because he ain’t a professor. “Quite right,” said I to her. “How can you expect the blessing?” Our new minister replied that “the woman was silly”; that “she should have gone to a clever, rather than to a godly, doctor”; that “it was merely a question of professional skill,” and that “religion had nothing to do with it.” Says I, “We think too much of mere human talent.” Said he, “he did not think we did. It was so rare that when we found it we ought to encourage it,” said he. I said to him, “Our old minister never preached in that way;” and he said he was “sorry to hear it.”’
Again all groaned.
‘Just what I expected,’ observed the chemist and druggist. ‘The other morning, as I called, he was reading Shakespeare. “Not much there for the immortal soul,” says I. “Upon my word,” says he, “I don’t agree with you there at all. I hold Shakespeare to be next to the Bible.” I said as how I had never read a line of Shakespeare, or any other play-acting, fellow. Said he, he was “sorry to hear it.” I had “missed a great treat. There was no one like Shakespeare to display the workings of the human heart.”’
‘And what did you say to that?’
‘Why, that my Bible told me that the heart was “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and that was enough for me.’
‘Ah, you had him there,’ said the others.
‘Yes, I think I had,’ replied the chemist, with a grim smile of satisfaction.
It is told of the Aristotelians, when Galileo offered to show them that the world moved round the sun, that they refused even to use his telescope, as they would not see what they could not find in Aristotle. These poor men would have done the same. Science offered them a telescope, but they preferred darkness, like the old bigoted Roman Catholics who persecuted Galileo.
‘You know my boy Tom,’ continued Mr. Robins. ‘He thinks he knows a lot more than his father, because I sent him to the grammar-school. He always is telling me he don’t see this, and he don’t see that. Now, according to my way of thinking, he has no right to talk so. It’s really sinful. He has got to believe. The Bible says, “Whoso believeth shall be saved.” I says to the lad, “If I had talked in that wicked way to my father, he would soon have beaten it all out of me, and I had a great mind to do the same with him.” I said as much to the minister. He begged I would “do nothing of the kind. The lad could not help his doubts.” He believed he was “sincere. Thomas was one of the Apostles, and had not he his doubts? Doubts,” said he, “often lead to faith.” Did you ever hear such a doctrine? I saw the Lord in a minute when I was converted, and I’ve never had a doubt since, blessed be His Holy Name!’