f their confidence. They might then
have thought me a very wise and good physician.

A man who wishes to be greatly popular in the world must learn the ways
of the world, and walk in them more or less, whether they are crooked or
straight. He must not be over-modest, or over-honest; nor must he be
over-solicitous to improve his own mind or heart, or encourage others,
by precept or example, to walk in the way of improvement. He must not
only make up his mind to take the world as it is, but to suffer it to
remain so. The world does not like to be found fault with; it has a
great deal of self-confidence.

The young man, in the end, recovered; not, as I now believe, in
consequence of the treatment, but in spite of it. Had he been nursed
carefully from the first, and kept from every source of irritation, both
external and internal, even from food, except a very little of the
mildest sort, just enough to keep him from absolute starvation; and had
his air been pure and his temper of mind easy, cheerful and hopeful, he
would probably have recovered much sooner than he did, and with far
better prospects for the future. But he had been frightened about
himself, from the very first, by my own inquiries about poison,--which
had unwarily been communicated to him,--and his fears never wholly
subsided.

How much wisdom from both worlds does it require in order to be a
physician! The office of a medical man, I repeat, is one of the noblest
under the whole heaven. The physician is, or should be, a missionary. Do
you regard this assertion as extravagant or unfounded? Why, then, was it
made an adjunct, and more than an adjunct, in the first promulgation of
the gospel, and this, too, by the gospel's divine Author? Why is it that
our success in modern times, in spreading the gospel, has been
greater--other things being equal--in America or China, in proportion as
its preachers have attended to the body as well as to the soul?

At the time of my commencing the practice of medicine, I was no more fit
for it than I was to preach the cross of Christ; that is, I was almost
entirely unqualified for either profession. I was honest, sanguine,
philanthropic, but I was uneducated. I knew very little, indeed, of
human nature; still less did I know of the sublime art of becoming all
things to all men, in the nobler and more elevated sense of the great
apostle Paul. I would yield to no other compromise than such as he
encourages, of course. Let us b