Don't you see the advantage to the
ship?"
"Oh, certainly, and I admire the ingenuity of your allegory. You must
have been studying Bunyan, lately."
"No, Miriam, I have little time for books, save those necessary to my
profession. I study a mightier volume daily than scholar ever wrote--the
wondrous mind and body of man, the one illustrated by the other, and
both so mutually dependent that short-sighted people have occasionally
confounded them, yet distinct after all as God and the universe."
"I am glad to hear you say this; doctors are so often accused of being
materialists."
"No men living have less excuse for being so. The phenomenon of death
alone ought to set that matter at rest in any reasoning mind. The
impalpable is gone, and the material perishes. It is so plain that he
that runs might read, one would think. That sudden change from volition
to inertia is, in itself, conviction to every right-seeing mind."
"Yet I wish we knew more," I mused, aloud. "We ought to know more, it
seems to me. God has not told us half enough for our satisfaction. It is
so cruel to leave us in the dark, lit only by partial flashes of
lightning. If we were certain of the future, we could bear separation
better from those we love. It would not seem so hopeless."
"If we were certain of the future, we would not bear it all," he
remarked, "but grow impatient and exacting like children who rise in the
night to examine the Christmas stocking, rather than wait until morning.
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