Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/225

212 unwholesome-looking young man, who is prematurely bald, and spectacled besides, but kindly and benevolent in his face, what is in all those vessels. "O, that is medicine. It is all medicine." "But what is it good for?" "Why it is to make sick men sound, and keep well men so." "What are these things under the glass." "They are surgical instruments, sir, to remove teeth, limbs, and help men out of the many ills that flesh is heir to." "Are they of any use?" "Of any use? Of course they are. You don't think I would sell them if they were not? Life would not be safe, sir, without these drugs and instruments." "Then," says the visitor, "I will have some medicine and tools. Put me up enough to do my business." "Yes; but we have all kinds, for this is a general druggery: we have Allopathic, Homoeopathic, Thompsonian, Indian, and Eclectic. There is no medicine, sir, in the four quarters of the globe, that we have not got it here. What will you have?" "O, I don't care. It is all medicine—all good, you say. Give me some of the best." "But," says the thoughtful apothecary, "you must discriminate. Most of these things would kill a well man. Some are good for one disease, some for another. You must not take all the doctors' stuff in the world, because it is called medicine. Take a pinch of this and you are a dead man; a little of that, and you will be a fool all the rest of your life. That saw and tourniquet are to amputate limbs withal. I don't think you want to cut off one of your own legs, do you? You must consider what kind of medicine you need before you take any, and when you use it, do so with the greatest discretion."

Well, it is with ministers' stuff as with doctors' stuff. There is a whole shop full of deeds and doctrines labelled "Religion;" and when a minister, in his technical way, tells a young man, or an old one, "You must have religion, or you will perish everlastingly," it is much as when a doctor tells the sick man, "you must have medicine, or else die." In the one case, I want to know what medicine; in the other, what religion. There is some little difference, I think, between oatmeal and strychnine, though they are both called medicine; and there is no less difference between various things called religion.