ORATIONS  AND  ESSAYS.  187

"There  is  no  sufficient  reason  for  attacking
the  motives  of  a  man  so  saintly  in  life,  so
holy  in  aspirations,  so  patient,  so  meek,  so  la-
borious, so  thoroughly  in  earnest  in  the  work
to  which  his  life  was  given.  But  after  long
smothering  in  the  sulphurous  atmosphere  of
his  thought,  one  cannot  help  asking,  is  this,

—  or  anything  like  this,  —  the  accepted  belief  of
any    considerable    part  of    Protestantism  ?     If   so,
we   must    say    with    Bacon,     '  It    were   better   to
have   no   opinion    of   God   than    such   an  opinion
as    is    unworthy    of   him.' '

In  speaking  of  the  old  reproach  against  physi-
cians, that  where  there  were  three  of  them  to-
gether there  were  two  atheists,  Doctor  Holmes
pertinently  remarks  :  "  There  is,  undoubtedly,  a
strong  tendency  in  the  pursuits  of  the  medical
profession  to  produce  disbelief  in  that  figment  of
tradition  and  diseased  human  imagination  which
has  been  installed  in  the  seat  of  divinity  by
the  priesthood  of  cruel  and  ignorant  ages.  It  is
impossible,  or,  at  least,  very  difficult,  for  a  physi-
cian who  has  seen  the  perpetual  efforts  of  Nature

—  whose  diary  is  the  book  he  reads  oftenest  —  to
heal  wounds,  to  expel  poisons,  to  do  the  best  that
can  be  done  under  the  given  conditions,  —  it  is


188  OLIVER   W EX  DELL  HOLMES.
