The union of Intellect and Piety will grow stronger as the world grows older. When men began to think, they began to doubt, but when men have thought more deeply they will cease to doubt.
An idea is in the air that the study of science has a tendency to make men sceptical. This is an error. For surely the study of Nature in any of its manifold aspects has a direct tendency to lead us into the inscrutable. Amongst those who demonstrate the ennobling influence of science let us only name Boyle, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton. If we would select a few names from the number of medical celebrities of the past who have felt this elevating influence, the following will readily occur to us, Linacre, Sydenham, Brodie, Astley Cooper, Graves Watson, and Abernethy. The latter, who is chiefly remembered as a coiner of quaint sayings and personal originality, had, notwithstanding his biting wit, a deep sense of the nobility and the sacredness of his calling, as the following extract from a lecture which he delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons will prove. He says:--"When we examine our bodies we see an assemblance of organs formed of what we call matter, but when we examine our minds, we feel that there is something sensitive and intelligible which inhabits our bodies. We naturally believe in the existence of a first cause. We feel our own free agency. We distinguish right and wrong. We feel as if we were responsible for our conduct, and the belief in a future state seems indigenous to the mind of man."
The noiseless tread of time will cause many doctors whose names are now household words to be forgotten, but we may rest assured that the wreath of memory will cluster round the brows of these grand, noble workers in the field of medicine who have shown by their daily life that they never flinched from the arduous duties, aye and the dangers of their profession, but steadfastly plodded on. Originality, integrity, and honesty are attributes which grace the life of any man, and although the history of medicine claims no monopoly of these virtues, for they serve all men alike, yet they are the handmaids of greatness; without them no human being will ever win that true success which enables us to look back upon such lives and say, "Here are examples which show us the possibilities of the race." Doctors ought to be great burden lifters. Their mission is to carry into the chamber of disease--and even of death itself--that calm courage, that buoyant hope, which has around it a halo of sympathy and of encouragement.