CORRESPONDENCE.

The somewhat unusual and inconvenient length of the following letter of complaint, or rather of reproof, from the Author of the tract entitled" Professional Christianity," has made us hesitate whether to give it entire. In suppressing some passages, we should, possibly, have consulted the Writer's credit as much as our own convenience. But to prevent all suspicion of unfairness, we have determined to give the complainant whatever benefit he may derive from an appeal to our readers, without alteration or abridgement, though we cannot let it pass without

comment.

We regret that we were unable to make room for it in our last Number. The article in question appeared in the Eclectic Review for April.

Mr. Editor,

My attention was lately called to the April number of your Eclectic Review, by a note from a highly respectable clergyman, of my acquaintance, informing me that he had just seen in it "a very ill natured and most unjust review" of a small publication of mine entitled "Professional Christianity;" and stating his belief that "some hair-brained doctor had got the intemperate article introduced stung with my Christian fidelity;"-and more recently another vene. rable and judicious clerical friend who had perused my work with approbation, has dropped me a note of a similar nature. On reading over the Review alluded to, I do perceive that it is far from giving to your readers a just representation of the general tendency of my publication on the contrary, its Author has confined himself to the business of arraigning my motives, and taking hold of a few detached passages as a basis on which to found conclusions and consequences quite opposite from the scope of my argumentation, and intersperses among his remarks a general and sweeping condemnation of the whole production evidently and directly for the purpose of misleading your readers, and representing my little work as really so crude, libellous, and injudicious, as to be unworthy of their notice.

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Where I am conscious of rectitude of intention, and see my way clearly to be consonant with the unerring principles of truth, I am not much given to yield deference to the opposing opinions of others whomsoever;-much less to tremble and vacillate under the paw of malicious and merciless criticism. Such a bug-bear would have no more influence in diverting my purpose from a pursuit in which my judgement led me to believe I might be useful, than a nursery hobgoblin. Accordingly had the notice of " Professional Christianity" in question appeared under a less respectable cover than that of the Eclectic Review, I should have met it with the silence it merits; but issuing as it does before the public under your sanction, I cannot acquit myself of the respect due to you and to your readers, were I to withhold a reply; and I am sure I pay nothing more than a just tribute to your candour and impartiality as an Editor, when I solicit of you as an act of justice to myself, the favour of inserting these remarks.

1. Your Reviewer commences and concludes his strictures on "Professional Christianity," by impugning the Author's motives. Your readers, however, do not require to be told how unusual a course this is on the part of a reviewer, and how inconsistent with common candour not to say Christian charity. Is it fair to urge any charge against the motives of an Author unwarranted by the obvious tendency of his production and the consonancy of his views with principle? In the present case, the only just standard of principle is the word of God. By this criterion, let my pamphlet and his review stand or fall in the eye of every discerning and Christian reader of your journal. I shall be content with their award, and if a single sentiment expressed by me is shewn to be inconsistent with Scripture, I, on my part, shall publicly renounce it.

2. To justify my motives would ill become me. To insinuate that they are pure, would display a lamentable ignorance of my own heart. But of this I am sure, that in exact proportion as I am regulated by scriptural influence, so will my motives depart more and more from the characteristics of a worldly, selfish, or otherwise degrading principle; and from thence I draw the conclusion, that while the Scriptures continue true, and human nature continues depraved,so will the motives in every other human breast be purified and ele. vated, or contaminated and degraded as they correspond with, or diverge from Scripture.-Verbum sat sapienti.

3. If your reviewer has judged me uncharitably in this respect, recrimination would, in any view, ill become me; but especially as he relieves me from all ground of complaint by the admission, How excellent soever may be the Writer's intentions." For this meagre mor sel of approval, I would thank him, were it not that the direct selfcontradiction it implies, neutralizes all its value. How he can consistently admit that my motives" may be excellent," and yet expect me to be "heartily ashamed," especially" of having thought to recommend myself by libelling my profession," and affecting a zeal which he asserts to be "not according to knowledge," 1 cannot perceive. How again, after admitting that he is at a loss to conjecture what motive can have prompted me,' &c. he can take it upon lum immediately thereafter, so directly to charge my motives, is another inconsistency your readers will probably expect his ingenuity to reconcile as a matter of curiosity. I can only assure him for my part, that the next time I think proper to appear in the press, I shall not be very solicitous what motives are ascribed to me by such a Reviewer as he has shewn himself to be.

4. My style.-Your Reviewer designates. it a "strange rhapsody," "bombastical," an exaggeration or rather a burlesque of Mr. Irving." I shall be quite content your readers consult the work itself on this point; at any rate they will perceive there is not much in the quotations adduced to justify these epithets. Nothing is more easy than to apply epithets, and in the present case, nothing would be more silly than to rebut them.

5. My matter.-On this point our reviewer is particularly violent. We would ask him, why so intemperate? Is he an advocate for

Christianity in medical men as he insinuates by the very slovenly admission of its importance; "there can be no doubt that the pious physician has frequent opportunities of being useful to the souls as well as bodies of his patients." If so, his whole objections to my produc tion apply only to my mode of treating the subject; he is my friend at bottom, and we are both pointing towards the same end. Why then adduce so much acrimony and invective to separate us asunder when a few temperate and candid remarks might shew a better mode of advocating the common cause, and unite us as brethren? If my production is likely to "prejudice the cause it advocates," is the present review of it intended to promote the cause? Then I fear it is not written in a manner well calculated to carry these intentions Tinto effect. I could with patience see my own performance proved to be crude, jejune, and injudicious, if a more matured and efficient Lirere substituted. But when it is merely asserted to be such by a writer who contradicts himself almost in every sentence, and when that writer betrays the most palpable inconsistencies in thinking as well as in expression, I am almost ashamed of myself for noticing his Ostrictures.

J Till I am apprized also whether he is an advocate or an opponent of "Professional Christianity," (a point rendered extremely equivocal by the present review in the most charitable view of it,) much time might be wasted in controversy to no purpose. I shall therefore only recommend a few of the positions adduced by our Reviewer to his more mature consideration, in the expectation that he will see the necessity for at least thinking consistently himself, before he administers counsel or reproof to others.

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1. Your Reviewer first objects to my mode of accounting for what he admits to be "the prevailing infidelity among medical men,' and after quoting me at some length, very courteously adds, this is not true," and a train of similar assertions. For the purpose of controverting my position, he farther indulges in a series of remarks, which, had he duly adverted to the two first lines of his quotation of me, would have appeared to himself so inapplicable, as to have been Mentirely spared. Like a true materialist, he refers all uneasy feelings at the first spectacles of mortality, to the physical effect on the stomach of the student. But as my qualifying clause in commencement limited my remarks only to those students who enter the dissecting 1 room" with serious impressions respecting their own future destiny, i. e. with a conscience in a state of sensibility, he will see that mere physical sensations it was not my object to notice. However newmy account of the matter may be to him, I have had too many opportu nities of witnessing the same melancholy course from serious feeling to confirmed apathy in reiterated drafts of students for a succession of years to be disconcerted by collision of ideas on the subject, and however monstrous the conclusions may be to which it leads, it is too deeply founded in human nature to be controverted. He ali vs!!

Our reviewer's principal argument in overturning my position 1 is the singular assertion: "The fact is notorious that there are men of the first eminence in the profession who are neither infidels nor men of decided piety." A moment's further reflection, however, uld have enabled him to perceive, that his authority on this point

is directly pitted against the authority of the revealed word of God. We are there informed, in the most plain terms, that there is in fact no possibility of such a middle state as he contends for. For either a man must be " decidedly pious," i. e. a sincere believer in the sacred scripture, or an unbeliever, in other words an infidel; and if it be true, which our Saviour so explicitly and forcibly declares, that "whosoever believeth not is condemned already," what estimate shall we form of the condition of those eminent men in the profession who are not men of decided piety." If it be also a necessary consequence, that he who believeth not the word of God maketh God a liar, what is the correct inference to be drawn respecting those medical students who "receive not the Gospel." However tender particular individuals may feel on this point, I for one believe it to be consistent with eternal truth; and whatever offence it may give to those characters at whom it points, it would be a sorry procedure indeed to compromise it out of deferénce to the over-sensitive pride of the human heart.

It is this direct statement of truth that seems to call forth the anost virulent invective from our reviewer. He declares " my whole representation to be false and scandalous," he charges me with want of charity, with "bearing false witness against the larger part of my own profession," and he feels it difficult to repress indignation “AT transcribing the rash and criminal assertions." All this asperity is excited simply by my denying that the human heart, which is described by Almighty God to be" desperately wicked," can supply pure motives to professional duty, and insisting that the holy scrip tures alone can,-positions which all the indignation and influence of all the medical men that ever lived, or ever shall live, would not induce me to retract or qualify by the slightest shade. Does he expect that great immutable truths are to give way before the fretting of a prideLavounded mortal as well might he expect a rock of adamant tomelt down before the fruitless foaming of the surge. Did he know more of the corruption of the human heart he would discover the necessity for humility in every fallen son of Adam, and he would, I dare say, read my little production with more selfcommand. Deeper reflection will, I doubt not, convince him, that ritis for the "CREDIT of religion," if such an expression be justifiable, and for the interests of religion too, not complacently to cloak over human depravity, but humbly to acknowledge it-and that it is for the credit of the medical profession, and must contribute valike to its dignity and its usefulness to search for motives to duty in the Scriptures, and there alone.

Reflection I am sure will convince him that ambition is a very tolame and illegitimate motive, and also the desire of success and of fortune-making; in like manner regard to his own character, which ocis a kind of behind-back delinquent. It is rather singular by the way, that when in quest of motives to inspire a sense of professional arduty, he should rank in his list "a sense of professional duty," which if it can be admitted at all will turn out to be nothing but 70 pride, unless that sense be derived from Scripture. It is singular also to find him quarrelling with me for urging on the medical man a due sense of the value of his patient's life as the best gua

rantee for exertion in his behalf, and adding the awkward acknowledgement, that "in his view the value of his patients' lives seldom enters into his account, "the value of the individual life is nothing to him, and rarely enters at all into his calculation"-and yet with the same breath admitting that "if it does, it must inspire greater caution." Surely such contradictory averments are ill calculated to impress your readers with respect for his judgment as a critic, and we could desire no stronger proof of the importance of "Professional Christianity" than such a direct avowal, that to the irreligious physician, or the medical man who is not decidedly pious, the value of the individual lives entrusted to his care is nothing. If this be not a full admission of the truth of my description, in all its extent, I know not what would be. It is curious to see him nevertheless attempt to saddle the whole blame on the "hospital practice, and on the army and navy surgeons," whom he considers" the dregs of the profession." Now we submit it to his own mature consideration what these classes in the profession, who by the way stand somewhat respectably before the public, will think of a charge so specific and personal, that they take but little account of a poor fellow's life." Although I feel myself quite at liberty to argue from the general principles of human nature, and from the premises of divine truth, upon the evil tendency of infidel opinions as a reason for embracing Christianity, I would have been sorry indeed to have made so specific a libel on this or any individual or class of the profession.

From these specimens of direct self-contradiction on the part of our candid and instructive critic, we are really at a loss to conceive what sort of beings those persons must be whom a mind of such a standard feels itself entitled to look down upon and designate the "dregs of the profession." Certain it is those physicians whom I consider respectable are at least accustomed to think consistently, and though some of them come short of Scriptural influence, I have generally found them rather unaware of its importance, and unfortunately for themselves and their patients, so much occupied and troubled with many things, as to forget this "one thing needful," than resolved to scoff at and trample it down in others, at all hazards, and with all their influence. Yet if the matter were traced out it would be found, that much of this delicacy of feeling on their part, is due to the high tone of moral feeling that pervades not only medical but general society, arising from the lustre that emanates so widely and so steadily in modern times from the sacred page; and the advantages the medical world would derive by drawing direct for themselves from that humiliating but purifying source, could be only equalled by the deplorable consequences that must ensue if all men were to turn sceptics, and the Scriptures thus be suffered to moulder. into oblivion. It would then be seen what a fearful moral darkness must follow from an eclipse of scriptural and spiritual light, and how rapidly our profession would degenerate from their present standard 'to a much greater extreme of inefficiency both in motive and practice than any I have ventured to chalk out.

We shall not press upon our reviewer, the charge of a wilful and uncandid perversion of the meaning and scope of my whole argumentation, when he extracts from it a conclusion the very reverse of