Testimony Of Two Men by Taylor Caldwell

would be outlawed, as they were for the first few hundred years of Christianity, or regarded with contempt as mere vets, and sacrilegious, in the Middle Ages. Even in Britain to this day a doctor is a mere ‘Mister.’ When Our Lord cured the suffering, He did say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you.’ But that was in a different context and for a different reason. Surely you know that? We don’t believe, any longer, that his ‘sin’ is the cause of a child being born crippled or blind or defective or diseased. Or cancer a ‘judgment’ on the anguished, many of them good people who had rarely sinned in their lives. Remember how, in medieval times, a man or even a child who became sick was regarded as a criminal, suffering the condemnation of a supposedly merciful God? Sometimes he was stoned to death. Yes! You know that, Father. What an offense to God that must have been!”
    “Yes, Jon, I know. But your ferocious war on pain—which is exemplary—does seem a personal battle to you, a personal insult—”
    “That’s because I believe in the dignity of man.”
    He no longer believed in it. He no longer cared what happened to his fellows, because of what they had inflicted on him, because of the derision and hatred even those he had so tirelessly helped had heaped on him. If it had all come from only a few who had not known him at all, even by reputation, he could have forgiven. But it had come from his friends and his own patients, who had eagerly desired—yes, they had desired! —to believe the very worst of him. Many still so desired; many were still disappointed.
    I was puerile, he thought, staring at the files with rage and bitterness. I expected that some men at least were human. I expected that some had a sense of justice. I actually believed in friendship! What an utter, stupid, disgusting fool I was! No man has a friend. We hate each other instinctively; we love to destroy each other. What other explanation is there for wars, for all the obscene injustice we administer to each other, in full and radiant malice? Nothing delights a man more than causing pain to his brother. Even a rat has better instincts toward his kind.
    When he caught himself in occasional acts of kindness, even now, he despised himself. He had vowed, months ago, that never would he lift a hand to help another again. He thought of young Dr. Morgan. Now, why in hell had he bribed and blackmailed to get him appointed to the staffs of those hospitals? Jonathan struck the files angrily with the palm of his hand, in revulsion against himself. He thought of the pain recorded there, and the hopeless hope and despair, and he said aloud, “Good.” He had cut his palm a little on the steel and he looked at the drops of blood with anger.
    The young priest had said, “You must not desert humanity, Jon.”
    He had replied, “But humanity first deserted me. I don’t care about their pain any longer, Father.”
    “That is a sin against God. He made you a physician.”
    “That’s why I’m resigning!” He had grinned. But he was resigning because he had lost his compassion—he hoped.
    “If man’s sinfulness affected all priests that way, Jon, after listening in Confessionals, there would be no clergy.”
    “I am no priest, Father.”
    “All physicians, the real ones, are priests, Jon. Once only priests were physicians. You remember that?”
    But Jon had not replied. He had left one of the few men who had believed in him.
    He was thinking of this now. He felt anger against young Father McNulty, to whom life was very simple. Father McNulty “loved” people. Oh, for God’s sake! What was there to “love”? Suddenly he thought of Jenny Heger, the trollop. He turned and went into his office again and sat down at his desk. Aimlessly, he began to clear out the drawers.
    He found the small framed photograph of his dead young wife, Mavis. He set it on his desk and stared at the lovely face, framed in its masses of fair hair, at the full soft neck,