Nothing like hair of the dog that bites you." "The Doctor talks well," said the Skipper, who had listened rather dubiously to his friend's commentaries on his story; "but he carries too much sail for me sometimes, and I can't exactly keep alongside of him.
I told Elder.

Staples once that I did n't see but that the Doctor could beat him at preaching.

'Very likely,' says the Elder, says he; 'for you know, Skipper, I must stick to my text; but the Doctor's Bible is all creation.'" "Yes," said the Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, "the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most important matter.

The mere dead letter of a creed, however carefully preserved and reverently cherished, may be of no more spiritual or moral efficacy than an African fetish or an Indian medicine-bag.

What we want is, orthodoxy in practice,--the dry bones clothed with warm, generous, holy life.