The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [57]
Like a scientist not wishing to publish a finding too early, he remained circumspect about his breakthrough. “Would not presume, but trust Christian principles [are] beginning to have some influence on [my] Character—specially that of Faith,” he confides to Reflections in mid-May 1854. “Truly the very simplicity [of Faith] is almost a stumbling block,” he adds, a line that comes across as a stunner for the reversal it shows in his thinking. What he had pursued so doggedly in the past had perhaps never really been so far out of reach. But then, as if the skeptic in him cannot refrain from questioning, he wonders: “Are we all together, body and soul, so much under God’s direct influence and knowledge, that it may be said, the very hairs of our heads are numbered?”
The spleen book omission would be God’s second warning to Carter. In his growing awareness that a Providence is never “any excuse for inexcusable deficiencies” but rather an impetus for soul-searching, he sets aside his disappointment and commits himself to succeeding on his second try at the M.B. exams.
And he earns his reward. “Success, under Providence,” he writes on November 14, 1854, “M.B.—first division.”
Hooray! he might have added, but he saves his effusiveness for a letter to Lily. “The only thing after all that can be said about the examination is that it is the best in the country. To have passed it implies a certain amount of knowledge.” But more important, Carter must have felt he’d passed the greater test put to him by God. With a note of pomp, he then explains to Lily that degrees such as the M.B. are merely “weapons with which to fight the battle of life, and some men will fight as well with few as many. The contest will shortly begin downright, though, for many reasons, I do not greatly fear.”
That Carter believed he had achieved a milestone in his spiritual growth is underscored just days later in Reflections, though it’s what he doesn’t say that is so telling. He stops writing here. His four-year-long running debate on whether to lead a Christian Life has quietly ended in God’s favor. From now on, he folds his religious ruminations into his daily diary. However, none of this is meant to suggest that faith had come with inner peace. On the contrary, Carter remains as tortured as ever, albeit with an important difference. Whereas in the past he had agonized over the absence of God, now he agonizes over His presence. Sadly, though, he has little skill at recognizing God’s signals. When your life is a lightning storm, as Carter’s so often was, how do you know which bolt is a Providence?
At the start of December, Carter receives a request from John Sawyer, a figure who has been absent of late. Sawyer asks his former apprentice to fill in for him for a couple of days. For the younger doctor, this comes as a welcome chance to practice medicine and is also an unexpected compliment. Carter had covered for Dr. Sawyer for a full week back in September, a trial by fire as a G.P. that, frankly, had left him somewhat singed at the edges. All started well enough, he had written. Carter felt honored just for being asked (plus, he relished the chance to take time off from the college), but he ran into trouble almost as soon as Dr. Sawyer was out the door. The trouble being