Life's Pleasures Quote by Mark Twain

Twain slips the knife in with a pharmacist’s smile. Calling the Bible a “drug store” sounds almost respectful: stocked shelves, familiar remedies, a place people trust. Then he turns the metaphor. The inventory “remain[s] the same,” but “medical practice changes” - and suddenly Scripture isn’t eternal truth so much as a static cabinet of substances that can be prescribed in wildly different ways, depending on the era’s anxieties and fashions.

The intent is less to mock belief than to mock certainty. Twain is targeting the human habit of treating a fixed text as a living authority while quietly updating the interpretive method to match whatever a culture wants to justify. If the “practice” changes, then doctrine is revealed as professional judgment, not pure revelation: a clinician’s choice of dosage, an interpreter’s choice of emphasis. A verse can be a stimulant for reform in one century and a sedative for obedience in the next. Same bottle, new label.

The subtext is clinical and cynical: religion often functions as treatment, not proof. People don’t reach for Scripture because it “wins” an argument; they reach for it because it soothes fear, organizes chaos, legitimizes power, or offers moral painkillers. And like medicine, it can heal or harm depending on who’s prescribing and who’s profiting.

Context matters: Twain wrote in an America roiled by revivalism, moral crusades, and a growing prestige culture around science and “progress.” By borrowing the language of modern medicine, he frames biblical interpretation as a historically contingent technology - less holy fire than evolving bedside manner.