ty, as in the direction which it takes."[282]

Dr. Newman observes: "Any one study, of whatever kind, exclusively pursued,
deadens in the mind the interest, nay the perception of any other. Thus
Cicero says, that Plato and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Isocrates, might
have respectively excelled in each other's province, but that each was
absorbed in his own. Specimens of this peculiarity occur every day. You can
hardly persuade some men to talk about anything but their own pursuit; they
refer the whole world to their own centre, and measure all matters by their
own rule, like the fisherman in the drama, whose eulogy on his deceased
lord was 'he was so fond of fish.'"[283]

The same author further says:[284] "When anything, which comes before us,
is very unlike what we commonly experience, we consider it on that account
untrue; not because it really shocks our reason as improbable, but because
it startles our imagination as strange. Now, revelation presents to us a
perfectly different aspect of the universe from that presented by the
sciences. The two informations are like the distinct subjects represented
by the lines of the same drawing, which, accordingly as they are read {269}
on their concave or convex side, exhibit to us now a group of trees with
branches and leaves, and now human faces." ... "While then reason and
revelation are consistent in fact, they often are inconsistent in
appearance; and this seeming discordance acts most keenly on the
imagination, and may suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even
hurry him on to the commission of definite acts of unbelief, in which
reason itself really does not come into exercise at all."[285]

Thus we find in fact just that distinctness between the ideas derived from
physical science on the one hand and from religion on the other, which we
might _a priori_ expect if there exists that distinctness between the
natural and the miraculous which theological authorities lay down.

Assuming, for argument's sake, the truth of Christianity, it evidently has
not been the intention of its Author to make the evidence for it so plain
that its rejection would be the mark of intellectual incapacity. Conviction
is not forced upon men in the way that the knowledge that the government of
England is constitutional, or that Paris is the capital of France, is
forced upon all who choose to inquire into those subjects. The Christian
system is one which puts on the strain, as it were, _ev