214 



DIFFERENCES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 



IN reasoning on this matter, whether as regards sects 

 or individuals, few advert sufficiently to an element of 

 distinction which must ever exist, and ever divide men, 

 whatever creeds they nxay be born under or brought 

 up in. This is the diversity of natural temperament, 

 physical, intellectual, and moral a diversity which the 

 common experience of life is ever bringing before us. 

 We see one man of hard, unflinching, sceptical logic, 

 another vague and imaginative in his reason one with 

 cold affections, another warm or passionate in his 

 feelings one with keen and artistic senses, another 

 dull and unimpressionable one with buoyant physical 

 powers, another feeble and sickly in frame. You may 

 bring these several men under the same religous creed 

 or denomination, but virtually, they are of different 

 religious belief, if this word belief has any substantial 

 meaning at all. 



And what is true as to individuals is true also, 

 though more generally, as to the conditions under 

 which sects and churches are formed. Certain tempera- 

 ments tend to coalesce in certain modes of belief or 

 outward worship ; the founders of which religious 

 bodies are usually men strongly marked by correspond- 

 ing individualities of character. Luther, Calvin, Loyola, 



