216 DIFFERENCES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 



Mahometan and the Parsee remnant of the religion of 

 Zoroaster), and the Catholicism of mediaeval and all 

 later times, exhibit these diverse colourings of human 

 character, not in individuals merely, but in those 

 divisions and hostile sects which every religion is prone 

 to engender within itself. In every age and country, 

 under one shape or other, we find the same innate 

 diversities of temperament which lead to this result 

 the enthusiastic and credulous, the philosophical and 

 sceptical, the formal and ceremonial, the austere and 

 ascetic. Names multiply and are ever changing, but 

 the essential character of human nature continues the 

 same, however disguised in outward lineaments. Reli- 

 gious distinctions, indeed, are often mere matter of 

 inheritance from one generation to another, in nations 

 as well as in families. But causes are at work beyond 

 this ; and the gorgeous ceremonials of the Eoman 

 Church, in contrast to the austere worship of Puritans 

 and Quakers, represents a distinction deeply graven in 

 the map of human life. 



When Cardinal Eetz described his own tempera- 

 ment as ' le moins ecclesiastique que fut dans 1'univers,' 

 he well denoted his peculiar idiosyncrasy. When Sir 

 Isaac Newton, a man of very different stamp, said to 

 Leclerc, 'In disputable passages of Scripture I love to 

 take up with that which I can best understand,' he 

 aptly depictures the love of fact and truth deeply innate 

 in his own mind. Such diversities, among lesser men 

 than these, are matter of the most common observation, 

 though not always duly estimated in their bearings 

 upon life, and especially in the connexion they establish 



