286 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



experience, we consider it on that account untrue ; not be- 

 cause 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 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." 40 



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 Christian- 

 ity, 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 in- 

 quire into those subjects. The Christian system is one 

 which puts on the strain, as it were, every faculty of man's 



40 Thus Prof. T^yndall, in the Pall Mall Gazette of June 15, 1868, 

 speaking of physical science, observes : " The logical feebleness of science 

 is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of supersti- 

 tion, not by logic, but by slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for its 

 cultivation." 



