ou may come across something here
that I forgot to say when we were talking over these matters.

He began, reading from the manuscript portion of his book:

--We find it hard to get and to keep any private property in thought.
Other people are all the time saying the same things we are hoarding to
say when we get ready. [He looked up from his book just here and said,
"Don't be afraid, I am not going to quote Pereant."] One of our old
boarders--the one that called himself "The Professor" I think it
was--said some pretty audacious things about what he called "pathological
piety," as I remember, in one of his papers. And here comes along Mr.
Galton, and shows in detail from religious biographies that "there is a
frequent correlation between an unusually devout disposition and a weak
constitution." Neither of them appeared to know that John Bunyan had got
at the same fact long before them. He tells us, "The more healthy the
lusty man is, the more prone he is unto evil." If the converse is true,
no wonder that good people, according to Bunyan, are always in trouble
and terror, for he says,

"A Christian man is never long at ease;
When one fright is gone, another doth him seize."

If invalidism and the nervous timidity which is apt to go with it are
elements of spiritual superiority, it follows that pathology and
toxicology should form a most important part of a theological education,
so that a divine might know how to keep a parish in a state of chronic
bad health in order that it might be virtuous.

It is a great mistake to think that a man's religion is going to rid him
of his natural qualities. "Bishop Hall" (as you may remember to have
seen quoted elsewhere) "prefers Nature before Grace in the Election of a
wife, because, saith he, it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is
peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire conquest while Life
lasteth."

"Nature" and "Grace" have been contrasted with each other in a way not
very respectful to the Divine omnipotence. Kings and queens reign "by
the Grace of God," but a sweet, docile, pious disposition, such as is
born in some children and grows up with them,--that congenital gift which
good Bishop Hall would look for in a wife,--is attributed to "Nature."
In fact "Nature" and "Grace," as handled by the scholastics, are nothing
more nor less than two hostile Divinities in the Pantheon of
post-classical polytheism.

What is the secret of the profound i