of this kind act freely not only in the Church of
England, but in other Churches, even in the Church of Rome. Who amongst
the scientific men of this century has been more profoundly scientific,
more capable of original scientific discovery than Ampere? Yet Ampere
was a Roman Catholic, and not a Roman Catholic in the conventional sense
merely, like the majority of educated Frenchmen, but a hearty and
enthusiastic believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The belief
in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampere from becoming one of the
best chemists of his time, just as the belief in the plenary inspiration
of the New Testament does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an
acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may have the finest
scientific faculty, the most advanced scientific culture, and still
believe the consecrated wafer to the body of Jesus Christ. For since he
still believes it to be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a
wafer, it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis would
resolve itself into the same elements as before consecration; therefore
why consult chemistry? What has chemistry to say to a mystery of this
kind, the essence of which is the _complete_ disguise of a human body
under a form in _all_ respects answering the material semblance of a
wafer? Ampere must have foreseen the certain results of analysis as
clearly as the best chemist educated in the principles of Protestantism,
but this did not prevent him from adoring the consecrated host in all
the sincerity of his heart.

I say that it does not follow, because M. or N. happens to be a
Protestant, that he is intellectually superior to Ampere, or because M.
or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, or a Positivist, that he is
intellectually superior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on the other
side of this question it is equally unfair to conclude that because a
man does not share whatever may be our theological beliefs on the
positive side, he must be less capable intellectually than we are. Two
of the finest and most disciplined modern intellects, Comte and
Sainte-Beuve, were neither Catholics, nor Protestants, nor Deists, but
convinced atheists; yet Comte until the period of his decline, and
Sainte-Beuve up to the very hour of his death, were quite in the highest
rank of modern scientific and literary intellect.

The inference from these facts which concerns every one of us is, that
we are not to bu