important and one true idea
of their visit remains with them: of the various pictures of the world
not one is painted by the imagination but from nature.[5349]

Now, between this picture and that which the Catholic Church presents
to them, the difference is enormous. Even with rude intellects, or minds
otherwise occupied, if the dissimilarity is not clearly perceived it
is vaguely felt; in default of scientific notions, the simple hearsay
caught on the wing, and which seem to have flickered through the mind
like a flash of light over a hard rock, still subsists there in a latent
state, amalgamating and agglutinating into a solid block until at
length they form a massive, refractory sentiment utterly opposed to
faith.--With the Protestant, the opposition is neither extreme nor
definitive. His faith, which the Scriptures give him for his guidance,
leads him to read the Scriptures in the original text and, hence, to
read with profit, to call to his aid whatever verifies and explains an
ancient text, linguistics, philology, criticism, psychology, combined
with general and particular history; thus does faith lay hold on science
as an auxiliary. According to diverse souls, the role of the auxiliary
is more or less ample it may accordingly adapt itself to the faculties
and needs of each soul, and hence extend itself indefinitely, and
already do we see ahead the time when the two collaborators, enlightened
faith and respectful science, will together paint the same picture, or
each separately paint the same picture twice in two different frames.--
With the Slavs and Greeks, faith, like the Church and the rite, is a
national thing; creed forms one body with the country, and there is less
disposition to dispute it; besides, it is not irksome; it is simply a
hereditary relic, a domestic memorial, a family icon, a summary product
of an exhausted art no longer well understood and which has ceased
to produce. It is rather sketched out than completed, not one feature
having been added to it since the tenth century; for eight hundred years
this picture has remained in one of the back chambers of the memory,
covered with cobwebs as ancient as itself, badly lighted and rarely
visited; everybody knows that it is there and it is spoken of with
veneration; nobody would like to get rid of it, but it is not daily
before the eyes so that it may be compared with the scientific
picture.--Just the reverse with the Catholic picture. Each century, f