The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so protected. Let me illustrate this by a reference to one of the fine arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is removed the acid bites the copper. The waxy ground does not in the least affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible is protected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common sense of Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at a time when it needed not only much courage but great originality to expose them! Remember the intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was one--so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion! Intellectual forces 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 Ampère? Yet Ampère 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 Ampère 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? Ampère 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.