help to understand the matter. In the first place the philosophical and theological studies of the priest have been stunted, one-sided, and superficial; very few of them have continued the work at a university, and even there the work would again be narrow and superficial. They are plunged into active parochial work immediately after their ordination; they have no stimulus and little continuous time to study—except a little casuistry—on the other hand there is ample opportunity and pressing invitation to dissipate their time and wits in agreeable trivialities. Under such circumstances they feel disposed to regard Wellhausen and Kuenen (or even Sayce and Cheyne), Huxley and Spencer, Taine, Draper, and even Anglican divines, as so many literary hedgehogs. Their scholastic system was plausible enough when the professor urged it upon them, and they give no further thought to the subject. Add to this that most of them are Irish, and the happy buoyant Celtic temperament does not take religious doubt very seriously; no one knows into what depths of study and seas of trouble it may lead. In the educated layman, of course, the temperament is sceptical enough, though it is a careless, light-hearted scepticism, not obtrusive and not very consistent; in the priest the same disposition leads to a natural reluctance to take any steps that may lead to a violent dislocation, and to a habit of deprecating a Quixotic striving after mathematical precision and consistency of thought.
