Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Road to Seward

considering those mere
trifles which only affect the imagination of the weak? See him go to sermon,
full of devout zeal, strengthening his reason with the ardour of his love.
He is ready to listen with exemplary respect. Let the preacher appear, and
let nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comical cast of countenance,
or let his barber have given him a bad shave, or let by chance his dress be
more dirtied than usual, then, however great the truths he announces, I
wager our senator loses his gravity.
If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself upon a plank wider
than actually necessary, but hanging over a precipice, his imagination will
prevail, though his reason convince him of his safety. Many cannot bear the
thought without a cold sweat. I will not state all its effects.
Every one knows that the sight of cats or rats, the crushing of a coal,
etc., may unhinge the reason. The tone of voice affects the wisest, and
changes the force of a discourse or a poem.
Love or hate alters the aspect of justice. How much greater confidence has
an advocate, retained with a large fee, in the justice of his cause! How
much better does his bold manner make his case appear to the judges,
deceived as they are by appearances! How ludicrous is reason, blown with a
breath in every direction!
I should have to enumerate almost every action of men who scarce waver save
under her assaults. For reason has been obliged to yield, and the wisest
reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has
everywhere rashly introduced. He who would follow reason only would be
deemed foolish by the generality of men. We must judge by the opinion of

and immediate feeling.
733. That He would teach men the perfect way.
And there has never come, before Him nor after Him, any man who has taught
anything divine approaching to this.
734.... That Jesus Christ would be small in His beginning, and would then
increase. The little stone of Daniel.
If I had in no wise heard of the Messiah, nevertheless, after such wonderful
predictions of the course of the world which I see fulfilled, I see that He
is divine. And, if I knew that these same books foretold a Messiah, I should
be sure that He would come; and seeing that they place His time before the
destruction of the second temple, I should say that He had come.
735. Prophecies.--That the Jews would reject Jesus Christ, and would be
rejected of God, for this reason, that the chosen vine brought forth only
wild grapes. That the chosen people would be fruitless, ungrateful, and
unbelieving, populum non credentem et contradicentem.141 That God would
strike them with blindness, and in full noon they would grope like the
blind; and that a forerunner would go before Him.
736. Transfixerunt.[142] Zech. 12:10.
That a deliverer should come, who would crush the demon's head, and free His
people from their sins, ex omnibus iniquitatibus;[143] that there should be
a New Covenant, which would be eternal; that there should be another
priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, and it should be eternal; that
the Christ should be glorious, mighty, strong, and yet so poor that He would
not be recognised, nor t