But I now discovered that there was a deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ, than I was previously conscious of--a distaste which I found out, by a reaction from the minute interest felt in such details by my new friend.

For several years more, I did not fully understand how and why this was; viz.

that _my religion had always been Pauline_.

Christ was to me the ideal of glorified human nature: but I needed some dimness in the portrait to give play to my imagination: if drawn too sharply historical, it sank into something not superhuman, and caused a revulsion of feeling.

As all paintings of the miraculous used to displease and even disgust me from a boy by the unbelief which they inspired; so if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to call out in me a sense, that from day to day equal kindness might often be met.