That was a fine, brave word from a professor in a Baptist...

That was a fine, brave word from a professor in a Baptist theological school when he said recently,—

"It is disloyal to our one Master to say that a view which is not in our opinion so disloyal as to forbid it to be secretly held among us is so disloyal that it must not be openly avowed among us. For myself, I have not, and never have had, any such secret opinions; but I stand for the absolute right of every Baptist to declare views which I do not believe in, but which I dare not propose to expel him for holding. There is no secure ground for liberty except loyalty to Christ alone, and there is no secure loyalty to Christ except in liberty for Christians.

"Truth is but correct statement of reality; and reality must come to light in order to be recognized and correctly stated. The fight is on. It is arduous and confusing. Let it go on. Christ is the truth, and this will appear."

Such an expression of freedom from the coercive limitations of a conventional faith is most promising, and there is abundant evidence that it is being asserted and maintained by an ever-increasing majority of the clergy of the evangelical churches as well as of the so-called liberal. One of the subtlest temptations of an educated, open-minded minister appears in the form of a question as to the advisability of taking his parishioners into his confidence so far as to speak to them frankly respecting his convictions regarding revealed truth; and many a man has lost the esteem and confidence of his more alert and inquiring hearers by disclosing in incidental conversation that there was a great gulf between the legitimate inferences from his pulpit statements, and the doctrinal beliefs which he actually entertained. To be equivocal or inconsistent here is fatal, it strikes a death-blow at his self-respect, thus depleting his spiritual life, and at public confidence, thus ending his general usefulness.

There is nothing so intolerant of pretence as Truth, and nothing dethrones a public teacher more quickly than the conveyed impression that he is not entirely frank and fearless in the statement of his deepest religious convictions. W.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit