in the past? It has been very simple. "There is a heretic. Burn him!"
That is all. "There is a man who has gone off the road. Bring him back
and torture him!"
We have got past that physically; have we got past it morally? What
does the modern Church say to a man who is skeptical? Not "Burn him!"
but "Brand him!" "Brand him!"--call him a bad name. And in many
countries at the present time, a man who is branded as a heretic is
despised, tabooed and put out of religious society, much more than if
he had gone wrong in morals. I think I am speaking within the facts
when I say that a man who is unsound is looked upon in many
communities with more suspicion and with more pious horror than a man
who now and then gets drunk. "Burn him!" "Brand him!" "Excommunicate
him!" That has been the Church's treatment of doubt, and that is
perhaps to some extent the treatment which we ourselves are inclined
to give to the men who cannot see the truths of Christianity as we see
them.