The "offense" of the visible churches that tells most against
them today in the minds of educated men is not worldliness or
unfaithfulness; it is their inability to shake off their untenable
position as judges of others. The "Church" in Jesus' day judged him
unfit to live. Upon Luther, Wesley, and many of the best servants of
the human race the churches to which they belonged passed similar
sentences. Even the suggestion of the "holding-up-of-skirts," of this
"I-am-holier-than-thou" attitude, because I think differently, is
repellent and has not yet met the fate that certainly awaits it, before
there can be a reign of universal peace. Science has taught us that
doubt, quite as much as faith, leads to the apprehension of truth. There
are countless men, skilled in the exact sciences and in scholarship,
possessed of wealth and rank, who find it impossible to define their
position in words, yet whose humility and charity make us love them,
whose deeds are just such as those which have come down the ages as
Jesus' own selection for the most convincing evidence of his Sonship of
God. We all know today men of inferior attainments and lives who not
only know themselves to be infallible, but haven't the grace to leave
even such men alone, and who have interpreted their call to the
"ministry" as simply a mandate to set every one else intellectually
right. I know that that which is hidden from the wise can be revealed to
babes, and that our talents--namely, social position, wealth, and
brains--merely enlarge in God's sight our capacity for service, and
therefore our responsibility. But I know also that the prizes of our
high calling can be purchased only by our fidelity in following, and
that involves other than intellectual processes.