erstand
about the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity as necessary to an
intelligent religious faith? And what about feeling or emotion, which
is usually represented as a vital part of the driving power of
Christian life and conduct? Well, speaking for myself, I make no
pretension to the lofty disregard of doctrine which in so many quarters
seems to be regarded as the hall-mark of enlightened thinking. We do
well to beware of a so-called "breadth," which is but a pet euphemism
for thinness.

But after all, we can hold a thing for true, and yet find no
explanation of it which quite satisfies us. Theories about the heavens
have come and gone, but the stars remain. Christ was, before creeds
gathered about Him; and it is because He is, that men must formulate
doctrine to explain Him. I have long had the conviction that in
religion nothing really matters but the Spirit of Christ. This is not
to say that if we have, or claim to have, the Spirit of Christ, it
makes no difference whether we do, or do not, believe in the
"historical Christ." To my thinking such a position is nonsense. We
may as well talk about an effect without a cause. Spirit must needs
clothe itself with body. The "external may come in at different points
of the process, but the internal without the external cannot exist." I
am simply saying, that everything we need to know in a general sense
about Christian doctrine becomes intelligible and reasonable, not when
we approach Christ through our doubts and difficulties about doctrines,
but our doubts and difficulties through Christ. In Him is life, and
the life is the light of men. I care not for the moment what dogmas
about Christ you accept or reject; I ask you to think, and then say,
what heaven worth entering, of state or place, could close against us,
were we in the Spirit of Christ walking in the footsteps of Christ?

Then about feeling: Is there one of us who can say, that he, or she,
has never had the impulse that should lead to Christian decision? Long
as we make it possible for God to appeal to us, He will find His own
way. From Him is the impulse, whichever way it comes, but it is ours
to put it in practice. But just as we do not wait for feeling to take
us out to earn our bread, and keep a roof over our head, so it is a far
nobler thing to turn to God from a sense of duty, and conscience, and
spiritual need, than it is to depend upon feeling to make us do, what
not to do, with or w