world. The enfeeblement of the church, in all the generations,
has been largely due to this cause.

What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may
be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian
church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural
and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and
the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek
church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has
made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged
nation and church into the ditch together.

Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect.
What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what
is true. There is old truth--truth that has nourished the lives of men
in many generations; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it.
There is new truth--some fuller outshining of the great revelation of
God, in nature or in human nature; let me hail that light and walk in
it.

It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now
believe. Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and
good of the past would be childish egotism. But it is always needful
that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to
seek it. Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege,
and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church.

Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly.

3. Sectarianism is not the least among them. To a large degree it is the
product of orthodoxism. Men who venture to think for themselves are
driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in
separate groups. Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam
the doors behind them. The seceders often claim a superior orthodoxy;
their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave
behind. The responsibility for these divisions sometimes rests more
heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in. On the
one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main
procuring cause. Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast
in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust
out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in
peace the truth which is their inheritance.