hange of metaphor.

I have heard that some people spend their time in church inspecting
other people's clothes. If that is so, they must be profoundly
impressed by the amazing proportion of misfits. The souls of thousands
are quite obviously clad in ready-made garments. Here is the spirit of
a bright young girl decked out in all the contents of her grandmother's
spiritual wardrobe. The clothes fitted the grandmother perfectly; the
old lady looked charming in them; but the grand-daughter looks
ridiculous. I was once at a testimony meeting. The thing that most
impressed me was the continual repetition of certain phrases. Speaker
after speaker rang the changes on the same stereotyped expressions. I
saw at once that I had fallen among a people who went in for ready-made
clothes.

The thing takes even more objectionable forms. Those who are half as
fond as I am of Mark Rutherford will have already recalled Frank Palmer
in _Clara Hopgood_. 'He accepted willingly,' we are told, 'the
household conclusions on religion and politics, but they were not
properly his, for he accepted them merely as conclusions and without
the premisses, and it was often even a little annoying to hear him
express some free opinion on religious questions in a way which showed
that it was not a growth, but something picked up.' Everybody who has
read the story remembers the moral tragedy that followed. What else
could you expect? There is always trouble if a man builds his house on
another man's site. The souls of men were never meant to be attired in
ready-made clothes. Somebody has finely said that Truth must be born
again in the secret silence of each individual life.

For the matter of that, the philosophy of ready-made clothes applies as
much to unbelief as to faith. Now and then one meets a mind distracted
by genuine doubt, and it is refreshing and stimulating to grapple with
its problems. One respects the doubter because the doubt fits him like
the elastic silk; it seems a part and parcel of his personality. But
at other times one can see at a glance that the doubter is all togged
out in ready-made clothes, and, like a bird in borrowed plumes, is
inordinately proud of them. Here are the same old questions, put in
the same old way, and with a certain effrontery that knows nothing of
inner anguish or even deep sincerity. One feels that his visitor has
seen this gaudy mental outfit cheaply displayed at the street corner,
and h