l certain of it. He admits by
implication that it is weak. He shows an attitude of infidelity instead
of an attitude of faith, of trust.

There is no position which I hold to-day that I consider so sacred that
people are not at liberty to ask any questions about it they please;
and, if they do not see a good reason for accepting it, I am certainly
not going to be angry with them for declining to accept. The attitude
of truth is that of welcome to all inquiry. It rejoices in daylight, it
does not care to be protected from investigation.

Then there is another reason still, another point to be made in regard
to this matter. People are not very likely to find the truth if they
are frightened, if they are warned off, if they are told that this or
that or another thing is too sacred to be investigated. I have known
people over and over again in my past experience who long wished they
might be free to accept some grander, nobler, more helpful view of
truth, and yet have been trained and taught so long that it was wicked
to doubt, that it was wicked to ask questions, that they did not dare
to open their minds freely to the incoming of any grander hope.

If you tell people that they may study just as widely as they please,
but, when they get through, they must come back and settle down within
the limits of certain pre-determined opinions, what is the use of their
wider excursion? And, if you tell them that, unless they accept these
final conclusions, God is going to be angry with them, they are going
to injure their own immortal souls, they are threatening the welfare of
the people on every hand whom they influence, how can you expect them
to study and come to conclusions which are entitled to the respect of
thoughtful people?

I venture the truth of the statement that, if you should inquire over
this country to-day, you would find that the large majority of people
who have been trained in the old faith are in an attitude of fear
towards modern thought. Thousands of them would come to us to-day if
they were not kept back by this inherited and ingrained fear as to the
danger of asking questions.

Do I not remember my own experience of three years' agonizing battle
over the great problems that were involved in these questions, afraid
that I was being tempted of the devil, afraid that I was risking the
salvation of my soul, afraid that I might be endangering other people
whom I might influence, never free to study the Bible,