in
the ordinary mind to rely upon some form of external authority in
religious as in other matters. With one man it is the authority of an
infallible church; with another the authority of an infallible book;
with another the authority of some infallible statement of belief which
ought to hold good for all time, but never does. At the best, external
authority is only a crutch, and at the worst it may become a rigid
fetter upon the expanding soul. The true seat of authority is within,
not without, the human soul. We are so constituted as to be able to
recognise, little by little, the truth of God as it comes to us. It
may come from any one of a thousand different quarters, but to be
recognised and felt as truth it must awaken an echo within the
individual soul. If it does not awaken such a response, it is of no
effect so far as the growth of the soul is concerned. What is true in
this book will not be received as true by the readers merely because I
say it, but because they feel it to be true and cannot get away from
it. Why should we be afraid of trusting the human soul to recognise
and respond to its own truth? All truth is one, and all earnest
truth-seekers are converging upon one goal. It is the divine self
within everyone of us which enables us to discern the truth best fitted
to our needs, and this divine self is, as has already been pointed out,
fundamentally one with the source of all truth, which is God.

If men could only come to see this more clearly and to trust their own
divine nature to enable them to follow and express the truth as well as
to receive it, they would not suffer themselves to be hampered by
formal and literal statements of belief whether in the church, the
Bible, or anywhere else. But this is what they seldom do. Your devout
Anglican or Roman Catholic will tell you that the church teaches this
or the church teaches that: as though that fact ever permanently
settled anything. One cannot really begin to appreciate the value of
united continuous church testimony until one is able to stand apart
from it, so to speak, and ask whether it rings true to the reason and
the moral sense. Suppose the Christian church enjoined or permitted
rape and murder, would the devout Catholic believe and obey? "But it
is inconceivable that the church could ever do that," he might answer.
Yes, but suppose it did, would he obey? If not, why not? He would not
obey because he would know quite well that