work. He finds the truth, digests it,
is nourished and enriched by it before he offers it to his flock. To a
large extent it will nourish and enrich in turn a number of his hearers.
But still they will lack something. The faculty of selecting truth at
first hand and appropriating it for one's self is a lawful possession to
every Christian. Rightly exercised it conveys to him truth in its
freshest form; it offers him the opportunity of verifying doctrines for
himself; it makes religion personal; it deepens and intensifies the only
convictions that are worth deepening, those, namely, which are honest;
and it supplies the mind with a basis of certainty in religion. But if
all one's truth is derived by imbibition from the Church, the faculties
for receiving truth are not only undeveloped but one's whole view of
truth becomes distorted. He who abandons the personal search for truth,
under whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming
the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and
faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity,
resting on mere opinion.

In those churches especially where all parts of the worship are
subordinated to the sermon, this species of parasitism is peculiarly
encouraged. What is meant to be a stimulus to thought becomes the
substitute for it. The hearer never really learns, he only listens. And
while truth and knowledge seem to increase, life and character are left
in arrear. Such truth, of course, and such knowledge, are a mere
seeming. Having cost nothing, they come to nothing. The organism
acquires a growing immobility, and finally exists in a state of entire
intellectual helplessness and inertia. So the parasitic Church-member,
the literal "adherent," comes not merely to live only within the circle
of ideas of his minister, but to be content that his minister has these
ideas--like the literary parasite who fancies he knows everything
because he has a good library.

Where the worship, again, is largely liturgical the danger assumes an
even more serious form, and it acts in some such way as this. Every
sincere man who sets out in the Christian race begins by attempting to
exercise the spiritual faculties for himself. The young life throbs in
his veins, and he sets himself to the further progress with earnest
purpose and resolute will. For a time he bids fair to attain a high and
original development. But the temptation to relax the always