Untitled - Electric Scotland

[863-67] ATTITUDE TOWARDS l-
KEE
INQUIRY 481
\Vc have been accustomed to speak a good deal of the right and
duty of private judgment. It was by the exercise of this right
and the discharge of this duty that our fathers freed their and
our souls from Rome s time-honoured falsehoods. Are we to be
scared from those great principles which opened the closed door
of truth in the sixteenth century, because some men, using our
instruments of investigation, arrive at false and dangerous con
clusions ? As well might Luther have turned against the Refor
mation because of the eccentricities of the Anabaptists, or our
own divines have thought it best to make common cause with
the Jesuits because of the spread of Unitarianism. Am I con
vinced of the heavenly origin of those great truths for which the
Church of England has been appointed by the Lord Jesus as
the chief witness upon earth ? And shall I, from a craven fear
lest these truths be shaken, disparage the use of that great
instrument of reason which God has given to man for the
investigation and defence of truth? If I am wise I will not
ask my people to give to the Church s teaching an unreason
ing and stolid assent. I will set myself to work, as being
conscious of the value of that priceless gift of reason, to dis
cipline myself, and help others, that we may use it as God directs.
. . . For example, am I the pastor of a parish, and do I
know that some intelligent and promising young man of my
flock is distressing the old-fashioned piety of his parents by giving
utterance to speculations which sound to them like blasphemy ?
How shall I deal with him? . . . He has been, say, to the
University, and has heard questions freely discussed there, of
which he never dreamed in childhood ; questions as to the nature
and limits of inspiration, as to the difficulties which stand in the
way of an unquestioning assent to the perfect historical accuracy
of the Bible narrative ; questions as to the possibility of reconciling
a belief in miraculous interpositions with the maintenance of
as to how far the discoveries of
unchanging laws ; questions
modern science agree with the teaching of the sacred books ; or
(after the general truth of the Bible scheme is admitted), intricate
metaphysical questions still may be raised as to the particular
mode in which the life and death of Christ avail for man s
salvation, and how far the exact truth on this momentous subject
is expressed in the Church s formularies. A man need neither
be conceited, nor shallow, nor rash, nor irreverent, to have had
his thoughts exercised on any one of these subjects. . . . You
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