If
my brother is short-sighted I must not abuse him or speak against
him; I must pity him, and if possible try to improve his sight, or
to make things that he is to look at so bright that he cannot help
seeing. But never let us think evil of men who do not see as we
do. From the bottom of our hearts let us pity them, and let us take
them by the hand and spend time and thought over them, and try to
lead them to the true light.
What has been
The church's treatment of doubt
in the past? It has been very simple. "There is a heretic. Burn
him!" That is all. "There is a man who has gone off the road.
Bring him back and torture him!"
We have got past that physically; have we got past it morally? What
does the modern Church say to a man who is skeptical? Not "Burn
him!" but "Brand him!" "Brand him!"--call him a bad name. And
in many countries at the present time, a man who is branded as a
heretic is despised, tabooed and put out of religious society, much
more than if he had gone wrong in morals. I think I am speaking
within the facts when I say that a man who is unsound is looked
upon in many communities with more suspicion and with more pious
horror than a man who now and then gets drunk. "Burn him!" "Brand
him!" "Excommunicate him!" That has been the Church's treatment
of doubt, and that is perhaps to some extent the treatment which
we ourselves are inclined to give to the men who cannot see the
truths of Christianity as we see them.
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