The herald., 1897-01-24

does. There is, in fact, as much Of the
spirit that made the Spanish inquisition
possible in the average self-styled free
thinker as Is possible to crowd into one
mortal. He is a slave to his dogma and
has no more patience with those who
dispute his premises than the Turk has
with the religious dogma of the Armeni-
an.
AS q rule, those who boast Of being
liberal thinkers" are intensely and Of
ten extensively illiberal-unless they are
permitted to do all the thinking. Now.
there is no more possibility Of ones being
liberal" thinker than there is of ones
being free" thinker. Every one who
has come in contact with liberal and
free" thinkers knows that they recog-
nize but one side of any religious ques-
tion, and that is their side. All other
sides are untenable. The average free"
thinker makes himself believe he is lib
eral thinker because he takes broader
and, perhaps, a more comprehensive
view Of duty now and existence here
after but his liberalism is confined with
in bounds that are as arbitrary and un-
yielding as those established by John
Calvin. Faith in ones religious belief
is necessary, but when he refuses to ad-
nit that the faith Of another in widely
different belief could possibly have a
satisfying foundation, the threads Of his
bigotry and narrow-mindedness are not
only large and numerous, but they are
woven into the fabric of his existence by
shuttles wholly made of insolent intol-
erance and copper-riveted dogmatism.
There is another class of so-called
thinkers, who call themselves liberal
religionists," but, with scarcely an ex-
ception, they have only contempt for
orthodox believers. Their own system
of religion is the truest and best, and
they are so illiberal that they cannot un-
derstand how any sensible person could
be so narrow as to separate himself
from them. The fact Is, is is just as i'm
possible to be liberal religionist as 1t is
to be liberal Calvinist or liberal free
thinker Every one who thinks on relig-
ion or politics thinks through an iron
pipe. The pipe of the Unitarian may be
larger than that of the Episcopalian and
a good deal larger than that of the CAL
whist, but 1t is not whit more flexible.
1t is not only true that most people have
religious and political opinions, but that
they are dogmatic to the fighting point
all the time, and the most irrational.
bigoted and unsufferable dogmatist is
the individual who is so much of free
and liberal thinker that he does not
believe in any kind of a system or the
ory of religion. Such one is found in
Ingersoll.
However, the man who is not some
thing of dogmatist in politics and re-
ligion is man who never thinks He
has no ideas of his own, and man with
out ideas is man without brains. 1t Is
one thing to be a sensible dogmatist, but
quite another thing to be an ignorant
partisan. Blessed is the man who knows
enough to confine his dogma tism to the
field of his own unspoken thoughts. And
quite close to the kingdom is he who
cheerfully admits that, although his own
dogma is altogether satisfying to him
self. it might not fit his neighbor as
we'll as his neighbor's own dogma, and
that he loves his neighbor fully as sin
cerely as he would were their dogmas of
the same piece. 1t is not true, in any
sense or degree, that what is sauce for
the goose is necessarily sauce for the
gander "The greatest of these is char
ity."