THE PRIDE OF IGNORANCE. 261 



problem. By tliis time your critic probably loses 

 his temper, and begins to call you hard names, 

 reflecting upon the conduct of your father and 

 grandfather, and hinting in an aside that your 

 second cousin was duly transported some fifty 

 years since to Botany Bay for a bank-robbery. 

 To people of this class, in fiict, their own igno- 

 rance is a simple source of admiration and self- 

 congratulation. It positively gives them in their 

 own eyes a sort of mental and spiritual superiority 

 over the knowledge of others. They think they 

 are submitting their own opinions entirely to the 

 guidance of an infallible Mentor, whereas they 

 are in reality only setting up their personal inter- 

 pretations and views on religious questions as a 

 supreme law over everybody else's life and con- 

 duct. It is not the letter of Scripture alone that 

 is inspired to them, but their special reading and 

 interpretation of it. Anything that seems to 

 them to conflict with that beloved idol of their 

 own explanation rouses at once their prejudice of 

 ignorance. " Here is this fellow," they say, " who 

 actually ventures to believe himself wiser than 

 my particular private theological opinion. How 

 arrogant of him — how j)resumptuous ! lie de- 

 serves to be scouted as a rank unbeliever." We 

 get the extreme case of this curious sort of narrow 

 dogmatism in the old story of the illiterate street- 

 preacher who commented in a mistaken way upon 



