IIKCONSTRCCTION AND RESTATEMENT. 



17 



precise than that which is required for an occurrence of normal 

 kind. 



Only those who misunderstand the reign of law or ignore it 

 can hold an abnormal event to be more sacred than a normal 

 one. On the other hand those who have attained to this 

 scientific clearness of vision, and who can see as a simple and 

 obvious truth that in abnormality there is nothing of itself 

 that is sacred, that the normal is just as sacred as the abnormal, 

 must not, because it is obvious to them, despise or condemn 

 those who in the pre-scientific ages did attribute some sort of 

 sacred ness to abnormality. 



There are still those, and possibly they are still a majority 

 amongst professed Christians, who would think it derogatory to 

 the person whom they worship as wholly God as well as wholly 

 man, to be a man in the fashion of His birth as well as in the 

 fashion of His death. Let us honour them for their sincerity 

 of heart and for their reverential souls even when we deem 

 their sincerity and their reverence to be founded in this respect 

 on no adequate basis. If we find ourselves in the cause of 

 what we consider truth unable to share all their beliefs, let it' 

 be ours to see that we neither plume ourselves on any 

 superiority of discernment, nor fall behind them in the 

 devotion with which inwardly and outwardly we follow the 

 Master. 



Our minds are not all constituted alike ; it is impossible for 

 us all to see truth in the same aspect. But we can all follow 

 truth as it is discoverable by us, and we can all pray for a 

 clearer revelation of it. To our own Master we stand or fall. 

 There are idols of the temple as well as the idols of the cave, 

 and of the tribe, and of the market-place. It has been largely 

 the part of scientific investigation to show us how well-meaning 

 piety has not always held a clear distinction between idol and 

 emblem, between the symbol and the thing symbolized ; and 

 " Nehushtan " has had to be the verdict pronounced, and still 

 will have to be pronounced, over some of the survivals before 

 which men, thinking to worship God, have offered incense, and 

 bowed themselves down. 



It is for this cause that as our convictions deepen and 

 strengthen we must be the more ready to preserve open minds 

 towards the convictions of others, to hold judgment in 

 reverential suspense even toward some things which large 

 bodies of devout men have regarded — perhaps for centuries — 

 as closed questions. Revelation has not stood still, nor 

 will it in our time. We stand not on the limited territory 



