it. If what we think is truth is really error, it will be the sooner beaten down for being made to stand up for itself. But if it is indeed the truth we know it will prevail the more in the world as we keep it free from all connection with anything that will weaken or becloud it.
I know how much danger there is in such an attitude as this if we take it up towards the truth that we hold. It lies in our human nature to go to violence or extremes with everything. Martin Luther used to say that human nature is like a drunken man trying to ride a horse, you prop him up on one side and he topples over on the other. It is that way with us. We try to be firm and we become hard-hearted. We pride ourselves on uncompromising loyalty to the truth and we lack the tenderness and sympathy. Moreover, as Bushnell said in his essay on "Christian Comprehensiveness":
"It is the common infirmity of mere human reformers
that, when they rise up to cast out an error, it is generally
not till they have kindled their passions against it. If they
begin with reason, they are commonly moved, in the last
degree, by their animosities instead of reason. And as
animosities are blind, they, of course, see nothing to respect,
nothing to spare. The question whether possibly
there may not be some truth or good in the error assailed,
which is needed to qualify and save the equilibrium of
their own opposing truth, is not once entertained. Hence
it is that men, in expelling one error, are perpetually
