9
What has been said by no means exhausts the injustice of undenominationalism. It professes to be at least a measure of equality to all. It is found to be, in working fact, the most galling of inequalities. It only suits precisely the outsider, who with a sort of vague instinct of religiousness, has no particular principles or convictions. It is indeed exactly what he holds to be true. It is an attempt to force his indefiniteness and indifference, by legal compulsion, upon the whole community. It invests him with an importance that is ludicrously undeserved. It does direct injustice, whether more or less, to everyone who has serious convictions upon theological subjects at all.
Meanwhile the injustice which is done to these is very far indeed from being a generally equal, or (in that sense) approximately "just" injustice. To a very large number of nonconformists, and (unfortunately) to a very appreciable number of Church people, it is a comparatively slight injustice; so slight that they feel that little or no real sacrifice is involved in the acceptance of it. Indeed there are those who even accept it with eagerness as a price which they will readily pay for certain immediate advantages: sometimes even, it is to be feared, for the mere satisfaction of seeing it enforced upon those more thoughtful Church people to whom it is an incalculable wrong.
Why is it an incalculable wrong to anyone? Here is a second point (besides the essentially positive character of every negation), which the opponents of the Bill either generally overlook, or at all events make singularly little effort to understand. It is well worth thinking out a little.
There are widely different conceptions as to where the true differentia of Christianity lies. There are those to whom Christianity means primarily an exalted moral standard. The Decalogue, or the Sermon on the Mount,
