manner of life. We like the old ways. Like old shoes, they are more comfortable. We would probably declare, if asked, that we want to know the truth, but we are pretty well satisfied that we already know it. So if we chance to find that a knowledge of the truth involves a giving up or a laying down, a renunciation, a sacrifice of something that we have learned to love because we have had it in our possession a very long time, we may decide that the new thing is not the truth because it is not so comfortable as the old view. This is the selfish spirit, the spirit that makes old abuses of so long a life and reform so interminably tedious. The new thing may be true, but it is new.
The message of Jesus to us is: "If ye continue in my words, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." It follows that in such a case we shall see our errors and our evils, but at least we shall get rid of them and be free men. Let us then be brave men who, because we desire to be free, do not fear the light whatever of sacrifice it may involve. If the thing is true, we want to know it. The vision of it may so entrance us that nothing will be accounted sacrifice if so be that we at last possess it.
