church behind
them.

Nevertheless they might have noted that the drift, for the last few
centuries, has been in the direction of the teaching of Jesus. It is
hardly conceivable that Christian nations should go to war to-day for
the settlement of points of doctrine. Three hundred years ago the whole
church thought that necessary; to-day a very large part of the church
would think it horrible and monstrous. It is not very long ago that the
church believed in the settlement by force of disputes between
individuals. The wager of battle was supposed to be a proper and
Christian way of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused
person. To most of the great Christians of the fifteenth century the
proposition to dispense with that would have seemed a "noble folly,"
just as the proposition of general disarmament now seems to some
twentieth century Christians. But the church has learned that there are
better ways of settling personal quarrels than the wager of battle; and
it is likely to learn, after a while, that there are better ways of
settling international and industrial difficulties than the way of war.
The church is beginning to see that the way of Jesus is not, after all,
so impracticable as it has always been supposed to be; it is beginning
to discern the truth that the law of service is a stronger law than the
law of strife. One of these days we shall find the church of Jesus
taking its stand on the Golden Rule as the practical rule of everyday
life, and insisting upon the organization of the industrial and the
political order on the basis of good-will. When that day comes we shall
have a right to say that the church believes in Jesus Christ. When that
day comes it will be evident to all that the main cause of the church's
enfeeblement through all these centuries has been her unbelief. And we
shall marvel that it took her so long to find out what might there is in
meekness and what force in gentleness; and that it was so hard for her
to understand that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the
weakness of God stronger than men.

2. The second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism.
Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over
into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism.

Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct
belief, orthodoxy answers: "That which is generally believed to be
correct." Its demand is, therefore, conformity t