ect, the aforesaid reason would be
sound and sufficient, no doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science
might go away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all know that
conversions are seldom made in that way; that such a thing as a serious
and painstaking and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of a
religion or of a political dogma is a rare occurrence; and that the
vast mass of men and women are far from being capable of making such
an examination. They are not capable, for the reason that their minds,
howsoever good they may be, are not trained for such examinations. The
mind not trained for that work is no more competent to do it than
are lawyers and farmers competent to make successful clothes without
learning the tailor's trade. There are seventy-five million men and
women among us who do not know how to cut out and make a dress-suit, and
they would not think of trying; yet they all think they can competently
think out a political or religious scheme without any apprenticeship to
the business, and many of them believe they have actually worked that
miracle. But, indeed, the truth is, almost all the men and women of our
nation or of any other get their religion and their politics where they
get their astronomy--entirely at second hand. Being untrained, they are
no more able to intelligently examine a dogma or a policy than they are
to calculate an eclipse.

Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized
training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and
judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are
lost--usually without knowing it. In a church assemblage of five hundred
persons, there will be a man or two whose trained minds can seize upon
each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and recognize its value
or its lack of value promptly; and can pass the details in intelligent
review, section by section, and finally as a whole, and then deliver a
verdict upon the scheme which cannot be flippantly set aside nor easily
answered. And there will be one or two other men there who can do the
same thing with a great and complicated educational project; and one
or two others who can do the like with a large scheme for applying
electricity in a new and unheard-of way; and one or two others who can
do it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing the scientific world's
accepted notions regarding geology. And so on, and so on. But the
manufacturing experts will not be comp