not differ
from my fellow-Christians without growing angry with them,
suspecting them, despising them, treating them as if they were not
my fellow-Christians at all.' Yes, my friends, this is what we have
to do first when we think of religious controversies, to examine our
own hearts and deeds and words; to see whether we too have not been
making bitterness more bitter, and, as the old proverb says,
'stirring the fire with a sword;' and to repent humbly and utterly
of every harsh word, hasty judgment, ungenerous suspicion, as sins,
not only against men, but against God the Father of Lights, who
worketh in each of His children to will and to do of His good
pleasure.

But some will say, 'We cannot give up what we believe to be right
and true.' God forbid that you should try to do so, my friends; for
if you really believe it, you cannot, even if you try; and by trying
you will only make yourselves dishonest. But does not that hold as
good of the man who differs from you? God will not surely lay down
one law for you, and another for him? 'But we are right, and he is
wrong.' Be it so. You do not surely mean that you are quite right;
perfect and infallible? You mean that you are right on the whole,
and as far as you see. And how can you tell but that he is right on
the whole, and as far as he sees? You will answer that both cannot
be right; that yes and no cannot be both true; that a thing cannot
be black and white also.

My friends, my friends--but where is the religious controversy, the
two sides whereof are as clearly opposite to each other as yes and
no, black and white? I know none now; I have hardly found one in
the records of the Protestant Church since first Luther and our
Reformers protested against Romish idolatry. On that last matter
there should be no doubt, as long as the first two commandments
stand in the Decalogue; but, with that exception, it would be
difficult to find a dispute in which the truth lay altogether with
one party. The truth rather lies, in general, not so much halfway
between the two combatants, as in some third place, which neither of
them sees; which perhaps God does not intend them to see in this
life, while He leaves his servants each to work out some one side of
Christian truth, dividing to every man severally as He will,
according to the powers of each mind, and the needs of each
situation.

True we have the infallible rule of Scripture: but are our own
interpretations