p needed
a moment's examination.

This intellectual pride is one of the very greatest sins to which
humanity is tempted. It goes very deep in its destructive force because
it is a sin, preeminently, of the spiritual nature, of that in us which
is akin to God, His very image. It is, you will remember, the sin on
which our Lord centres His chief denunciation. And common as it has
always been, it has never been so common as it is to-day. Pilate and the
chief priests are duplicated in every community in the thousands who
reject Christianity without any adequate examination as incredible in
view of what they actually hold, or as inconvenient in view of what they
desire to practice. We have only to read very superficially in the
current literature of the day, we have only to examine the teaching in
colleges, to be completely convinced of the vast extent of the revolt
against the Christian Religion. This revolt is for the most part a
revolt without adequate examination. It assumes that the Christian
Religion is contrary to science, or to something else that is
established as true. It looks at Christianity superficially through the
eyes of those who reject it and are ignorant of it. The fact is that
Christianity cannot be understood in any complete sense of the word by
those who do not practice it. Its "evidence" is no doubt of great force;
of sufficient force to lead men to experiment; but the actual
comprehension of Christ as the Saviour of man is an experience. The
operation of the Holy Spirit in life is necessarily proved, and only
completely proved, by the action of the Spirit Himself.

Another demonstration of the same pride is seen in the refusal, without
adequate examination, to accept the Catholic Religion, and the picking
and choosing among articles of belief and sacraments and practices as to
what we will use or observe. Men do not like this or that, and they
therefore decline it. The whole attitude is one of self-will and pride.
Whatsoever comes to us with a great weight of Christian experience back
of it certainly deserves careful consideration; it demands of us that we
treat it as other than a matter of taste. Pride is the commonest of sins
and the most dangerous for it attacks the very heart of the spiritual
life. It runs, to be sure, through a broad range of experience and not
all manifestations of pride are mortal sin; but all manifestations of it
are subtle and insidious and capable of expansion to an indefin