Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect.  What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what is true.  There is old truth—­truth that has nourished the lives of men in many generations; let me cling to that and feed my soul upon it.  There is new truth—­some fuller outshining of the great revelation of God, in nature or in human nature; let me hail that light and walk in it.

It is often useful for me to know what others have believed and now believe.  Not to be influenced by the consenting voices of the great and good of the past would be childish egotism.  But it is always needful that my mind should be open to new truth and that I should be free to seek it.  Orthodoxism restricts this right and disparages this privilege, and in doing this it has greatly weakened the Christian church.

Several other sources of weakness must be treated much more briefly.

3.  Sectarianism is not the least among them.  To a large degree it is the product of orthodoxism.  Men who venture to think for themselves are driven forth from the fold of the faithful and compelled to organize in separate groups.  Sometimes they are not driven out, they go out and slam the doors behind them.  The seceders often claim a superior orthodoxy; their separation from the fold is an act of judgment on those they leave behind.  The responsibility for these divisions sometimes rests more heavily on those who go out, and sometimes on those who stay in.  On the one side or the other, often on both sides, pride of opinion is a main procuring cause.  Sometimes men go out because they desire to hold fast in peace the truth which they have found, and sometimes they are thrust out because they will not permit those who are within to hold fast in peace the truth which is their inheritance.

The ambition of leadership also figures largely.  Men who are not able to control the church to which they belong are often tempted to lead away a faction in which they may be more conspicuous.  Satan, according to the Miltonic mythology, was the founder of the first sect; and his philosophy was that it was better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.  The leaders of many of the sects have had a similar inspiration.

It would not be true to say that all schisms have sprung from selfishness:  they have often originated in a larger vision of the truth, and their testimony, which has cost them many sacrifices, has enlarged the thought and enriched the life of the whole church.

It must, however, be admitted that selfishness, in the forms of ambition and pride of opinion, has had more to do with the multiplication of sects than love of the truth or loyalty to the Master.  The existence of such numbers of organizations, differing from one another only in the most trivial particulars, cannot be reconciled with the plain principles of Christian morality.  There is no justification, in reason