This intolerant spirit is not indispensable to great reforms; but it sometimes goes with them, and is made use of, as intense selfishness may often be used, for higher ends.  The ends might have been accomplished more rapidly and more effectually with less selfish instruments.  But man must be left free, and if he will not offer himself as an open channel to his highest impulses, he is used to the best advantage possible without them.

There is no finer type of a great reformer than Jesus Christ; in his life there was no shadow of intolerance.  From first to last, he showed willingness in spirit and in action.  In upbraiding the Scribes and Pharisees he evinced no feeling of antagonism; he merely stated the facts.  The same firm calm truth of assertion, carried out in action, characterized his expulsion of the money-changers from the temple.  When he was arrested, and throughout his trial and execution, it was his accusers who showed the intolerance; they sent out with swords and staves to take him, with a show of antagonism which failed to affect him in the slightest degree.

Who cannot see that, with the irritated feeling of intolerance, we put ourselves on the plane of the very habit or action we are so vigorously condemning?  We are inviting greater mistakes on our part.  For often the rouser of our selfish antagonism is quite blind to his deficiencies, and unless he is broader in his way than we are in ours, any show of intolerance simply blinds him the more.  Intolerance, through its indulgence, has come to assume a monstrous form.  It interferes with all pleasure in life; it makes clear, open intercourse with others impossible; it interferes with any form of use into which it is permitted to intrude.  In its indulgence it is a monstrosity,—­in itself it is mean, petty, and absurd.

Let us then work with all possible rapidity to relax from contractions of unwillingness, and become tolerant as a matter of course.

Whatever is the plan of creation, we cannot improve it through any antagonistic feeling of our own against creatures or circumstances.  Through a quiet, gentle tolerance we leave ourselves free to be carried by the laws.  Truth is greater than we are, and if we can be the means of righting any wrong, it is by giving up the presumption that we can carry truth, and by standing free and ready to let truth carry us.

The same willingness that is practised in relation to persons will be found equally effective in relation to the circumstances of life, from the losing of a train to matters far greater and more important.  There is as much intolerance to be dropped in our relations to various happenings as in our relations to persons; and the relief to our nerves is just as great, perhaps even greater.

It seems to be clear that heretofore we have not realized either the relief or the strength of an entire willingness that people and things should progress in their own way.  How can we ever gain freedom whilst we are entangled in the contractions of intolerance?