LIFE MORE THAN PROFESSION.
By Archdeacon Farrar
MEN are always testing their own religion and that of their neighbors by agreement about small points of disputed belief or variant ceremony; but Christ's test treats such things as supremely insignificant, and he says, "By their fruits ye shall know them." The real question to ask about any form of religious belief is, Does it kindle the fire of love? Does it make the life stronger, sweeter, purer, nobler? Does it run through the whole society like a cleansing flame, burning up all that is mean, and base, and selfish, and impure? . . . I am so convinced that there is no error more fatal than the notion that correct belief or church membership are of any value whatever in comparison with that righteousness of life which is the be-all and end-all of true religion, that I say plainly—and if I could find words to say it yet more plainly, I would say it yet more plainly—I would rather that any man should be a Romanist, or a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan, so that he were a holy and godly man, than ten times over a member of the most Catholic church that ever existed, and be a sly intriguer, or a rancorous slanderer, or an unclean liver, or a professed liar, or, in any one form of conscious wickedness, a hypocrite and a bad man.—Archdeacon Farrar.