Moral Integrity Without Intellectual Integrity
Moral Integrity without Intellectual Integrity. THIS often exists. Many are the sincere persons who have a twist in their judgment; they can be trusted to do what they believe right, but their ideas of what is right are often far astray. Their imagination intoxicates them; some such would not steal, but they believe in and promote large schemes sure to fail, and even claim divine direction; but their unstable intellect originates the revelation, and they lead into hopeless ruin the friends who trust in them because of their moral integrity. Having done this, without intending to injure any one, as soon as they regain the least foothold another dubious scheme appears. If not operating in financial spheres, they judge harshly all not agreeing with them, denounce them as hypocrites, declaring at the same time that they "love their souls and pray for them every day." One of the most brilliant men in this country has changed his religious views four or five times, and written to us in the same rebuking strain because we can not see that his ideas are in harmony with Scripture or with reason. Many geniuses are of this type and their very brilliancy depends in great part upon the fact that their good intentions and belief in divine direction cause them to neglect to summon the powers of the intellect to aid them in deciding, while they use all those powers in carrying out the last inconsistent notion that fascinates them. It is this lack of intellectual integrity, which may exist in great minds as well as small, that explains the persistence with which they adhere to an untenable position. They will make a statement or a contract which to every plain person has one meaning, and then read into it something that no one else can see. In this state of mind they act exactly as do those who have intellectual integrity without moral integrity, and in dealing with men one of the most difficult questions to decide often is, Are their motives bad, or is their judgment unreliable? In the widely different realms of physical science, philosophy, theology, psychology, and criticism (classical or Biblical) men dealing with the same facts and principles will deduce or induce, as the nature of the case may be, the most diverse results. Assuming equal moral integrity, all the fundamental errors must be attributed to lack of intellectual integrity.—The Christian Advocate.