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"Ye shall know," says orthodoxism, "only the truth that has been prescribed and ticketed by authority; ye shall be taught what is orthodox, and orthodoxy shall keep you safe and sound." The entire attitude of the mind is changed, under this demand. It is no longer that of free inquiry, of open-minded search for truth; it is that of passive assent, of unreasoned submission to authority.
Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made.
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. 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.
And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together. 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.
The temper of coercion, physical or moral, which is an essential element in orthodoxism, always produces, in those who do not submit to it, the temper of resentment and rebellion, which largely characterizes what is known as liberalism. Those who are thus flung off into opposition are in no mood to examine fairly the truth that there is in orthodoxy.
That the church has suffered serious injury and enfeeblement from the causes we have considered, from her lack of faith, from her subjection to orthodoxism, from the ravages of sectarianism, from her entanglements with Mammon, no one can deny. But that these evils are tending to increase is not evident. There is reason rather to hope that they are all on the wane, unless it be the last.
The second of the church's chronic infirmities has been orthodoxism. Perhaps it was the recoil of her unbelief in Christ that sent her over into the intellectual prostration of orthodoxism. Orthodoxy is defined as correct belief. But when we ask what is correct belief, orthodoxy answers: "That which is generally believed to be correct." Its demand is, therefore, conformity to current opinion.
What orthodoxism produces when it has free course and is glorified, may be seen in the Greek church. More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom.
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