VI

THE OPEN MIND1

NOW THESE WERE MORE NOBLE THAN THOSE IN THESSALONICA,

IN THAT THEY RECEIVED THE WORD WITH ALL READINESS OF

MIND, EXAMINING THE SCRIPTURES DAILY, WHETHER THESE THINGS WERE SO.-Acts xvii. II.

IT has become a customary manner of speaking among us to associate together religious zeal and intellectual narrowness, enthusiasm and bigotry, a keen interest in theology and a fanatical refusal to pay attention to new ideas, however in themselves reasonable and attractive. Nor may it be doubted that our habit of speech in this particular is justified by a great mass of human experience, accumulated through many ages in many lands. And certainly it cannot be denied that in this present time religious zeal, interest, and enthusiasm are more often than not accompanied by narrowness, lack of intellectual sympathy, and bigotry. We may add that there

1 Preached on the fifth Sunday after Trinity, July 12, 1903, in St. Margaret's, Westminster.

are obvious reasons why this should be the case. Theological beliefs are something more than opinions, however confidently held. They enter into the inner shrine of the conscience and unite themselves with the intimate loyalties of the heart. They wield authority over action, and fashion for themselves a suitable framework of accustomed procedure, giving colour and direction to the life which has been insensibly surrendered to their control. Most of all is this the case when the beliefs in question repose on a Divine Revelation. The natural reluctance to discuss or even abandon positions which have come to be the substructures of life is reinforced by the apprehensions of piety. It is taken for granted that God has spoken; and the line is drawn with hesitation, if drawn at all, between revelation itself and human apprehensions of it. Yet it might have been thought that, however natural this confusion may be, human experience, melancholy and monotonous, might have corrected it by the demonstration, many times repeated under many circumstances, of the error of human opinions, the best established in the world. It hardly needs to make appeal to history; the experience of individual men will suffice to prove as much as this. Let any man who has reached, I do not say old age, but middle life, look back on

his own career and call back to his mind the beliefs which he held once and holds no more, and he will need no further argument to disprove the exclusive and final claims advanced by his present convictions.

Of all men, the Jew in the time of St. Paul was least accessible to new religious notions. His ancestral religion reposed, as he believed, on a Divine Revelation; it was buttressed in his mind by all the subtle converging sentiments of national pride and racial superiority. He was a religious aristocrat, the favourite of heaven, and his creed drew to its support both the enthusiasm of patriotism and the selfishness of privilege. We cannot wonder that the Gospel of religious equality seemed wonderfully unconvincing to the Jews; that, for the most part, the apostolic preaching moved them to contempt and indignation; that they, far more than their heathen contemporaries, were moved to the baleful activity of persecution. The chapter from the Acts, which we have read as our second lesson this morning, contains a sad but thoroughly representative record of Jewish fanaticism. The sacred historian has to note one illustrious exception to the general rule. The men of Beroa did not reveal the common bigotry; they were willing to listen,

ready to examine, even open to conviction. "Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so." The laudatory adjective of the historian is worth noting. The Berceans, he says, were evyevéσTepoɩ, more noble, or, to render the Greek word more accurately, better bred, more gentlemanly in their behaviour, than the Thessalonians, and they showed the fact by the courteous audience which they gave to St. Paul, and by their willingness to be at the pains to look carefully into the matters he had brought before them. Beroa, we Bercea, we are told, was a city of some antiquity, and "no doubt prided itself on the pure blood of its citizens." It stood in obvious contrast with "the noisy democracy of Thessalonica." If I may without offence suggest a modern parallel, it stood towards its flourishing neighbour as Boston stands to-day towards New York. No doubt a society of leisured and prosperous people, among whom there is a tradition of culture and a habit of discussion, is very favourable to tolerant views. A busy mercantile community is impatient of discussion, and asks for nothing more than a working system of religion; its interest is stimulated by the

competition of business and bound to the pursuit of commercial success, which means, of course, the acquisition of wealth. The circumstances of the Beroans were more kindly to the open mind than those of Thessalonica, and though even in Beroa there was a multitude of ignorant people, which the Jews could "stir up" and "trouble," yet we may reasonably suppose that there were not in it, at least in any great number, that promiscuous mob from which the persecutors of Thessalonica drew those "vile fellows of the rabble" who "set the city on an uproar." But, when all is said, the superiority of the Berceans was not merely in their breeding and in their circumstances; they evidently were persons accustomed to use their minds in the matter of their religion, and, sufficiently convinced of the gravity of religion, to be ready to take some trouble about it. It is in these respects that the sacred historian certifies their nobility. "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so."

I propose to you that the "nobility" of the Berceans is worthy our emulation. Look at the matter a little more closely. The root of bigotry very often to be found in mental indolence. I do

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