Identifier: lifelettersofphi02alle (find matches)
Title: Life and letters of Phillips Brooks
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Allen, Alexander V. G. (Alexander Viets Griswold), 1841-1908
Subjects: Brooks, Phillips, 1835-1893
Publisher: New York, Dutton
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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sed it was dead. It is thefatal difficulty of eclecticism, that each man wants to make hisown selection, and no man can choose for others, but only forhimself. He defined true tolerance as the willing consent thatother men should hold and express opinions with which wedisagree, until they are convinced by reason that those opin-ions are untrue. Earnest discussion is a part of tolerance. It might haveall the power to put down error by force, and it would never useit. But true tolerance must be utterly impatient toward dishon-esty, hypocrisy, self-conceit, or cant. There is a moral intoler-ance which must go with intellectual tolerance to give it vigor. The nature of tolerance ... is composed of two elements,both of which are necessary to its true existence, and on the har-monious and proportionate blending of which the quality of thetolerance which is the result depends. These elements are, first,positive conviction; and second, sympathy with men whose con-victions differ from our own.
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. ^T- 33S6) THEOLOGY 5oi True tolerance consists in the love of truth and the love ofman, each brought to its perfection, and living in harmony withone another, . . . orhed and enfolded in the greater love ofGod. The love of truth alone grows cruel. It has no pity forman. . . . And the love of man alone grows weak. It trimsand moulds and travesties the truth to suit mens whims. The advice to give to every higot whom you want to make atolerant man must he not, Hold your faith more lightly andmake less of it, hut, Hold your faith more profoundly andmake more of it. Get down to its first spiritual meaning;grasp its fundamental truth. So you will be glad that yourbrother starts from that same centre, though he strikes the samecircumference at quite another point from yours. It is true, strange as it sounds at first, that the more deeplyand spiritually a man believes in fixed, endless punishment ofwicked men, the more and not the less tolerant he will becomeof his brother who cherishes ete

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