Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/11

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THE RELIGION OF A SCEPTIC

The old controversy between Fundamentalists and Modernists has recently broken out again, as bitter and malignant as ever; and it does seem advisable at this juncture to give a few plain hints to these disputants as to exactly how their theological bickerings affect the nerves of ordinary outsiders!

What these ecclesiastics must be given to understand is briefly this; that to the majority of intelligent minds—and this includes a far greater number of average men and women than they realize—the whole quarrel is utterly outworn and tedious!

What any person endowed with moderate discernment is bound to feel is that the Fundamentalists are so stiffly conventional, that they lack the clairvoyance to understand the real human value of the thing they are defending. They just defend it professionally, blindly, instinctively; as if it were some sacred idol or tribal image, the very expression of whose features, carved by some early inspired artist, they had lost all power of interpreting.

So much for the Fundamentalists.

But what the sensitive outsider feels about the

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