The one really strong case for Christianity is that even those who condemn sins have to confess them. It is a good principle for Pharisees that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. But it is the good principle for Christians that he who casts the first stone should declare that he is not without sin. The criminal may or may not plead guilty. But the judge should always plead guilty...
....They discredit the Church with these criticisms. They never credit the Church with criticising itself. They forget that as human institutions go, the Church was not peculiar in having evils, but peculiar in admitting them. We all remember the old story of the Irish pilot who took a gentleman's yacht into port, declaring that he knew every rock in the harbour. A few minutes afterwards the vessel crashed upon an enormous crag, and when the owner cried angrily to the pilot, "But I thought you knew every rock in the harbour!" the pilot replied with equal freshness and indignation, "And so I do; and this is one of them." When Christianity splits on the rock of original evil she has a right to say that the rock is not marked down on any chart except her own. The sins of Christians are a doctrine of Christianity. But it is by no means true that the sins of Imperialists are a doctrine of Imperialism, or that the sins of Socialists are a doctrine of Socialism, or that the sins of the Worshipful Company of Candlestick-Makers are a record dogma of that institution. We do not lack abuses in the strict sense of that word; what we sadly lack is abuse, in the popular sense of it. We have not enough people to abuse the abuses. We do not lack what corresponds to the corrupt monastery; we lack what corresponds to the courageous and denunciatory priest. It is not that we have not got enough scoundrels to curse, but that we have not got enough good men to curse them- to curse them with that violence and variety which we have a right to expect.
-March 14, 1908, Illustrated London News
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