The Religion of the Plain Man

The book is intended for the “man in the Street,” who, after all, has a certain claim on our consideration, since JESUS CHRIST came to save his soul. This man in the street, like myself, is entirely unable to discourse profoundly upon the Fathers, or to decide where scholars disagree in matters of simple scholarship. His religion is composed partly of emotion a good deal of Scripture, partly of imagination and, to a very small extent, of reason. He is competent to say what he thinks a text probably means; and to recognize a few of the plainer facts of history, such as that Rome has always had some sort of a Pope, and that ambition and wickedness may perhaps have characterized certain persons high in ecclesiastical affairs. He is capable also of understanding that oaks grow from acorns, and athletes from babies; and of perceiving a law or two in the development of life; he can grasp that poison has a tendency to kill; and that two mutually exclusive propositions require a good deal of proof before they can be accepted as different aspects of one truth. Now this kind of intellectual attainment seems a poor equipment for the pursuit of salvation; but it is undoubtedly the only equipment that many of us have, and it is GOD that has made us and not we ourselves. Therefore if we believe in GOD at all -- at least in a GOD of mercy or even justice -- we are bound to acknowledge that this equipment is all that we actually require.