Page:Orange Grove.djvu/68

 makes one so abstracted that he fancies some one else is talking when he is hearing, himself think. Just as you and I get engaged, father, he will take up the conversation and then scold me for it."

"Well Rosa, what was the idea you intended to bring out?" said her father.

"That if there is a certain standard all men must recognize and live up to in order to be happy, how are we going to know what it is when opinions differ so much? One person says this is the only true faith and another says that."

"I think you are laboring under a misapprehension of terms. You confound theology with intuition. One is spiritual, the other intellectual."

"Theology, how I hate that word! I never could understand it, and what it has to do with a person's life in making him good or bad. Why should we assume to be nearer right than others?"

"That assumption of right is based on a correct principle. In order to start an opinion or truth we must assume its infallibility until convinced of its error. We must have a stand point whence to draw our conclusions, which will be truth to us so long as we conscientiously believe it. The error lies in excluding others from the privilege of exercising the same prerogative, whose opinions are entitled to the same respect as ours. By tolerating and discussing each other's views the errors are detected, over which the truth, from its divine character, must ultimately prevail.

The claim set up by every sect to be founded on the Bible is not so absurd as it seems as first thought.