Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BROAD AND NARROW. "Give heed to ... thy doctrine." YOUNG Christian people are met in these days by the objection to the Evangelical Churches—Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, and others—that they are rigid and severe and narrow in their doctrines. To this objection I wish to give some attention. It is easy to denounce positiveness of conviction, and the consistency of action which follows it, as unworthy and narrow; and it is equally easy to glorify laxity of faith and general indifference to doctrine, both in theory and policy, as broad, large, and noble. The expulsion by the Conference of the Rev. Dr. from the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, some years ago, was the occasion for many harsh utterances by people, in and out of the Church, on the subject of " breadth "and of "narrowness," of "liberality," "freedom of opinion," " freedom of speech," etc. Many honest souls were then, as they always will be, misled by specious and beguiling talk about "advanced ideas," "a new era," and "a new theology." The writer of these lines gave at the time, through the columns of the New York " Independent," a view of the whole question, as suggested by the case—a view so highly commended by wise and good men in and out of the Church, that he has yielded to the suggestion to put the article into more permanent shape. This is done without the slightest desire to reflect upon the character of Dr. himself, for whom, indeed, the writer has much respect and admiration, nor to revive an old Conference discussion, which would, certainly, be an unworthy aim; but to state, for the benefit of our intelligent young Methodist Episcopal people, who hear so much in these days about " liberality'' and " breadth," the true philosophy of denominational opinions and administ...