Being Tolerant of Different Beliefs.

Sermon: Tolerance

1867

From the book: Discipline and Other Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

" Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 

The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' "'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'

"'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'"
Matthew 13:24-30

The thoughtful man who wishes well to the Gospel of Christ will hardly hear this parable without a feeling of humiliation. None of our Lord's parables are more clear and simple in their meaning; none have a more direct and practical command appended to them; none have been less regarded during the last fifteen hundred years.

Toleration, solemnly enjoined, has been the exception. Persecution, solemnly forbidden, has been the rule. Men, as usual, have fancied themselves wiser than God; for they have believed themselves wise enough to do what he had told them they were not wise enough to do, and so have tried to root the tares from the wheat.

Men have, as usual, lacked faith in Christ; they did not believe he was actually governing the earth which belonged to him; that he was actually cultivating his field, the world; they therefore believed themselves bound to do for him what he neglected, or at least did not see fit, to do for himself; and they tried to root up the tares from among the wheat.

They have tried to repress free thought, and to silence novel opinions, forgetful that Christ must have been right after all, and that in silencing opinions which startled them, they might be quenching the Spirit, and despising prophecies.

But they found it more difficult to quench the Spirit than they fancied, when they began the policy of repression. They have found the Spirit blew where it listed, and they heard the sound of it, but knew not whence it came, or whither it went; that the utterances which startled them, the tones of feeling and thought which terrified them, reappeared, though crushed in one place, suddenly in another; that the whole atmosphere was charged with the, as with electricity; and that is was impossible to say where the unseen force might not concentrate itself at any moment, and flash out in a lightening stroke.

Then their fear has turned to a rage. They have thought no more of putting down opinions, but of putting down men. They have found it more difficult than they fancied to separate the man from his opinions; to hate the sin and love the sinner. So they have begun to persecute; and, finding brute force, or at least the chichane of law, far more easy than either convincing their opponents or allowing themselves to be convinced by them, they have fined, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, exterminated; and like the Roman conquerors of old, "made a desert, and called that peace." To be continued....