b. Because the average Christian cannot answer technical questions
Others regard the religious verities lightly because the average Christian cannot answer technical questions pertaining to his faith. Yet there is not one cultivated person in a thousand that can answer technical questions concerning the material universe in which we all live. The most highly civilized and prosperous community succeeds simply because it relies on the technical knowledge of the few. Most of us know electricity neither practically nor theoretically. Even among practical electricians, how many could answer more than the simplest questions? It requires no profound knowledge of the subject to wire a house and give its occupants light and comfort. Yet the practical electrician knows as well as the expert that he is dealing with a real force, and may be able to wire the house better than the theoretical electrician himself could do. How many good cooks are there who could chemically analyze the food which they have prepared for their families? It is absurd to expect the average Christian to go into all the psychology and philosophy of his religion; as it is absurd to deny the reality of his experience because a full analysis is not forthcoming. The large majority of people have neither time nor qualifications to go into an exhaustive and technical examination of the philosophy and science of religion, any more than they have to go into the philosophy and science of the material world. Fortunately, a more practical way stands wide open to them. Because men are men, they may possess the great realities before they can adequately explain them. They know the stars before they are astronomers. They have an implicit knowledge of God which under right conditions becomes explicit. They have intuitions and common sense, the foundation of all knowledge. It is their privilege, likewise, to put things to the severe test of use. In the material world men risk their lives and fortunes on the truth of sciences of which, at first hand, they are totally ignorant. But by so doing they find themselves the richer and the wiser. Likewise, the Christian multitudes who take the spiritual world practically, find themselves the recipients of untold blessings. Their knowledge, to be sure, is only practical, but it is their knowledge, and they would be willing to die for it if necessary. One may have the reality without the analysis, or he may have the analysis without the reality, or, unfortunately, he may have neither. The happiest possible situation is where he has both. A man may be justified in giving money and labor for the support and extension of religion without himself being a psychologist or a theologian. Just as the men who have given the most money for the advancement of the sciences do not know enough about these sciences to teach them. Yet we do not call them fools; we highly esteem them as philanthropists and benefactors. They are often as intellectual in the practical world as the scholars are in the scientific world. The practical and theoretical everywhere supplement each other.