In recent years there has been a tendency in liberal religious circles to discredit the importance of doctrinal study. Frequently an impression has been given that sincerity of attitude was more important than the importance of doctrinal study. Frequently an impression has been given that sincerity of attitude was more important than the content of belief. While no one would discount the necessity of sincerity, no right-thinking person believes that sincerity can or should be substituted for a knowledge of the truth. To believe a falsehood, however sincerely, is disastrous, and the greater the degree of sincerity the more dire are likely to be the consequences. It is only a knowledge of the truth that makes men either free or safe. And if this be true, as it is, in the physical and material realms of life, how much more important it is in the realm of spiritual values with their eternal consequences.

An anonymous writer has well expressed the intimate relation between belief, activity, character, and destiny in the following lines:

Sow a thought, reap an act:

Sow an act, reap a habit;

Sow a habit, reap a character;

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Exactly so! Ideas are motor. They eventuate in acts. Acts, repeated, become habits out of which character evolves. Thus does Holy Writ affirm that out of the heart are the issues of life, and "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." There is a chain of unbroken continuity between what one believes in the here and now, and the kind of person he will be and the place of his abode in the hereafter. It is clear, therefore, that belief is vital in determining personal activity, moral character, and eternal destiny!