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I Don’t Believe

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 15, 1866

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 27, No. 24.

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“I Don’t Believe.”

By R. F. Cottrell

THIS is the creed of infidels and skeptics. Prefix I don’t believe to every statement of revelation, to every article of Christian faith, and you have their entire creed. They never tell us what they do believe. They labor to destroy the Christian faith, and offer us nothing in its stead. They would pull down our house and leave us with no shelter at all. Their labor is unproductive, and is no benefit to any one, unless, from the fact that “misery likes company;” they would be glad to see others as poor and houseless as themselves. But we prefer to remain in our comfortable home until some one shall offer us a better one.
But open infidels are not the only ones that hold this creed. You will hear it from many a professed Christian. Say they, “I don’t believe” it makes any difference what day we keep; “I don’t believe” it makes any difference whether you are immersed or sprinkled; and “I don’t believe” it makes any difference what a man believes. Still they would probably admit that belief in the Christian religion is preferable to belief in Paganism or Mohammedism.
Our Lord Jesus Christ made our belief of some importance. Said he, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” None of our Christian friends who talk so much of non-essentials, will hold that baptism is of more importance than faith. And if faith is thus essential to salvation, it would hardly be consistent that the belief of a lie would do just as well as the belief of its opposite, the truth. In fact we read of some being left to “believe a lie that they might be damned.”
A Christian who has scripture for his faith will tell you what he believes, and sustain his belief by Bible proofs. But when they adopt the infidel’s creed, and say, “I don’t believe,” you may be sure it is because they hold some faith or practice for which they have no Bible proof. If they are substituting something else for what the Bible requires, they tell you “I don’t believe it makes any difference.”
When I hear one say, as I did yesterday, “I don’t believe it makes any difference what a man believes,” it leads to reflections like these: It would make a vast difference with me. I would not choose to live in a community who believe that murder, adultery, and theft are no crimes, but are perfectly right. My Christian friends who occasionally use the skeptic’s creed will agree with me in this. Well, these crimes may look worse to you than Sabbath-breaking, because they come a little closer to self. But he who breaks one of God’s commandments sets aside the whole authority of Him who is the Author of the whole law. Who has a right to say of any one of his commandments, “Is it not a little one?” Matt. v, 17–20.
R. F. Cottrell.