The Blindness of Unbelief.
By R. F. COTTRILL
JEHOVAH is the God and author of truth; hence truth and right are always well-pleasing to him. Faith acknowledges the truth, and thus glorifies God, its author. Satan is the author of lies and the father of sin. Unbelief is its mother. If the truth of God had not been discredited, sin would not have entered the world. Hence, as faith and righteousness glorify God, unbelief and sin glorify the Devil. Since man has broken his allegiance to the Author of truth, and transferred it to the father of lies, it seems next to impossible for him to break the chains of unbelief and give credit to the truth. The strongest evidence fails to produce faith, and is disregarded and esteemed as nothing. Unbelief sees no evidence in the clearest proofs, but is obstinately blind. It could stand by the tomb of Lazarus who had been dead four days, and see him called forth to life, and then go away and conspire to kill the Son of God, at whose voice the dead had been awakened to life, and also to kill the resurrected man, because his resurrection was the cause of many believing on Jesus. If we go further back, to the time when ten successive plagues were inflicted upon Egypt, and see the Egyptians still hardening their hearts, and though seemingly repenting when the evil was upon them, returning immediately to their unbelief, we see another example of the inveterate obstinacy and unconquerable power of unbelief. And follow favored Israel themselves, whom God delivered by his mighty power, opening a highway through the midst of the sea, feeding them with bread from Heaven and causing the water to flow from the desert rock for their thirst, then causing them to hear his majestic voice, talking to them out of the midst of the fire which enveloped the summit of Sinai; then, after all this, while Moses had gone up into the mount to talk with God and receive the tables of the covenant, making a molten calf like one of the gods of Egypt, proclaiming this “similitude of an ox that eateth grass” as the gods that had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and dancing around it like the heathens who had never witnessed the power of God as they had. Oh! the astonishing blindness of unbelief! We wonder at such examples of it which are recorded in the Bible. But has the day of unbelief passed away and the age of faith come? Let us look around us and see. Prophecies given in the days of Moses and downward, have been continually in progress of fulfillment. We have the recorded examples of all the past, and the facts of the present which have all been foretold, to admonish us and cause us to believe; and yet, in countries that have the Bible, infidelity is increasing as never before. Multitudes of professed believers are becoming infidels, and those who still hold the profession of faith have so little confidence in the word of God that they dare not exchange their traditional fables for its plainly-expressed teachings. The most thrilling warnings of God’s wrath, founded on the clearest teachings of the Bible, can induce but a few to turn from their idols to the living God. And even those who are moved to obedience by the last merciful warning to mankind, are slow to realize that God is in the work—that he is infallibly leading those who will submit to be led, and preparing them for translation to the kingdom of God without death. Many, after starting in obedience to God, are still tenacious of their old, idolatrous ways, and fear at every step that God will kill them with hunger or thirst, or will harm them in some way, should they discard all their idols, and follow cheerfully in all the way, as God is pointing it out. They fear that to follow implicitly the pillar of light, would be “going in blind,” while it is the most astonishing blindness that they cannot see that God has mercifully sent the pillar to lead them safely out of the wilderness of sin and error in which they are involved, to the promised inheritance of the saints. They accept of a part of the truth, but still distrust the means which God has used to enlighten them. At every little discouragement they distrust the guiding hand of the Lord, and are ready to murmur or revolt, like Israel of old. All this is to be charged to the blindness of unbelief. It is so hard to believe in God and trust him fully at all times. We behold his wonders and see his mighty hand stretched out to save, but we soon forget his works, and distrust his love and goodness, and his faithful guidance, and think unless we put our hand to the helm our bark will be lost. What folly to think that we so blind can mark out the way in which God should lead his people, better than he by his own all-wise and ever-gracious providence, and the instrumentalities which he has chosen! Let us who believe there is a God—a God whose foreknowledge has given us the prophecies of the Bible, and whose providence guides and controls their fulfillment—oh, let us learn to trust in him, and gratefully acknowledge his benevolent hand reached down to save us from our “evil heart of unbelief,” and trustingly follow in all the way, as his providence may guide, never looking back to the things we have left behind in Egypt, nor murmuring at the roughness or the privations of the way, but believe that he knows best what is for our good, and that he intends, and is able, to lead us to a land flowing with milk and honey, and will do so, if our unbelief and consequent sin does not cause us to fall, short of the promised land.