INFIDELITY by Rev. G. C. Lorimer, D. D.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 4, 1881

INFIDELITY.

By Rev. G. C. Lorimer, D. D.

HUMANITY is left hopeless and helpless by infidelity. If we are in sorrow, it has no comfort; if we are in sin, it has no deliverance; if we are in perplexity, it has no message; if we are in darkness, it has no light. The virtue it preaches, is without foundation; the heroism it inculcates, is without inducements; and the immortality it whispers, is without evidence. Its loftiest sentiments are borrowed from the religion it affects to despise; the liberty which it claims to champion, it has sacrificed but little to secure; and the sweet charities it commends, it has done nothing to secure. The garland of eloquence wherewith it clothes itself, is the adornment of a corpse, every flower sheathes a worm in its bosom, and every breath of fragrance is mingled with death. Its oratory smells of the tomb, and the symbol of its hope is an eyeless, tongueless skull, grinning in mocking insolence at everything that dignifies and ennobles life. It brings no benefaction, it pronounces no benediction, but casts its baleful shadow on all that is fair and sacred. From its cold lips there comes no grand and full rounded “Yea” to match its piercing, blighting and destroying “Nay.” It is simply a huge negation, seeking with one hand to stop the mouth of religion, and with the other to write on human aspirations and beliefs a bitter and derisive “No.” It has no gospel of salvation even for this world, but only an evangel of destruction. Let us then turn from it, and proclaim Him in whom is life, and who came “that we might have life and have it more abundantly.” Let us in realizing the insufficiency of all other answers, repeat to those who ask “What must we do to be saved?” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” saved from sin, saved from despair, saved from uselessness and misery, and saved forevermore in the kingdom of his glory.—Rev. G. C. Lorimer, D. D.