WHAT HAS IT DONE FOR YOU?
AFTER a noted skeptic had concluded one of his infidel lectures in a village in the north of England, he challenged those present to discussion. Who should accept the challenge but an old, bent woman, in most antiquated attire, who went up to the lecturer and said:— “Sir, I have a question to put to you.” “Well, my good woman, what is it?” “Ten years ago,” she said, “I was left a widow, with eight children utterly unprovided for, and nothing to call my own but this Bible. By its direction, and looking to God for strength, I have been enabled to feed myself and family. I am now tottering to the grave; but I am perfectly happy, because I look forward to a life of immortality with Jesus in Heaven. That’s what my religion has done for me. What has your way of thinking done for you?” “Well, my good lady,” rejoined the lecturer, “I don’t want to disturb your comfort; but—” “Oh! that’s not the question,” interposed the woman; “keep to the point, sir. What has your way of thinking done for you?” The infidel endeavored to shirk the matter again; the feeling of the meeting gave vent to uproarious applause, and the skeptic had to go away discomfited by an old woman. Let us change the picture. The mother of Hume, the infidel philosopher, was once a professor of Christianity. Dazzled by the genius of her son, she apostatized from her early faith, and followed him into the mazes of skepticism. Years passed, and she drew near the gates of death, and from her dying bed wrote to him the following pathetic letter:— “MY DEAR SON:—My health has failed me. I am in a deep decline. I cannot long survive. “My philosophy affords me no comfort in my distress. I am left without the hopes and consolations of religion, and my mind is sinking into a state of despair. “You can afford me some substitute for the loss of the hopes of religion. I pray you hasten home to console me, or, at least, write to me the consolations that philosophy affords at the dying hour.” Such are the straits into which infidelity leads its votaries. To them death is at best but a leap in the dark, and they shrink with fear lest it be a leap into “the blackness of darkness forever and ever.” Said the learned and courted infidel Voltaire:— “In man, there is more wretchedness than in all animals put together. He loves life, and yet he knows that he must die. If he enjoys a transient good, he suffers various evils, and is at last devoured by worms. This knowledge is his fatal prerogative; other animals have it not. “The bulk of mankind is nothing more than a crowd of wretches equally criminal and unfortunate, and the globe contains carcasses rather than men. I tremble at the review of this dreadful picture, to find that it contains a complaint against Providence itself, and I wish I had never been born.” This is the best that infidelity can do for man. Listen now to the words of a dying Christian. Said the godly Hallyburton:— “I shall shortly get a very different sight of God from what I have ever had, and shall be meet to praise him forever. What a wonder that I enjoy such composure under all of my bodily pains, and in view of death itself! What a mercy that, having the use of my reason, I can declare his goodness to my soul! I bless his name, I have found him, and die rejoicing in him. Blessed be God that ever I was born.”