Your ShelfYour Projects

The Skeptic Answered

3%

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 35.

Read the full edition

The Skeptic Answered.

By The Presbyterian

“I don’t believe in a personal God,” remarked a skeptic to Rev. R. F. Jones, a Welsh Presbyterian minister, who was a fellow-traveler in a railroad train between Toledo and Cleveland some time ago.
“Why not?” asked the minister.
“Because I can’t see him. His existence is not demonstrable, capable of proof, like facts of science.”
The minister asked, “Don’t you believe that you are alive, and that I am alive?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Why do you believe it?”
“Because I can see you move.”
“Well,” said the minister, “the locomotive that is drawing this train also moves—is it alive?”
“No,” he answered, “but the engineer who runs it is alive.”
“Please tell me,” said the minister, “whether the engineer is a part of the machinery or a living person?”
“He is a living person,” replied the skeptic.
“Now, sir,” retorted the minister, “consistency is a jewel—please tell me why you attribute the movement of the locomotive to a living person, but deny that God, who sets the universe in motion, is a living person?”
He could not answer. Silenced on this argument, he branched off into another objection against Christianity.
“What I hate,” said he, “in orthodoxy is this endless talk about creed, creed, creed, thrust upon us everywhere and at all times.”
“What do you mean by a man’s creed,” asked his opponent.
“I understand by a creed that which a man believes.”
“Well, sir,” rejoined the minister, “you have just as much creed as I have. I believe there is a personal God; you believe the opposite doctrine. I believe in the incarnation of the Son of God for our redemption; you believe the opposite. I believe in the ruined estate of man; you believe the opposite. What difference is there in the bulk of our creed, only that I believe one side of the question and you believe the other? Now, sir, when we come to that point you have just as much creed on your side as I have on mine; but you want the right to advocate your sentiments, but wish to deny me the right on my side.”
He was silenced again.
“But,” said the skeptic, resuming the attack by another argument, common at this day, “Christianity is not capable of scientific demonstration. When we take the sciences, all truths are capable of demonstration by experiments which prove them. You can put them to the test. I take peculiar pleasure in the study of chemistry. Its propositions are plain and capable of proof by facts and experiments which appeal to the senses.”
“You have studied chemistry, have you?” inquired the minister.
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“Well,” resumed the minister, “if you are a student of chemistry you are acquainted with the fact that charcoal, coal, and the diamond are the same in their molecules—namely, carbon. Now can you take a molecule out of the charcoal and put it into the diamond and get a perfect thing of it?”
He acknowledged he could not.
“Where, then,” said the minister, “is your demonstration in chemistry? But so far as Christianity is concerned, your objection is not valid, for it is capable of spiritual demonstration. You can try it and find it all that God has represented it to be. God says to all, ‘Oh taste and see.’ Try it, and experience will attest its truth. Millions have put it to the test of their experience, and have found it ‘the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.’"
The skeptic, then, in a somewhat conciliatory spirit acknowledged that his father and mother were orthodox, Christian people.
The minister inquired, “Were they good people?”
“Yes, excellent; my father was an excellent, good man.”
“Well,” inquired the minister, “what practical benefit do you get by changing the religion of your parents for skepticism? Does it make you a better man? Are you a better husband to your wife, a better father to your children, a better citizen in the community in which you live?”
He frankly acknowledged he was not.
“Have you a watch?” inquired the minister.
“Yes, an excellent timepiece,” he said, taking it out and displaying a fine gold watch.
“It keeps good time, does it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how would you trade it off? Would it not be for a better timepiece and more valuable, rather than for an inferior one?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Here, again,” retorted the minister, “you are not acting consistently with reason; for you have changed the creed of your parents for one that, by your own confession, does not benefit you at all!”
He had no reply to make.
“Now, my brother,” concluded the minister, “why do you embrace infidelity in preference to the faith of your parents? Is it not only because you love sin, and the first principle of Christianity is holiness—opposition to sin? Is it not so?”
He was speechless.—The Presbyterian.