Spirit of Negation by Arthur T. Pierson, D. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 18, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 24.

Spirit of Negation.

By Arthur T. Pierson, D. D.

THE gospel encounters everywhere a cold, repellent, indifferent spirit of doubt, if not of denial. Mephistopheles called himself "the spirit of negation." Satan's master-device is to becloud the minds of men with the mists of vagueness and uncertainty. If he can hide the stars, and even the sun, behind a veil of mystery or even of mist, until in the despair of skepticism men cry out with Pilate, "What is truth?" he has gained a triumphant advantage. When the hope of finding the road out of the depths and darkness of a forest dies away, the traveler has reached practically the end of all effort. He resigns himself to death by starvation or by wild beasts. It is so in spiritual things. Men persuade themselves that there is no fixed moral standard, no absolute truth, right or wrong; that duty is another name for expediency, and honesty for policy; that if there be a God, he is unknown and unknowable; that if there be a soul, it is not distinguishable from matter; and if there be a future life, it is impossible to foresee any of its conditions. And so intelligent and thinking men resign themselves to a stoical apathy, and, folding about them the drapery of a careless indifference, often live, and sometimes die, with less impression made upon them by the blessed gospel of Jesus than is made by the sun upon a polar iceberg. They meet all argument with the sneer of ridicule or the smile of derision, as though all argument were sophistry; and they confront all testimony of experience with the condescension of a lofty pity, as though disciples were under some harmless delusion, or half crazy with their own misguided enthusiasm.

But the commonest obstacle to the converting power of the gospel is the hard heart, the perverse, rebellious will. It is still "the evil heart of unbelief" that departs from the living God. "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life," is as true now as ever. Men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. There is abundance of light, but no disposition to receive it. The sinner fights against the truth and shuts his eyes to conviction of duty; and to the shut eye it is as though there were no sun shining; as Job said, long since, "They are of those who rebel against the light," and "the morning is to them even as the shadow of death." Selfishness and sensuality, avarice, appetite and ambition, evil habits and evil associates, the love of sin and the love of the world,—these leave men to be, at the best, only "almost persuaded." Under the mighty movings of the Spirit in times of revival, or under the softening influence of sorrow and suffering, or under the terrors of great judgments that compel men to consider, souls are drawn or driven as by some great wave of God's power toward Heaven, but, as by some returning wave of wickedness and worldliness, they are borne back to the depths of their old sins. Christ said to the scribe, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God," but we have no reason to hope that he ever entered within. Thousands have come to the very vestibule of salvation, and stood upon the threshold of life eternal, only to turn away from the open door; and so many who are to-day "almost persuaded" will be wholly lost.