p. 6 (582) | DOUBT VERSUS FAITH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 37.

DOUBT VERSUS FAITH.

In a great daily, which poses as a public moralist, there recently appeared an editorial entitled, “It is Our Duty to Doubt,” recommending again a book which teaches the same thing. The editor of the paper wishes that the author “might have ‘omitted’ from his work a spirit of antagonism to religious faith. Such antagonism is against public policy.”

After a quotation from the work, the editor continues:—

Unquestionably the tendency to DOUBT is the foundation of progress. For ages the monkeys BELIEVED that they must always run on all fours. But one DOUBTED. He tried to stand erect. And while he tottered feebly, as men totter mentally who try to think independently, that DOUBTING monkey was the forerunner of those who now walk firmly erect and look up to the stars for inspiration. (Typography as we find it.)

And then seven skeptical writers are quoted, the majority of whom condemn, and justly, the superstitious credulity of the Medieval Ages, equally manifest now in other forms; as, for instance, the blind following of disagreeing delvers in uncertain science, “falsely so called.” Huxley is quoted as saying:—

Skepticism is the highest duty, and blind faith is the one unpardonable sin.

Over against this we place the following words of the unknown writer of Hebrews, and of Jesus of Nazareth:—

“Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing unto Him [God]; for He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him.”

“All things are possible to him that believeth.”

“According to your faith be it done unto you.”

For credulity we have no defense, no apology. It is the fruit of either ignorance or sin or both. To the ignorant it appears as faith. To the instructed it is a base counterfeit. Its basis is the creature rather than the Creator; the thing rather than He that brought it into existence.

Faith in the Bible sense means more than mere belief, or assent to a fact or to facts.

Faith centers in the one God, the all-sufficient Creator, Redeemer, Father, and Friend, and in the revelation which He has given of His eternal purpose concerning His creatures. Faith impels its possessor to take all as his which God gives, whether in precept or promise, whether in life or service, and to yield all that God requires, whether to work or to wait, whether to proclaim or to practise.

Faith accepts, receives, God’s plan of salvation in Christ Jesus, and finds in it all that God has promised.

Faith may seem blind to those who know only the use of physical vision; but Faith’s vision, Faith’s seeings, are the seeings of God from a loftier viewpoint, including in their field the eternal as well as the temporal.

God reveals Himself—His wisdom, power, and love—in various ways, but in the fullest, clearest way by His written Word, the Holy Scriptures. He does not ask blind credulity in the acceptance of that Book. He gives evidence sufficient to every willing soul; to every soul which longs to separate from sin and self, and become acquainted with eternal righteousness and everlasting love. The doubter will always find a way to doubt.

Confirming Witnesses.

God has even gone so far in meeting the low plane of doubt in the minds of sinful men that He has given double, treble, quadruple witness of the truth of His Word—witnesses which could in no way be accused of collusion.

He has given through His servants predictions without number, at times when there was no human evidence that these predictions could possibly be fulfilled; and in later years, sometimes centuries, in His overruling providence the prediction is written in history. The witnesses agree in every detail. Much of the Bible is composed of prophecy, “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.” Isa. 46:10.

God declares that He will write His holy law, which even infidels recognize as good, in the characters of those who have faith, who will accept of Christ Jesus. How many poor, wretched, wicked sinners, drunkards, thieves, blasphemers, have complied with the conditions and demonstrated in their own lives and to the world the truth of God’s Book. And every soul can demonstrate this test in himself, if he will. Here it is as given by Jesus: “If any man willeth to do His [the Father’s] will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God.” John 7:17. Here are two-fold tests of the truthfulness and divinity of the Bible,—the one appealing to candid students in a general way, and the other appealing to the individual, promising sure witness in personal experience. In both of these there are a multitude of witnesses.

Faith in God Is Reasonable.

Why should not one follow the very laws implanted in every fiber of his being? How natural it is for the child to look up to his father and trust him! If the father proves true to the child, how faith in the father’s instruction develops the child! How naturally he looks, when older, from his earthly father to his heavenly Father! A few years ago we spent some time in converse with a noted scientist, whose study of science in skeptical schools, with no help from a traditional religion, had made him doubt. At the close of our conversation he remarked that he had before said he would not discuss religious matters. We remarked that all our converse had been without bitterness or rancor. “Yes,” he assented, “but it makes me feel uncomfortable.” And then he said that he often found himself, as he sought his bed at night, repeating the prayer taught him at his mother’s knee. And we said then what we say now, that the instinct, the conscious need, divinely implanted, which makes man a worshiping being, was truer than all his skeptical science. It was no figure of speech used by the psalmist,—“My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and weary land.” It was the Spirit of God in humanity voicing humanity’s needs, which only God can supply. And, O soul, fretted and worn with the sins and cares and disappointments of this life, it is the highest reason to trust God; it is the sublimest vision to see in Him the great source of all satisfying supply.

In Faith Only Is True Progress.

Faith looks to God, the Infinite One. Not to compass God, not to comprehend Him—it does not expect that; but it looks to God to apprehend Him, to lay hold of Him, to see Him as He reveals Himself, the God of all justice, mercy, wisdom, knowledge, power, and love, and comfort. With soul open toward the Infinite, with intellect strained to grasp the wonderful whisperings of God to His finite children, with heart yielded to the will that controls the universe, how is it possible not to expand, progress, grow! How it enlarges human mercy to behold God’s mercy! How it helps men to see the microscopic littleness of the things of this world, which spread so thinly, yet seem so substantial to faithless eyes, and to place in contrast with all these for eternal choosing, things which may seem small and narrow, but which broaden to all the realms of God, and are as enduring as His throne! How, in the light of God’s love, human love grows, even toward one’s enemies, till all barriers are oftentimes melted, and the enemy becomes a friend! Faith having God for its object, must ever grow and expand toward the Infinite to all eternity, ever seeing new beauty, ever drinking deeper draughts from the satisfying wells of God’s love, ever hearing and singing holier, sweeter, diviner strains of the harmony of the universe.

But Doubt is self-centered. It turns the soul from the Infinite to the finite. It shuts out the sun by an eyelid of the flesh. It turns from the heaven-shed light of star and sun and throne to grope in the gloom of a sin-blinded selfishness. It puts the great, good, loving Father in the criminal dock, and erring, puny, doubting man on the judgment seat. It proves, by being out of harmony with its grand major chords and heavenly symphonies, that God’s wonderful oratorio of the universe is a failure! Doubt made Lucifer, the light-bringer, the prince of darkness. It changed an angel to a devil.

Doubt brought sin into the world, with all our woe. Doubt has made man, the highest of all God’s creatures of earth, lower than the monkey; in fact, the lowest in morals and vitality, subject to the swarming animalculæ of sin’s environments. Doubt has blasted and blighted, darkened and blackened, cursed and crushed, marred and murdered, from the time it came into the universe until now.

Have naught to do with the demon, dear soul; it promises what it can not perform; it takes what it can not replace. Open the soul Godward. Believe Him. Demonstrate the truth of His Word by doing it. Thereby you shall know of the teaching. Trust not in your faith, not in any of the instruments of God, not in the material channels of faith; but trust in Him who uses these channels to impart His light and life and love to all. Doubt denies God; Credulity trusts in the thing, the creature, the channel; Faith with shining eyes lays hold by God’s appointed means of the very hand and heart of the Infinite One.

“Lord, increase our faith.”