DISGUISED INFIDELITY by R. F. Cottrell

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 18, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 32.

DISGUISED INFIDELITY.

By R. F. Cottrell

As a hypocritical professor of religion is worse than though he made no profession, so infidelity, under a profession of faith in the word of God, is worse in its influence than an open rejection of that word. Avowed infidelity would be feared and avoided by many a mind that would listen to the insidious attacks upon revelation from one who professes to believe it.

To illustrate the idea I will say that I once heard from a professed preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ three lectures, in which he attempted to prove that Adam was not the first man of the human race, but that men had existed upon the earth hundreds of thousands of years before him, and that he was born of parents, as others are at the present day. He ridiculed the idea that "God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul;" and that God took a rib from Adam, and of it made a woman, and brought her to the man. He did not believe any such absurdity. But did he not believe the book? Oh, yes! but all this was allegorical; it meant that man was then raised to a higher state of development than he had enjoyed during the previous hundreds of thousands of years of his existence. He thanked God for the book of Genesis; but if there was anything in it that conflicted with the sure light of geological science, it was no revelation to him—he did not believe it. He also thanked God for giving to the world such a man as Charles Darwin, a devout believer in God, who had done so much for the advancement of science among mankind. One would think from the encomium of the speaker that the man who holds that man was evolved or developed from the monkey, was truly one of the greatest benefactors of mankind.

Most Christian readers will wonder that such infidelity should be held forth by a professed believer in the Bible and a preacher of salvation through Christ. But let me tell you that all who favor the mystical mode of interpreting the Scriptures are accomplices in this work of helping in the progress of infidelity; and are in a degree responsible for the prevailing and increasing skepticism of our times. The Bible is a revelation to mankind, or it is not. If it is, its plain statements of facts, its promises and its threatenings, are to be taken at par—they mean what they say. But if these things are to be allegorized, spiritualized, rationalized, and mysticized, the Bible is not a revelation, but a riddle. All have an equal right to guess at its meaning; and, as a consequence, there may be as many creeds as there are persons. To make such a book a revelation, another one is necessary to tell us what this one means.

You may wonder that anyone should allegorize the plain statements concerning the creation of man, as described above, so as to deny that man was formed of dust, while we see him turning to dust again; but if you make the threatening of death, in case of man’s disobedience, to mean eternal life in torment, or something besides what God defined it to be—a returning again to the dust out of which he was taken—you are in a like position, and are aiding in the work of destroying faith and building up infidelity. And this remark applies to every interpretation which takes the license of setting aside a commandment of God, or an ordinance of the gospel.

The fault of factions and false doctrines is not in the Bible, but in this huge license of interpretation. This is the pillar and support of infidelity. If the Bible be thus assailed by its professed friends, what shall we not expect from its open enemies? R. F. COTTRELL.