THE CREDULITY OF UNBELIEF.
It is often charged against the firm believer in God, and in the Bible as the word of God, that such a belief involves a large measure of credulity. And there are many who pride themselves on their freedom from credulousness, as evidenced in their refusal to believe in the personality of God, or in any explicit revelation of God to man. Yet it is a simple matter of fact, that the beliefs which are held to-day by many scientific and critical scholars who refuse to accept the Bible as the direct result of divine inspiration, and as the record of a revelation from God, involve a larger measure of credulity than would be necessary for the full acceptance of the Christian scheme—even on its face as a reasonable view of truth. Modern science discloses a system and a progression in the order of nature, which are every way consistent with the idea of an Infinite Mind as the source of all that is. Modern science fails to find the possibility of even the lowest conceivable form of animal life, save as the outcome of a prior form of animal life. Yet many a modern scientist believes that life itself, and the entire order of the universe, somehow came to be, and keeps on being, as the result of a primal senseless wriggle, and of a spontaneous undirected movement of soulless matter. What credulity is shown in this belief, compared with that simple faith in God as the Author of life and as the Creator of the universe, which is exercised by him who accepts the Bible view of God and of the works of God! Modern science shows that the one invariable distinction between the lowest type of mankind and the highest type of the inferior animals, is in man’s capacity to conceive of spiritual existences as such, and to imagine the possibility of a revelation from the Great Unseen. Modern research shows that no race of men has fallen so low, and that no race of men has risen so high, as to be without a belief in the existence of God, or of gods, or as to reject the thought of communication with the Divine. Yet there are scientists who believe that a man’s glory as a reasonable being consists in his refusal to exercise the one capacity of his nature which distinguishes him from the brute; or who, again, believe that if there be a God he is somehow the Great Unknowable, incapable of revealing himself, or a knowledge of himself, to mankind. Refusing to accept the Bible record of God’s revelation of himself to primitive man, as fully accounting for the beliefs and the perversions of belief concerning God among the various races of mankind, such scientists endeavor to account for these universal conceptions of God, as a natural evolution of ideas from the customs of pre-human animal existence. Thus Herbert Spencer, one of the finest specimens of the scientific credulous unbeliever, actually suggests that the ordinary salutations of mankind are developments of the customs of brutes. In an African tribe’s habit of a man’s throwing himself on his back and rolling from side to side, while slapping his thighs with his hands, Spencer finds a survival of a little dog’s custom of throwing itself on its back with its legs in the air, when before a superior dog. And kissing as a social custom—as he views it—had its start in a dog’s habit of licking one whom he liked. Was there ever such credulity as this, on the part of a believer in the Bible as a revelation from God?83Modern research finds, practically, all the world over, a tradition of a departed golden day of man’s primal purity, and a hope of an ultimate restoration of such a day. In ancient Egypt the serpent represents the embodiment of evil, and a struggle with that serpent is the chiefest work of the pre-eminent son of the gods. In India the thousand-headed serpent is a means of destroying the very world itself, at the close of each distinctive æon. In primitive North America, the serpent figures as a source of evil to all who share its nature or who feel its power. And these are but specimens of a world-wide similarity of symbolism. The idea of a tree of life is, again, as nearly universal in the race as the idea of the evil-symbolizing serpent. Accepting the Bible story of Eden, and the fall of man, and the promise of redemption, as an inspired record of truth,—all these perverted traditions of that primal truth are simple and natural. But there are scientists and critics who actually believe that primitive men everywhere—howsoever circumstanced or trained—happened to imagine almost precisely the same state of things, as to the beginning of evil in their race, with the employment of the same symbols of the serpent of evil and the tree of life. It requires wonderful credulity to be one of that class of believers. Modern research has brought to light the so-called sacred books of the principal religions of the ages, and has laid them in comparison with the Bible as the Book of books. Not one of those books can be said, even by its warmest Christian admirers, to contain a single new truth; to be free from the teaching of gross error; to have a trustworthy historic value; or even to be composed in large part of other matter than puerile absurdities. The best that can be said of any one of them is, that it contains vestiges of primal truth. Yet there are both scientists and critics who speak of those books as if they had a similar origin to that Book which furnishes in itself the proofs of divine origin, and which in its substance commands the admiration of the loftiest human intellect, while its spiritual teachings satisfy the uttermost longings of the holiest human soul. The credulity which would put any one of the ethnic sacred books on a corresponding plane with the Bible is in itself a marvel of marvels. An unreasonable credulity is essential to an acceptance of the principal beliefs of the unbelieving scientist and critic of to-day. A reasonable faith is all that is required of one who believes in God, and the Bible as the word of God. It is reasonable to believe that God is the Creator of all things. It is reasonable to believe that God, having created man with a capacity to conceive of his Maker, should make a revelation of himself to man. It is reasonable to believe that such a revelation of God, and of man's origin and destiny, as is found in the Bible as it stands, is the truth without any admixture of error. Credulity and faith stand over against each other for our choice. Man by searching cannot find out God. God by revelation discloses himself to man. "For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness [or the simplicity] of the preaching [or the heralding of God's revelation of himself] to save them that believe."