UNBELIEVING BELIEVERS by H. S.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 10.

UNBELIEVING BELIEVERS.

By H. S.

“BELIEVERS” is one of the names by which the people of God are distinguished. They all have some faith in God, whilst others are wholly destitute of it. They not only believe in his existence and perfections, but they trust in him and in his exceeding great and precious promises, and all their hope of salvation is in his Son Jesus Christ, who loved them and gave himself for them.

But their faith is by no means perfect. It differs in degrees in different persons, and also at different times in the same person. Someone has well said, “How unbelieving are the best believers!” “Unbelieving believers” may seem a contradiction in terms, and yet it is not an inappropriate characterization. Every believer is more or less an unbelieving believer. There are none whose faith is perfect. There are none whose faith at all times is so strong as not to be mixed with some measure of unbelief. Abraham, who has been termed the “father of believers,” did not always trust. It was unbelief that on two different occasions led him to pass off Sarah, his wife, as his sister. Elijah, who was so eminent for faith, was as weak as other men at the time that we behold him fleeing into the wilderness, and there despondingly requesting for himself that he might die.

The disciples were believers, but their faith was often weak and wavering. The Saviour had repeated occasion to reprove them for their unbelief. Their faith wholly failed them at the time of his arrest in the garden; nor was it confirmed until after his resurrection and ascension. And how weak, for the most part, is the faith of the great majority of the disciples of Christ now! They are all believers. At the very outset of their Christian life they believed. Their first act in that life was an act of faith, and, so far as they live at all, it is by faith upon the Son of God. But, alas, how feeble is their spiritual life, because of the feebleness of their faith! How few of them are “strong in faith,” thus giving glory to God! How few of them are so strong in faith as to have power with God in prayer! How few so strong as to have courage to take up crosses for Christ’s sake, and boldly follow wherever he may lead! Well may we all cry, “Lord, increase our faith.”—H. S., in N. Y. Observer.