Truth Against Majorities.
By Horatius Bonar, D. D.
FELLOWSHIP between faith and unbelief must, sooner or later, be fatal to the former. "I would thou wert either cold or hot," has a deep significance for us. Truth is truth, and error is error. There the case begins and ends. The blending of light and darkness can at the best only produce twilight, not noon. We may tamper with doubt, we may trifle with certainty, and we may succumb to public opinion, but what will the end be? Has the one great oracle spoken? Has it spoken accurately and intelligibly? If it has, our only honest position is acceptance of its utterances. Every revealed truth has a distinct personal claim to be believed, however offensive to the taste or spirit of the age. Truth never demands a vote. It refuses to go to the poll, or to acknowledge majorities. It presents its evidence, and claims submission. To attempt to gather truth out of a multitude of errors by setting them to neutralize each other, is to revive the vain alchemy of the Middle Ages to turn iron into gold, or to imitate the folly of an old student of prophecy, who gathered some scores of conflicting prophetic dates together, and struck the mean among them in order to reach the true year! We are apt to forget that error is sin; that truth does not reverse itself; that inspiration and non-inspiration are two opposite poles, admitting of no medium; that infidelity ought not to cloak itself under the name of candid inquiry; and that candid inquiry should beware of being landed in unbelief, perhaps before it is aware. There are some who are cowardly enough to trifle with or nibble at truth, but not bold enough to fling it away. It would be well for us to remember that not merely accepted error, but undervalued truth, has often made havoc of a church and shipwreck of a soul. Much of the teaching of the present day is not in the direction of certainty, and men feel that to be tossed to and fro with curious speculations will make but a poor life for them. Meanwhile Revelation remains to us, and, when human thinkers have spent themselves, it will reassert its authority and power. The cross still stands and with it Jehovah's eternal purpose of grace—grace finding its way to the sinner through the righteous channel opened by the death of the divine substitute.—Horatius Bonar, D. D.