SEEING IS BELIEVING by Obadiah Oldschool

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 11, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 10.

"SEEING IS BELIEVING."

By Obadiah Oldschool

I WAS traveling by rail. I met on the cars a man whom I had known for many years. He is a sensible and a moral man, but he is not a Christian. In trying to tell me why he was not, he said: "Somehow or other I can't exercise faith as you Christians seem to. I am constitutionally skeptical. I never could believe in anything that I could not see and understand."

"That is very sad," I replied. "It must embarrass you a great deal in your business, your studies, and your social intercourse. By the way, how can you, with this constitutional peculiarity that you tell of, sit here so quietly, with the train rushing on at the rate of forty miles an hour? Have you been out on the cab to see if there is an engineer there? Have you examined him so as to be sure that he is competent and thoroughly reliable? If there is not an engineer and we are running by chance, there is no telling what may happen. If there is an engineer, and he is ignorant, he may not be able to control his engine. If there is an engineer, and he is vicious, he may want to tumble us all over some embankment. Perhaps he is an Anarchist, or is afflicted with the homicidal mania. How dreadful that would be! Are you sure, positively sure, that there is an honest and skillful man in charge of the engine?"

My skeptical friend had to admit that his constitutional infirmity had not prevented him from trusting himself on a train without seeing the engineer. And he could not deny that it was less unreasonable to trust in an unseen Saviour than in an unseen engineer.

In the course of our conversation I urged upon him the duty of prayer. He said: "Now there again I am troubled. I have tried to pray, and it seems like talking to the wind. I can't realize that there is anybody who hears my prayer." In the midst of our talk we reached a way-station, and my friend said, "I must telegraph from here to a man who is to meet me in New York." He went out, and when he came back I said, "Did you telegraph to that man to meet you?" "Yes," he replied. "Did you see him?" "Of course not." "Well, tell me just what you did." "You know already. I wrote a dispatch and handed it to the telegraph operator." "Did you know the operator? Did you examine his instrument? Did you trace the wire all the way from that station to New York?"

"Now you are quizzing me again. But you can't catch me this time. That was a telegraph station. There was a sign up, and the paper I wrote on had the caption, 'Western Union Telegraph Company.'"

"So you trusted to what was printed on a slip of paper, and sent your message to a man whom you had never seen, and who, if there is any such man, is five hundred miles away. And yet you won't believe in the Bible when it says, 'Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear.' You may say you know of instances in which dispatches have been sent by the Western Union Telegraph Company and answers received. But the Bible tells again and again of answers to prayer. Abraham and Moses, David and Solomon, Elijah and Daniel, prayed, and the response came promptly from the unseen heavens. Paul and the other apostles prayed, and God gave them the very things they asked for. Now, is not the Bible, which has been tested for so many ages, as reliable as this telegraph company, which has been in existence less than thirty years? I tell you it does not require half as much faith to pray to the invisible God of the Bible, who has been hearing and answering prayer for nearly six thousand years, as to send a message from a railroad way-station and expect that it will reach its destination."

Again we were interrupted by the whistle announcing that we were entering the town of W. This was a railroad center, and my friend had some letters that he wanted to mail there. We went out when the train stopped, and seeing in the depot an iron box with the words "U. S. Mail" upon it, he put his letters in it and we returned to the cars. As soon as we were seated I said:—

"I am now astonished beyond measure. You, a constitutional skeptic, who cannot trust in an invisible God, trusting in an iron box because it has the letters "U. S. Mail" upon it. Nobody told you that it was a letter-box. You did not see anybody there waiting to take your letters and carry them to their destination. But just because you saw the box you believed that somebody would come, and, reading the direction on those letters, would see to it that they went to the right place and were delivered to the right person. You have unbounded confidence in the postal service of the United States, but you have no confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ."

My fellow-traveler had thought a good deal about Heaven, but he could not realize that there was any such place. Yet he confessed to me that he believed in New York City, though he had never been there. He believed in it because he had read about it in books and newspapers. And so great was his faith in New York as a real place, and one worth visiting, that he had bought a ticket for it and was going there. I could not understand how he could confide in men's statements about New York, and yet doubt God's statements about Heaven.

It came out again in conversation that he had made investments in New York through persons whom he had never seen, and whom he was induced to trust on the recommendation of others. And yet when he was exhorted to lay up treasures in Heaven he could not realize that it would be a good investment, though God himself promised a profit of an hundred-fold.

The more I talked with this man the more fully I realized how utterly unreasonable is the skepticism of multitudes in regard to spiritual things. If they would exercise the same faith in God that they exercise daily in their fellow-men, they would soon become Christians. The gospel comes to us with stronger proofs of its reality and value than anything else, and it only asks us to apply to it the principles on which we act in other things. Though its basis is faith, it is not a faith that rests on visions and dreams, but on solid facts which not only justify, but demand, our confidence.—Obadiah Oldschool, in Interior.