LOSS OF FAITH by Christian Standard

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 21, 1892

LOSS OF FAITH.

By Christian Standard

An able and influential lawyer, a man well advanced in years and successful in his profession, a member of long standing in the church, one whose supposed lot most men would envy, said to me that the saddest thing in his experience was the loss of the trusting, childlike faith he had once enjoyed. He had but recently lost his wife, and his children had begun to scatter abroad upon the face of the earth, leaving the old homestead more and more desolate. Somehow he had failed to keep that which would have been to him in these circumstances beyond all price—that faith which was very "precious" to the aged Peter, and grew more and more precious as he neared the martyrdom for which he had been marked.

As we all reach the time when we know that we "must shortly put off this tabernacle," we most keenly enjoy the possession of that precious faith, or most keenly lament its loss. If we have allowed it to lapse, to become utterly eclipsed, if we have not held fast our begun confidence, we are of all men most miserable. We have no longer hope in this life, and that in the life to come has been allowed to perish. In the case cited I tried to find out how this came to pass. The man's business—for the most part that of a corporation lawyer—was intensely secular; if not irreligious, at least sordidly unreligious. As a counterweight against its influences he should have constantly "refreshed" his faith (as his craft so often admonish witnesses with respect to their memory) by copious draughts from the source and fountain of it,—the word of God. This he had not done. He read extensively, but his reading was chiefly of that sort which makes for skepticism. He had kept it up for years, with the feeling, no doubt, that he was too strong to be injured by such meat, however palatable it might be. He could possibly at any time have refuted, to his own satisfaction, the infidel teaching of any book or magazine article he had read, just as strong constitutions can throw off any single attack of malaria, and "feel as well as ever;" but, as in the case of the strong constitution, there comes a time when the slowly-accumulated poison wrecks the health utterly and hopelessly, so there came a time when the faith of this strong-minded, cultured man was seriously crippled, if not mortally wounded.

There are thousands of men and women today who are, in both the natural and spiritual realms, subjecting themselves to influences whose very deadliness consists in their apparent harmlessness. What folly! Brother, sister, if you would keep that precious thing, the most precious faith which you have obtained, against the day of its sorest need, the day of which you shall say, if you have not this faith, "I have no pleasure in it," be very sure that your reading, your associations, and your activity in the church, are such as promote its increase.