INFIDEL CREDULITY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 23.

INFIDEL CREDULITY.

THOSE who boast that they believe nothing are frequently the first to believe almost anything. The human mind is pendulous, and swings back and forth, from utter faithlessness to blind credulity. Thus, the man who believes nothing that he cannot understand, believes in a creation without a Creator, in laws without a lawgiver, and in scientific theories which are so absurd that the men who invent them speedily throw them overboard, but not until they have been formally adopted by men who know nothing of the facts in the case, but simply believe anything that will encourage them in unbelief, and doubt everything which would lead them to a true faith.

Unbelief is exceedingly illogical. The man whose faith is limited by his vision, never would invent, never would discover, anything. He lives in his own narrow world. What he can see and feel is his, but his mind has no reach beyond. There have been numerous instances of the most blind and undistinguishing credulity on the part of the men who profess to be very skeptical. Multitudes of the infidels of other years who believed neither in God nor the devil, neither in souls nor in spirits, were brought to believe in the “spiritual manifestations” which are current, and to swallow communications and theories and doctrines which would have taxed the powers of Jonah’s fish. The man who has no faith in religion is often the man who has faith in a nightmare. Julius Cæsar publicly denounced a belief in a hereafter, and rejected the idea of a soul and a Deity, yet muttered a charm when he entered a chariot, and did not cross the Rubicon until he had consulted the omens. Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, writes a book against Revelation, and asks a sign from heaven to tell him if his book is approved by his Maker. The man who cannot believe in the miracles performed by the Saviour, gravely tells of a miracle vouchsafed to himself.—The Christian.