MAKING SCEPTICS | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1880

MAKING SCEPTICS.

THE verities of religion once accepted, nothing is so consistent as the most profound earnestness and the most intense revival efforts. A single instance of apparent listlessness may cause a soul to be seized with an unfavorable prejudice never to be overcome. When Dr. Wm. E. Channing was in his childhood, an incident occurred which may possibly explain why his remarkable talents were given to the advancement of New England Unitarianism rather than the old gospel with its revival fervor. In his boyhood, his father, who was a member of the orthodox church, took him to hear a celebrated preacher in the neighborhood. The things of the unseen world were set forth with deeply solemn effect. Man's lost condition without Christ, was represented in colors so vivid and startling as to produce a wonderful impression upon the mind of the youthful Channing. And then when the preacher unfolded the salvation of the gospel and offered it freely to the people as God's precious gift to those who seek for it, in his simplicity he thought that every one would seek it without delay. The service was concluded, and, with intense feeling, he watched to see what the people would do. His father pronounced the sermon "sound doctrine," but said nothing to the boy or any one else about seeking the Lord. They got into the carriage and rode home—the boy absorbed in awful "thoughts." The father, making no further allusion to the sermon, presently began to whistle; and on reaching home took off his boots, put his feet toward the fire-place, and began to read the newspaper, leaving his boy, without a timely word of Christian counsel, to struggle with the great thoughts which oppressed his young heart.

But even childhood draws its conclusions; and young Channing asked within himself the question, Can what I have heard be true? And too quickly he reached the conclusion—No! The people did not believe it, or they would have sought it at once; his father did not believe it, or he would have evinced a deeper solicitude. And ever afterward Channing had a prejudice against the solemn and startling revival efforts of the evangelical church. May not a lack of earnestness on the part of Christ's friends sometimes produce more scepticism than the shallow logic of avowed infidelity?