Cause of Unbelief

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 18, 1879

Cause of Unbelief.

WE do not say that there are no honest doubters of Christian truth, or that there are no skeptics who are good men. But we do say that more religious skepticism arises from moral obliquity than from all other causes. And if reputedly honest doubters will recall the period when they began to dissent from Christian truth, they will probably remember that it was not the time when they were most faithful to the light they had, or most obedient to their convictions to God and man. The unbelief which may be honest now, may not have been honest at its initial stages. It may have begun in some conscious sin, which gave a false bias to the mind; and though, in after years, the sin may have been outgrown, or abandoned its evil fruit, the unbelief still remains. No man, while he is true to himself, true to his moral nature, true to the voice of God in his soul, can fall into any dangerous skepticism. The fact that such skepticism is usually found in association with positive vices, compares with the Scriptural genesis of it, to induce the belief that it is not or has not always been honest; that it began and grew in practical disloyalty to the truth, in conscious violation of known obligation.—North-western Advocate.