A COLLAPSE OF FAITH

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1880

A COLLAPSE OF FAITH.

This is what threatens at the time now present. That general credence of Christianity which has been customary for Protestant nations, has been subjected to such constant and tremendous erosion by floods of modern skepticism that its fall is imminent.

Never were the proofs of the truth of the Scriptures more full and plain than now. Those proofs are multiplying every day. As every panful of miner's earth yields its proportion of gold, so every new research and excavation adds its precious testimony to the oracles of God. The bases of unchangeable truth that underlie the gospel, were never more manifest than now. The alluvium of superstition which the dark ages deposited around them has been all washed away, so that they now stand clear. In spite of these facts, it is to be seen that the truth has lost, or is losing, that general hold that it had two hundred years ago; or, again, seventy-five years ago. Those who were born of God hold the truth now, of course, though with perhaps a grasp enfeebled by the relaxation all around them. But infidelity has made fearful havoc among the mass of our civilized fellow-men. This is not yet so evident as we fear it may be in a few years. In the decaying tooth, the external wall of enamel hides for a time the ravage of caries within; and the gloss of civilization will hide the decay of public faith for a season. But the time of collapse must come.

It should not be necessary to say that we have no fear of the future in regard to the gospel. It is of God, and stands secure as God. But the sun may for a season be eclipsed by a far inferior body. So the truth of God may be darkened by a smoke ascending out of the pit. And truly, when we come to ask what enemy it is who hath drawn the minds of men away, we are of nothing reminded so much as of the three unclean spirits like frogs, which the apostle saw coming out of the pit of the abyss. In one of Poe's pieces, he describes man as a noble actor on a grand stage, falling before a conquering worm. How vile and unseemly are the new doctrines of infidelity! Satan, sitting like a cormorant, or squatting like a toad, is a fair representative of them. And it is before such repulsive forms of unbelief that men will bow? Even so. It has come to that, that men are fascinated, not by the meretricious beauty of error, but by its foul deformity. As a dog returns to his vomit, the modern skeptic has gone back to the defecations of ancient philosophy. The more you debase him, the higher a teacher you are in his eyes. Preach to him that he is a superior monkey, and he reverences you. Preach that he is a fortunate environed mollusk, and he worships you. O Philosophy! "into what depth thou seest, from what height fallen."

This erosion of the common belief of the people is carried on by newspapers, magazines, and even by books of history, which now sometimes go out of their way to give a fling at Moses, as the Jews are said to turn aside to throw a stone at Absalom's supposititious tomb.

When belief in the records of Moses has gone down, belief in the claims of Jesus must soon follow. When the soldiers of Titus burst the outer wall of the Holy City, they knew they could soon put a torch to the sanctuary.

The Duke of Argyll has written how the stream of Niagara frets away first the nether stratum of its rock-bed. That stratum is a soft shale, and leaves the hard upper rock unbroken and overhanging for a time. But by and by, the projecting hard rock is too far underworn, and falls, in sudden collapse, into the chasm. False science has been abrading the common faith in Moses' writings, because the belief in Jesus is necessarily resting on that, and must fall soon after. Some say, "Give us Jesus and the resurrection, and let Moses go." But Christ said, "If they hear not Moses, neither will they be persuaded though one should rise from the dead."—Watchman.