p. 38 | Practical Infidelity

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Jul 4, 1865

Practical Infidelity.

"An infidel, brother? Your room-mate an infidel?"

"Yes, there are many in the University. Why are you so terrified? Do you think my life is in danger!"

"I fear your principles are."

Oh! as to that, they do try to bring me over to their views; but I am little moved by all they can say. My danger lies in another direction—from skeptical believers, rather than from unbelieving skeptics.

"What do you mean?"

Why this. So far as I have observed, there is only here and there one among professing Christians, who really takes the Bible for the word of God, practically believing all its declarations, not because they accord with his own worldly maxims and the dictates of common sense, but because "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it;" and all who do thus believe are called fanatics by their less credulous brethren.

Now here are father and mother, long standing professors of religion. Do they believe the whole Bible? Christ says: "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." If father believes that, why does he deny himself all leisure for intellectual and spiritual culture "that he may buy and sell and get gain?" If mother believes it, why her pride in her accumulated household stores, her goodly wardrobe, fashionable furniture, and what she calls "style of living?"

Notice these commands. "Love your enemies." "Forgive if ye have aught against any." "Pray for them which despitefully use you." You know of father's chronic bitterness toward Mr. A. for some real or fancied injury. Mr. A. has more than once tried to effect a reconciliation, but father cannot forgive. Does mother, think you, ever pray for that tattling Miss S., whose slanderous reports have so annoyed her? One would not think so, judging from her talk.

"Then here is the promise. 'Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.' If I should act faith in that, and devote myself to a life of charitable endeavor, taking God for my paymaster, father would think me insane. And as with the promises, so with the threatenings. Those having their fulfillment in this life, and in accordance with observation and experience, are credited, such as this, for example: 'He that will not plow shall beg in harvest;' but for those awful passages which threaten eternal loss to the finally impenitent, can it be that father believes them? You remember when I first started for the University, months ago, father took me to the station. While waiting for the train he talked to me freely, expressing his solicitude for my future welfare, his hope that I might acquit myself with honor, take a prominent rank in my class, and finally attain to professional eminence. Did he really believe that it would not profit me to gain the whole world and lose my own soul? Did he believe that by a collision of trains, a heedless crossing of the track, or a careless step upon the platform, I might that very day be sent to the bar of doom and an eternity of woe?"

"And do you think father is not a Christian?"

"I did not say that. I do not presume to judge. I am only saying that my faith in the Bible is less endangered by the arguments of avowed skeptics, than by the practical infidelity of professed believers."—Congregationalist.