CAUSES OF UNBELIEF.
How came I to wander into doubt and unbelief?
1. There are several causes of skepticism and infidelity. One is vice.
When a man is bent on forbidden pleasures, he finds it hard to believe
in the truth and divinity of a religion that condemns his vicious
indulgences. And the longer he persists in his evil course, the darker
becomes his understanding, the more corrupt his tastes, and the more
perverse his judgment; until at length he "puts darkness for light, and
light for darkness; calls evil good and good evil, and mistakes bitter
for sweet, and sweet for bitter." He becomes an infidel. It is the
decree of Heaven that men who persist in seeking pleasure in
unrighteousness, shall be given up to strong delusions of the devil to
believe a lie.
2. But there are other causes of skepticism and unbelief besides vice.
Thomas was an unbeliever for a time,--a very resolute one,--yet the
Gospel gives no intimation that he was chargeable with any form of vice.
And John the Baptist, one of the noblest characters in sacred history,
after having proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah to others, came himself to
doubt, whether He was really "the one that should come, or they should
look for another." Like the early disciples of the Saviour, and the
Jewish people generally, John expected the Messiah to take the throne of
David by force, and to rule as a temporal prince; and when Jesus took a
course so very different, his confidence in his Messiahship was shaken.
And one of the sweetest Psalmists tells us that, as for him, his feet
were almost gone; his steps had well-nigh slipped: and that, not because
he was eager for sinful pleasures, but because he saw darkness and
clouds around the Providence of God: he could not understand or "justify
the ways of God to man."
And there are thoughtful and good men still who fall into doubt and
unbelief from similar causes. The kind of people who, like Thomas, are
constitutionally inclined to doubt, are not all dead. Baxter mentions a
class of men who lived in his day, that were always craving for sensible
demonstrations. Like Thomas, they wanted to _see_ and _feel_ before they
believed. In other words, they were not content with faith; they wanted
_knowledge_. And there are men of that kind still in the world.
And the darkness and clouds which the Psalmist saw around the providence
of God are not all gone. There are many things in connection with the
government of the world that are hard to be understood,--hard to be
reconciled by many with their ideas of what is right. There are
mysteries both in nature and in history, which baffle the minds and try
the faith of the best and wisest of our race.
3. And there are matters in connection with Christianity to try the
faith of men. Like its great Author, when it first made its appearance,
it had "neither form nor comeliness" in the eyes of many. It neither met
the expectations of the selfish, proud, ambitious Jew, nor of the
disputatious, philosophic Greek. To the one "it was a stumbling-block,"
and to the other "foolishness." And there have been men in every age,
who have been unable to find in Christianity all that their preconceived
notions had led them to expect in a religion from Heaven. There are men
still, even among the sincerest and devoutest friends of Christianity,
who are puzzled and staggered at times by the mysterious aspects of some
of its doctrines, or by some of the facts connected with its history.
They cannot understand, for instance, how it is that it has not spread
more rapidly, and become, before this, the religion of the whole world.
You tell them the fault is in its disciples and ministers, and not in
Christianity itself. But they cannot understand why God should allow the
success of a system so important to depend on faithless or fallible men.
Nor can they understand how it is that in the nations in which the
Gospel has been received, it has not worked a greater transformation of
character, and produced a happier change in their condition. How is it,
they ask, that it has not extinguished the spirit of war, destroyed the
sordid lust for gain, developed more fully the spirit of
self-sacrificing generosity, and converted society into one great
brotherhood of love? How is it that the Church is not more holy, more
united, and more prosperous,--that professors and teachers of
Christianity do not exhibit more of the Christian character, and follow
more closely the example of the meek and lowly, the loving and
laborious, the condescending and self-sacrificing Saviour whose name
they bear? They are amazed that so little is done by professing
Christians to save the perishing classes; that so many of the churches,
instead of grappling with the vice and wretchedness of our large towns,
turn their backs on them, build their churches in aristocratic
neighborhoods mostly, and compete with one another for the favor of the
rich and powerful. They cannot understand how it is, that churches and
ministers do not exert themselves more for the extinction of
drunkenness, gambling, and licentiousness, and for the suppression of
all trades and customs that minister to sin. It startles them to see to
what a fearful extent the churches have allowed the power of the press,
which once was all their own, to pass out of their hands, into the hands
of selfish, worldly, and godless adventurers. These matters admit of
explanation, but there are many to whose minds the explanation is never
presented, and there are some whom nothing will relieve from perplexity
and doubt but a grander display of Christian zeal and philanthropic
effort, on the part of the churches, for the regeneration of society.
4. Then the religion of Christ is not, as a rule, presented to men in
its loveliest and most winning, or in its grandest and most overpowering
form. As presented in the teachings and character of Christ,
Christianity is the perfection of wisdom and goodness, the most glorious
revelation of God and duty the mind of man can conceive: but as
presented in the creeds, and characters, and writings of many of its
teachers and advocates, it has neither beauty, nor worth, nor
credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and
the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they
exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or
pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish
traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a
mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting it in an
antiquated and outlandish dress. The language of many theologians, like
the Latin of the Romish Church, is, to vast numbers, a dead
language,--an unknown tongue. There are hundreds of words and phrases
used by preachers and religious writers which neither they nor their
hearers or readers understand. In some of them there is nothing to be
understood. They are mere words; meaningless sounds. Some of them have
meanings, but they are hard to come at, and when you have got at them
you find them to be worse than none. They are falsehoods that lurk
within the dark and antiquated words. I have heard and even read whole
sermons in which nine sentences out of ten had no more meaning in them
than the chatter of an ape. Perhaps not so much. I have gone through
large volumes and found hardly a respectable, plain-meaning sentence
from beginning to end. And wagon loads of so-called religious books may
still be found, in which, as in the talk of one of Shakespeare's
characters, the ideas are to the words as three grains of wheat to a
bushel of chaff; you may search for them all day before you find them;
and when you find them they are good for nothing. When I first came
across such books I supposed it was my ignorance or want of capacity
that made it impossible for me to understand them; but I found, at
length, that there was nothing in them to understand. There are other
books which have a meaning, a good meaning, but it is wrapped up in such
out-of-the-way words and phrases, that it is difficult to get at it. Men
of science have not only discarded the foolish fictions of darker ages,
but have begun to simplify their language; to cast aside the unspeakable
and unintelligible jargon of the past, and to use plain, good, common
English, thus rendering the study of nature pleasant even to children;
while many divines, by clinging to the unmeaning and mischievous
phraseology of ancient dreamers, render the study of religion repulsive,
and the attainment of sound Christian knowledge almost impossible to the
masses of mankind. And all these things become occasions of unbelief.
"So long as Christian preachers and writers are limited so much to human
creeds and systems, or to stereotyped phrases of any kind, and avail
themselves so little of the popular diction of literature and of common
life, so long must they repel many whom they might convince and win."
Dr. Porter, _President of Yale College_.
5. Then again: the divisions of the Church, and the uncharitable spirit
in which points of difference between contending sects are discussed,
and the disposition sometimes shown by religious disputants to impugn
each other's motives, to call each other offensive names, and to consign
each other to perdition, are occasions of stumbling to some.
6. And again: many advocates of Christianity, more zealous than wise,
say more about the Bible and Christianity than is true, and attempt to
prove points which do not admit of proof; and by their unguarded
assertions, and their failures in argument, bring the truth itself into
discredit. Others use unsound arguments in support of the truth, and
when men discover the unsoundness of the arguments, they are led
sometimes to suspect the soundness of the doctrine in behalf of which
they are employed. The pious frauds of ancient and modern fanatics have
proved a stumbling-block to thousands.
Albert Barnes says, "There is no class of men that are so liable to rely
on weak and inconclusive reasonings as preachers of the Gospel. Many a
young man in a Theological Seminary is on the verge of infidelity from
the nature of the reasoning employed by his instructor in defence of
that which is true, and which might be well defended: and many a youth
in our congregations is almost or quite a skeptic, not because he wishes
to be so, but because that which is true is supported by such worthless
arguments."
7. Again; theological students sometimes adopt erroneous principles or
unwise methods of reasoning in their search after truth, and do not
discover their mistake till they are landed in doubt and unbelief. They
find certain principles laid down by men in high repute for science, and
adopt them without hesitation, not considering that men of science are
sometimes mad, fanatical infidels, and that they manufacture principles
without regard to truth, for the simple purpose of undermining men's
faith in God and religion. Writers on science of one school tell you,
that in your study of nature, you must be careful never to admit the
doctrine of final causes; or, in other words, that you must never
entertain the idea that anything in nature was meant to answer any
particular purpose. You must, say they, if you would be a true
philosopher, shut out from your mind all idea of design or contrivance
in the works of nature. You must just look at what is, and not ask what
it is for. You may find wonderful adaptations of things to each other,
all tending to happy results; but you must never suppose that any one
ever _designed_ or _planned_ those adaptations, with a _view_ to those
happy results. You must confine yourself entirely to what you see, and
never admit the thought of a Maker whom you do not see. You must limit
your observations to what is done, and not dream of a Doer. You may see
things tending to the diffusion of happiness, but must not suppose that
there is a great unseen Benefactor, who gives them this blessed
tendency. And if you feel in yourself a disposition to gratitude, you
must treat it as a foolish, childish fancy, and suppress it as
irrational.
A sillier or a more contemptible notion--a notion more opposed to true
philosophy and common sense,--can hardly be conceived. How any one could
ever have the ignorance or the impudence to propound such an unnatural
and monstrous absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a
mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's
understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of
their own wisdom, transforms them into the most arrant and outrageous
fools.
Yet this monstrous folly has found its way into books, and papers, and
reviews, and, through them, into the minds of some Christian students;
and when the madness of the notion is not detected, it destroys their
faith, and makes them miserable infidels.
Some adopt the principle that reason is man's only guide,--that reason
alone is judge of what is true and good, and that to reason every thing
must be submitted, and received or rejected, done or left undone, as
reason may decide. This sounds very plausible to many, and there is a
sense in which it may be true; but there is a sense in which it is
fearfully false; and the youth that adopts it, and acts upon it, will be
likely to land himself in utter doubt, both with regard to religion and
morals. There are numbers of cases in which reason is no guide at
all,--in which instinct, natural affection, and consciousness are our
only guides. You can never prove by what is generally called reason
alone, that man is not a machine, governed entirely by forces over
which he has no control. You cannot therefore prove by what certain
philosophers call reason, that any man is worthy of reward or
punishment, of praise or blame, of gratitude or of resentment; or that
there is any such thing in men as virtue or vice, according to the
ordinary sense of the words. The ablest logicians on earth, when they
take reason alone as their guide, come to the conclusion that there is
no such thing as liberty or moral responsibility, in the ordinary
acceptation of the terms, but that all is fixed, that all is fate, from
eternity to eternity. They accordingly come to the further conclusion,
that there is no free, voluntary Ruler of the universe,--that there is
no Almighty Judge and Rewarder,--that there is neither reward nor
punishment, properly speaking, either in this world or in the world to
come. They become atheists.
You can never prove by reason that a woman ought to love her own child
better than the child of another woman. You cannot prove by reason that
she ought to love it at all. You may say no children would be reared if
mothers did not love their children, and even love them better than the
children of other mothers. But how will you prove that children _ought_
to be reared? Can you show that the mother will confer any advantage on
her child, or secure any advantage to herself, or any one else, by
rearing it? Can you prove that it will not be a torment to her,--that it
will not bring her to want, and shame, and an untimely death? The fact
is, a mother's love, a mother's partiality for her own child, is not a
matter of reason. The hen loves her chickens, the she bear loves its
cubs, the mother dog loves its whelps, and the ewe loves her lambs,
without any regard to reason. Their affections and preferences are
governed by something infinitely wiser than reason; infinitely higher,
at least, than any reason that _man_ can boast. And men love women, and
women love men, and men and women marry and form new families, not at
the bidding of reason, but under the influence of instincts or impulses
that come from a wisdom infinitely higher than the wisdom of the wisest
man on earth. And so it is with many of our beliefs. They are
instinctive; and reason, when it becomes reasonable enough to deserve
the name, will advise you to cherish those instinctive beliefs as your
life, in spite of all the infidel philosophy and reasoning on earth.
But even honest and well-disposed men of science sometimes form bad,
defective, or one-sided habits of thought and judgment unconsciously,
which render it impossible for them to do justice either to Nature or
Christianity as revelations of the character and government of God. And
these faulty habits of thought and judgment, and the anti-Christian
conclusions to which they lead, pass on from men of science to literary
men; and literature is vitiated, and books and periodicals which should
lead men to truth, cause them to err. Thus skeptical principles pervade
society. They find advocates at times even among men who call themselves
ministers of Christ. The consequence is, that well-disposed, and even
pious young men, are perplexed, bewildered, and some who, like John the
Baptist, were "burning and shining lights," become "wandering stars,"
and lose themselves, for a time at least, amidst the "blackness and
darkness" of doubt and despair.