'There is a servile deference paid, even by Christians, to incompetent
judges of Christianity. They abjectly look to men of the world, to
scholars, to statesmen, for testimonies to the everlasting and
self-evidencing verities of heaven! And if they can gather up, from
the writings or speeches of these men, some patronising notices of
religion, some incidental compliment to the civilising influence of the
Bible, or to the aesthetic proprieties of worship, or to the moral
sublimity of the character or gospel of Christ, they forthwith proclaim
these tributes as lending some great confirmation to the Truth of GOD!
So we persist in asking, not "Is it true? true to our souls?" or, "Has
the Lord said it?" but, "What say the learned men, the influential men,
the eloquent men?" Shame upon these time-serving concessions, as
unmanly as they are fallacious. Go back to the hovels, rather, and
take the witnessing of the illiterate souls whose hearts, waiting there
in poverty or pain, or under the shadow of some great affliction, the
Lord Himself hath opened.'--F. D. HUNTINGDON, _Christian Believing and
Living_.
{251}