The mission of infidels is not to build up anything but to pull down
churches, civil laws, governments, morals, the characters of men and
women, peace, happiness, protection of home, property and life. They
come with a mission of denials of the truths contained in the Bible—a
mission of war upon the Bible, religion, and the friends of purity
and mercy. They come not with a mission of peace and good will to
man, but a mission of hatred towards the Bible and all it enjoins—a
mission to pull down and destroy—to spread desolation among other
men’s labors and lay their work in ruins, leaving nothing but wrecks
and devastation. They come to neutralize, paralize and dishearten
all efforts for the amelioration of man’s condition—to discourage,
enfeeble and ignore all efforts to rise. They come not into our midst
with a warm, kind and affectionate appeal to the attentive, thinking
and reflective portion,—the more spiritually minded; but appeal to the
lukewarm, back-sliding, or the apostate, who is beginning to stand at a
distance, who already is descending upon the retrograde plane—not to
rescue him, or to prevent his retrograde movement, but to accelerate
it. The appeal to him is not to give him confidence, but to destroy his
confidence in his Bible, his religion, his brethren, and fill him with
doubts and distrusts. It is not to embolden him, but to intimidate him
and fill him with fears, and discourage him from all good forever.
The mission of infidels is not to enlighten, civilize and ennoble
the nations. They have never enlightened, civilized or elevated a
nation or a people since the world was made. They have never organized
society, established peace and order in any place on this earth. They
have established no civil institutions, no system of morals, no code
of laws, no system of education, and no institutions of learning
that deserve the name. Even the literature of the country has almost
entirely been left to the believers in the Bible. It is an easy work
to pull down civil government, subvert the foundation of organization,
condemn the means of enlightenment, and object to them. It is an easy
matter to deny everything and prove nothing; to doubt, vacillate and
fear. It is an easy matter to distrust, fill others with distrust,
destroy confidence, throw everything into confusion and uncertainty.
Some men have fallen so fully into this state, that they hardly will
venture to say they believe anything, have confidence in anything, or
know anything. One man, under the blinding, benumbing and stupifying
influence of unbelief, when asked whether he knew that he existed,
hesitated to say he did.
What ability, knowledge or learning does it require, to deny
everything? The most ignorant, illiterate and stupid, can deny as
stoutly, as the most learned, enlightened, and talented. It requires
no strength of mind to stand and deny—to declare in the most
pertinacious manner, disbelief, want of confidence, doubts, distrusts
and uncertainties in everything. A man who never read the Bible once
through in his life, nor ten other books, who has the most corrupt
character, can talk of inconsistencies, incongruities, contradictions
and absurdities, in the Bible, as stoutly as anybody. Any blockhead
could leap over the Falls of Niagara, or from the Suspension Bridge
below. In the same way, any man with or without much mind, learning or
talent, can leap into the dark abyss of unbelief, rejecting, contemning
and despising all evidence; but, would it not be the part of prudence,
of wisdom and discretion in such, to look before they leap? It is a
fearful experiment they are making. If the step is a mistaken one, it
can never be retraced beyond this life. He who makes the experiment,
obtains nothing now, only the unbridled privilege of declaring the
Bible false—religion priest-craft—that man will never be called to
account, hence all men can do as they list.
The mission of infidels is to risk, and induce all men to risk the loss
of everything, without the possibility of gaining anything in this
world, or the world to come. They have no worthy object—they can have
no worthy object in opposing the Bible. They have no reason for
opposing it, for they do not propose to make the world any better. They
have no proposition to make the world more true, kind, affectionate
or happy. Indeed, the very fact of their malignity towards the Bible,
shows that it is no fable. The land abounds with acknowledged fables;
why are they not enraged at these? They are read by the million;
but, sceptics are no more enraged at them than other men. If they
are satisfied the Bible is all fiction, false or human, why trouble
us about it? Why not let it pass? We hear thousands contending about
the “signs in the moon,” but we care nothing about them, and do not
even trouble those who believe in them; the reason is, we are well
and fully satisfied, that there is nothing in them. Why do they not
let the believers in the Bible pass in the same way? The reason is
obvious; they are in doubt, not fully satisfied, and feel that there is
uncertainty in their position. They see and are constantly impressed
with the fact, that if the Christian could be mistaken that his mistake
amounts to nothing—that he is as happy now, and has as high assurance
in regard to all beyond this life, to say the least of it, as they;
and that if the sceptic should prove mistaken, his mistake will be an
irreparable one. They see that a mistake on the part of a Christian
involves no danger, no serious consequences in this world or the world
to come; while a mistake on their part involves eternal consequences.
They are not constantly impressed, too, with the fact, that they are
relying upon that which amounts to anything like certainty; for a
large proportion who have occupied their position, before death have
repudiated and renounced it,—many of them in the immediate expectation
of death,—and warned all their friends against it. They find on the
other hand, that all who believed the Bible when in health, also
believed it when approaching death, and that no man who has contended
for its truth till he was in the immediate expectation of death, has
then denied it. They must, then, see that their mission is simply to
fill the world with doubts and distrusts, involving all in darkness and
uncertainty.