Goethe says it is a law of the demons that they must get out at the same
place where they sneaked in. This is a very suggestive expression. If a
mathematician makes a mistake in the solution of a problem his only
chance to get out of the difficulty lies just at the point where the
mistake was made. He must remain in perplexity until he finds the
mistake and corrects it. This law holds good in all our intellectual
operations. Many men are professedly in unbelief. How shall we get them
out? This is an important question and needs to be well studied by all
Christian ministers. If we can find out just how they got in, then it
will be easy to get the honest ones out. But it is well to remember that
many professed infidels are _only skeptics_ in heart. They are
unbelievers at will. The most effectual remedy for such unbelief, as yet
known, is an attack of cramp colic, or some other fearful affliction.
Under such circumstances they always surrender. There is not much chance
for Gospel means as long as a man's unbelief is simply a profession. His
disease is not one of the head, but of the heart; yet our law holds good
here. The man himself may repent; may make to himself a new heart and a
new spirit. This is his way out. If a man gets into unbelief through a
misunderstanding of Bible facts he will never get out short of a better
understanding of those same facts.
If he gets in through the impression that science and the Bible are in
conflict, there is no way to get him out short of a removal of the
impression. Hence the importance of ministers being scientists. Many
unbelievers claim that the Bible and science conflict, who have never
investigated them, and know comparatively nothing of either. This class,
too, is in the majority. They are men who ape certain leaders, being
under their influence. Many of them love to have us know that they know
something about such men as Strauss, notwithstanding their ignorance of
_even the man_. To have such a mind do their thinking is the highest of
their ambition. There is a good deal of heart disease about these
fellows. They really glory in the names of such men as Strauss. He was
so far away that they never learned the fact that "he was divorced from
his wife, the former actress, Agnese Schebest, and spent his days going
about from place to place. His pseudo-theology or mythology ended in a
theatrical comedy, and the comedy in a tragedy." "In 1839 this famous
Dr. Strauss--who resolved the gospel history of salvation into an
incoherent and self-contradictory mythological poem, and denied the
existence of a personal God and the immortality of the soul--was duly
elected professor of Christian dogmatics and ethics in the University of
Zurich, by the party then in power, which consisted mostly of demagogues
and frivolous infidels."
But the free Swiss would not submit, so the people of the Canton of
Zurich rose in their republican majesty and marched to the city under
the lead of an energetic pastor, and with the weapons which they hastily
collected scared the Strauss clique away; they very courageously took to
their heels; then the people of the Canton of Zurich placed the
government into the hands of conservative, trustworthy Christian men,
and quietly retired to their mountain homes without shedding a drop of
blood. The new government elected Mr. Lange in the place claimed, but
never occupied, by Strauss; but Mr. Strauss claimed half the salary, and
it is said that he enjoyed it, up to 1857 at least.
How much influence could such a man in our own country exert over the
American mind? For these facts touching the life of Strauss, see
"Germany; Its Universities, Theology and Religion," by Phillip Schaff,
pages 101, 386. The reader may rely upon the quotations given above. I
have taken them with the book referred to open before me.
Infidels who investigate the Bible honestly, with reference to an
understanding of its contents, are unknown to us. The master spirits in
unbelief give abundant evidence of their ignorance of the scriptures of
the Bible. Not one in a thousand ever investigated the scriptures of the
Bible with pure and honest motives. Many have never investigated it at
all. To read a chapter here and there for the sole purpose of finding
fault and getting up a difficulty, is not investigation. An honest
investigation requires a very different course. All the evidence must be
brought into the court and presented in such a manner as to be
understood, just as it was given, otherwise the court is not qualified
to decide righteously in the case. That all such men as Col. Ingersoll
have failed to thus investigate the Bible is evident from the fact that
they, to be like him, must be infidels in all their history. It is
published to the world that the Colonel was born an infidel. He has been
hacking away at religion and the Bible ever since he was a small boy. So
his infidelity is not the result of an intelligent investigation of
either science or religion. I will not undertake to say what the
Colonel's trouble is, but if he was born an infidel it is possible,
according to our law, that he will die an unbeliever.
Many infidels, governed by a spirit of fanaticism, undoubtedly, have
labored with as much earnestness as if the world's salvation depended
upon their efforts, without the least hope of bettering its condition,
for the false philosophy of materialism which they advocate gives to a
man nothing to live for except his own animal nature. This philosophy
says all is well as long as you dodge the sharp corners of the laws of
your country. If the materialist can avoid paying fines, along with all
other penalties of the laws of his country, what need he care for one
course of life in preference to another? Do you say he has a conscience?
Well, it may be that it is not seared so that he is past feeling. Very
few men, I know, ever reach such a depraved condition. And this is
doubtless the greatest reason why all infidels, as a general rule, get
into mental distress during great bodily afflictions. Many of them are
converted by disease of the body, for two reasons: first, they were
unbelievers at will, just because it suited their desires, and, second,
because they are in possession of a religious nature or conscience. But
men who are converted by disease of the body are liable to go back to
the old wallow as soon as prosperity and health crown them again.
Many men are driven to irreligion through its abuses. I have often
thought it a misfortune that we Americans are under the necessity of
meeting the infidel literature of the old world, for the simple reason
that it is evolved out of the circumstances peculiar to state churches.
In America our religion is heroic; that is, it rests upon the merits of
its own evidence, and is supported by the voluntary contributions of the
people. But in Europe, where the mass of our infidel literature comes
from, Christianity is not free and independent, but entangled with the
affairs of state, and supported by the secular arm. The result is that
difficulties are continually arising out of the unholy alliance which
are disgusting to the independent scientific mind. The natural result is
to drive such persons into irreligion. Where men are educated in both
science and religion, and have not been all their lives called upon to
look upon religion in a secular light, tangled up in the interests of
politics and law, there should be no fears on account of any literature
that infidels may pass around. The misfortune that I speak of is not
with such men, but with the uneducated in religion and science, who are
more than anxious to find an excuse for irreligion. Christianity fears
nothing in the light.
* * * * *
The desires that have only a bodily end and aim, that are unconnected
with the high, holy, and noble purposes of a pure, true, and good life,
are false desires, and should be cast off.
COUNCILS--No. II.