When the minister wants to frighten his congregation he draws a picture of
infidelity. The infidel has been used for years to scare weak-minded
persons into accepting Christianity. Outwardly the infidel is painted like
a man, but the world is warned not to trust to appearances, for the
infidel is not what he looks to be; he is “a fiend in human shape;” he is
“a moral monster,” and a mirror in which everything bad and vicious can
see its face.
We do not wonder that a minister paints the infidel in black. He has hurt
the minister’s business, and so must suffer for what he has done. But we
do wonder that so large a part of the world is frightened at the word
“infidelity.”
It is a fact that an infidel would never be known if he himself did not
disclose his character. To conceal his infidelity he has only to keep
still, to hide behind silence.
Infidelity is nothing more or less than intellectual fidelity, and an
infidel is a man too honest to disguise his real thoughts and convictions.
Had the infidel not been honest he would still be in the church, a
hypocrite, to be sure, but this could not affect his religious status at
all. Intellectual and moral uprightness is the distinguishing
characteristic of modern infidelity. The modern infidel trusts his brain
and his heart; he accepts as true what appeals to his reason, and makes
known his convictions as though to conceal them were a vice or a crime.
The infidel gains nothing by avowing his convictions; on the contrary, he
is condemned for making them known. The Christian presumes upon the right
to damn infidels here and to teach that God will damn them hereafter. It
is in the face of a fate, in many instances cruel, that a man acknowledges
that his honest thoughts, his honest convictions place him in antagonism
to the popular faith, and yet he is denounced, rather than praised, for
his brave action.
Infidelity is the proof of an honest man. Hypocrisy cannot hide in its
shadow. Every man in the Christian church may be a hypocrite, a knave, a
pretender professing its faith, while laughing inwardly at its foolish
superstitions, but every man who espouses infidelity must reveal his true
character, must show exactly what he is.
A dishonest or hypocritical infidel is an impossibility. There is nothing
to be gained, but much to be lost, by confessing one’s disbelief of the
Christian dogmas. It is the man who prizes self-respect above the world’s
approval who takes the fate of infidelity—be it what it may.
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Don’t put too much faith in the man who wants to know the distance to the
nearest church before he has written his name in the hotel register.