Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and EcclesiastesMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Second Kings Chapters VIII to End and Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Esther, Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes
Now, there is one direction in which I wish to urge that
especially--and now I speak mainly to the young men in my
congregation--and that is, in regard to the attitude that so many
amongst us are taking to Christian truth. If you have honestly thought
out the subject to the best of your ability, and have come to
conclusions diverse from those which men like me hold dearer than
their lives, that is another matter. But I know that very widely there
is spread to-day the fashion of unbelief. So many influential men,
leaders of opinion, teachers and preachers, are giving up the
old-fashioned Evangelical faith, that it takes a strong man to say
that he sticks by it. It is a poor reason to give for your attitude,
that unbelief is in the air, and nobody believes those old doctrines
now. That may be. There are currents of opinion that are transitory,
and that is one of them, depend upon it. But at all events do not be
fooled out of your faith, as some of you are tending to be, for no
better reason than because other people have given it up. An iceberg
lowers the temperature all round it, and the iceberg of unbelief is
amongst us to-day, and it has chilled a great many people who could
not tell why they have lost the fervour of their faith.
On the other hand, let me remind you that a mere traditional religion,
which is only orthodox because other people are so, and has not
verified its beliefs by personal experience, is quite as deleterious
as an imitative unbelief. Doubtless, I speak to some who plume
themselves on 'never having been affected by these currents of popular
opinion,' but whose unblemished and unquestioned orthodoxy has no more
vitality in it than the other people's heterodoxy. The one man has
said, 'What is everywhere always, and by all believed, I believe'; and
the other man has said, 'What the select spirits of this day
disbelieve, I disbelieve,' and the belief of one and the unbelief of
the other are equally worthless, and really identical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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