Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again: A Life StoryBarker, Joseph
Religion
Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again: A Life Story
Barker, Joseph
Barker, Joseph, 1806-1875; Methodist Church -- Clergy -- Biography; Skepticism
And so with regard to religious matters. There is nothing like
omniscience,--nothing like infinite or absolutely perfect knowledge or
infallibility in any man: yet every one may have all the information and
all the assurance on things moral and spiritual needful to his comfort
and salvation.
Our assurance of the truth and excellency of Christian doctrine rests on
something better, surer, than theological and metaphysical niceties. You
who fancy that your strong and heart-cheering faith rests on theological
theories, and that if those theories were exploded, it would perish,
are, happily, under a great mistake. Your faith, and hope, and joy,
rest on the harmony between Christianity and your souls. My faith and
trust in the outward world, and my infinite appreciation of its
arrangements, rest, not on any philosophical theory; but on the
wonderful, the perfect adaptation of every thing to my nature, to my
wants, to my comfort and welfare. Nature answers to me, fits into me, at
every point. I am just the kind of being nature was made for; and nature
is just the kind of world my being requires. They match. They answer to
each other exactly, all round, and make one glorious and blessed whole.
And this is the secret of my trust in nature.
And so it is with regard to Christianity and my soul. They are made for
each other. They fit each other. My soul just wants what Christianity
brings; and Christianity just brings what my soul requires. It answers
to my soul, as light and beauty answer to the eye, and as sound and
music answer to the ear, and the whole of nature to the whole of man.
There is neither want, nor superfluity, nor disagreement. Christianity
and my soul, like nature and my physical being, are a glorious match.
They are one: as I and my life are one. Christ is my life. Christ is my
all. And He is all that my soul requires or desires.
And this is the ground of the good Christian's faith. It is not external
or historical evidence; it is not metaphysical niceties or theories; it
is not the endless mass of jarring evidences of any kind which lie in
misty, musty, dusty volumes on the shelves of dreamy, doting divines,
that makes you feel at rest in Jesus; but Jesus Himself, whose fulness
just answers to your wants, and whose life and love just make your
heaven. It is just that, and nothing more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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