Disbelief

“ And yet, apparently, there is much more to it than the mere suspension of disbelief—it is rather a desire to accept such matters as may be set forth, whether or not they challenge belief—simply because they make an appeal to instinctive belief. ”

“ But hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief- is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it's better to hang oneself at once. Knowing that you are inclined to believe in me, I administered some disbelief by telling you that anecdote. ”

“ Depend upon it, that a secret and scarce acknowledged disbelief, or at least doubt and distrust of the very existence of God, and of His government of the world—HIS REAL PRESENCE AND INTERFERENCE with the men and the things of the world—lies at the bottom of almost all impatience and despair under adverse circumstances. ”

“ See what foolish fruitless pains sinners take in their sinful ways; they seek deep, they sink deep, to hide their counsel from the Lord, who sits in heaven and laughs at them. Note, A practical disbelief of God's omniscience is at the bottom both of the carnal worships and of the carnal confidences of hypocrites ”

“ This inward stability of the mind's content is as characteristic of disbelief as of belief. But we shall presently see that we never disbelieve anything except for the reason that we believe something else which contradicts the first thing. ”

“ The feeling of doubt is, as a psychological phenomenon, essentially distinct from the feeling of belief which, in its objective aspect, correlates with certainty or matter of fact; as well as from the feeling of disbelief, the correlate of which can only be described negatively. Every man knows these feelings by his own mental experience. ”

“ A delicate sentiment is rendered with the rapidity of lightning. Love, fear, hope, and despair, change countenances, and say every thing that they wish to say, void of deceit, as if falsehood no longer existed as soon as the mouth ceased to open. ”

“ Not for a moment have you come face to face with the world:
You are weaving your bondage of falsehood, your words are full of deception:
With the load of desires which you hold on your head, how can you be light? ”

“ In early life, however, before long contact with the world has blunted the susceptibilities, and hardened the sympathies of the soul, before the constant experience of the treachery, the coldness, the ingratitude of men has given birth to universal doubt and general distrust, the shadow vanishes as soon as the cloud which cast it is withdrawn, and the sufferer again believes, alas! ”

“ But what after all is the character of these pleasures upon which there is such a high estimate placed? They are all vain and empty as a bubble on the wave. They are like a dream which assumes all the appearance of reality, till we awake from our slumber and discover the deception. ”

“ You are too great, to be (by me) gainsaid:
Your Spirit is too true, your Feares too certaine.
North.
Yet for all this, say not that Percies dead.
I see a strange Confession in thine Eye:
Thou shak'st thy head, and hold'st it Feare, or Sinne,
To speake a truth. ”

“ I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished, and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as delusive, as false, but to which I now cling with the same fond trust. ”

“ Behold the source of unbelief, the corruption of the heart. Yes, my brethren, find me, if you can, men wise, temperate, pure, regular, and lovers of truth, who believe not a God, who look forward to no future state, who look upon adulteries, abominations, and incests, as the inclinations and innocent pastimes of nature. ”

“ I will pray ye to observe how much of our positive misery originates in our idle speculations in matters of faith, and in our blind, our fearful forgetfulness of facts—our cold, heartless, and, I will say, insane indifference to visible causes of tangible evil, and visible sources of tangible happiness. ”

“ But, who can unlock the secret mysteries of the human mind, or give a clue to its strange inconsistencies? Even while he argued, the dreadful doubt passed into his own mind, and, wondering and amazed, he found himself an unbeliever in the faith he had so warmly defended! ”

“ Hear with fear and trembling, lest you should be deceived, and given up, like them, to a strong delusion. As they continually mingle truth and lies, how easily may you take in both together? Hear with fervent and continual prayer, to him who alone teacheth man wisdom. ”

“ I have perceived the lie of our lives, thanks to the sufferings which the false path entailed upon me, and, having recognized the falseness of this path on which I stood, I have had the boldness to go at first in thought only—whither reason and conscience led me, without reflecting where they would bring me out. ”

“ Still the vain doubt has in delusion birth.
We hesitate, we cavil, we deny,
And ask, though all things answer in reply;
All nature echoes with one mighty Yes,
And only man will not his God confess. ”

“ Many of you, no doubt, have in your serious reflecting moments, looked upon the bewildered, blind, cold, formal, powerless systems with which you were surrounded with feelings of sorrow and disgust. You have wished to know the truth, but, alas, wherever you have turned your investigations, darkness and uncertainty have stared you in the face. ”

“ You worldlings come and entice and sigh and kiss the hem of our robes, as long as the delusion of your excited imagination lasts, and your delusion infects us till we at last believe ourselves that we are gods--and then you thrust us headlong into the depths. ”

“ The whole universe, deluded by these three states of mind, develops from the qualities, does not know me who am beyond them and inexhaustible; for this delusion of mine, ... is divine and difficult to transcend. ”

“ The final impression left upon the mind after one closes one of these fascinating volumes is, it must be confessed, a little sad. So much ambiguity in human life—so much unnecessary suffering—so many mad, blind, wilful misunderstandings! ”

“ I have done so from a conviction that in judging others we not only see but often suspect little of the latent causes of the sins which seem to us, and which in truth are, so flagrant and so disastrous. ”

“ Idle thoughts, critical thoughts of those about us, silly vain thoughts of self,—how covered with confusion and shame we should be if some by-stander were able to look within and see the busy, thronging procession that streams through our mind unchallenged, nay more, welcomed and indulged. ”

“ And, in effect, notwithstanding all your pretended doubts upon faith, you feel that avowed unbelief is a horrible course to adopt; you dare not determine upon it. It is a quicksand, under which you have a glimpse of a thousand gulfs which fill you with horror, in which you find no consistency, and on which you could not venture to tread with a firm and confident foot. ”

“ All that hitherto made life delightful, all the fine emotions, all the bright hopes, and the rare accomplishments of our nature, were dark delusions now, cruel mockeries, and false and cheating phantoms! ”

“ The part affected is the whole soul, and all the faculties of it; there is a privation of joy, hope, trust, confidence, of present and future good, and in their place succeed fear, sorrow, &c. as in the symptoms shall be shown. The heart is grieved, the conscience wounded, the mind eclipsed with black fumes arising from those perpetual terrors.
SUBSECT. III.—Causes of Despair, the Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Rigid Ministers, Misunderstanding Scriptures, Guilty Consciences, &c. ”

“ When you tear down your veil of unbelief, which causes you to remain in your awful state of wickedness, then the great and marvelous things that have been hidden since the beginning of the world will be shown to you. ”

“ That is a mighty 'But,' which buckles into one sentence two such antitheses as confront us here. 'We know not what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee'—blessed is the desperation which catches at God's hand; firm is the trust which leaps from despair! ”

“ This is not precisely the way in which we suffer ourselves nowadays to talk about truth, but a few generations back, people still cherished a healthy predilection for the comfortable delusions of life. ”

“ But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. ”

“ Must my thoughts dwell night and day on my personal sins and blemishes, because I truly have them?—or may I sink and ignore them in order to be a decent social unit, and not a mass of morbid melancholy and apology? ”

“ I shall mention four names but too familiar—Disappointment, Discontent, Dissension, Distrust. Let us see whether the sufferings which they inflict are not more severe and perpetual than those brought upon us by what are called visitations of Providence; whether many griefs which we term “crosses” are not rather burdens laid upon us by enemies to the soul, to whose yoke we should never have stooped. ”

“ How much of human unhappiness has been caused, directly and indirectly, by opposite beliefs,—by the delusion of stability,—by the delusion that distinctions of character, condition, class, creed, are settled by immutable law,—and the delusion of a changeless, immortal, sentient soul, destined, by divine caprice, to eternities of bliss or eternities of fire! ”

“ With her most surely the final effect and impression rest upon powers of revelation—upon the ability to realise and to interpret the simplest and the subtlest phases of emotion, far more than upon those artifices of deception that make for the more obvious triumphs of disguise. ”

“ I should like to know where our modern unbelief is that is such a distress to us in all our efforts and in our inward life, when you reverently, and in the deep meaning of thought say, “As the Lord liveth”? ”

“ Easier it is a great deale to know the number of my haires, then the running motions of my heart and affections. Oh, the blind corners, the secret turnings and windings, the close lurking holes that are therein: upon examination I have found a world of falshood in my soul, more then ever I suspected or imagined. My cogitations are vaine, if not wicked and ungodly, mine affections unsound, mine aimes indirect, my course of life palpably grosse in dissimulation before God, and towards men. ”

“ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem—and it does seem—as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error, deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous πολύτροποι. ”

“ Therefore we regard our craving with complacence, we feel the great aching of the Want, and we say, with conviction, “I know I exist, I know I am I, because I feel the divine discontent which is personal to me, and eternal, and present always in me.” ”

“ The outward covering of infantile and childish innocence, with which those passions and propensities were enveloped, is broken through; those hidden evils, coming forth, cast off their gilded covering, and, with it, also, the beauty and the joy which it communicated. And then the anxieties and pains which evil and sin always bring in their train, nay, which belong to their very nature and are inseparable from them, begin to be felt. ”

“ Conceptions derived from education and all sorts of fancies that have crept into the mind would exercise their influence here, where delusion is mingled with truth, a real spiritual sensation being, indeed, the foundation, but converted into phantoms of sensuous things. ”

“ They embrace the new light—whatever it may be—with a degree of sincerity, and commit themselves to it; then they push it, stimulate it, make a business of it, and live by it. O the multitude of spiritual delusions that in every age of the world have originated and derived their strength solely from the fact that the bodily necessities of certain individuals depended upon their perpetuity! ”

“ It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have committed 'the unpardonable sin' and are lost forever, who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak aloud or look us in the eye. ”

“ I am wearied with seeing the conduct of some of this people, their theiving, lying, tattling, deceiving, running after the Gentile spirit, after the spirits of this world, receiving delusive spirits, and adhering to all manner of principles that are not of God. ”

“ A word, a look, nay the very appearance of a slight, throws me into the greatest uneasiness and confusion; and though I can govern my temper enough to hide it from the world, my heart is ready to burst with indignation. ”

“ By our own inconsiderateness and sensuousness, we live in a lie, in a false dream of permanence, and so in a sadder sense we walk in 'a vain show,'—deluding ourselves with the conceit of durability, and refusing to see that the apparent is the shadowy, and the one enduring reality God. ”