Unbelief

“ By despising unbelief, let us deprive it of the deplorable glory it seeks. From the moment they are despised, unbelievers will be rare among us; and the same vanity which forms their doubts will soon annihilate or conceal them, when it shall be a disgrace among us to appear impious, and a glory to be a believer. ”

“ 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 the sin of the world. Why, a great many people think that unbelief is a sort of misfortune, but do not know, if you will allow me the expression, it is the damning sin of the world to-day; that is what unbelief is, the mother of all sin. ”

“ And much and successfully as we may contend with these misgivings of unbelief, yet that frame of mind which is represented by them, that wavering, fitful, unsteady faith, ever accompanies us. The distress arising from it is known to every one who has the Christian life in him. Only those never doubt who have never believed: for doubt is of the very essence of belief. ”

“ But belief and unbelief are no more to be helped or hindered than the eyes' perception of a cloud. If the eyes carry out their function and if the cloud be there, I shall see it. Why, so far as belief and unbelief are concerned, will, desire, hope, fear, pain have no part to play at all, let them be cruel as flame or powerful as time. ”

“ Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve. ”

“ It is by that path that he has attained to the wonderful and sublime science of unbelief; it is to these grand efforts that he owes the discovery of a truth, of which the rest of men before him had either been ignorant, or had detested. ”

“ 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”? ”

“ When we fear that either ourselves or others shall fall away, in a day of trial, and turn from the truth. Though all men prove liars and deceivers, truth will abide the same, and stand out all the blasts of opposition.
5. When unbelief would make us question the truth of the promises, the faith of his being truth itself, and the truth, even truth in the abstract, would shame unbelief out of countenance. Shall truth fail? Shall not the Truth be true? ”

“ Thus, to take a published instance; a person now living has said of himself that "he read himself into unbelief, and afterwards read himself back into belief." As if mere diligent study could restore any one who had fallen from the faith! ”

“ In short, the average popular creed of the day, is the mental standard, from which the stadia are measured off towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary place, lodged somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief. ”

“ The unbelief that will be visited with judgment at the last day is, the wilful, stubborn, uncandid, prevaricacious, unpersuadable unbelief. Easiness of temper does not make a just man; no more does easiness of credence make a believing man.
Conceiving then that you are honestly anxious to arrive at truth, I will endeavor in this address to meet some of the difficulties which once perplexed my own mind. The being of God, or the mystery attaching to the Divine existence, not unnaturally disturbs the mind upon the very threshold of religious inquiry. ”

“ Herein he differs from unregenerate men. They obey sin; he does not. Flesh is in them both. But they walk after the flesh: He walks after the Spirit.
“But how can unbelief be in a believer?” That word has two meanings. It means either no faith, or little faith; either the absence of faith, or the weakness of it. In the former sense, unbelief is not in a believer: in the latter, it is in all babes. Their faith is commonly mixt with doubt or fear, that is (in the latter sense) with unbelief. Why are ye fearful, says our Lord, O ye of little faith. ”

“ Avowed unbelief is a vice perhaps rare among us, but the simplicity of faith is not perhaps the less so. We would feel a horror at quitting the belief of our fathers; but we wish to refine upon our sincerity. ”

“ My design is not to enter into the foundation of the proofs which render testimony to the truth of faith; I mean only to expose the falsity of unbelief: I mean to prove, that the greatest part of those who call themselves unbelievers, are not so; that almost all those sinners who vaunt, and are continually alleging to us their doubts, as the only obstacle to their conversion, have actually none; and that, of all the pretexts employed as an excuse for not changing their life, that of doubts upon religion, now the most common, is the least true and the least sincere. ”

“ the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; ”

“ And this truth is more evident from this, that the majority of those who profess themselves unbelievers, live, nevertheless, in perpetual variations upon the point even of unbelief. In certain moments they are affected with the truths of religion: they feel themselves torn with the keenest remorses ”

“ Let us consider this name of the Lord, and it shall answer all our suspicions of him,—all our objections against coming to him and believing in him. It is certain, ignorance is the mother of unbelief, together with the natural perverseness of our hearts. ”

“ They argue, that God has expressly declared, He that believeth shall be saved; and therefore it is not only absurd but impious, and in a manner calling God a liar, for a man to say, "I believe the Gospel, but have doubts nevertheless of my own salvation." They maintain that unbelief is the unpardonable sin. ”

“ Supposing you cannot, does your unbelief make the predictions of the servants of God without effect? Supposing, for instance, we should disbelieve excepting eight souls, as was the case with the antedeluvian world, would our unbelief subvert the word of God. ”

“ While, then, Reason and Revelation are consistent in fact, they often are inconsistent in appearance; and this seeming discordance acts most keenly and alarmingly on the Imagination, and may suddenly expose a man to the temptation, and even hurry him on to the commission, of definite acts of unbelief, in which reason itself really does not come into exercise at all. ”

“ In passing from these remarks on the peculiarly subjective tone of modern unbelief, and the literary influences which have produced the general change in the public taste, of which it is only one example, to an enumeration of the authors who have given expression to doubt, and of the specific forms of doubt now existing, we encounter a difficulty of classification. ”

“ What a man sows that shall he reap. If he sows to the flesh, he shall of the flesh reap corruption. Reader, it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
3. Unbelief has generally been considered the most damning of all sins. I wish those who make this assertion would condescend to explain themselves. What is this unbelief that damns and ruins mankind? Their not permitting their minds to be persuaded of the truths which God speaks. Απιστια, from α, negative, and πιστις, faith, signifies faithless or to be without faith. ”

“ Among the indispensable requisites in the pursuit of such knowledge, are, the receptive disposition, the listening attitude, the becoming humility, the consciousness of a tendency to go wrong, and of dependence on the Divine illumination of the Holy Spirit. "Blind unbelief is sure to err." ”

“ the battle of Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! ”

“ you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.—"But this is what I am afraid of."—And why? ”

“ We should not then see a fanatical confidence placed in pet theories for the summary 1-16expulsion of all superstition, wrongfulness, and ill-will,—theories whose prototypes failed ages back: neither would good Christian folk be so frightened as some of them are at the seemingly novel exhibitions of unbelief in our time. ”

“ Note, Unbelief shall be left inexcusable, and convicted of a wilful obstinacy. ”

“ The writer has aimed at assisting the student, in the struggle with his doubts, in the inquiry for truth, in the quiet meditative search for light and knowledge, preparatory to ministering to others. The survey of a new region, which ordinary works on the history of infidelity rarely touch, may lay bare unsuspected or undetected causes of unbelief; and thus indirectly offer a refutation of it; for intellectual error is refuted, when the origin of it is referred to false systems of thought. The anatomy of error is the first step to its cure. ”

“ Was ever such a miracle, that a falsehood works truth?—that a delusion, instead of leading into marsh, or bog, or quicksand, as other will-o'-the-wisps ever and always have, leads along a morally elevated path where every footstep rings with the music of divine certainty, as though it trod upon a rock! Such a miracle, contrary to all reason, is worthy of acceptance only by the blind, childish, credulity of infidelity. ”

“ 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! ”

“ In warning me to doubt the testimony of my senses, you destroy for me the proofs of all religion. If men can be dupes of their imagination, if their senses are deceivers, why would you have me believe in the miracles which made an impression upon the deceiving senses of our ancestors? If my senses are faithless guides, I learn that I should not have faith even in the miracles which I might see performed under my own eyes. ”

“ They taught so many false stories as articles of faith, that at last clever people, wise in their own conceit, began to believe nothing, and became like the fool who said in his heart, "There is no God." ”

“ What has doubt, what has investigation, done concerning the universe of which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work, before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little, petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the fear of ignorant men had created. ”

“ Thinking we trust God, when it is some false revelation of the devil, or some delusion of deceivers, or some dream, or fancy, or brain-sick, proud conceit of our own, which indeed we believe, and ground our trust upon: as those do that are deluded by false prophets and false teachers, and fantastical fancies of their corrupted imaginations. 6. When men in presumption and carnal security will rashly venture their souls in the darkness of uncertainty, (as well as in the neglect of a holy life,) and cast away all the sense of their miserable state ”

“ Far be it from us to interpret these predictions as they do who have not believed, along with the whole world, in that which it was predicted the world would believe in. For why should we not rather understand them as the world does, whose belief was predicted, and leave that handful of unbelievers to their idle talk and obstinate and solitary infidelity? ”

“ 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. ”

“ We would candidly confess, there are mysteries in this doctrine above the powers of a finite mind fully to comprehend. But are we, for that cause, to refuse our belief of its truth? We should indeed be reduced to a most distressing dilemma, if we were to disbelieve every thing we cannot fully comprehend. ”

“ But the abominable, auricular confession which is so highly esteemed by the world, is nothing but hypocrisy, human righteousness and superstition, open delusion of unbelievers, a false hope of the impenitent sinner, and a subtle invention of gain by the avaricious priests, whereby they set aside true confession and repentance, and comfort and encourage the world in their reckless, ungodly life. ”

“ In this mad determination to believe what is contrary to sense and reason, we reach such a degree of aberration that we are ready to take as an indication of truth the very absurdity of the object in whose behalf we solicit the confidence of men. ”

“ And yet, no one seems really to draw a strong, clear line between non-belief and disbelief. And you are the first and only man I ever met who hesitates to affirm the impossibility of that which seems to him wildly improbable, contrary at once to received opinion and to his own experience, and contrary, moreover, to all known natural laws, and all inferences hitherto drawn from them. ”

“ To lose sight of this is to remain in hopeless ignorance of the faith and hope, which God has graciously set before us in His word; and to lay ourselves open to every species of delusion that the carnal mind, so fertile of evil fruits, may enunciate in opposition to the "mystery of the divine will". ”

“ Look to conduct, and not profession for the proof. Is this world, or the next, the object of pursuit? If conscience whisper, that we who believe, lack the true spirit; how can we expect it in those who disbelieve? Where then in true Christianity? ”

“ It is the assurance that we get through intuition, through feeling, through the light revealed to us {103} in certain moments when thought ceases, and the proud intellect is dumb, and when the divine speaks quite directly to the passive and humbled soul." Now when we calmly consider the evidence of such moments of inarticulate conviction, they strongly impress upon us what we have called the religious paradox. ”