It is sometimes asked in petulant indolence. The writer has a vivid recollection of its being put by a rather feeble, and not very worthy, member of a country church. He possessed a copy of “Brown’s Bible,” and it was a favorite exercise with him to spend Sunday afternoon in comparing the exposition he had heard in the morning with the remarks in the commentary. These did not always agree, and disagreement was never noted without annoyance. One Sunday there chanced to be a more than ordinarily wide divergence. The minister happened to call a day or two afterward, and, having spent his strength in explaining and defending the position he had dared to take in defiance of “Brown,” he was rewarded by the exclamation: “What are we to believe!”
It might be well for all men, and it would certainly be more agreeable to many, were there no divergent opinions. But it is not well for any man, when he discovers that all do not think alike, to faint amid the strife of tongues and to “throw the whole thing up.” There are few truths which have not had to run the gauntlet of controversy; and those truths are our possession today solely because there happened to be men who, while they loved peace, would not part with conviction though the holding to it meant war. Science as well as faith has had its martyrs. They were brave enough to leave the beaten track in search of truth; and, when they found it, they were not to be frightened from their possession by the chorus of doubt and condemnation with which they were assailed. That man will do little in the world who can be terrified by clamor, or who surrenders convictions because all are not agreed as to their truth. The manly man feels that, in such differences, there is a call to inquire and to make his own decision. The rest, though it pains one to say it, are no great loss. The wind that sweeps across the threshing-floor takes only the chaff away; or, if it take with it too the light, withered, heartless, grain, the wheat that is left clean and sound is all the worthier of the garner.
Were such the only lips to ask the question we might pass it lightly by. But it is sometimes asked in despair. There is many a tragedy in these last days which never gets into the newspapers; which is played out to the bitter end in obscurity and silence; which no eye-witnesses, and neither tongue nor pen relates. Let us glance at a few typical instances. A lad leaves a northern village, in which he had been born and brought up, for one of our large southern cities. He has come from a pious home where impressions had been made which fond parents hoped would be an abiding protection against the temptations which he went forth to meet. And at first it was so. He sought and found, in his new home, associations similar to those with which he had so long been familiar. He breathed a kindred social, intellectual, and spiritual atmosphere. He was found at prayer-meetings, and he rejoiced in young men’s religious societies. Between him and heresy, or unbelief, there lay a great gulf of pious horror, which shut off all communication, and which, one would have imagined, effectually disposed of any dread of infection.
Some years passed and then there came a change. He began to read. The pleasures of “the Pierian spring” allured him on. He wandered in new, and hitherto undreamt of, fields. And, as the center of interest changed its place, there was a corresponding transfer of affection. The old resorts were less frequented. The limitations of old companionships became painfully apparent. They were judged of more by what they lacked than by what they had.
By-and-bye another stage was reached. His reading had hitherto been of a colorless character so far as Christianity was concerned. But now in the course of his journeying he lighted upon a country whose thought and speech were diverse from all he had hitherto known. The beliefs which he had till then cherished were regarded with pitying contempt, or were spoken of as if no sane man could have patience with them. All this he read with pain, but also with increasing curiosity. There must surely be some grounds, real or supposed, for the position which was assumed. What were they? From Matthew Arnold he passed to the Leben Jesu of David Frederic Strauss. The deadlier potion seemed at first less objectionable than the other. It was a relief to turn from the pretentiousness of Arnold to the studied fairness and the transparent frankness of Strauss. But it was still a thorny pathway. With grief and deepening sadness, one conviction after another was laid aside, till all were buried in a grave for which it seemed no resurrection morn was possible. It was a terrible awaking. The holy tenderness and glowing hopes of his earlier faith died as the day dies when the sun has sunk beneath the western horizon. Deep darkness settled down on past, present, and future. He wrote to a friend “I have ceased to believe in Christ, Christianity, or the Bible.”
Part of another life-drama was enacted in the same city, a few years earlier. It was that of a youth from another district and with a very different preparation for the struggle. No religious training had either biased or blessed his boyhood. Religion belonged to a world with which he had nothing whatever to do, and with which he desired no closer connection. He had gone to church just as he had gone to school, from compulsion rather than choice, and the Sunday exercises had made still less impression than the other. He must have heard the texts given out; and, though his thoughts were wandering far away, he must have heard parts at least of many a sermon; but they were remembered quite as little as the humming of the bees in the fields, through which he passed to reach his home.
A guest came one evening, who, for lack of better accommodation, had to share the boy’s bedroom, and the stranger seized the opportunity to speak to him about that of which he had never thought—his soul. The result could not have been encouraging to the good man, and the circumstance was long remembered by the subject of his solicitude with anything but gratitude. Why people should take such dire offense at plain dealing in this of all matters—why they should be more indignant at the question whether they are bound for heaven than at the inquiry whether they think of going to New Zealand, is a matter which philosophers have yet to explain.
Some time after his arrival in the city, conscience began to assert itself; but to religion he was as indifferent as ever. A friend of the people, with whom he boarded, used occasionally to spend an evening with him and them. He was a Secularist, and belief in the existence of God was argued against and scoffed at. The youth was unable to refute the arguments advanced, but he recoiled from the dark abyss of Atheism. The story is told of a lady who, having fallen into a trance and having been buried alive, regained consciousness as the grave-digger, who had afterward unearthed the supposed corpse, was severing a finger in order to obtain the ring which had been left upon it. And so the attempt to rob him of this last conviction seemed to arouse his long-slumbering mental and moral nature. The question was now eagerly asked which had never passed those lips before— “What are we to believe?” An advertisement regarding The Defender, a periodical edited by Dr. Rutherford, of Newcastle, was noticed. The magazine was regularly purchased and eagerly read. It met his need. A spirit that was willing to believe if it only could, was, so to speak, taken by the hand and led onward into brightening light.
We may cite one case more. Two clergymen, stationed in a University town, are walking out into the country, as they often do, on Monday morning. Both are young men and in their first pastorates, the elder of the two having had a couple of years’ more experience of ministerial life than his companion. There is a sadness, however, in this morning’s conversation. In the confidence of a very sincere and close friendship, the elder is relating some of his difficulties. He professes himself unable any longer to accept the ordinary representations of the Atonement. His friend is sympathetic but astonished. To him everything is clear. He refers to one passage of Scripture after another, but the other is neither convinced nor helped.
A few years have passed. The friends are now separated by distance, but the younger has reason to remember that morning’s conversation. He comprehends the doubts today, the strength and misery of which were hid from him a year or two ago. The ground is now slipping from beneath his own feet. He has been increasingly attracted to a literature, the one grand dogma of which is the Fatherhood of God. It was a belief which, as he grasped it, had more of sentiment than of strength, but it had become to him practically the whole evangel. Deductions are sometimes made slowly even by a logical mind, but once made they are bound on the soul with bands of iron. Looked at from the new standpoint, old beliefs lost their reasonableness, and even their credibility. His faith in the central doctrine of the Scripture went as completely as his friend’s had formerly done.
He did his work as best he could; but he was not at rest. The gospel message, as he now viewed it, had lost much of its urgency. There was an uneasy feeling, too, that he was at war with the Book which he professed to accept wholly, and all the counsels of which he acknowledged it his duty to declare. Then there came to him a period of enforced leisure. He had time to look back upon the past, to weigh his work, to judge his life. The retrospect seemed ghastly. He asked himself what had been the outcome of his toil, and confessed that the answer, if stated truly, was—a salary. Measured by spiritual result it was nothing, and less than nothing. He was interested in the special truth on which he might happen to preach on the Sunday, and he believed that the people were also interested; but, when Monday came, he and they were just where they had been before. The studying and preaching led neither him nor them to anything that satisfied and saved. Theirs was a wandering, not a progress. Then came a time of terrible darkness, and of soul wrestling. But there was hope in the ordeal, for the wrestling was, like his of old, a wrestling with God. Light dawned, and it found him humbled and willing to be led. It gave him a truer hold on Christ, a deeper and more childlike trust in God’s word. He still serves, and not without result. The other lies today in a suicide’s grave.
These are no fancy sketches; they are photographs. They remind us in how many ways and by how many lips this question is being asked—WHAT ARE WE TO BELIEVE? Is there any answer? Is there anything which will put dark doubts to rest, and leave the heart with certainty and God? The old ideas regarding inspiration are not, generally speaking the ideas of today. “Verbal inspiration” is spoken of as a contradiction in terms, and rejected as a superstition and an absurdity. The clear and sharply-defined defense of former times has given place to wavering and apology. We are told that the language of scripture is not to be too closely pressed. We are taught rather to expect mistakes in science and in history, till we begin to wonder wherein the inspiration of the Bible lies. Is there anything which will settle these questions—which will show whether we have a Book that is not man’s but God’s, and which will prove once for all how its words are to be taken? I believe there is.