THIS account of the manufacturing process is the experience of an eighteenth century German named Kollner, but the process today in Britain and America is practically identical. The well-known hymn writer and Gospel preacher, Horatius Bonar calls Kollner’s autobiography “a most interesting but little known volume,”
“In the autumn I entered the university at X― as a good evangelical Christian, acknowledging Jesus Christ as my Atonement and Mediator, and God as my Father and provider through Him.
Here began a new division of my life, which was highly important, but at the same time equally dangerous to my faith. Even during the first half-year my faith became like a reed, blown about by the wind, and like a ball with which the professors might play, and did play at their pleasure because my power of discrimination was still too imperfect to estimate rightly everything I heard, and because I was still totally unacquainted with the spirit of the times, which even then had powerful influence.
I am now indeed aware that the path which had been prepared by rendering the Canon of Scripture suspected, was, even at that period (i.e. just before the French Revolution) universally trodden, and a heterodox theology was the first to enter upon it with gigantic steps.
For a short time only I was surprised at the exegetical expositions of Scripture, which were entirely opposed to my system, and especially to those passages which I had hitherto regarded as irrefragable proofs of the Divinity of Jesus. I was soon not only accustomed to hear the tendency of a every such passage flatly explained away, but I also persuaded myself that it could not be otherwise than as I heard it delivered from the pulpit. Satan now began to carry on his work in me, and the first thing he wrought was a disregard and contempt for my former teachers when at school. In my eyes they now seemed only ignorant, weak-minded people, not worthy to unloose the shoes’ latchet of the supremely wise heads of the university; nay, I even thought myself much more enlightened than they!
The idea, indeed, frequently recurred to me—what becomes of Jesus Christ if He is not the true God, and my Mediator and Redeemer, if His death is not the great means of my reconciliation, and if He did not shed His blood for the remission of my sins? This idea occasionally made me suspect the mighty wisdom I heard from the professor’s chair, but only for a very short time, for who could bring any objection against the arguments of these teachers, or rather, who could resist their persuasive eloquence? Not I. I attempted indeed, a few times, to lay my perplexities before God in prayer, and to implore His light; but I soon clearly perceived that my heart continued cold, and no longer felt the emotion it had formerly experienced. The reason of this was quite natural—I was in reality already captivated by the new system; how, then, could my prayer be heard, seeing that James expressly demands of the Christian, in order to pray in a proper manner, that he “ask in faith, nothing wavering”? My earnestness in prayer diminished still more, when, according to the new dogmatical system, prayer was asserted to be no longer what it had hitherto been to me.
It was thus my faith was tossed hither and thither amidst a thousand doubts... and it would certainly have suffered a total shipwreck if the adorable Saviour had not intervened and raised up for me a patron and friend who made it a matter of conscience to draw me back from the gulf which yawned before me.”
Kollner was saved from spiritual ruin and death, but how many, alas! have been utterly poisoned and lost by the subtle doubts cast upon the truth of God’s Word by those who should be their spiritual instructors. Let all take serious warning. Beware of the “great swelling cords of unbelief” so common in our time.
F. Henderson.