WE consider that nothing can be more appropriate at the close of the year than to address our readers, and particularly those who have had FAITHFUL WORDS in their hands for the twenty-one years of its life, to the Word of God as absolute authority. In relation to trust in the Scriptures, a vast change has come over the minds of English-speaking people during the last twenty-one years, and it is now the case that the confidence that God Himself has spoken to us in His Word is undermined in thousands of souls. This result has come about by a gradual process of thought, for Satan first softly entwines doubts about the soul, and then leads captive in chains of unbelief. We must expect further developments of infidelity as time goes on.
Let us beware of the first symptoms of this prevailing evil. A lady was telling us only the other day of her son, who is now a prominent Jesuit, and who forsook the evangelic faith of his parents some years ago. When he was a youth, writings were placed in his hands which sowed doubts in his soul as to the authority of the Scriptures, and, instead of the authority of God's Word, proffered to him the authority of the church! The logical end of such credulity is submitting oneself to the pope instead of to God, This is what this son of an earnest evangelical clergyman has, alas, done!
A young man, who professes himself a free thinker, gave us as his reason for his unbelief that he was following his conscience! One young man accepted “the church” as authority, and became a Jesuit; the other accepted his conscience as authority, and became a free thinker. Both rejected the authority of God's Word, and followed human authority. Both by the means of their individual judgment surrendered themselves to the dictates of man. These sorrowful cases are typical of the way the enemy is working in the souls of thousands.
One very apparent fact in reference to these two lines, “Hear the church," " Follow conscience," is, that in due time they unite in one, the incline of which grows steeper and steeper, year by year, on the descent into the dark regions of infidelity.
The best way to honor the authority of the Scriptures is to search them, and then to obey them. The Word of God needs no apology at man's hands; it has commanded, guided, and preserved God's people for thousands of years, and will be their rule and guide to the end.
When the apostle Paul foresaw the ills that were about to fall upon the favored church of Ephesus— the entering into it of "grievous wolves," and the arising within it of selfish men speaking perverse things—he commended that church to God Himself and to the Word of His grace. Apostles might die, evil times and evil men arise, but God and God's Word never change, and God's Word was “able to build (them) up." “Building up " is the need of the day. We need to be established, to be founded and grounded in positive truth. Then, whether the winds blow or the floods come, we shall stand firm upon the rock. As our from St. Jude, " But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life "(vers. 20, 21).