The Unkindness of Skepticism

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 7
 
The following story of Washington McLean was reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer: One terribly snowy, sleety day in Washington, McLean was sitting in the Riggs House reading-room, looking out upon the dreary scene on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Presently in came Colonel Bob Ingersoll, the great agnostic. As he entered the apartment he held out his hand, saying: "Hello, Wash; How do you do?"
Mr. McLean took his hand, and as he did so, said: "Bob, I wish you could have been here a little while ago. I saw a scene out there which made me wish I were twenty years younger.
"A poor, old crippled soldier was limping across the Avenue, when a young, lusty fellow ran by him, and, as he did so, kicked the crutch from him and tumbled him down in the slush."
"The villian!" said Ingersoll, "he should have been sent to the penitentiary."
"Do you really think so?" said McLean.
"Why certainly," replied the colonel. "What else could I think?"
"And yet, Bob," said McLean, "that is what you are doing every week in the year. Here are poor, old, infirmed Christians, with nothing to aid or support them but their faith in Christ; nothing to keep them out of the mire of despair but faith. And yet you go about kicking the crutch from under them, worse even than the fictitious fellow did to the fictitious soldier."
The example is true with one exception. The true Christian's faith is a living thing and can never be knocked away.