The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-11-11
The Naturalness Of Belief.

The earliest activity of the infant
mind is faith, belief in the reality of all
it sees and hears. 1t never doubts un
til it has been deceived. 1t is born
| into a paradise of perfect confidence.
Did it never detect its seniors engaged
in works and words which its intuitions
of virtue condemn as wrongs, it would
continue in the elvsium of faith in its
fellows. But the instant men are
proved before it to be not what they
seem, the infant vision of the perfect is
spoiled, and it begins q course of kinder
garten education in doubt. Its sensitive
aptness in absorbing obiect-lessons gets
it into trouble 1t begins to pronounce
man farce and to practice its little
parts on the same stage. 1t is trying
the hammer, the cold-chisel and other
simple tools of the adept in doubt
learning the trade of infidelity. If the
child is spared a knowledge of It's de-
structive misunderstanding doubt
from man to God-it is because Christ
takes him by the hand and leads him to
distinguish good from evil, to build his
belief on that which is what it seems
the Word, works and Spirit of God and
the redeemed of humanity, but to alb
jure that which is false.
Man was made to believe, and is
largely the architect of his personal
faith, or doubt, which is the foundation
respectively of his wise, or wicked,
character. The little child accepts the
story of God and creation with natural
credulity which renders it no marvel
that the Master placed little child in
the midst of the multitude as the model
of living faith which all must conform
to, or fail to be saved. Man makes to
himself no more Fictitious and unnat-
ural state of mind than infidelity con-
corning God, the divine history and the
divine promises. 1t is very hard to
find one so perfectly finished intidel
that he prefers to believe that there is
no God and no Immortality for men
no life not lost in the body's death.
And practically, even the worst of the
infdel genus, in spite of their negative
professions, do believe in God. With
what wretched uncertainty OF purpose
and continuance here would one walk
this earth who should really doubt that
an Omnipotent Engineer controlled its
revolutionsl OF such an one consistency
would require that he most literally
"take no thought for the morrow"
neither for food, raiment, shelter,
friendship, cultivation of self, nor the
education of children. He should
deny all uniformity of operation in the
great laws of gravitation, light, heat,
chemical combinations and vegetation,
and expect palaces, lakes, mountains,
hay-stacks and humanity to play The
Wandering Jew through space, and
jOstle each the other, reckless of fixed
time and place He should expect the
sun to rise at noon or midnight as GER
tainly as at morning, sometimes to emit
heat and light, sometimes cold and
darkness. If he doubts that an ON
niscient legislative department and an
omnipotent unchanging executive de-
partment make and execute laws over
this universe, in attestation that divine
government exists, he should expect,
resting his hand within the blaze, to
withdraw it frost-bitten as often as
burned; and that now and then he
could retire at night into his closed
chamber, blow out the gas-jet and
awake in the morning refreshed. 49,
No! even material law leads up 10
God. This reign of law the protested
infidel recognizes, and he knows it to
be system not made by man; that
there is God, and he is subject to His
laws. The world endures no other
such arrant, self-confessed hypocrite as
the man who processes infdelity touch
ing divinity ~ Y. Christian Advocate.