Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1882-10-27
The Assurance Of UnbeIief.

1t is a palpable solecism to speak of
the dogmatism of doubt and the assur-
ance of unbelief; and yet, in point of
fact. the skeptics of our day are of all
men the most dogmatic and confident.
Great, indeed, is their denying and re-
jecting faiths. The assurance of. Ap-
Mysticism might almost provoke the
envy OF the average Christian. Mod
ern unbelievers treat the Bible and
Christianity with proud scorn or pity
ing contempt. They spurn the one as
an utterly discredited book, the other
as an utterly exploded system. They
regard God and Immortality as notions
belonging TO a creed outworn and cast
aside. With nothing to offer as sub
stitute for ideas which have entered
into the very life-blood of the race.
they calmly relegate these ideas to the
limbo of Anticipated rubbish and con-
fessed absurdities. With proud airs of
conscious superiority or words of
venomous hate, they discard or de-
nounce the only doctrines and facts
which give dignity to man and make
life worth living.
AT first view, this absolute confidence
which characterizes modern unbeliev-
ers may serve to alarm and depress the
Christian mind. ItseemS to have ter
rible significance, and to warrant the
suspicion that our religious faith is no
better than the baseless fabric of a
dream. Is not that cause lost, we may
ask, which is contemptuously spurned
by so many men of undoubted ability
and learning?
A moments sober reflection and re-
! hn 60 - e.
and reassure our hearts. This conf
denee of unbelief is nothing new under
the sun. In every century since Christ
was literally slain and rose from the
dead, His cause, in the bold assertions
OF Its foes, has been slain again, and
the loud song of triumph has been sung
over It's grave. Voltaire said that he
was tired of hearing how twelve inlet
tered fishermen established Christian
lty, and he would show how easily one
man could overthrow it. Never was
| proud boast more vain. Bishop Butler
tells us in the preface to his immortal
Analogy that Infidelity was so much the
fashion of his time that to profess faith
In Christianity was regarded as the sure
proof OF intellectual inferiority. Unbe-
lief was just as arrogant and scornful
then as 1t is now, and with just as little
reason. The religion of the Bible sur
vived the assaults of its foes in former
! generations, and became more widely
and firmly lodged in human convictions
than ever before. 1t will do the same
again and again. 1t triumphed over the
PanthelStic fashion of unbelief which pre-
vailed generation ago, and it will live
and flourish when the Materialistic
fashion of unbelief which now assails it
has persisted in the vile dust from which
IL springs. The present enemies of
Christianity are certainly no more able
and resolute than those whom it has
yanquished in the past. Tyndall and
Spencer are rot the equals OF Hume and
Voltaire. and Paine was greater than
lngersoll, If not quite so scurrilous. AS
Christianity Is an anvil that has worn
out all the hammers of persecution, so
is it defended by a shield that can
turn aside all the fiery darts of unbe-
lief
The friends of Christ are fully war
ranted in cherishing and manifesting a
confidence more firm and lofty than
that of their foes. The truth is, Chris
tianity is founded in principles which
make it necessity for the human mind.
De Tocqueville finely says: Religion
is simply another form of hope, and it
is no less natural to the human heart
than hope itself. Men cannot abandon
their religious faith without kind of
alteration of intellect, and sort of vio-
lent distortion of their true nature; they
are invincibly brought back to more
pious sentiments. Unbelief is an acct
dent, and faith is the only permanent
state of mankind. IN Y Examiner.