T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
354 some distinguished name. When en gaged iii disputes they settled them by saying: “ Ipse dixit! he himself, the m aster, has decided it.” Here we touch another of th e tricks of mental jugglery. We cannot all study everything, and must rely on others for tw o-thirds of all we know. We get accustomed to accept w ithout hesitation the statem ents of astrono mers, botanists, microscopists and sci entists generally in th eir various de partm ents, for we have no tim e nor facilities for examining into w hat they affirm to be true.- You can see how a designing man can m islead th e com mon mind. He has a name famous in his departm ent. He propounds a theory which is yet unproven, and tells you he believes it. It may be false, bu t be cause he holds it and is supposed to know far more th an you, you do not venture to dispute it. Beware of being driven into silence by th e loud voice of human authority. There is no au tho rity bu t th a t of tru th ; the sanction of th e g reatest of human names has been often given, carelessly or wilfully, to fallacy and falsehood, ju st as men who stand foremost in the commercial world sometimes endorse b ank rup t paper and give it temporary- currency. Skepticism often hides a moral state behind an intellectual statem ent. If you could get sin out of th e soul, most religious doubts and difficulties would immediately vanish. Get evil out of the h ea rt and you have already got infidelity out of th e head. If th e tru th never touched our moral n atu re, the world would present no schools of skep tical opinion. The “evil h e a rt” is the root of “ unbelief” . Men p refer to sin. God’s tru th will not suffer them to sin w ithout uneasiness. It declares the “wages of sin” to be “ d eath ” , and re veals the w rath of a holy God against all unrighteousness. It reasons of “ a judgm ent to come.”
There is one easy way for a sinner to rid himself of misgiving, if he can only deny the tru th , persuade himself th e re is no death for th e sinning soul, no w rath in God or b etter still no God- a t all, no judgm ent to come, he may then sin w ithout mixing in his cup of pleasure th e b itter dregs of apprehen sion. But mere denial does no good. A man does not blot th e sun out of th e sky and tu rn day into n igh t by shutting his eyes and saying th ere is no sun! So a man cannot get rid of a God and a judgm ent by saying th ere is none. Here skepticism comes in to help him. It suggests a doubt, a difficulty, in the way of a personal God, and a fu tu re life. It builds up a philosophy; w ith specious sophistry it pretends to prove th a t in th e n atu re of things, th ere can be no inspired revelation, no incarna tion, no atonement, no regeneration. W ith th e strange credulity of th e evil h eart, men tak e refuge behind a skep tical philosophy and persuade them selves th a t they may now safely deny th e tru th because th e ir denial is propped up by philosophic doubts; like th e pagan who is satisfied w ith his theory of the universe because the world is held up by the elephants and the elephants by the tortoise; true, the tortoise rests on nothing, but th a t m atters not. Suppose you deny a God, and rest your denial on your doubt, and your doubt on philoso phy; what if your philosophy has no real foundation! W hat if in the very crisis of destiny you find th a t fallacy and falsehood were the only basis of your doubt and denial? Among those whom I address mky be persons in all stages of skeptical opin ion. I beg you to consider how far your intellectual doubts are th e mere refuges, behind which you hide an un willingness to subm it yourself to the tru th ! Skepticism is th e outgrow th of an evil heart. As Paul w rites to the Homans, wickedness leads men to “hold
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