Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1914 — Doubts, and How to Dispel Them [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Doubts, and How to Dispel Them

By REV. HOWARD W. POPE

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TEXT—"I am the Mght of the world: he. that followeth me shall not walk In darkness, but shall have the light of Ufa" John 8:12.

It is not strange th a t men are doubters. Sin has so blinded our moral vision that we do not see the truth as it is, but in a distorted fashion which makes it less attractive. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he

know them*because they are spiritually discerned." (I Cor. 2:14). - - Furthermore, the truth as It is in Jesus carries with it condemnation, for the sinner, and nd ope enjoys reproof or rebuke. As the lawyer, willing to justify himself, said: "Who Is my neighbor?” so the natural heart questions the authority of the Bible, and even the existence of God, rather than confess Its sin. Add to this the fact that the devil who first Injected doubt into the mind of man, and who is rightly called by our Savior the father of lies, is ever seeking to prejudice the creature against the Creator, and it is not strange that all thinking people pass through a period of doubt as to the fundamentals of religion, and some are so completely blinded that they never come out of their spiritual darkness. In dealing with doubters it is important to ascertain their real posttioil. Some skeptics are mere trifiers who are too indolent to grapple with the truth in a resolute way, and so find it easier to doubt and drift with the current of their natural inclinations. Others use their skepticism as a cover for an ungodly life, You can say to such when they question the Inspiration of the Bible that one proof of its divine origin is the fact that it describes their condition so completely, and tells how they came into that condition. r Remind them that to doubt the Bible does not alter the facts which it reveals, but it does subject them to the charge of making God a liar (I John 6:10), and it puts them under condemnation. "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. And this Is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:18, 18). It is ®tfd that a vessel once sighted an enemy just at sundown, and kept up* cannonade until the darkness put a stop to it When the sun arose the next morning, they were chagrined to find that the supposed enemy was an immense rock, which still remained intact after many hours at bombarding. So hi all ages men have been demolishing the Bible as the enemy of the human race, but the old Book still stands, silent, but solid as the Rock of Ages. For trifling skeptics John 8:21, 24 is very good as showing the consequences of unbelief, while John 5:40 discloses the origin of their skepticism. "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life."

There is another class of doubters who are really desirous of knowing the truth. As some one has expressed it, “He wishes there was a God to whom he could come as a child to his father, but he does not know whether there is or not, and he wants to know. He wishes he were an immortal spirit; but he is not positive that he is anything more than an animated machine, and he seeks for evidence. 1 He would be glad to believe that this unknown God has provided for this unknown soul some way by which It could know both its father and itself. He does not disbelieve in God or Christ, but he does not know, and he wants to know* For such people there are two paths to the light, the intellectual and the moral. The first begins with the known and argues its way to the unknown. The creation proves a creator. Intelligent and moral beings imply a creator capable of producing such. The scientific method results only in a high degree of probability, it is true, but then we act every day on just such probabilities, and we ought to act upon them in religion. The other method starts with the distinction between right and wrong which we all know, and which no moral man can doubt. Into this world has come Jesus of Nazareth. He meets our ideals, he commends himself to our consciousness, he commands our will. If we take his life and follow It, his teachings and obey them, we will soon find our way into the light. **l am the light of the world: be that foQoweth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). If .toXW will do his will, be shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself" (John T:1T).