To Infidelity and Back

by Henry F. Lutz

But I taught rationalism in guile one day by which it thoroughly exhibited the absurdity of its teaching. Its continual song was, "You dare not believe what you cannot conceive to be true." So it declared one day, in its bold folly, that an object cannot move in the space in which it is, nor in the space in which it is not; therefore you cannot conceive of an object moving; therefore you cannot move to walk, eat or live. So the conclusion to which my rationalistic guide finally led me was that I must sit down and die or be irrational. Well, this was too much for me. I refused to die, and concluded that rationalism is not a safe guide, and commenced to investigate as to where the difficulty lay.

But before I tell you how I discovered the false tricks of rationalism, let me say that all these things into which rationalism led me were against my strong religious nature, and gave me continual and excruciating pain. I never for a day ceased to pray to God for help; for while my intellect was held in doubt through the bondage of rationalism, my heart held on to God, and thus I was in a mighty conflict. In my despair I cried unto God, and when he had accomplished his purpose concerning me, he set me free. Blessed be his name! Surely "he bringeth the blind by a way that they knew not, and leads them into paths that they have not known. He makes darkness light before them, and crooked things straight, and does not utterly forsake the honest in heart."

Most people have come to their religious and political position by heredity and are held there by inertia. If you can set a person free from this hereditary inertia, you can convert him to almost anything at will; for it is but few who are sufficiently informed on any subject to defend it against an expert, and none are thus qualified on all subjects. So when I entered this school, free from all hereditary ideas, determined to accept every position that I could not refute in argument, you can imagine my experience. At first I was converted from one thing to another by the different students and professors until I was about all the "arians," "isms," and "ists" ever heard of, together with a number of other things for which they have no names as yet.

But how did I discover the fallacy of rationalism? and how was I delivered from its mighty clutches by which it had dragged me from one pitfall to another so ruthlessly? My deliverance came from a source where you would perhaps least expect it. It was through the study of John Stuart Mill's "System of Logic." In it I learned "that inconceivability is not a criterion of impossibility," as rationalism claims. On the other hand, that we know things to be true that are just as inconceivable as that there can be two mountains without a valley between.

Let me introduce a few of these contradictions or inconceivabilities. Before you can reach your mouth with your hand, you must go over half the distance, then half of the rest, then half of the rest, and so on ad infinitum. But you cannot make the infinite number of divisions, and therefore you cannot reach your lips. Again, you cannot conceive of extension of space or time without a limit, nor can you conceive of a limit to space or time. Here conceivability contradicts itself. Furthermore, you cannot conceive of existence without a cause, nor of a cause without existence. To the statement of the believer that, "as the wonderful mechanism of the watch presumes a designer, so the infinitely more wonderful mechanism of the universe presumes God, the infinite designer," Ingersoll replied that this is simply to jump over the difficulty by an infinite assumption. Ingersoll, on the other hand, claimed that the material universe has always existed; apparently unaware that he thus was guilty of the same fallacy of which he accused others, by assuming infinite existence without a cause. The difference is that the believer's assumption gives us a personal God, a kind, loving heavenly Father who provides for the eternal bliss and welfare of his children, while Ingersoll's assumption gives death and darkness and despair.

An object thrown from one point to another is always at some point, therefore it has no time to move from one point to another. And yet we know that it does move, even though we cannot conceive how it can do so. Again, suppose that the hour-hand of your clock is at eleven and the minute-hand at twelve. Now, you cannot conceive how the minute-hand can overtake the hour-hand, although you know by observation that it does overtake it. For by the time the minute-hand gets to eleven, the hour-hand has passed on to twelve, and by the time the minute-hand has reached twelve, the hour-hand has passed beyond it. Every time the minute-hand comes to where the hour-hand now is, the hour-hand has passed beyond. The distance becomes less and less, but theoretically, or in conceivability, the one can never overtake the other.

Through this line of reasoning I learned, clearly and once for all, that inconceivability is not a proof of impossibility; but, on the other hand, that we know many things to be true that are not conceivable to the finite mind, and therefore we must follow truth learned by experience and observation, irrespective of rationalism. In this way the mighty fetters of rationalism that held me in bondage were cut and I was set free to search for the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. I learned the limitations of the finite intellect and the truth of God's word when he says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

After the empirical school of philosophy had taught me that we must follow inductions based on experience and observation rather than rationalism or conceivability, I began to value Paul's admonition, "Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good." If inductive philosophers have often been opposed to religion and the Bible, it is because they have not carried their inductions far enough to cover the entire world of facts. It is admitted by all historians and observers that prayer and faith and religious convictions have been among the mightiest forces at work in the world, and any system of reasoning that does not take these facts into consideration is neither philosophical nor scientific.

To illustrate what is meant by saying that we must follow experience rather than conceivability, let us suppose that you are suffering from a malignant disease and you hear of a medicine that has cured this disease whenever it has been tried, and you know of nothing else that will cure it. Would it not be foolish for you to refuse to use the medicine because you cannot conceive how it produces the cure? It might be discovered later that it was not the medicine, but your belief in its curative qualities, that produced the result. But this would not affect your common-sense duty in the matter. If certain desirable results follow the doing of a certain thing, we are bound to do that thing until we know how to get the good results without doing it.

This reveals the folly and inhumanity of the conduct of some infidels towards religious people. When I was minister of a church in Ohio, I was visited by a noted infidel. After he went on in a tirade against preachers and Christians, I asked him if he was not an unhappy man. At first he denied it; but I called his attention to some of his utterances, and he soon admitted that he was a very unhappy man. But he said he was unhappy because he knew too much, and claimed that Christians were so happy because they were ignorant and deluded. He claimed to be a great lover of humanity, and although, according to his profession, he had no God or conscience or judgment to require it of him, he spent his time in spreading the knowledge and wisdom which made people unhappy by destroying that which he admitted gave people great joy and peace and happiness. Suppose a man should come to town who is as lean as a skeleton and is slowly dying because he is not getting enough nourishment out of the food he eats, and should begin to lecture well-nourished and healthy people for eating the food they are eating. Would we not put him down as a fool? Well, if he would add the claim that we are well fed because we are ignorant and deluded, while he is suffering and dying because he knows too much on the food question, he would be on a par with many of our infidelic friends.