Not to believe will surely bring condemnation at God’s bar. To believe in Christianity, and yet not in heart to accept it, and not publicly to avow one’s faith, is perhaps a greater sin. The declaration of our Saviour is positive, that he will not recognize at the judgment-day those who have not confessed him before men.
There are undoubtedly those who have wickedly cherished a spirit of unbelief, until God, as a punishment,“has sent them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”[174]
The following incident affectingly illustrates this truth. The writer, a few years ago, at the close of the afternoon’s service in the church on a summer’s day, was called upon in his study by a man of dignified person and manners, whose countenance and whole demeanor indicated superior intellectual culture. I had noticed him for one or two sabbaths in the church. His marked features, and his profound attention to the preaching, had awakened my interest. With much courtesy he apologized for intruding upon my time, but expressed an earnest desire to have a little conversation with me.
“I have,” said he, “for several sabbaths, attended public worship in your church, and need not say that I have been interested in the preaching; and you will probably be surprised to have me add, that I cannot believe the sentiments you advocate. I cannot believe that the Bible is a divine revelation, or that there is any personal God. I am what you would probably call both an infidel and an atheist; and I should be glad to give you a brief account of my history.
“When a young man, I became interested in the writings of the French philosophers,—Voltaire, Helvetius, Diderot, and D’Alembert. I filled my library with their works, and perused them with eagerness. Their teachings I accepted. They were in harmony with my desires; and I lived accordingly. Renouncing all faith in Christianity, in any other God than the powers of Nature, and in any future life, I surrendered myself unrestrained to the indulgence which those principles naturally inculcated. Thus I have lived. Christianity and its professors have ever been the subjects of my ridicule and contempt.
“I still retain those principles. The arguments with which I have stored my mind, and upon which I have so long relied, appear to me invincible. I cannot believe that the Bible is any thing more than a human production. When I look upon the world, its confusion and misery, I can see no evidence that there is any God who takes an interest in the affairs of men. I see that the wrong is just as likely to triumph as the right. In the animal creation,there is, from the lowest to the highest, a regular gradation; and as they all, at birth, came from nothing, so, at death, into nothing they will vanish.
“I have now passed my threescore years and ten. I have lost most of my property. My eyesight is rapidly failing. The companions of my youthful days are all gone. Most of my children are in the grave; and I have no more expectation of meeting them in another world than of meeting my faithful dog or my sagacious horse. I am aged, infirm, bereaved, and joyless. There is nothing in the retrospect of the past to give me pleasure: the present brings but weariness, gloom, and sadness: before me is the abyss of annihilation.
“Now, could I only believe as you believe,—that there is a loving heavenly Father, who watches over his children; that the trials of this life are intended to form our characters for endless happiness; that beyond the grave there is immortality, happy realms where the sorrows of earth are never known; that provision is made for the forgiveness of all my sins; and that, after a few more days here, I could enter golden gates, and be forever in heaven with the loved ones who have gone before me,—I should indeed be the happiest man in the world. But I cannot believe it. There is no evidence sufficiently strong to remove my unbelief.”
Such was the confession of an unbeliever; and we know that such must be the moral condition of every man who is approaching the grave without the Christian’s hope. How different from this was the testimony of Paul the Christian as he drew near the close of his noble life, even with the pains of martyrdom opening before him! He writes to Timothy,—
“I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”