In all our deepest hours, when our heart is truly touched, or our mind satisfied, we believe. It is each soul’s positive faith, however unconventional or perhaps unconscious that faith may be, that sustains its hope, that incites its effort, that supports it through the trials of life. Any doubt, even, that is earnest and to be respected, is really an act of faith, faith in a higher law than that of human creeds; in a more direct revelation, within ourselves, in our own sense of justice and consistency, than in any manuscript or print.
The very atheist, who in the name of truth repudiates the word God, is really manifesting (in his own different way) the belief which he cannot escape, in the divine righteousness and its lawful claim on every human soul.
“There is no unbelief;
And day by day, and night by night, unconsciously
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny,—
God knows the why.”
Finally, and most important of all, let us not worry ourselves so much about the intellectual opinions of men; but look rather to their spiritual condition. The church ought to think less of creed and more of character. The essence of faith lies not in correct conclusions upon doctrinal points; but in righteousness, and love, and trustful submission to God’s will. No scepticism concerning dogmas touches the heart of religion. If that seems at all heretical, let me cite good orthodox authority. I might quote Bishop Thirlwall, of the Church of England, in his judgment concerning Colenso’s attack upon the accuracy of the history of the Exodus in the Pentateuch, that “this story, nay, the whole history of the Jewish people, has no more to do with our faith as Christians, than the extraction of the cube or the rule of three.” Or I might quote Canon Farrar’s weighty words, in a recent article in the Christian World, upon the true test of religion. “The real question,” he declares, “to ask about any form of religious belief, is: Does it kindle the fire of love? Does it make the life stronger, sweeter, purer, nobler? Does it run through the whole society like a cleansing flame, burning up that which is mean and base, selfish and impure? If it stands that test it is no heresy.” That answers the question as aptly as it does manfully. And to the same effect is the noble sermon of Dr. Heber Newton a few weeks ago, in which he subordinated the question of the denominational fold to the higher interests of the Christian flock; and that notable saying of Dr. MacIlvaine’s at the Presbyterian Presbytery the other day, when, quoting the admission of one evangelical minister, that it was the Unitarian Martineau who had saved his soul and kept his Christian faith from shipwreck, he added significantly, “You must first find God in your soul before you can find Him elsewhere.” Yes, the prime and essential thing is to find God in the soul; to worship him in spirit, by a pure conscience, a loyal will, a heart full of devotion to God’s righteousness and love to all our kind. This is to worship God in truth. And what have Calvin’s five points, or the composite origin of the Pentateuch, or the virgin birth of Christ to do with such worship? If a man likes to believe them, very well. But if he cannot honestly credit them, why should we shut the doors of the church against him and threaten him with excommunication? Were these the requirements that Jesus Christ laid on his disciples? Not at all. Look all through the Sermon on the Mount, study the Golden Rule, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or the conditions Jesus lays down in his picture of the last judgment as the conditions of approval by the heavenly Judge, and see if you find anything there about the infallibility of Scripture, or the Apostolic succession, or the Deity of Christ, or any other of the dogmas on account of which the ecclesiastical disciplinarians would drive out the men whom they are pursuing as heretics. How grimly we may fancy Satan (if there be any Satan) smiling to himself as he sees great Christian denominations wrought up to a white heat over such dogmas and definitions, while the practical atheism, and pauperism, and immorality of our great metropolis is passed over with indifference.
Sunday after Sunday, the Christian pulpit complains that the great masses of the people keep away from their communion tables and do not even darken their doors.
Does not the fault really lie in the folly—I may almost say sin,—of demanding of men to believe so many things that neither reason nor enlightened moral sense can accept, and making of these dogmas five-barred gates through which alone there is any admission to heaven?