Young Men; In Business

by William Guest; J. D. Wells

You may ask, Can a man be lost for sincere doubt? If a man clings to this doubt, if he will not candidly inquire, if he refuses to receive testimony, he will be lost; not because of his doubt, but because of his obstinacy. This talk of sincere doubting is often very unreasonable talk. A man may sincerely doubt whether it is well to sow corn in the autumn or spring, and he may sow his fields in July; but his sincerity will not save him from bankruptcy or the workhouse. A schoolboy may sincerely doubt the necessity of learning Euclid, history, and geography—he may refuse the testimony of wiser heads; but his sincerity will not save him from going into mercantile or professional life a dunce, and the chances are that he will rue his so-called sincere doubt to the end of his days. You, my brother, will soon pass into a world shrouded with impenetrable darkness. There is but one voice which can tell you of a way whereby your spirit hereafter may reach a region of light and felicity. Should you close your ear to that voice, and nurse your doubts, and refuse to investigate, then let me tell you that there can be nothing for you at the last day but “shame and everlasting contempt.”

Observe also, if you want demonstration that will overbalance all difficulties, you will never find it. In the affairs of this life men act on the preponderance of evidence. If there should appear twenty reasons for a course of action and only five against it, he would be reckoned a fool who became swayed by the five, and refused to inquire further. In mercantile life, the men who will never decide and act till they have reasons which exclude all doubt, are left behind in the progress of society, and become the poor and despised. Your condition in this world is a test whether you will be true and docile. If you want light, there is abundance to guide you; if you choose darkness, God will not compel your belief.

I remind you, again, that no man has ever grown wise or good, or left a permanent impression on his age, as a doubter. The heroes of all times have been men of faith. Read the Book itself. The Bible is a locked treasure to prejudice, but it never fails to satisfy candor. As you stand outside one of our ancient cathedrals, and look up at its chancel window, all looks cold, unmeaning, and uninteresting. But, as has been well said, when on a sunny morning you have entered that chancel, “how changed is that window! It is now gorgeous in beauty, and glows with life. Cold and dreary outside, it is warm and radiant within. Instead of being incomprehensible and obscure, it is full of meaning and glorious harmony?” Such is the difference between reading the Bible as a doubter or as a critic, and going to it as one interested in its contents and willing to be taught.

Follow for a moment the course of two young men. Your acquaintance will supply the sketch readily. See one coming in the morning from the chamber where he has looked with affection and trust into the face of his Saviour; has supplicated strength to meet the day’s duties and temptations; and has pondered the words, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.” He enters the family circle to meet the mother’s smile, a brother’s greeting, and a sister’s cheery welcome. His father, with proud joy, consults him as an equal. He is a firm link in the family chain of happiness. See him as he stands on the floor of the warehouse with uprightness. The tricky trader, when he cannot cheat him, respects his honor. He chooses friendships that are elevating. No profane scorner walks by his side; no impure profligate soils the atmosphere of his home. He spends his evenings amid cheerful enjoyments, ennobling elevations, or useful ameliorations.

Contrast the other. He rises from a prayerless bed; drags down stairs his wearied frame at the latest possible moment; the older members of the family have gone off to their several duties. As for him, the debauch of the last night makes every thing wrong: the coffee is thick; the servant slow; the very cat’s quietness upon the hearth irritates him, and with a kick he relieves his pent-up discontent. To his mother he is rude; the younger children have scampered away at his approach, saying their “big brother is so sulky.” The clock sounds; he is off to business. The whole day he is confused and hindered by the remembrance of the last night’s pollution, or the planning for the coming evening’s pleasure. When the evening has come, he goes where he will degrade young women in a way which would arouse his direst indignation should another do the same to his sister; or he enters scenes where he would die with shame if his mother or sister could follow him. And this is the young man whose law is a miserable and hateful selfishness, or who on a Sunday afternoon reads an infidel book for five minutes, and then says, “Ah, I knew the Bible was false, and Christians all hypocrites.” Poor pitiable wretch! as if the judgment of such a man was of the slightest value against Scripture.

And observe, the end will come. A nurse very recently was summoned to a sick-bed in Paris. The invalid was a young Englishman. Before she would enter upon her duties, she asked if the sufferer was a Christian. Upon being answered in the affirmative, she said: “I have seen such horrible sights, and heard such wailings in the dying chambers of ungodly and dissolute men, that I dare not now undertake to nurse another such a one.” Tronchan, in his memoirs of Voltaire, says: “I wish that those who had been perverted by his writings had been present at his death. It was a sight too horrid to witness.” These are awful facts and foreshadowings after a life of infidel pleasure.

Let me add a test of your sincerity. One of the most accomplished and gifted of authoresses has told us that dark doubts on divine subjects once shrouded her spirit. As she looked up at midnight to the vault of the heavens, and saw the stars moving in serenity and order, the thought came over her troubled spirit, “The Creator of those orbs must take an interest in me, his rational creature. I hold to nothing but a dim hope of his existence. I will take my dark mind to him, and ask him for light. Prayer shall be with me the ‘test of truth.’” To that sincere cry the answer came. Her heart, intellect, and conscience, found rest in Christ; the Bible became to her an exhaustless fount of wisdom; in mathematical culture and in musical taste she became distinguished, and her life became signally useful. Two eminent men were lifted out of their doubts by the promise in Luke 11:13. “If the Bible be true,” they reasoned, “the Lord will give his Spirit to them that ask him. We will put this promise to the proof.” The one—John Newton—became the most influential preacher of the gospel in the British metropolis; the other—William Wilberforce—became one of the best, most useful, and most honored of statesmen.

My brother, let this be the test of your sincerity. Will you earnestly and perseveringly ask God to fulfil this promise in you?

I shall close this address with twelve articles, which may be termed the creed of the infidel.

1. That Book is to him an imposture and pretended revelation, which furnishes the only explanation ever offered of human misery, suffering, and death; which responds to man’s universal craving for immortality, and throws the clearest light upon a future state; which presents the sublimest views of the compassion of the Creator; which paints a picture of man which has had an exact transcript in the history of all nations, and on behalf of which myriads rise up to testify that it has been a ceaseless impulse to aspirations, a comfort in their trials, and has taken away the fear of death.