THE CAUSE AND CURE OF INFIDELITY. CHAPTER I. INFIDELITY is produced by two causes, acting conjointly. The primary, or more remote cause, is man's depravity; the second, or proximate cause, is man's want of knowledge. As it regards the first, or original cause, man's wicked nature, we can readily see how it would lean his belief towards the side of falsehood. It must incline him to reject the sacred volume, which enjoins every thing that is righteous, self-denying, pure and holy. Again, we can easily understand how this first cause of unbelief, (man's sinfulness,) must tend toward the production of the second cause, his lack of information. It retards his labours in searching after truth; it aids in continuing his want of knowledge; it prevents his activity in search after facts which sustain the truth. As it regards the secondary, or proximate cause, want of knowledge; it sounds strange to speak of the ignorance of the learned. This seeming contradiction will be fully explained after a time. For the present, we must begin with the original cause. Man's depravity claims our notice first. CHAPTER II. MAN IS A FALLEN CREATURE. THE Bible is not true, if man is not prone to evil. The holy page has two modes of expression in holding up the fact of man's depravity. The first is his hatred towards God; the second is his love for falsehood. Let us take one of each kind of these assertions, and dwell upon it. 1st-The carnal mind is enmity against God. This seems to the unconverted man as though it must be false. He is not conscious of any enmity against God. He thinks (mostly) that he loves his Creator. Of course, if we talk of his hatred, we cannot gain his assent. The reason it seems to him that he loves, where he really hates, is simply this, he does not hate that which he calls God. He well approves the character which he himself has given to the Creator; but this character always differs in one or more traits from that which is drawn of God in the Bible. It always resembles, more or less, the character of the individual who has drawn it. A part of the character accords with the sacred page; but a portion of it, more or less, belongs to the man who draws it; of course he does not hate it. This has been true in every age; and is now a fact, wherever men are living. Examples.-Could you have asked the ancient Scandinavian, as he stood before you, with a purse in one hand, and a spear in the other," Do you love God?" he would have answered you in the affirmative. Then, had you inquired, "Who is God?" he would have told you, Thor-the God of battles and of plunder. The warrior loved such a Deity,-a part of the character belonged to the barbarian. Omnipotence and other traits were correct, and were received from truthful tradition: but holiness and purity the man did not love, and therefore did not receive into his creed as belonging to heaven. Could you have asked the Greek, at Athens, two thousand years ago, if he loved God, he would have told you Yes. "Who is God?" Answer-Bacchus, Venus, or Mars. A Deity of wine, or revelry, or sensuality, or war, he did not hate; but if you had placed before him the full character of the God of the Bible, as the Apostles did, he would have turned away in anger. Go now, and con verse with the enfeebled Asiatic concerning his enmity to God, and he will look astonished at your assertion. He is willing to give up his life in the service of his God. But ask after this Deity, and he will name one of lust, cruelty, and pollution; one resembling, to a great extent, the man who stands before you. If you claim his notice to the God who loves justice and and peace, he cannot bear to hear you. the land of Bibles and of light;-so it is in England or America. Go to that Universalist, and ask him if he hates God. He is insulted at the question. He thinks he loves his kind Creator ardently; he thinks he never did hate God. And it is true that he does love a God whose character resembles that of the man before you, in some prominent traits. But place before him the God of the Bible,-one who will say, Depart, to the wicked; one who will not take pollution, and the rejectors of mercy into heaven; one who will see the smoke of their torment ascend up forever and ever: and the Universalist will tell you, earnestly, he hates such a God as that. Just so it is with the Deist. He gives to God a character which he thinks rational; he loves that char humility, purity Just so it is in |