The Sceptic's Unconscious Ministry to the Truth.
I. Two things are terribly fruitful of scepticism, nay, are its chief parents in all ages: (1) the folly, vice, and passion which are mixed up with the life of all the Churches; (2) the narrowness and selfishness of their dogmatic conceptions of Divine truth. Scepticism of a very bitter kind is always generated when the Churches are very worldly. Men take the truth and the error, the good and the evil, together; and if the error and the evil seem to predominate, they say, and set themselves to prove, that the root must be bad which bears such fruits. Christ bears in all ages, as of old, the shame of the sins of His servants, and the sceptics arm themselves with scourges to chastise the vices and follies of the Church. But the main point of importance is the other. Scepticism is generated when Churches grow arrogant and oppressive, and frown on all attempts otherwise than by preaching their dogmas to widen the realm of truth.
II. It seems as if just now a rebellion had risen in every direction against the authority of the Church, not against truth, but against truth on Church authority. The Christ of authority, as the Church believes in Him, men will not have. They say, No; we will build up a new, more natural, more human, image of Christ for ourselves and for the world. Let them build. It is with an honest heart in the main that they make the effort; they have only to search deeply enough and to see far enough to discover for themselves that the only simple Christ, the only natural Christ, the only human Christ, the only Christ who can supply man's need and satisfy man's longings, and fill the throne which is waiting the advent of Emmanuel in every human breast, is the Christ whom prophets foretold, whom Evangelists portrayed, whom Apostles proclaimed, whom the Church of God in every age adores.
J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 145.
References: 2 Corinthians 13:8. Homilist,3rd series, vol. ii., pp. 121, 181; J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 138.