Present Phases of Unbelief.
I. Unbelief may have its rise and find occasion in three directions the external world, man, and the nature of Christianity itself. One meets constantly the words Agnosticism and Positivism, and these words indicate the channel in which unbelief at present flows.
II. The very principle of the Agnostic involves a contradiction. He declares that man cannot know that there is a God that God, if He exists, cannot make Himself known. Is not this professing to know a very great deal? This is not agnostic without knowledge; this is claiming to have an exhaustive knowledge both of man and God, claiming a knowledge, too, in plainest contradiction to human history and human consciousness.
III. One of the characteristics of the unbelief of the present time is its high ethical spirit and purpose. In this it stands wholly opposed to the atheism of former days, which often sought to efface moral distinctions. Our quarrel with this phase of unbelief is, that it ignores man, that it does not look at the facts of the soul, in comparison with which all others are fading pictures. It is fractional and exclusive. Christianity is wide and impartial. It believes that the true reason is the utterance of man's whole nature.
IV. The Positivist rejects agnosticism He is successful in showing that agnosticism as a religion fails in the three essential elements belief, worship, conduct. But when he comes to exhibit his own substitute for Christianity, he creates a feeling of surprise, of bewilderment. It is collective humanity that he proposes to worship. While rejecting all abstractions and theories, and professing to regard only fact and law, "law social, moral, mental as well as physical," he is guilty of worshipping the most entire, and at the same time the most incongruous abstraction. He forgets that men can only worship that which can respond.
V. Another phase of unbelief specially characteristic of our time, and by which it seeks to overthrow religion, is the exclusive claim to disinterestedness.
VI. Our age supplies in its spirit and tendency three antidotes to its own phase of unbelief. (1) The study of the comparative science of religions. The effect of this is to deepen on the mind the conviction that religion is an essential part of human nature, and the dominating part. (2) The strongly ethical character of much of the literature of the time and the deep interest taken in the discussion of ethical questions is on the side of religion. (3) The best poets are among the best friends of religion in our day.
J. Leckie, Sermons at Ibrox,p. 362.
References: Mark 9:23; Mark 9:24. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 281; J. Natt, Plain Sermons,p. 166.