It cannot but be perplexing in the extreme, to devout and moderately thoughtful minds, to find how constantly we catch new theories of what we had once felt to be fixed and immutable truth. Men extinguish the fair lights which the Divine hand has kindled, and set up lurid flames and beacons of their own. But as surely as you follow the one, so surely shall you find yourself among the breakers, the breakers of controversy, doubt, and haply of despair; while, following the other, the voyage shall be prosperous and serene, under the command of the great Pilot who "holds the winds in His fist, and the waters in the hollow of His hand."
I. "Our fathers trusted in Thee and were helped." Apostles, fathers, and old sires, who held fast the form of sound words, have set their sign upon the landmark which they believed to be of God. We are not going to lay down the rule that you and I are bound to believe everything that our fathers believed, or that a man's creed and faith is to be hereditary, and handed down unchanged to his posterity. But, when we recollect the firmness with which the old men clung to the broad doctrines of the gospel, and the strength they gathered, and the rest and peace and joy of soul they drank from them as from a crystal spring, these memories ought to check that mania for fashionable doubting which is so rife amongst us now, and lead us to cherish with some reverence the intimations of the past.
II. We live in a novelty-loving age, and men make novelties in creeds, just as they would make new things in dress. But while, in one grand sense, it is true that when we pass beyond these lower scenes old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new, it is also true in another, and perhaps a subtler, sense, that new things shall pass away, and all things shall become old. The novelty of the regenerated life shall be evolved out of the antiquity of the old landmarks. "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? "Forsake not your first love. Take the quiet place of the disciple at the feet of Him who is the Light of the world.
A. Mursell, Lights and Landmarks,p. 1.