Considering Doubts Rather Than Beliefs

A man has more power through believing one thing than in disbelieving ten thousand things. It is a man’s duty to disbelieve, or to doubt, at a proper time, when the matter has been well considered; but no man is capable of disbelieving, or of doubting, intelligently and sensibly, unless he first has strong and positive beliefs. A man’s real power either to do or to doubt starts from his beliefs, and if a man gives attention to what he does not believe, rather than to what he does believe, he makes no progress, and he lacks practical power in any direction.

Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, who was a man of tremendous convictions, and who made thousands believe as he believed because he had those convictions,

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said, just before the opening of the Civil War, of Abraham Lincoln, “I’m glad we’ve got a man now who believes something.” And that was good ground for our hope in those days, as it is in any day. Yet to-day, on every side, there are young men and older men who think little about their beliefs, or about their convictions if they have any, and much of their disbeliefs and doubts and questionings.

Such persons are not always proud that they are so ready to doubt and to question; sometimes they regret the tendency of their minds to work in this direction, but it seems to them that they are helpless through the constitution and nature of their very being. Many of these persons feel the need of help, and sometimes ask it from others. What can be done for these persistent doubters? How can those who disbelieve and question continually, concerning matters about which they would fain be at rest in their minds, be helped to a wise dealing with their mental and spiritual troubles?

Considering 2)oubts IRatber than JBeliefs

Very often one’s best way of dealing with one’s doubts is by letting them alone, and refusing to consider them just now. I heard Dr. Bushnell, in giving the charge to a keen-minded young pastor, say on this point: “If you have doubts that trouble you very much, do not try to solve them at once. Hang them up in your study for a while, and attend to things that you have no doubt about. By and by, when you have leisure, and feel so inclined, take your doubts down. Very likely you will find, when you attempt to examine them anew, that they have settled themselves.” There was a world of wisdom in that bit of advice by Dr. Bushnell.

One who had been brought up in comparative strictness of belief reached a time when she began to question the truth of one doctrine and another that in her early life she had accepted as correct because others to whom she looked up said so. Dwelling on her new disbeliefs, she came to be practically controlled by them. In

IKow to Deal with Doubts

her troubles of mind, she was telling me one day of certain views of truth that she could not now believe. At this I said to her: “You say a good deal of what you do not believe; why don’t you say something of what you do believe, however little that is?” That was a fresh thought to her. She took it home, and acted on it. It proved a turning-point in her life. She began to consider what she did believe, and to find comfort in the thought of this. Her disbelief vanished out of sight, as the darkness in a room vanishes when a window is opened to the light. She came to find pleasure in leading others to see and know the truth, and she often told me afterwards that her new start was taken when she began to think of what she did believe, instead of what she did not. In this she simply illustrated a truth that is always worth considering by one who would help, or be helped, in the perplexity of doubting.

A young man who had been for years

Con0it)ering BoulJts IRatbct than :©elief0

active in Christian work and study, and whose desire and purpose were to be in the ministry, came to me at one time in Northfield and told me his story, asking if there could be any cure in his case. He said that he had wrestled first with one doubt, and then with another, but his doubts had grown faster than his wrestlings, and he had lost ground steadily, until at last he had nothing left to be sure of except that there is a God. He positively was not sure of any truth in the Bible or Christianity except just that.

At this I seemed not at all surprised, but simply asked: “What do you think of murder as a regular business?”

“I don’t understand your question,” said the young man.

“Why, the Bible teaches that murder is wrong. I want to know what you think of murder as a business, apart from the question of the statute law on the subject.”

“I have no doubt about the moral law laid down in the Bible,” was the response of the young man.

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“Then there’s one thing in the Bible that you believe, outside of the truth that there is a God.”

Then I went on to ask one question after another as to some point of duty enjoined, or wrong act forbidden, in the Bible, to every one of which the young man said frankly that he had no doubt as to that point. He believed that the Bible teachings were to be believed so far.

“Do not think, my friend, from my unexpected questions, that I lack sympathy with you in your troubles of mind,” I said to the young man; “but you told me, to begin with, that you had no sure belief except that there is a God, and now at my questions you have told me that you have a firm belief as to a good many other things. Now I want to interrupt this conversation just here for twenty-four hours. Go to your room, and take up the Bible. Turn over its pages, and when you see a statement that you believe, make a note of it. If you find anything that you do not

Considering 2)oul)ta IRatber than Beliefs

believe, or that you doubt, pass it by, — pay no attention to that for now. I want you to look for things in the Bible that you believe, and to count them up as a whole when you have done with the examination. Keep your mind entirely on what you are sure of, and then see, when you are through with the search, whether it really amounts to anything worth holding on to. Come back to-morrow, and tell me the result of your search.”

The next day I watched for the young man, but he did not call. The day following, I met him on the street, and asked him why he had not returned to continue the conversation. There was a new look on his face as he replied:

“I went home that night, and began to look in the Bible for things that I believe. I found more of them than I thought for. I kept finding them. As you requested, I didn’t stop to consider anything that I had a doubt about, so that I don’t know from this search what there is in that line; but I

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find so much that I do beHeve that I’ve come to the conclusion that I beHeve pretty much everything now.”

And there was one more soul made newly glad, changed from gloom to cheer, from doubt to confidence, through God’s blessing, by his simply looking at what can be believed, instead of what may have been doubted. That is the way for such a doubter to deal with his troubles of mind. If one would give help to a doubting Christian of this sort, let him bear this in mind.

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