Secularism

A scorn er seeketh wisdom and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth.”- -xiv. 6.

JT is the constant profession of those who reject the Bible that they are seeking truth. Their likeness is taken here from life. They seek wisdom, but do riot find it. They want the first qualification of a philosopher, a humble and teachable spirit.

There is a race of men amongst us at the present day who scorn bitterly against faith’s meek submission to God’s revealed will. They desire to be free from authority. The papist, they say, submits to the authority of the church, and the protestant to the authority of the Bible: they count these only different forms of superstition, and cast off with equal earnestness both the bonds. They make a man’s own feelings the supreme judge to that man of right and wrong, good and evil. The divinity, as they phrase it, is in every man; which means that every man is a god unto himself. It is, in its essence, a reproduction of the oldest rebellion: a creature, discontented with the place which his Maker has given him, strives to make himself a god.

If men really were independent beings, it would be right to assert and proclaim their independence; but as matters stand, this desperate kicking against authority becomes the exposure of weakness, and the punishment of pride. We are not our own cause and our own end; we are not our own lords. We are in the hands of our Maker, and under the law of our Judge. Our only safety lies in submission to the rightful authority, and obedience to the true law. The problem for man is, not to reject all masters, but to accept the rightful One.

Those who scorn the wisdom from above, seek laboriously for the wisdom that is beneath. The name “secularist” is adopted to indicate that they appreciate and study the knowledge that concerns the present world, and repudiate as unattainable, or useless, all knowledge that pertains to another. People sometimes lose their way in words as they do in mist; and then very vulgar objects seem mighty castles looming in the darkness. Let it be known, and remembered, that “secularism” is the Latin for thisworld-ism, and means, Attend to the world that you are now in, and let the next alone. Perhaps this translation of the name into English may help us to take the measure of the thing signified. Before we adopt this philosophy we must be sure that there is no immortality for man; for, if there be another world, obviously our course here will affect our condition there, and the view that we take of eternity will decisively influence our path over time. Granting even that it is this world with which men have now to do, our present view of the world to come exerts a supreme control over the whole course of our conduct, and every step of our life. It is by faith in the unseen that men steer through this shifting sea of time. Cut us off from the future, and you have left the ship without a chart, and without a star: without a compass to steer by, and without a harbour to steer for; you have left the ship an aimless meaningless log lying on the water, to be tossed up and down by the waves, and driven hither and thither by the winds, until it fall asunder or sink unseen.

Those seekers of knowledge, who limit their search to the earth on which they tread, profess great zeal in the question of education. I am not aware that they do more in the work of education than others, but they say loudly, and oft, that the young of the nation should be educated according to their views. Children in the public schools, they say, should be thoroughly trained in secular knowledge, and religious dogmas should be left untouched. The public schoolmaster should be entirely neutral on the subject of religion: he should give no judgment for or against any of its doctrines. Verily, these men seek knowledge, and find it not: after all their efforts to learn, they are not yet very wise. They prescribe to the schoolmaster a task that is palpably impossible. Revealed religion has touched the world, and been the turning point of its history in all ages. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, claiming as they do to be the inspired record of God’s will, have in point of fact influenced the conduct and history of mankind more than all other books together. Jesus of Nazareth was, through the unwilling instrumentality of the Roman, put to death by the Jewish priesthood, because he made Himself equal with God; and this event has done more to cast the civilized world into its present mould, than any or all the revolutions of kingdoms since the beginning of time. How shall the teacher dispose of that book, and that event, in his complete course of secular instruction1? Must he teach history and leave these things out of it 2 He may as well teach the elements of Euclid, omitting all the capital letters; he may as well weave without a warp, as exhibit the kingdoms of this world, without taking notice of the kingdom of God, and of his Christ. The religion of Christ has grasped the world, and penetrated human history through arid through. If you exclude these topics, your disciple comes out of your hands a barbarian; and if you introduce them, you are compelled to take a side. For or against Christ the teacher must be, and the scholar too. God has, in providence, not left it possible simply to pass the Bible by without letting it be known whether you believe it or not. The question, “What think ye of Christ 1” was of old pressed upon the Jews, though they desired rather not to commit themselves to an answer; and by the same sovereign Lord, who rules over all, it is in these latter days pressed upon men so as to force an answer out of them whether they will, or be unwilling. No man can teach the history and condition of this world without indicating expressly, or by implication, whether he counts Jesus of Nazareth ‘a blasphemer, or the Son of God. No man can live where the gospel is known without accepting or rejecting Christ’s claim to be the Redeemer of his soul, and the sovereign of his life. Such have been the effects of the Bible, and such is the place of Christ among men, that we must take a side. The decision cannot be avoided; all depends on making it aright. The liberty of having no Lord over the conscience is not competent to man. Submission absolute to the living God, as revealed in the Mediator, is at once the best liberty that could be, and the only liberty that is.

In these days, when the pendulum is often seen swinging from scepticism over to superstition, and from superstition back to scepticism again, we would do well to remember that there is truth between these extremes, and that in truth alone lies safety for all the interests of men. We must beware of confounding two questions that are totally distinct — the existence of truth, and our perception of it. Although all the men that live on the earth should awake to-morrow blind, that would not prove that the sun had ceased to shine. It is fashionable in high places to laud religious indifference, and stigmatize as bigotry all earnest belief. This is a great mistake. They who fall into it cannot read even profane history aright. Let politicians learn to apply the grand test, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” To believe nothing will produce as rank intolerance as to believe all the legends of Rome. Look to the history of modern Europe, and you will see that those who believed all dogmas and those who rejected all are equally stained with the blood of the saints, and have equally impeded the progress of men. To have no belief, and to believe a lie, are seeds that bear only bitter fruits. The conceit of the sceptic that outside of himself there is no truth to believe in, projects into human life only an empty shadow of liberty; but if He who is the truth “make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

I see two men near each other prostrate on the ground and bleeding, while one man stands between them, with serenest aspect, looking to the skies; who and what are these1? The two prostrate forms are Superstition and Unbelief. Superstition bowed down to worship his idol, and cut his flesh with stones to atone for his soul’s sin. Unbelief scorned to be confined, like an inferior creature, to the earth, and was ever leaping up in the hope of standing on the stars. Exhausted by his efforts, he fell, and the fall bruised him, so that he lay as low as the neighbour whom he despised. He who stands between them neither bowed himself to the ground, nor attempted to scale the heavens; he neither degraded himself beneath a man’s place, nor attempted to raise himself above it. He abode on earth; but he stood erect there. He did not proudly profess to be, but meekly sought to find God. This man understands his place and feels his need; to him therefore knowledge is easy. To him that hath shall be given. He has the beginning of wisdom, and he will reach in good time its glad consummation. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom.”