What is a freethinker?

In Protestant countries, as we know, the Bible is too much read and known for such a vain show. People too are more honest about God and His word; if they do not believe, they say so. Some, it is true, have been learning a novel lesson at Oxford lately: it is to profess the truth, but to insinuate, preach, and print the contrary. This is almost the lowest form of infidelity that has been seen yet. In former days infidelity went outside the profession of faith; this had at least an appearance of low and rude integrity about it. If a clergyman became an infidel, he gave up his profession; but the characteristic of modern free-thinking is that you find men of amiable habits and character who adhere to forms of Christianity which they do not accept as divine and ultimate truths, but only as a step in human progress; and thus they try to destroy the faith of the truth. The influence of this immoral, easy-going scepticism extends, as does the equally unbelieving system of Ritualism; and what will be the result? There will come an uprising of public indignation against Babylon; there will be a revolution in religious things as well as political. This I shall show by the word of God.

This in a very simple, but a very blessed principle. Of course it would not satisfy an infidel or a sceptic; what would? It is the province and prerogative of a sceptic to doubt everything, to believe nothing. He measures everything by his own standard, and rejects whatever he cannot reconcile with his own notions. He lays down, with marvellous coolness, his own premises, and then proceeds to draw his own conclusions. But if the premises are false, the conclusions must be false likewise. And there is this invariable feature attaching to the premises of all sceptics, rationalists, and infidels, they always leave out God; and hence all their conclusion's must be fatally false. On the other hand, the humble believer starts with this great first principle, that God Is; and not only that He is, but that He has to do with His creatures; that He interests Himself in, and occupies Himself about, the affairs of men.

If on the one hand infidels are bolder and increasing, on the other there is much more earnestness on the question of religion. By "religion" is not here meant humble and sincere searching God's word for a deeper acquaintance with it, and a life more conformed to its teachings, though that through grace is not banished from the earth. But the two names which divide the religious world are Rationalism and Ritualism. The former is religious infidelity and allied with secularism, and the latter is but another name for superstition, and tends Romeward. Both evidence the activities of a religious nature, in some the deeper misgivings in natural conscience on questions of eternal moment. If the soul is not in the presence of God, the result is that one of two courses is taken, according as the mind is superstitious or materialistic. In the latter case Rationalistic paths are followed. In the former Ritualism attracts; where the sensuous, the imaginative, and the impressible, are snared by gorgeous ceremony, and made captives by the dogmas of tradition. Rationalism subjects God's word to human reason: what it cannot comprehend, it rejects. It is sight, not faith. Even if the Rationalist accepted the whole Bible merely because his reason approves, it would not be faith. Faith says "It is written," and this suffices. Any other faith is human, not divine.

But the same unbelief, which of old in the Jews violated the law and lusted after idols, now in the Gentiles trusts an ordinance for it, to the exaltation of those that arrogate to themselves its valid and exclusive administration, or openly distrusts God and slights His Son, confiding in themselves without Him. They are the religiously or the profanely infidel. They are "the dead," and have never heard the voice of the Son of God, but only of their priests or of their philosophers. Whatever their boastings, they shall not live, for they have not Christ, but only ideas, imaginative or rational; not the truth which is inseparable from Christ received by faith to the glory of God and the annihilation of human pretensions.

In these brief remarks two facts are established: that man without revelation inevitably became an idolater; and that with revelation he became an infidel. Revelation, not reason, cast its light upon idolatry, and man saw that it was senseless and degrading. He forthwith derided it. The same light manifested himself, that he was a sinner and lost. This he resisted. But as he could not extinguish the light, so his unbelief could not change the fact. And just as idolatry varies in form according to the different manners and habits of men, so infidelity assumes different phases according to the special truth to which it is particularly opposed. In fact unbelief is as natural to man as idolatry: only it was latent and needed revelation to bring it out. The one is the proof of ignorance, the other the expression of enmity. Both declare the heart of man to be "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

That is important to remember. The intellect used away from God means infidelity, I do not care what name it is called by, for it has hundreds of names. This northern power was a confederacy. Jabin was the head of all the kings of the North. In like manner the sway of mind is called by many names. At one time it may be the Arianism that denied the divinity of our Lord; at another, the deadly deism that excluded God from His own world. Later on, it may be rationalism, or, as in our own time, Higher Criticism. But whatever the form, reason, the understanding of man is exalted. They say, Of course Scripture is of great value, and, in a certain sense, authoritative; but, remember, intellect comes first. That is the keynote to the whole Higher Criticism. It is that man, puny, sinful man, is capable of giving his judgment upon the word of God. Now, I do not care what place you give Scripture, if you give it a place short of the absolute perfection of God's revelation with absolute authority, you are giving it a place which Jabin himself wants it to have. Do the higher critics, for instance, tell us that they are infidels? Do they tell us that they do not believe in the Bible? No, indeed, they say they believe in the Bible more than we. They say they bring their intellect to bear upon it, and sift out of it men's thoughts, so that sitting in judgment upon it all, they tell us what is divine and what is human. Thus you have sinful man giving judgment upon the word of God. When he does this, he becomes an absolute enemy to the truth of God.

That is important to remember. The intellect used away from God means infidelity, I do not care what name it is called by, for it has hundreds of names. This northern power was a confederacy. Jabin was the head of all the kings of the North. In like manner the sway of mind is called by many names. At one time it may be the Arianism that denied the divinity of our Lord at another, the deadly deism that excluded God from His own world. Later on, it may be rationalism, or, as in our own time, Higher Criticism. But whatever the form, reason, the understanding of man is exalted. They say, Of course Scripture is of great value, and, in a certain sense, authoritative but, remember, intellect comes first. That is the keynote to the whole Higher Criticism. It is that man, puny, sinful man, is capable of giving his judgment upon the word of God. Now, I do not care what place you give Scripture, if you give it a place short of the absolute perfection of God's revelation with absolute authority, you are giving it a place which Jabin himself wants it to have. Do the higher critics, for instance, tell us that they are infidels? Do they tell us that they do not believe in the Bible? No, indeed, they say they believe in the Bible more than we. They say they bring their intellect to bear upon it, and sift out of it men's thoughts, so that sitting in judgment upon it all, they tell us what is divine and what is human. Thus you have sinful man giving judgment upon the word of God. When he does this, he becomes an absolute enemy to the truth of God.

If there comes a revelation of God, there is the responsibility to receive it, but it does not follow that my mind could have formed the idea. In these days it is well to be clear as to this. The worst kind of infidelity says, "Man can have no idea beyond his senses, and a few original deductions which he may draw." I reply, All true; but that leaves you as ignorant of God as an animal. Do not pretend that there is nothing outside of yourself, and here comes in revelation. Like the woman in John 4, conscience has to be reached from without: "If thou knewest the gift of God." The woman says in effect, "What of that?" And then how does Christ deal with her? "Go, call thy husband, and come hither," and this arrests her. Real intelligence of God is in the conscience. I do not say the heart may not be drawn.

If there comes a revelation of God, there is the responsibility to receive it, but it does not follow that my mind could have formed the idea. In these days it is well to be clear as to this. The worst kind of infidelity says, "Man can have no idea beyond his senses, and a few original deductions which he may draw." I reply, All true; but that leaves you as ignorant of God as an animal. Do not pretend that there is nothing outside of yourself, and here comes in revelation. Like the woman in John 4, conscience has to be reached from without: "If thou knewest the gift of God." The woman says in effect, "What of that?" And then how does Christ deal with her? "Go, call thy husband, and come hither," and this arrests her. Real intelligence of God is in the conscience. I do not say the heart may not be drawn.

And there are many who, in the realm of the spiritual, demand visible demonstration before believing. They ask for what they call tangible proofs; they will receive nothing "on trust," and refuse to believe anything that cannot be discerned by the senses—sight, hearing or touch —their deified trinity, the only god in whom they trust. And in doing this they consider themselves exceedingly astute, and look down with affected pity, and even scorn, on those who have not seen, yet have believed. "Yes," they answer, when it is demanded of them that they have faith in God, "when we see we will believe"; and wise in their own conceits they maintain the ground that they will believe nothing except that which can be demonstrated to the senses.