What is deism and what do deists believe?

By Deism is meant belief in the existence of a Creator—a great First Cause—unknown and unknowable, coupled with the refusal to admit that God has made any revelation outside of nature in Creation; that is to say, the deist, whilst believing in God as Creator, refuses the Bible as God’s revelation and rejects Christ as a Saviour. Darwin was a deist, and he refused the Bible and took the ground of being an agnostic. The closing words of the “Origin of Species” are:

This was seen in the remarkable case of Lord Lyttleton, a brilliant literary man, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his friend, Gilbert West. They lived in the early part of the eighteenth century, were both lawyers, and, as the fashion then was, were deists. Deists admit the fact of a Creator, but hold that once the creation is effected, the Creator retired from any further activity in this world’s concerns. They therefore did not believe in revealed religion, in the Bible, in Christ, in the need for salvation.

Infidelity is a term of wide range; its professors are subdivided into many schools, from the man who pretends to believe the Bible but denies its plenary inspiration, down to the depths of the fool who in his heart says "No God." It is essentially negative but with a varying phase, due to the manners of the people and the age of the country where it appears. Atheism denies the being of God. Some question whether any have really arrived at that stage of unbelief. Yet in just retribution a man who has for years openly asserted "No God" may be given up to believe his own lie. The Pantheist imagines God to be in every thing, a sort of essence diffused through all creation, and everything a part of God. That is, he denies the personality of God. Some deny providential arrangement and government, their favorite theme and word is "nature." To such moral evil is an impossibility; and "physical," as applied to evil, a misnomer. For that to which the expression is given is (as they say) nature's means for arriving at perfection. The deist recognises the existence and in a measure the government of God, both which he pretends to know by the light of reason alone. He wilfully ignores the condition and the results of reason when man had no Revelation from God; he derides the thought that his reason is indebted to the light of the Bible for its emancipation from the many gods of Paganism. Like the fabled Prometheus he has stolen heavenly fire and employed it against the Book whence he had it. For him the Bible, however much he may admire its precepts, has no more authority than the Koran or the mythologies of paganism. To him sin is not the effect of enmity against God, but errors of judgment or perhaps the mistakes of nature. It is for him to account for the present condition of man and the earth he inhabits; for if he deny sin as that which brought death into the world, the god of his imagination cannot be the God who is Love, the God of the Bible.

Judson's friend did not deny the existence of God, but he did not own a revelation from Him, and was thus a daring and avowed deist. The former was therefore soon and easily entangled in the meshes of human reasoning and unbelief � professing to doubt that which he did not understand. Filled with ambitious thought as to the profession they should choose, these young men spent their time in folly, "having no hope, and without God in the world."

Now, to say nothing of the heathen, who had gods to please their lusts, for lusts men have after all; nor of those who made God a kind of soul of the world, or who do, as there are many with a "desolating pantheism," make Him an all-pervading power or influence, so that everything is God; but to take such men as Mr. N., Sir Isaac Newton, Pascal, Paul, Justin Martyr (Mr. N. loves such associations), I must either judge that Mr. N.'s mind and judgment are the sole true measure, or that the human mind is not a competent measure of what God ought to be, or what should characterize a revelation from Him. Nay, should I think Mr. N. and his school alone right, I should not have gained much, for I should then have to consider all other minds incompetent; and he would, if he has not a revelation, be himself a Deaster, and the sole revealer of truth. What does Mr. N. think?

There was here in particular, what there is generally, a great deal to reason on; and this is exactly the basis of natural religion of any kind and at any time. It is a religion that man reasons out as becoming himself and others with God. But as man is its only source, there is nothing of God in it, only man's pretension and profession.

Why, if God has partially revealed Himself in His works, is it impossible He should reveal Himself in some other way? Is that the only possible one? If God can give in mere nature infallible evidence that it is He, why cannot He reveal Himself in some other way with adequate evidence that it is Himself who does so? This, we have seen, Mr. N. declares Him incapable of doing. But who will take his highest conceptions as an adequate guide to God? Why is he to use a partial revelation in which God has not left Himself without witness, if haply man might feel after Him and find Him, and deny all other? Mr. N., while using Christianity really to elevate his account of what God is, would reduce us to that which God's revelation points out as true, but as of the lowest kind. That is all his books amount to. The christian revelation recognizes this testimony: but it shews from the plainest facts, which Mr. N. very wisely passes over, that such a testimony, though it left man without excuse, had been perfectly useless, through man's perverseness, to elevate man above the corruptions of his own heart; that its existence had even left idolatrous revelling in abominations not fit to be named, and making gods to themselves to help them in them. Christianity owns the testimony, and shews that man's soul when in possession of it sank into the utmost degradation. Mr. N. avails himself of Christianity, from which he avows he has got almost all his manhood-wisdom, to prove the competency of this previous partial revelation to lead man up to God and render all other unnecessary, and to deny the Christianity which has given him the results and ideas to which the other never in fact led man. Which is the most philosophical, the most logical, the most true?

H. Yes, but it shuts out a living intervention of God in men's matters, and that is their great object. God may give an impulsion, but the intervention or intercourse with a living God does not suit the dignity or independence of man

Against a reverent study and inquiry into the form, structure, and contents of the Scriptures we have no word to say. Indeed, the very purpose of this present series of studies is to encourage a deeper, fuller, wider, and bolder examination into the whole realm of revealed truth; but a casual examination of the so-called modern criticism shows that it is hostile in its intent; it is destructive, not constructive. As in nature God had been so far removed from His creation as to have practically nothing to do with it, so in revelation everything of a supernatural character was eliminated. Miracles were therefore pronounced a priori impossible, or at least most unlikely, and prophecy as well. So, too, the conceptions of God — the earlier ones — were taken as necessarily materialistic and low, developing later on to the more spiritual ideals as a result of the cultivation of the human family.

But there was a time, we know, in the world's history, when God took a direct and immediate interest in what was going on among men. Even their battles were said to be the Lord's battles; and their defeats, famines, etc., were sent as a known infliction from God for some evil that He was dealing with. Now, while it remains perfectly true, that there is no war or sorrow of any kind that happens without God, and all is decidedly under His sovereign control, it is not in the way of the same direct government. So that a person cannot now say, This war is at the word of God; or, This famine is a chastening for such and such an evil. That would be indeed both ignorance and presumption. No doubt there are persons quite ready enough to pronounce as to these matters. Their mistake arises from not appreciating the great change that has taken place in God's government of the world. As long as Israel was the nation in which God was displaying His character for the earth, these things were found directly and immediately from God. But from the time God gave up His people Israel, it has been merely the indirect, providential control of a general kind, that God exercises over human affairs.