What is the argument from disbelief?

The whole of the chapter on grounds of disbelief is founded on an entire fallacy, that is, assumption that that is true of which no proof whatever is given; just what I said at the beginning as to using a word with his own definition of it as if it was the truth. He assumes that experience of natural laws is the only foundation of knowledge. Evidence can only be a proximate generalisation. Possibly so on his ground, that belief of testimony is only matter of inference. But this is simply begging the question. It can only be a question of superior generalisation, because that is the only ground of evidence. But that is just the question. It assumes that God, or man, cannot reveal himself so as to enforce belief which is not true - certainly cannot be assumed, specially when it is the point in question.

A child would settle the duties to parents in the world by denying there are any; because, if there are, the child could not reason for himself to know what he owes them. Man reduces himself to his own measure to judge if there be a God, because letting God in would not be logical — would not leave it in the measure of man's competency, which must be allowed if a man is to judge. And having made this famous step, he discovers that on this ground God cannot be known; and then writes a book to shew this, and calls it logical, and thereupon rejects revelation, and says it is only a question of history and outward facts.

The knowledge of good and evil, which man acquired in the fall, has so constituted him that judgment is the only action of God’s power which he understands; naturally enough, he resists it, and blasphemes God, because his conscience tells him that he must be the object of His righteous vengeance; so that to calm his conscience he tries to persuade himself that he is not wicked, and he hides himself from God, like Adam, and in his folly seizes with avidity the smallest pretext for denying His existence. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalms 14; 53.)

The knowledge of good and evil, which man acquired in the fall, has so constituted him that judgment is the only action of God’s power which he understands; naturally enough, he resists it, and blasphemes God, because his conscience tells him that he must be the object of His righteous vengeance; so that to calm his conscience he tries to persuade himself that he is not wicked, and he hides himself from God, like Adam, and in his folly seizes with avidity the smallest pretext for denying His existence. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalms 14; 53.)

Now, reader, may we not conclude the infidel believes more than the Christian? The Christian declares a grand effect is produced by a great cause. The infidel cannot deny to a large extent the effect, yet denies any strength or credulity in the cause. What a miracle of miracles is the Bible from the infidel’s standpoint! Yet his credulity only brings upon his head the withering rebuke of the psalmist—“The fool has said in his heart, There is no GOD.” He may not deny the very existence of God, but he denies all that which makes God God.

It is very remarkable, that whenever infidelity is at work, it will always be found characterised by this one fact, namely, it shuts out God. This will be found true in all ages, in all places, and under all circumstances. There is no exception. Infidelity can take account of human affairs, it can reason upon them, and draw conclusions from them; but all its reasonings and all its conclusions are based upon the exclusion of God. The force of its arguments depends upon shutting Him out, and keeping Him out. Only introduce God, and all the reasonings of infidelity crumble into dust beneath your feet. Thus, in the scene before us, What is faith's reply to all the objections advanced by those ten unbelievers? Its one simple, all-satisfying reply, to which there can be no rejoinder, is — 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.

What consolation for the Christian! But infidelity will not allow this at all. To bring God in is to upset all the reasonings of the sceptic, for they are based upon the thorough exclusion of God.

But what of Jehovah? Alas, He was left out! Unbelief invariably leaves God out of its calculations. It can take a very full account of the difficulties, the hindrances, the hostile influences; but as for the living God, it sees Him not. There is a melancholy consistency in the utterances of unbelief, whether we listen to them in the wilderness of Kadesh, or, fourteen hundred years afterwards, at the tomb of Lazarus. Unbelief is always and everywhere the same; it begins, continues and ends with the absolute exclusion of the one living and true God. It can do naught save to cast dark shadows over the pathway of every one who will listen to its voice.

The wish that there should be no God—none to exercise full authority over us, or restrain our wills, or condemn our sins, or call us into judgment; none, in short, to whom we should be thus responsible—is latent in every human bosom. Sin has produced that wish; and how easy to advance from the idea to the belief, from the wish to the word, “No God”! Yet, after all, he who should thus speak is called a “fool”; for can there be folly more self-evident than the rejection of God? Could you conceive the unfallen creature making such a denial? Impossible! It is reserved for fallen man to do so. Then, how awfully blinding must sin be!

The idea of God is distasteful to the natural mind.

“God” implies authority, and we all know that restraint is irksome; but, further, when “God” means holiness, and the judgment of evil, and the disallowance of that which we naturally like, then we do our utmost to banish from our minds, if possible, the existence of any such God at all.