James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 9:24 - 9:24

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James Nisbet Commentary - Mark 9:24 - 9:24


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FAITH AND DOUBT

‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.’

Mar_9:24

This cry of a soul in distress was spoken to God. Yet it contains elements which look to us incompatible: the affirmation of faith, and the confession of doubt. “I believe.” It is an emphatic statement, made to Him who knew what is in man. “Mine unbelief.” It is equally clear and outspoken. Faith and doubt are in the same soul together; fighting together in the same heart. The question was not about imaginary troubles or sentimental sorrows; it related to one of the most dreary and most practical of every day crosses and afflictions. Here was a father with a demoniac son; bodily sickness and darkness of mind; human nature brought to the lowest ebb. To this sad scene God draws near with power. There is help somewhere. But before the help can be given, one thing is demanded—faith.

“Lord I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!” What a clear, strong utterance! Hopeful at once and painful—painful in its confession, hopeful in its resolve. Here is the true philosophy of humanity and life; it accords with all we know of ourselves, with all we have heard of the Lord.

I. Doubt and faith co-exist in the heart.—It is natural to us to believe, and natural to doubt. As creatures of God we must believe; as fallen creatures we must doubt. It follows that the mere existence of doubt in the intellect or the heart is not sinful, nor need it disquiet the faithful. The sin begins where the responsibility begins, viz., in the exercise of the will. I believe and I doubt at once. Be it so. It is not my fault. But now, conscious of this, I have to act. How shall I act? What shall I do?

II. The will has power to choose between the two.—This is the sheet-anchor of moral and intellectual life, that no man is compelled to be all his life long subject to bondage to the spirit of doubt. We were made to believe; we are the better and the happier for believing. What we must do, is what the man in the Gospel did: assert the principle of faith, boldly, bravely, and in the terms of that invincible, immortal Credo which man in all lands is ever uttering through the darkness, ‘Lord, I believe!’ This must be the profession of the lips. And then, we must as boldly and bravely reject the principle of doubt—though we find it in us we must disown it; we must say, This is not mine, I acknowledge it not, it belongs not to me as God made me; it is a lower shape of some transient malady passing through my system; it is ‘mine unbelief,’ even as my other sins are mine—excrescences, foreign, alien, and soon to be purged away.

III. If we choose to believe, God will help.—The hour is at hand when doubt shall end for ever, and when the Eternal Truth shall stand out clear before our eyes. Doubt and uncertainty belong to this life; at the end of the world they will sink to long burial, while the world also sinks away, and then we shall see all things plainly.

—
Rev. Morgan Dix.

Illustration

‘What faith is—that is what we need first to realise, and then we have to go on to see with equal clearness what it is not. Here Bishop Westcott speaks with no uncertain sound: “Credulity is not faith. That indolent abdication of the responsibility of judgment in favour of every pretender, that superficial assent lightly given and lightly withdrawn, is utterly at variance with the intense, clear vision and with the resolute grasp of faith. Superstition is not faith. To choose for ourselves idols, whatever they may be, to invest with attributes of the unseen world fragments of this world, to brood over shadows, is to deny faith, which is at every moment active, progressive, busy with the infinite. Conviction is not faith. We may yield to what we admit to be an inevitable intellectual conclusion. Our opposition may be silenced or vanquished. But the state of mind which is thus produced is very often simply a state of exhaustion and not of quickening. Till the heart welcomes the Truth, it remains outside us.” ’



MODERN UNBELIEF

‘Help Thou mine unbelief.’

Mar_9:24

These words afford a fit starting-point for some remarks upon present phases of unbelief, showing, as they do, man’s need of faith. Unbelief in an active form seems to exist more round Christianity than any other religion. It is only Christianity that excites conflict.

I. Modern unbelief.—Unbelief may have its rise in three directions—(a) the external world; (b) man; or (c) the nature of Christianity itself. The present age being so much devoted to the study of nature, unbelief is mainly of a materialistic character. One meets constantly the words Agnosticism and Positivism, and these words indicate the channels in which unbelief flows.

II. And its remedy.—Our age supplies in its spirit and tendency three antidotes to its own phases of unbelief.

(a) The study of the comparative science of religion. The effect of this study is to deepen on the mind the conviction that religion is an essential part of human nature, and the dominating part. Its tendency is against the doctrine of development. Whatever may be true in other directions, religions do not develop into higher forms, but degenerate. The oldest forms are the simplest and highest. To publish the other sacred books of the world is not only to demolish their claims, if that were needful, but to show the Divinity of the Bible.

(b) The strongly ethical character of the time and the deep interest taken in the discussion of ethical questions is on the side of religion. The ethical finds that it requires the religious. Religion draws it out, and gives it not only intensity but courage, hopefulness, freedom, and joy.

(c) The poetry of our time must be taken into account. The best poets are among the best friends of religion in our day. Far more and more the question is coming to this: Is the materialistic, or the spiritual and religious view of life the true one? If men are but convinced that the deep ethical and spiritual view of life is true they must gravitate to Christ. Where else can they go?

Illustration

‘Mr. Lecky in his History of Morality says that it was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting upon all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions, has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to practice, and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of the three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.’