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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems: 12. Taking away a Cripple's Crutches.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 12. Taking away a Cripple's Crutches.
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Taking away a Cripple's Crutches.
There are two sorts of doubters; those that are not doubters at all but like to be so called, and then the doubters that really are doubters. To mark these real doubters off clearly the word honest should be used—honest doubters. That's a bit hard on the others, but still it seems to be the word to use because of its honesty. A true man does love to be honest. It's one of the touchstones of manhood.
The first sort is not really entitled to that good, wholesome word "doubter," but they insist upon using it, so let that go. The more accurate word to use for them is quibblers. When they search it is simply for something that will bolster up the opinion they hold. They find fault with Christianity. They pick out the flaws and faults of Christian people—and there are surely enough to pick out—and seem to take pleasure in pointing them out. They gather up the arguments and statements of others, and freely pass them out without finding if they are really trustworthy. They seem to listen to the other side only to study how to answer it.
These quibbling friends are fond of argument; that is, they are fond of that sort of argument which is a sharp crossing of swords to see which can outdo the other; the keen, sharp passage of words and measuring of statements to see which can come out ahead. Such dueling, it can be positively said, though very common, never helps and always hurts. The men who indulge in it are usually seeking to defend their own position, which often means to defend their own intellectual keenness. No earnest man in the thick of life has time for such discussion. It does but react, however unconsciously, upon a man's beliefs, and, worse yet, upon his ability to see a fact colorlessly, to weigh what comes without prejudice, and so to get the help of knowing the truth.
There is a story told of Henry Ward Beecher and a certain gentleman who was very widely known for his eloquence and for his skepticism. It was at a social gathering of a group of brilliant, intellectual men. The skeptical man had, as was his wont, taken occasion to make ugly flings at the Christian religion in his usual keen, eloquent way. Beecher listened with the others. After a pause he broke in abruptly by telling of a scene he said he had witnessed that day on one of the streets of New York.
It was a rainy day, with the streets in bad shape. A badly crippled man was hobbling painfully along on his crutches, picking his way over the crossing of one of the busiest thoroughfares, when a strong, burly man came roughly along, and rudely ran into the cripple; the poor fellow's crutches slipped this way and that, and he fell a-sprawling in the soft slime of the street. But the strong man, instead of apologizing and helping him up, laughed coarsely at the poor fellow's plight, and kept on his way.
As Beecher told the story in his own inimitably vivid way the company present expressed their disgust with such conduct, the skeptical man heartily condemning it. Beecher looked him full in the face and said slowly, "Thou art the man: we are all crippled by sin; Christianity is helping us find our way along the road of life, even then a painful, hobbling way; you come along ruthlessly and knock out the only help we have to hold us up and steady our steps, and offer nothing better, but leave us sprawling hopelessly in the mire." With his great keenness Beecher had characterized the whole class of skeptics, unbelievers, whose whole pleasure seems to be in telling what they do not believe, and in disturbing those who do honestly believe something.
It is not pleasant to say so, but it is very much to be feared that much so-called doubt is merely a sort of cloak for something else, and that something else a thing far worse and meaner than the doubt. The word doubt has quite an intellectual flavor. It seems to suggest mental strength. It makes a fine cloak. Its ample folds and soft gray color can cover up very much within. It is quite apt to be an intellectual covering for some very unintellectual, very common, and very coarse habits. Scratch some self-styled doubters and you will find ugly, selfish sinners. Let such friends remember and not forget that there is no necessary connection between selfishness and doubt, between sin, just common, plain sin, and intellectual difficulties