RELIGIOUS DOUBT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2220, 15 February 1886, Page 2

RELIGIOUS DOUBT.

But there is a state caUe'd which deserves c<miparison.„rather" than indignation: the dreadful state of one ; who craves light, and cannot .find it, I do think the way we treat thai'state is ! most unpardonably cruol.. it ~is awful when the soul begins to find that the props, on which it. has blindly rested so long, are, many of them, rutten, and besins to suspect all; when it begins to'li,feel the nothingness of money of the W traditionary opinions, which have been received with implicit confidence; arid in that horrible inseciirity.; .'tleginj/. also to doubt' whether there be anything to believe at all, It is an awful hour-let him who has passed through it say how awful—when this life has lost its meaning, nnd seems shrivelled into a span ; when the grave appears to the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name; the' sky above this univorse a dead expanse, black with the void from which God Himself has disappeared; In that fearful loneliness of spirit when those who should have, been his friends and frown upon his misgiving, mid profiwiy' ' bid him stifle doubts, which, H>r ought, he* knows, may arise from, the fountain? ol truth itself, to extinguish, as a glare 'from hell, that which, for aught ho knows, may be light from heaven, and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty, I know but one way in which a man. may come forth from nis agony, scathless: iis is by holdinglast to those things which A are certain still—the grand simple markß of morality. In the darkest hour > through which; a soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this is at least certain.. If there be no God, ana no future state, yet, even then, it is better tobegejioroua, than selfish, better "to be chaste tjuvs, licentious, better bo true than •false, better be brave than, a, coward, Blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is a man, who A hi, the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast'to these landmarks. Thrice blessed is he, who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, wheti his teachers terrify him, and his friends shrink, from him, has obstinately clung to moral good—because his, night shall pass into clear day. *. I appeal to the recollection of any- man who has passed through that how oi agony, and stood upon that rock dftast, The surges stilled below him, and tWlast cloud, drifted ffom the sky above, with a faith, hope, and trust no longer traditional but of hie. <>wn~4 trust which neithor earth w hell shall shake thenceforth for ever, But it is not in this way generally that men aot who are tempted by doubt. Generally, the step from doubt is a reci, less plunge into aonsuality. Then eon#) the darkening of the; moral being ;.as£j then from uncertainty and.' scepticism''j* may be that the path &s. unobstructed Athoism. But if there, be ono on oarth who deserve compassion it is the sincere, earnest,, anoWuay I eay, it without the risk of being misunderstood ?—honest • doubter, Let who will denounce him, \ will not, I would stand' by his' wy, "Courage, my brother! You are, contradicting the meaning of your ' owrj . existence. But God is. yo,ur Father, and; j an inffnite spirit seeks to mingle itself withyour« ( ~Rohertsori,