Standing in truth provides clarity to see errors and spiritual realities below.
"It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea, a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene, and to see the errors and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below." Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's
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| mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. Lord Bacon. |
| 5850. TRUTH, Weapons of Truth is not defended by physical weapons. Peter in defending Christ was defending truth; and yet Christ forbade the use of the sword. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty, through God, to the pulling-down of the stronghold of Satan." Truth shoulders in her palace of light as she beholds men attempting to promote her interests by the employment of material forces; truth sits not on a throne that is bristling with bayonets: her's is a throne established on the immovable basis of eternal right and infinite love. Dr. J. Parker. |
| 5851. TRUTH AND ERROR, Forms of Truth, like life, will make its own form: error only lives as it is wrapped in fine clothes. Christianity was a principle of living truth, "a seed;" and, though small, only give it soil, and it will build up structures for itself. The little acorn will build in oaken forests for itself a home, before which the most magnificent palace of kings shall appear mean, and that shall flourish in strength and beauty when those palaces are dust. Truth never studies appearances, error does; truth is content with the form of a mustard-seed, error seeks all the pageantry that art can invent and wealth procure. Dr. Thomas. |
| 5852. TYRANTS, Family. For his rule over his family, and for his conduct to wife and children, subjects over whom his power is monarchial, any one who watches the world must think with trembling of the account which many a man will have to render. For in our society there is no law to control the king of the fireside. He is master of property, happiness, life almost. He is free to punish, to make happy or unhappy, to ruin or to torture. He may kill a wife gradually, and be no more questioned than the grand seignor who drows a slave at midnight. He may make slaves and hypocrites of his children, or friends and freemen, or drive them into revolt and enmity against the natural laws of love. I have heard politicians and coffee-house wise-acres talking over the newspaper, and railing at the tyranny of the emperor, and wondered how these, who are monarchs too in their way, govern their own dominions at home, where each man rules absolute. When the annals of each little reign are shown the Supreme Master under whom we hold sovereignty, histories will be laid bare of household tyrants cruel as Amurath, savage as Nero, and reckless and dissolute as Charles. Thackeray. |
| 5853. UNBELIEF, Analogy of As a child brought up in a dungeon cannot believe when told of the beauties of the sun and the outside world, no more can the natural man the doctrines of religion. |
| 5854. UNBELIEF, Deadly. Unbelief of divine truth is a destitution of the only efficient principles by which the moral and spiritual life can be sustained. The experimentalist may display a vessel from which air has been more or less exhausted, and may tell | us there is nothing pernicious in it; but, if we discover a deficiency of support for animal and vegetable life, we shall charge him with a poor equivocation. An exclusion of those truths which are supereminently moral, such as the perfect holiness or rectitude of God, and the destination of man to glorify and enjoy him (truths which revelation alone demonstrates), is an exclusion of the only sufficient aliment of true virtue. We may as well expect a singing-bird to be vocal in a receiver where he has little or no air to respire, as expect the genuine exercise of real goodness from him who has no faith in God. Shepherd.
58.53. UNBELIEF, Deeply-Rooted. How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts, when we are surprised to find our prayers answered, instead of feeling sure that they will be so, if they are only offered up in faith, and accord with the will of God! Hare.
58.56. UNBELIEF, and Faith. See these electric wires that are shooting their mysterious threads throughout our land, communicating between city and city, between man and man, however distant; dead, yet instinct with life; silent, yet vocal with hidden sound; carrying, as with a lightning-burst, the tidings of good or evil from shore to shore. Separate their terminating points by one hair's breadth from the index, or interpose some non-conducting substance, and in a moment intercourse is broken. No tidings come and go. The stoppage is as entire as if you had cut every wire in pieces, and cast these pieces to the winds. But refasten the several points, or link them to the index with some conducting material, and instantaneously the intercourse is renewed. Joy and sorrow flow again along the line. Men's thoughts, men's feelings, men's deeds, rumors of war or assurance of peace, news of victory or defeat, the sounds of falling thrones, the shouts of frantic nations, all hurrying on after each other to convey to ten thousand throbbing hearts the evil or the good which they contain. The non-conductor is unbelief. It interposes between the soul and all heavenly blessings, all divine intercourse. It may seem a thing too slight to effect so great a result, yet it does so inevitably. It shuts off the communication with the source of all glad tidings. It isolates the man, and forbids the approach of blessing. That conductor is faith. In itself it is nothing, but in its connection every thing. It restores in a moment the broken communication; and this is not from any virtue in itself, but simply as the conducting link between the soul and the fountain of all blessings above. H. Bonar.
58.57. UNBELIEF, Forms of. There are the various ramifications of the subtle spirit of unbelief. Afeism, discarding its former audacity of blasphemy, assuming now a modest garb and mendicant whine, asking our pity for its idiosyncrasy, bewailing its misfortune in not being able to believe there is a God; rationalism, whether in the transcendentalism of Hegel, or in the allegorizing impiety of Strauss, or in the pantheistic philosophy of
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Eichte, eating out the heart of the gospel, into which its vampire-fangs have fastened; latitudinarianism on a sentimental journey in search of the religious instinct, doling out its equal and niggard praise to it wherever it is found, in Feticism, Thuggism, Mohammedism, or Christianity; that species of active and high-sounding scepticism, which, for want of a better name, we may call a Credophobia, which selects the confessions and catechisms as the objects of its especial hostility, and which, knowing right well, that, if the banner is down, the courage fails, and the army will be routed or slain, "furious as a wounded bull, runs tearing at the creeds," — these, with all their offshoots and dependencies (for their name is Legion) grouped under the generic style of infidelity, have girt themselves for the combat, and are asserting and endeavoring to establish their empire over the intellects and consciences of men. And as this spirit of unbelief has many sympathies with the spirit of superstition, they have entered into unholy alliance, — "Herod and Pilate have been made friends together," — and, joined hand in hand, they are arrayed against the truth of God. O rare John Bunyan! Was he not among the prophets? Listen to his description of the last army of Diabolus before the final triumph of Immanuel. "Ten thousand doubters, and fifteen thousand bloodmen; and old Incredulity was again made general of the army."
— W. M. Punshon
