The Need For Unbelief

Wednes­day. [Acts 18:22–28; John 12:36–47] Lord who hath be­lieved our re­port? (Is. 53:1), the Proph­et Isa­iah la­ments in as­ton­ish­ment. Now it would be fit­ting to cry out, “Who now sin­cere­ly be­lieves Thy word, O Lord?” Al­most ev­ery­one has be­come slack. Man­y are yet si­lent a­bout their un­be­lief; while it is rare to find a heart that has not turn­ed in the oth­er di­rec­tion. What is the rea­son for this? In­ter­est in un­be­lief has begun to be felt; the need for un­be­lief has de­vel­oped, for con­ceal­ing in­ter­ests of the heart which do not a­gree with faith. Here is the root of evil. Rea­son is not the ad­ver­sary of faith, but a cor­rupt heart is. Rea­son is on­ly guilty here in that it sub­mits to the heart, and be­gins to phi­los­o­phize — not ac­cord­ing to the foun­da­tions of truth, but ac­cord­ing to the de­sires of the heart. Fur­ther­more, pow­er­ful ar­gu­ments for the truth seem worth­less to the mind, and some trifling ar­gu­ment a­gainst the truth be­comes a whole moun­tain. In gen­er­al, con­fu­sion comes in­to the men­tal realm, blinding the mind, which does not and can­not see, no mat­ter what you tell it.