Not believing in the truth

Mon­day. [Acts 12:12–17; John 8:42–51] What means, do you think, did the Lord use to ex­plain to the Jews the rea­son for their not be­liev­ing in Him? The means he used was to tell them the truth. And be­cause I tell you the truth, ye be­lieve me not (John 8:45). The lie be­came, as it is said, their flesh and blood, and made them un­able to re­ceive the truth. Why do peo­ple not be­lieve to­day? For the same rea­son; the Lord speaks the truth; this is why they do not be­lieve. But how can this be? Are they not all sci­en­tists, and don’t they talk on­ly a­bout the truth? They have man­y words, but no deeds. They spin their sys­tems as a spi­der spins its web, on­ly they don’t no­tice the flimsiness. The prin­ci­ples of their sys­tems are ground­less, and their con­clu­sions can­not be proved; but they are sat­is­fied with them nev­er­the­less. There has be­come such a de­mand for hypotheses that it seems they alone make up the en­tire con­tent of their minds, and this is reputed to be sol­id ed­u­ca­tion. They ap­ply the fog of their dreams to the few facts they have pro­cured; and these facts ap­pear in this fog to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from what they are in re­al­i­ty. Nev­er­the­less, this is all reputed to be the sphere of im­mu­ta­ble truth. So their mind has gone rot­ten, and its taste has been ruined! How can it con­tain the truth? And so they do not be­lieve the Lord, Who speaks on­ly the truth.