EXTRACT FROM LECTURE BY LATE REV. JOHN KENNEDY, D.D.,
DINGWALL.*
To some minds any man will seem a bigot who yields the homage of a simple faith to the revealed truth of God. Men who have never tried to forecast their own eternal future, who have been ever rudely suppressing their consciousness of immortality and their conscience of sin, who imagine all that is knowable to be within the reach of unaided reason, and who, in the pride of intellect, boast of their achievements in the acquisition of knowledge, treat with contempt the love of Bible themes and the belief of Bible verities which dispose the Christian to cleave as with a death-grasp to the Word of God. What sympathy can these have with the man who, conscious of immortality and of sin, has looked in the light of truth on his relation to the Judge of all, and who in the normal condition of his sinful being finds no element of hope, but who in the light of Gospel truth has seen a provision, bright with the lustre of a glory manifestly Divine, fraught with the bounty of a love which only God could cherish, and adapted to his wants by a wisdom that must be infinite, which with unsuspecting confidence he cordially embraces, as his quickened soul realises as from heaven the voice that calls him to partake and live for ever. Can we wonder that that man should seem to the trifling sceptic a very bigot, as he refuses to quit his hold of what he grasps in the hand of faith? It is all to him. It is as nothing to the other.
But it ill befits the infidel either to mock or to pity this simple believer. In any case the latter has an immense advantage over the former. Meantime he has joy unspeakable and full of glory which the other has never tasted, and after losing this happiness all his life, the sceptic, when he dies, can possibly gain nothing.
Were names rightly applied, the infidel would be called the Bigot. There is not on earth a greater bigot than he. He must believe more than any other, and he must believe this without the shadow of a shade of good reason for his faith. He has by far the hardest task of believing to perform. He must believe that there are no such realities after death as an eternal heaven and an eternal hell, while refusing the information God gives regarding them, and having no other source of knowledge whatever. He
* Taken from Life of Dr. Kennedy, by late Rev. A. Auld, Obrig.—Ed.
must believe that he is quite competent to judge whether God should reveal His will to men, and in what form this should be done, if done at all; and judging that He hath not given such a revelation, He stakes all on that verdict. He must believe that all who ever received the Word of God as true were deluded, and conclude that they made no gain by faith, although He has no knowledge whatever of their present state. The man who believes all this has gone through the hardest of all tasks. He who, under the pretence of believing nothing, believes all this, and will not but believe it, though there is absolutely nothing to support his faith, is of all bigots the most bigoted.
In times such as ours it is easy to seem a bigot, if one keeps a firm hold of truth, and is careful to have the seal of heaven on his hope. No Christian can be true and faithful now-a-days on whose brow the world shall not brand the name of bigot. But let him bear it. It is a mark of honour, though intended to be a brand of shame. It proves him to be an associate of the men of whom the world was not worthy, but who, under the world’s lash, did more for the world’s good than all besides. The world ever suffers by the men it honours. The men of mercy to it are the men it hates. Ah, these old Covenanters of our native land were stern bigots in their day. It was well for Scotland that they were. They could part with their lives, but they could not sell the truth. They would yield all for conscience, but they would yield nought to despots. They could bear to suffer and to die, but they were afraid to sin. It was this bigotry which won its liberty for their native land. The legacy bequeathed to it by these men of faith, whose only home was oft the mountain cavern, and to whom the snow was oft only the winding-sheet which wrapped their bodies when they had given their lives for Christ, was a richer boon than all ever given to it by the kings who occupied its throne, and by all the men of title and of wealth who owned its acres. Oh yes, they were bigots these, in the judgment of scoffing sceptics and of ruthless persecutors, and not all the piles they could kindle could burn their bigotry out of them.
And these were stern bigots, too, according to the world’s estimate, who headed the crusade against Antichrist, when, at the era of the Reformation, a fire from Heaven had kindled in their hearts the love of truth. It was by unflinching resolution induced by living faith, these men overcame in the times of stern trial in which they unfurled their banner in the name of God. A pliant Melanchthon would have bartered the gospel for peace—the stern courage of a Luther was needed to prevent the sacrifice. In every age, from the beginning, when the cause of truth emerged triumphant from the din and dust of controversy, the victory was won by a band of bigots who were sworn to its defence.
There is need now of the men whom the world calls bigots. Men of grasp less firm and of love less fervent will do little for the cause of truth and for the best interests of humanity. Other men than these will even barter their own eternal prospects for the honour which comes from men and for the ease which is won by compromise. How many such as these there are, even in the Churches, and even there in the van, who boast of a charity which is indiscriminate, in its regards, of a sentiment that refuses the form which the truth imposes, and who have learned from the worldling his scorn of all seriousness, his contempt for all scrupulousness of conscience, and his sneers at the religion which is sustained by intercourse with heaven! These have their followers. A widespread movement has begun away from vital religion, fixed beliefs, and holy living. The Churches are moving with the current. The time may be fast approaching when the one alternative shall be living faith or open scepticism. A tide which few seem careful to resist is bearing us on to such a crisis. How the result may tell on Churches, communities, and individuals we cannot now forecast, nor can we attempt to conjecture without sadness of feeling. But an assured victory is the destiny of the cause of truth. Till the hour of its triumph shall have come, all who have linked their interests to the chariot of the gospel shall find themselves a diminishing band as they advance, their loneliness of feeling deepening as former friendships wane into neglect, coldness is changed into scorn, and contempt passes into bitter enmity; and they can follow the cause of truth only amidst the scoffs of unbelievers and the shafts of persecutors.
But let no lover of the truth—let none whose eye ever rested on the hope of the gospel—turn craven-hearted back from trial. To fall in the cause of truth is but to rise in the kingdom of glory. To be trampled under foot till crushed dead by the heel of persecution is but to have the prison broken open, that the ransomed spirit may pass from bondage to a throne. And in his saddest hour let not the sufferer for truth refuse the joy which glimpses of prophetic light bring to his heart as they break through the clouds of present trial. His King shall triumph in His cause on earth, and His friends shall share His glory. All nations shall touch His sceptre. The old strongholds of unbelief shall be levelled in the dust. Iniquity shall hide its face ashamed. Truth, as revealed from Heaven, shall receive universal homage, and be glorious in the halo of its blissful triumphs before the eyes of all.