BULK BELIEVERS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1880

BULK BELIEVERS.

It is one thing to believe the Bible when you know what it contains, and another thing to believe it when you do not. It is one thing to believe the things that are in the Bible, and another thing to believe that the Bible, whatever it may be, is true.

We may believe that the Bible is true without knowing what is true, or believe without knowing what we believe. Many of our believers are of this kind. They accept the Bible, and then let it go. For aught they know, it may be the Koran or the Apocrypha. They believe it as they believe the truths of astronomy, without having learned them. They believe in a closed book, and to them a blank book. Such a faith is like a knowledge of geometry which believes that it is true but does not know what it is. If you don't know what you believe, you don't believe anything to purpose. All have heard of the man who, instead of praying, had a prayer pasted on his bed-post, to which he referred the Lord, as containing his sentiments. So many persons do with their faith. Instead of believing, they simply point to the Bible as what they believe. They let the book do their believing for them.

Now, we protest that there is no belief of anything except what goes through the mind. You can't believe anything but what you think. You must know in order to believe; must know, at least, what it is that you believe. There is no such thing as believing the Bible. You must believe the things in the Bible—the story of creation, the story of Jonah, the story of Calvary. You must believe the utterances of Isaiah and of Christ. You must believe after you understand, and believe the particular things related. The Bible cannot be adopted like a series of resolutions, and such acceptance be accounted for faith. It is not to be taken into our opinion entire, lid and all, to be believed in the gross or accepted as a bulk. It is believed, if at all, by a rational acquaintance with what it contains and an assent to the truth of those very things. Those who believe without knowing what they believe are simply unbelievers, having no opinion or materials for any. They are biblical heathen, who need missionaries to take them the light. They are not Orthodox, whatever else they may be. They differ from the skeptics only in this: that, whereas the skeptics know what the Bible contains, and doubt it, they don't know what it contains and believe it. They know nothing of Scripture, instead of knowing it wrongly. They believe and believe nothing, while the skeptics don't believe and believe nothing; one's uncertainty being as to what is true and the other's as to whether it is true.

If you would cook a rabbit, you must first get the rabbit. If you would believe the Bible, you must first get the Bible. You cannot have belief without the materials, any more than you can have a dinner without the materials. You must get something to believe before you can believe, just as you must have something to sell before you can sell; and the way you are to get what you are to believe is to apprehend it in your mind, and not to take it as a bundle of unknown contents.

It would be interesting to some people if they would go to the Bible, to see what it is that they believe. And nothing would, perhaps, be as new to them as their own opinions. The reason so many people are such voracious believers is that they take it in without knowing what they swallow—a bulk under the name of the Bible, or a creed in which they really get nothing but the name. They take it like a pill in jelly, in which they do not perceive anything of the thing itself, and, therefore, may with indifference take anything, however repugnant to them. They might just as well eat the Bible as believe it in that way; or chew up and swallow the Westminster Catechism as accept it on such profession of faith.—Independent.