1870 160 The love of objections is one of the worst moral features possible. It is quite right to weigh them, and see that one is well founded in what the soul builds on. But there is moral proof in the power of an object to produce (where the soul is capable of feeling) affections which are the moral reflex, in a rightly-constituted mind, of the object itself, and which are thus the proof of power, because the fruit of power. Now where this is the case, the love of objections is only the proof of insensibility to the power which attracts and fixes the soul. It is moral incapacity to estimate what is excellent. The qualities displayed in the object do not convince and silence cavil. Why? Because the heart is incapable of estimating, by its own sentiments, these qualities; perhaps it does not like their superiority. This is infidelity.
There is another thing — that when the object is known and valued, the moral aim of the infidel is judged. "Their device is only to pull him down whom thou wouldest exalt." The sagacity, and here the spiritual sagacity, of affection easily detects this. "Give God the praise!" The modern compliment of infidels also, "As for this man, we know that he is a sinner," will not bide it. There is a kind of reasoning which flows from being the subject of power, which infidel Pharisees cannot reach. Theirs only creates astonishment, by its evident nonsense, to the simple mind who knows the power. "Why herein is a wonderful thing, that ye know not who he is, yet be hath opened my eyes." There is no mistake then.
The sceptic may ask, "What has this to do with scripture, or an historical document?" He is found there. No doubt the sceptic has not found Him there; he does not know Him. He says, indeed, to the evangelical — imitating language he has heard — that he has tried both; he has a double experience — the believer's and the infidel's. But this poor imitation (of what converted persons, who have come to the knowledge of Christ, have said) is too miserably transparent to be anything but the shame of him who uses it. What did he experience at the first? The effect, on his own showing, of believing a lie — of supposing true what had no existence in truth. "A deceived heart hath turned him aside: be cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" Let not the language seem hard. The sceptic declares it is a lie; and that Jesus is not the Messiah. What was his first experience? "To any 'evangelical' I have a right to say, that while he has a single, I have a double experience." Now how can he tell what the effects, "the spiritual fruits," of a living knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ are, since he does not believe there is such a person at all? His only past experience was, as he avows, a wholly false one: I ever hope it may not have been. "Spiritual fruits," in his case, are not those of the true knowledge in power of the Lord Jesus. He never had such; for if he really knew Jesus to be the Son of God, it was and must have been because He was so — if He was so, He is so. Now the sceptic declares it is, and hence was, all a delusion. His "spiritual fruits" were the fruits of a delusion, of belief in an imposture. Think of a person coolly speaking of this in his own case! To what a state of moral reasoning, of moral susceptibilities, must he be reduced!