Faith Makes Men Strong

Faith makes men strong - not in the head, but in the heart. Doubting people are generally headstrong - the Thomas-sort of people who obstinately declare that they will not believe unless they can have proofs of their own choosing. If you read certain newspapers, journals, quarterly reviews, and so on, you will see that the doubting people who are always extolling scepticism and making out that there is more faith in their doubt than in half the creeds, and so on, are particularly strong in the upper region, namely, in the head, only it is that sort of head-strength which implies real weakness, for obstinacy seldom goes with wisdom. They are always sneering at believers as a feeble folk, which is a clear sign that they are not very strong themselves; for evermore is this a rule without exception, that when a man despises his opponent he is himself the party who ought to be despised.

When certain writers rave about “evangelical platitudes,” as they commonly do, they only see in others a fault with which they are largely chargeable themselves. Anybody who glances at the sceptical literature of the present day will bear me out that the platitudes have gone over to the doubting side of the house. No people can write such fluent nonsense, and talk such absurdity, as the school of modem doubt and “culture:” they think themselves the wisest of the wise, but, professing to be wise, they have become fools, and I know what I say.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Cheery Word In Troublous Times." Image by flatworldsedge on Flickr under Creative Commons License.