The dissolving of doubt.
"I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts," etc. A most important subject (not growing exegetically out of the passage, nevertheless) is suggested by the text, which is admirably treated by Horace Bushnell, in 'Sermons on Living Subjects.' For the sake of any who may not have access to the book, we give a brief outline, for the most part in Bushnell's words.
I. THE PREVALENCE OF DOUBT. The prevalence of doubt is exhibited and illustrated at considerable length. "Science puts everything in question, and literature distils the questions, making an atmosphere of them."
II. CAUSES OF DOUBT. "They never come of truth or high discovery, but always of the want of it."
1. All the truths of religion are inherently dub/table. They are the subjects of moral evidence, not of absolute demonstration.
2. We begin life as unknowing creatures that have everything to learn.
3. Our faculty is itself disorder; e.g. a bent telescope; a filthy window.
III. THE DISSOLUTION OF DOUBT.
1. Counsel negative. Not "by inquiry, search, investigation, or any kind of speculative endeavour. Men must never go after the truth to merely find it, but to practise it and live by it."
2. Counsel positive. Bushnell asserts and illustrates at length that man has universally the absolute idea of right and its correlative wrong; and then enforces, with power and manifoldness of illumination, this: "Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly, and' with a completely whole intent, in the principle of right doing as a principle." (No condensation can give any idea of the grasp and fatness with which this is exhibited and applied.)
IV. THE RESULT. "A soul thus won to its integrity of thought and meaning will rapidly clear all tormenting questions and difficulties. They are not all gone, but they are going." "The ship is launched; he is gone to sea, and has the needle on board."
V. SUPPLEMENTARY DIRECTION.
1. Be never afraid of doubt.
2. Be afraid of all sophistries and tricks and strifes of disingenuous argument.
3. Getting into any scornful way is fatal.
4. Never settle upon any thing as true, because it is safer to hold it than not.
5. Have it as a law never to put force on the mind or try to make it believe. It spoils the mind's integrity.
6. Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conquer doubts against time. "One of the greatest talents in religious discovery is the finding how to hang up questions and let them hang without being at all anxious about them What seemed perfectly insoluble will clear itself in a wondrous revelation." And here is a thought: "It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth, if you should have some few questions left to be carried on with you when you go hence, for in that more luminous state, most likely they will soon be cleared, only a thousand others will be springing up even there, and you will go on dissolving still your new sets of questions, and growing mightier and more deep-seeing for eternal ages."—R.