The nobility of the inquiring spirit.
The people of Beraea are commended for their disposition to inquire and search into the truth of Christianity as it was taught to them by the apostolic missionaries. They were not the slaves of prejudice. "With a quick and clear intelligence they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether they really did speak of a Christ who should suffer anti rise again. The Berean converts have naturally been regarded, especially among those who urge the duty or claim the right of private judgment, as a representative instance of the right relations of reason and faith, occupying a middle position between credulity and skepticism." The attitudes of men towards truth, as freshly revealed, or as revealed in fresh forms, are threefold:
The word "skepticism" may be used in a good as well as in a bad sense. It properly stands for that disposition to question and doubt which is one of the features of the thoughtful and inquiring mind.
I. SKEPTICISM AS DEPENDENT ON NATURAL DISPOSITION. There are, in respect of this spirit, marked diversities in nations and in races. And there are answering differences in families and in individuals. Usually the skeptical spirit is found in men rather than in women, who are as remarkable for their receptivity as men for their tendency to criticism. The beginnings of what will afterwards appear as skepticism are found in children. Some will question the why and wherefore of everything that is told them, while others will open wide eyes, and take in as real, the strangest fairy tales that can be told them. A great part of the responsibility of parents and teachers lies in the need for culturing-cultivating or restraining—the early signs of the skeptical spirit. Where the skeptical spirit is unduly developed the corrective spirit of faith must be nourished; and where credulity is excessive, the mind must he quickened to doubt. Ministers need to remember that both classes are found in their congregations, and that both classes have to be wisely led to intelligent faith.
II. SKEPTICISM AS FOSTERED BY INTELLECTUAL PRIDE. This is one of the gravest difficulties of our age, in which remarkable advances, in knowledge have been made. Those advances have chiefly borne relation to the sphere of the physical sciences, and in that sphere pride is readily nourished, because, apparently, all depends on men's own observation and research. It becomes easy for men to say—What we observe and know is the truth; and there is no other truth than "truth of fact." So we find all around us much skepticism in relation to the moral, spiritual, revelational spheres: a disposition to unreasonable doubt; to doubting for doubting's sake. This needs to be wisely but firmly rebuked, and its real source, in mere pride of intellect, should be pointed out. The physical is not the only sphere through which God has revealed himself to his creatures; and it never can be a sign of human wisdom that the best three parts of God's revelation are set aside as the dreams of dreamers.
III. SKEPTICISM AS A RESULT OF ASSOCIATIONS. As a disposition of mind, skepticism takes a place among infectious mental diseases, communicated very readily by association. A skeptical workman will infect his fellows. A skeptical student will change the tone of his college. A skeptical member of a family will destroy the recipiency of a whole family. So we, who have any kind of trust of others, need to be watchful over the influence of such persons. A minister's influence in a congregation may be seriously resisted by the power among the people of one unreasonably critical and skeptical member. He will look with high hope on every sign of the Berean spirit, the spirit of intelligent inquiry and research, but he has fewer things that call for his watchful care than the infection of the skeptical spirit, which will at once impair his influence as a Christian teacher. And the association of books of a prevailing critical and unbelieving character will be found quite as dangerous as that of skeptical persons.
IV. SKEPTICISM AS AN IMPULSE TO INQUIRY. This is its good side; and in this the example of the Beraeans is commended to us. It is the spirit that seeks for two things:
But it is characteristic of intelligent inquiry that it seeks its proofs within the spheres of its subjects. If it inquires concerning physical principles, it seeks for proof and illustration in physical facts. If its sphere be moral or spiritual, it asks for moral or spiritual reason and proof. So the Bereans did not confuse the spheres and domains of inquiry. The matter was one of prophetic revelation and of answering historical fact, and therefore their inquiries concerned