November 12, 2019 – John 20:27

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.Stop doubting and believe.”
—John 20:27

We are born questioners.41 Look at the wonderment in a little child’s eyes before it can speak. The child’s great word when it begins to speak is “Why?” Every child is full of questions about everything that moves and shines and changes in the little world in which he or she lives.
That is the commencement of doubt in human nature. Respect doubt for its origin. It is an inevitable thing. It is not a thing to be crushed. It is a part of humanity as God made us. Heresy is truth in the making, and doubt is the prelude of knowledge.
Further, the world is a Sphinx—an unfathomable mystery—and on every side there is temptation to questioning. In every leaf, in every cell of every leaf, there are a hundred problems. Someone spends ten years investigating what is in a leaf and five years more investigating the things that are in the things that are in the leaf. God planned the world to incite us to intellectual activity.
But the instrument with which we investigate truth is impaired. Some say it fell, and the glass is broken. Some say prejudice, heredity, or sin has spoiled its sight and has blinded our eyes and deadened our ears. In any case, the instruments with which we work on truth, even in the strongest people, are feeble and inadequate to their task.
And all religious truths are doubtable. There is no absolute proof for any one of them. Even the fundamental truth—the existence of a God—no one can prove by reason. The ordinary proof for the existence of God involves either an assumption, an argument in a circle, or a contradiction. The impression of God is kept up by experience, not by logic. And thus when the experience of religion of an individual, of a community, or of a nation wanes—their idea of God grows indistinct, and that individual, community, or nation becomes infidel.
This brief account of the origin of doubt teaches us intellectual humility. It teaches us sympathy and toleration with all who venture after truth to find their own paths. Let us never think evil of those who do not see as we do. Let us pity them and take them by the hand and spend time and thought over them and try to lead them to the true light.
—Henry Drummond