The Sin of Scoffing at Religion 3

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II. I shall consider the CAUSES of scoffing. This vice has less to plead in excuse for itself than almost any other that the depravity of man can lead him to commit. It is at once the greatest crime, and originates in the least temptation. When Satan urges men on to other sins he presents the lure of some appropriate gratification; to ambition he offers the prospect of honor; to avarice, injustice, or extortion, riches; to lust, sensual indulgences; to malice, revenge; but to the scorner he offers neither riches, nor honor, nor sensuality; nothing, literally nothing—but the laughter of fools, and "the reputation perhaps of having said with sarcasm—which no wise man would have said at all." The scorner is a poor, silly hireling, who serves the devil for nothing; of whom it may be emphatically said, "the wages of his sin is death," nothing but death; his broad farce ends in the deepest tragedy, since it terminates in the eternal perdition of the miserable performer. "What folly," says Tillotson, "is that for a man to offend his conscience to please his humor, and for his jest, to lose the two best friends he has in the world, God and his own soul."

What then is the cause of this vice? There are many subordinate and proximate ones. Of these, pride and a high opinion of self takes the lead. There is no disposition more apparent in the scoffer than this; "proud and haughty scorner," says Solomon, "is his name." Neither that splendor of evidence amidst which religion reveals and proves her celestial origin, nor the assent of the greatest and best of men in all ages to its truth, is sufficient to convince such an individual that it is worthy of his regard. The reverence of ages, and of nations, is not enough to check his scorn, or to awe him into respect. His conduct is dictated by a disgusting conceit of his own powers, united with an insufferable contempt of the talents of others.

Scoffing is sometimes the result of a prevailing and indecent levity of mind, an habitual and indulged frivolity, which alike indisposes and unfits a man for any serious pursuit; an unbridled disposition to convert everything, not excepting the most solemn and momentous subjects, into matter of mirth and ridicule. There are people who scarcely ever have a season in which wisdom is the regent of the soul; but whose whole character and life are abandoned to the dominion of folly, and whose time to laugh is the whole period of their waking existence.

A silly affectation of novelty, combined with a wish to be thought superior to the terrors of superstition, leads in many cases to the sin of ridiculing piety. Not a few are persuaded to engage in the practice for the sake of indulging a talent for wit or humor. A talent for genuine wit as distinguished from burlesque, is a rare accomplishment; and still rarer is its proper application. When employed in confounding error, and abashing wickedness, it is invaluable; but how shocking is it to see this gift of heaven turned against its Divine Author, by being employed to ridicule his image. Yet this is the most beloved and valued accomplishment of the scoffer; to raise the laugh, and secure applause, he loses no opportunity, spares no character, and excepts no subject. To throw off the sparks of wit he would not scruple to "set his tongue on fire by hell." Dangerous and destructive sport! Such flames are more easily kindled than extinguished, and often consume the individual who ignites them.

Many are led on to assume the character of a scorner, by the power of fashion and the contagion of evil company; so dangerous is it to associate with the wicked, and so difficult to resist the influence of example. Many an individual has been emboldened to scoff while in company, who when alone, has trembled at the recollection of his sin.

Inability to attack religion in any other way induces some to assail it with their scorn. This is an easy method of manifesting their hatred—the pigmy mind that cannot wield an argument can throw a sneer; and he who could as soon hope to fly as to reason, may still have talent enough to laugh, or to retail the jokes which others have formed—and indeed, as men when their minds are heated by their passions, say things more clever than they could utter in their cooler moods—so people of dull intellect when irritated by dislike of piety, do really utter sayings of greater cleverness than they could otherwise aspire to.

But the chief source of scoffing is that which the apostle has mentioned in the text, "Scoffers, walking after their own lusts." Jude has traced the sin to the same source, "But beloved, remember the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how they told you there would be mockers in the last time walking after their own ungodly lusts."

It was said by an infidel of former times, that when reason is against a man, then a man will be against reason—and it may with equal, if not with greater propriety, be said, that when religion is against a man, then will a man be against religion. The truths and the precepts of Scriptural revelation are enemies to pride of intellect, and depravity of heart; and it is matter of little surprise that they who cannot be reconciled to humility and purity, should scorn the system which enforces such virtues. As those children in a school who have most to fear from a master's displeasure, are the most ready to treat him with ridicule behind his back, and as the whip will be generally treated with most merriment by those who are most in danger of its lashes, so they who have most to dread from religion will be more forward than others to scorn it; and they who are in the greatest danger of the quenchless fire, will like other madmen, be the first to sport with the flames.

True religion frowns upon every sin; rebukes, accuses, and condemns every sinner. A man cannot swear, or take the name of God in vain, or break the Sabbath, or indulge in the least act of uncleanness—but true piety—this representative of God in our world—censures the sin, and threatens the sinner. Like the angel of the Lord resisting the hireling prophet in his path, it opposes itself to the transgressor in his way, and with a drawn sword and a voice of thunder, exclaims, proceed at your peril. Interrupted, perplexed, and resisted in his iniquitous career; rendered uneasy, and less capable of enjoying his lusts, the sinner becomes angry, and like a evil youth impeded in lawless sport, he derides his monitor, and abuses him with ill names.

And for the same reason the scorner derides the righteous—their example is a constant reproof, accusation, and condemnation of him. Their holy conduct wounds his conscience, just as sunbeams do the weak and disordered eye—he cannot go on so easily in his sins while they are present; hence he hates them, as Cain did Abel; but being restrained by the laws from offering violence to their persons—he vents his rage in scoffs and sneers upon their character.

The sum of the whole matter is this—a man says there is no God, because he wishes there were none—he scorns spiritual religion, because spiritual religion condemns him—he is an infidel because he is a sinner—he is a scoffer because he is an infidel. This then is the true and ultimate source of scoffing, an unrenewed, unsanctified mind; a heart that hates God, and abhors his image. Some men would scoff at religion no more if they could exchange Christianity for the mythology of Greece and Rome. Give them but the profligate Jupiter and Venus to patronize their uncleanness; and the drunken Bacchus to sanctify their inebriety; and the laughing Momus to consecrate their folly; in lieu of the Holy Lord God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity—and they would find it no difficulty to live in terms of good fellowship with such a religion as this. But the religion of the Bible is too humbling for the pride of their intellect, too holy for the corruptions of their heart, too strict and too rigid for that liberty in which they would indulge in their lives, and they cannot endure it—and being unable to confound it by logic, or overwhelm it by eloquence, they treat it with derision.

In some cases there is reason to believe that scoffing may be traced up to fear, united with dislike. The scorner secretly trembles at the idea of a God, and of a judgment to come. In spite of himself he fears that there may be a reality in religion, and if there is—what is to become of him! The poor creature, like a scared child whistling as he passes through a graveyard to keep up his courage, or laughing at the story of a ghost, to conceal the palpitations of his heart, ridicules true religion to allay, if possible, the rising alarms of his conscience, and to avoid the terrors of his affrighted imagination. May I not appeal to some who read this for the truth of what I say, when I affirm, that the sneering countenance is oftentimes the impious mask of a cowardly heart and of a trembling conscience.

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