Men and their Unbelief!

“If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)

The history of the preaching of the Gospel, the whole history of Christianity, bears unanswerable testimony to the profound truth of the judgement which our Lord puts into the mouth of Abraham. People are apt to imagine that a striking miracle, performed under such circumstances as ought to banish doubt from any reasonable mind, must overcome opposition and silence contradiction. But this is a grave error which experience condemns. The majority of men who, knowing Jesus Christ and his Church, believe not, would not believe more readily though one went to them from the dead. The assertion admits of abundant proof. At the commencement of our Lord’s preaching St. John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask if he were the Messiah whom the world was looking for, and Jesus answered them: “Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen; the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in me.” (St. Matthew xi. 4-7)

Such were the wonders daily performed by Jesus Christ; each of his steps was, so to speak, marked by a miracle; he exercised absolute sovereignty over all nature; nothing resisted his voice; he called forth the dead from the grave with the same ease with which he gave sight to the blind or calmed the angry waves. His doctrine, his life, his moral character were equal to his power. Never a man spoke as he did. His lessons infinitely surpassed those of all the wise men who had preceded him; and men asked in amazement whence came this sublime wisdom to a man who had not followed the teaching of any master. What a life was to be compared to his in dignity, in moral grandeur, in modesty, goodness, unselfishness, in devotion to duty! He presented the ideal of moral perfection to the eyes of all men. Such is Jesus Christ as the Gospel narrative shows him to us… And how was He received? What effect did this threefold and incomparable miracle of the power, the doctrine, and the life of Jesus produce upon the Jews? His contemporaries who saw and heard him were divided into two or three different categories with regard to him: some believed in him, others were indifferent and appeared to take no heed either of his works or his person; many pursued with implacable hatred. (N.J. Laforet; The Principal Causes of Infidelity)

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