: Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again A Life Story by Barker Joseph - Barker Joseph 1806-1875; Methodist Church Clergy Biography; Skepticism

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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 1 to 24 GENERAL REMARKS ON INHALATION 25-26

SULPHURIC ETHER, OR ETHER 345-371 History and composition 345 Chemical and physical properties 345-9 Physiological effects 349-55 Administration of ether 356-61 Great safety of 362-9 The combination of chloroform and ether 369-71

AMYLENE 372-410 Preparation and properties 372-7 Physiological effects 378-86 Use in surgical operations 386-94 Use in parturition 394-7 Its effects 397-419

THE MONOCHLORURRETTED CHLORIDE OF ETHYLE 420-23

And the darkness and clouds which the Psalmist saw around the providence of God are not all gone. There are many things in connection with the government of the world that are hard to be understood,--hard to be reconciled by many with their ideas of what is right. There are mysteries both in nature and in history, which baffle the minds and try the faith of the best and wisest of our race.

Albert Barnes says, "There is no class of men that are so liable to rely on weak and inconclusive reasonings as preachers of the Gospel. Many a young man in a Theological Seminary is on the verge of infidelity from the nature of the reasoning employed by his instructor in defence of that which is true, and which might be well defended: and many a youth in our congregations is almost or quite a skeptic, not because he wishes to be so, but because that which is true is supported by such worthless arguments."

A sillier or a more contemptible notion--a notion more opposed to true philosophy and common sense,--can hardly be conceived. How any one could ever have the ignorance or the impudence to propound such an unnatural and monstrous absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of their own wisdom, transforms them into the most arrant and outrageous fools.

Yet this monstrous folly has found its way into books, and papers, and reviews, and, through them, into the minds of some Christian students; and when the madness of the notion is not detected, it destroys their faith, and makes them miserable infidels.

Some adopt the principle that reason is man's only guide,--that reason alone is judge of what is true and good, and that to reason every thing must be submitted, and received or rejected, done or left undone, as reason may decide. This sounds very plausible to many, and there is a sense in which it may be true; but there is a sense in which it is fearfully false; and the youth that adopts it, and acts upon it, will be likely to land himself in utter doubt, both with regard to religion and morals. There are numbers of cases in which reason is no guide at all,--in which instinct, natural affection, and consciousness are our only guides. You can never prove by what is generally called reason alone, that man is not a machine, governed entirely by forces over which he has no control. You cannot therefore prove by what certain philosophers call reason, that any man is worthy of reward or punishment, of praise or blame, of gratitude or of resentment; or that there is any such thing in men as virtue or vice, according to the ordinary sense of the words. The ablest logicians on earth, when they take reason alone as their guide, come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as liberty or moral responsibility, in the ordinary acceptation of the terms, but that all is fixed, that all is fate, from eternity to eternity. They accordingly come to the further conclusion, that there is no free, voluntary Ruler of the universe,--that there is no Almighty Judge and Rewarder,--that there is neither reward nor punishment, properly speaking, either in this world or in the world to come. They become atheists.

But even honest and well-disposed men of science sometimes form bad, defective, or one-sided habits of thought and judgment unconsciously, which render it impossible for them to do justice either to Nature or Christianity as revelations of the character and government of God. And these faulty habits of thought and judgment, and the anti-Christian conclusions to which they lead, pass on from men of science to literary men; and literature is vitiated, and books and periodicals which should lead men to truth, cause them to err. Thus skeptical principles pervade society. They find advocates at times even among men who call themselves ministers of Christ. The consequence is, that well-disposed, and even pious young men, are perplexed, bewildered, and some who, like John the Baptist, were "burning and shining lights," become "wandering stars," and lose themselves, for a time at least, amidst the "blackness and darkness" of doubt and despair.

There are several other causes of doubt and unbelief which we might name, if we had time; but we have not. There is one however which we must notice, because it had considerable influence in our own case; we refer to the bad feeling which sometimes takes possession of the minds of Christians towards each other, or of the minds of ministers towards their brother ministers.

You are aware, perhaps, that if you scratch the skin, and introduce a little diseased animal matter to the blood, it will gradually spread itself through the system, and in time poison the whole body. And if you do not know this, you know, that if you take a little leaven, and place it in a mass of meal, and leave it there to work unchecked, it will in time leaven the whole lump. And as it is with things natural, so it is with things spiritual. If you allow a little leaven of bad feeling to get into your minds towards your fellow Christians or your brother ministers, and permit it to remain there, it will in time infect your whole soul, impair the action of all its faculties, and after alienating you from individuals, separate you first from the Church, and then from Christ and Christianity.

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