Luke 20:40

They durst not ask - Or, did not venture to ask any other question, for fear of being again confounded, as they had already been.

We see in these verses — what an old thing unbelief is. We are told that "Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question." Even in the Jewish Church, the Church of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the Church of Moses, and Samuel, and David, and the prophets — we find that there were bold, avowed, unblushing skeptics . If infidelity like this existed among God's people, the Jews — then what must have been the state of heathenism?

We see in these verses — what an old thing unbelief is. We are told that "Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question." Even in the Jewish Church, the Church of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the Church of Moses, and Samuel, and David, and the prophets — we find that there were bold, avowed, unblushing skeptics . If infidelity like this existed among God's people, the Jews — then what must have been the state of heathenism? If these things existed in a green tree — what must have been the condition of the dry? We must never be surprised when we hear of infidels, deists, heretics and free-thinkers rising up in the Church, and drawing away disciples after them. We must not count it a rare and a strange thing. It is only one among many proofs, that man is a fallen and corrupt being. Since the day when the devil said to Eve "You shall not surely die" — and Eve believed him, there never has been lacking a constant succession of forms of unbelief. There is nothing new about any of the modern theories of infidelity. There is not one of them, which is not an old disease under a new name . They are all mushrooms which spring up spontaneously in the hot-bed of human nature. It is not in reality an astonishing thing that there should rise up so many who call in question the truth of the Bible. The marvel is rather, that in a fallen world — the sect of the Sadducees should be so small. Let us take comfort in the thought that in the long run of years, the truth will always prevail. Its advocates may often be feeble, and their arguments may appear to be very weak. But there is an inherent strength in the cause itself, which keeps it alive. Bold infidels like Julian, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Paine — arise from time to time, and make a stir in the world. But they produce no lasting impression.