Spurgeon: Educated Idiots

"My brethren, when you hear that a learned man has made a new discovery which contradicts the Scriptures, do not feel alarmed. Do not imagine that he is really a great man, but believe that he is just an educated idiot, or a self-conceited fool. If you find time to read the works of learned sceptics, you will soon see that their statements of fact are not reliable, their deductions are not logical, their inferences are monstrous, and their speculations are insane. I remember reading some statements of the great German, Oken, which to me sounded singularly like the babblings of Bethlehem Hospital. They reminded me of an incident which occurred when a prize was offered for verses of poetry, which were to be quite free from meaning. Two of the competitors were nearly equal, but in the poem of one of them there was the faintest glimmering of an idea, while the other had not even a trace of sense, and therefore gained the prize. I vote for the supremacy of the 'neologians' in that department; in sonorous nonsense, they excel. If I am thought to express myself too strongly, it must be so, for I believe I speak what God himself would endorse; he applies no soft terms to boastful unbelievers."

-C.H. Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry (1900, republished by the Banner of Truth, 2023)

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