Credulity and faith are like toadstools and mushrooms respectively, near enough in appearance to be mistaken for each other, but so wholly unlike that their effects are exactly opposite. The true man of faith is seldom credulous, and the credulous man seldom has real faith. Faith belongs to the simple-hearted, credulity to the simple-minded. They are worlds apart. The one honors God by believing His promises against all evidence; the other is a child of superstition and honors nobody. Rather, he reveals untidy mental habits and lack of spiritual insight.
It is astonishing what some people will believe when they get going. They properly hold it a sin to doubt the Bible, so they refuse to doubt anything that is served up along with the Bible, however ridiculous and unscriptural it may be. If the story has a flavor of wonder about it, these uncritical friends will accept it without question and repeat it in an awed voice with much solemn shaking of the bowed head. Multiply such people in any given church, and you have a perfect soil for the growth of every kind of false teaching and fanatical excess.
