Date: 1878
The object of it seemed to be not exactly to puzzle, still less to instruct, but to astonish the audience by violent antitheses.  The preacher compared persons who expected the Bible to do everything for them to those who expected to see a locomotive climb trees;" he mentioned Eusebius, Basil, and Ambrose as men who, by their false interpreta tions, had perverted the Scripture ; he talked wildly.  of art, and philosophy, and literature, and finally burst out with " The Bible isn't a treatise on astronomy, nor geology, nor baptism, nor greenbacks!'