Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-12-09

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Notwithstanding erain and disagreeab1e
weather, McKendree Church was crowded
with people Sunday night to hear DR.. VIM.
Z. Munsey. He read for his text the latter
portion of the 102d Psalm: ssOf old hast
thou laid the foundation of the earth, etc.
He preached more than two hours, and had
a still and attentive. audience throughout.
For all that his physical weakness hindered
distinct enunciati0n and otherwise inn
paired his delivery, the serin0li We would
pronounce a good one. 1t would compare
well with the best efforts of Bledsoe, Mil
burn, Holland or Palmer. As grandeur
and sublimity are the predominating traits
of their sermons, so of DR.. Munsey's Nor
is it too much to say, that his power of
eomprehending the universe, its creation,
time, eternity, the world of spirits and all
those great and awful conceptions, and of
rendering The inyisible-even darkness
itself-in some sense visible, the intangible
tangible, and the inaudible .Music from
the Spheres aulible-this power Of his re-
selnbleS that of Milton himself. His power
is that of simplifying the ordinary scope and
force of mans finite conceptions of things
natural and experimentation of the
Deity Himself-to something apparently
| like their true bounds. He took for ms
lance, the usually vague and unsatisfactory
conceptions of 'the. beginning" the
act of creation, the duration and de-
strlction of the world, hange, time,
from everlasting to everlasting" and
of the eternal Identity and self-exist-
ence of God, all of which arc suggested in
the text, and gave to. them all power
and magnitude In the last degree sublime.
For those who heard him he impaired to
the verses of the text; which would other
wise have been read with no extraoruliilsns,,',,
| interest, weight and significance that will
| long be remembered. This is true preach
| ING. This is indeed expounding the Scrip
ures-eyolving their hidden but real mean
| ing and resting it upon the minds of ifien
| iu all its impressiveness.
| In discussing the antiquity of the earth
| DR.. Munsey Undertook TO solve the prob
lem Of reconciling the account in Genesis
with the conclusions of science In oppo-
| sitiOn to those who reach the date OfcreatiOn
| by adding six ''earth DAYS" TO the number
of DAYS trarspired since Adam was created,
he took the rational and legitimate position
| that The six days spoken Of were not meas
ured by the diurnal revolution of our
planet, but by events. Day means cycle,
and the six days of creation were six great,
unequal and now Understandable cycles of
| the successive events in creation. These
were Gods days, to whom thousand
years is as our day and our day
as thousand Years. The man
| who would estimate Gods power by the
rapidity of His handiworks, would be con-
| temptible in the eyes of that Universal In
tehigence. The same man would ask God
| why He did pot make the welkin only half
as high as it is, or his own stature a few
inches lower. DR.. Munsey took the ground
that the substantial end of the Bible is
the salvation of man, and for this purpose
it is sufficiently clear and ineligible. 1t
was not the province of the Bible to antici
pate the progressive development of human
knowledge, by being itself scientifically
full and accurate. If it had, for instance,
announced the now received truth that the
sum does not rise and set, but is the cen
tire of circumvolving system of
plants, of which the earth is
one, and thus anticipated Capurnicus' dis
covery, which was made only three cen
turies ago, it (the Bible) would not have been
received as the truth. 1t would net have
been adapted to the age in which it was
written. 1t would have contradicted mems
convictions of things and subjected itself
to their contempt for the sheer sake of sci
ence, to the subversion of its higher mis-
sion, that of duty and salvation. Its
writers would have met the fate of GallileO
and been punished as heretics. No; the
Bible is adapted to no age, not even to this,
but to all ages in common; and this is con-
sidered by Dr.. Munsey as an important ey-
idence OF its divine origin
This notice would be too incomplete
without some further attention to the pow
er Of imagination displayed in the sermon.
1t is OF that bold, daring description, which
characterizes Hollands noted sermon on
the Judgment Day." 1t has no timidity
in going to the very confines of time
and eternity. 1t moves without embarass-
ment In either heaven he'll. Not all the
may depths Of infinite space can entaIgle
its steps or divert It's course whittier 1t does
not list to go. Not all the sublime terror
of original chaos and night can daunt its
advance or defy its description. A memer-
able EXAMPLE of this amazing power of
genius is DIR. Munsey's intrepid pilgrimage
to the verge of ''the beginning" even fur
ther still-tO the period when there was
no light, no world, nothing but infinite,
solemn darkness, instinct with the omnis-
cient, omnipotent, brooding spirit of God.
1t was then, in the awful stiffness of uni
yersal, unbroken night; that the purpose Of
forming this world was determined; and,
as in the ancient myth, old Atlas was sup
posed to bear up the world, so night, being
conquered, was compelled to take upon its
blackening and heaving shoulders all this
vast and illumined system of shining
spheres. Here the speaker attained a
pitch Of sublimity, never surpassed even in
| Paradise Lost.
DR.. Munsey delivers a lecture tonight on
the subject. ''Man," at Elm Street Church.