The New York herald., 1879-08-11
TALMAGE AT BRIGHTON.
PREACHING AT ENGLAND's rAvoRITE WATERING
PLACE-THE SCRIPTURES DEFENDED.
by CABLE TO THE HERALD

PREACHING AT ENGLAND's rAvoEITE WATERING
PLACE-THE SCRIPTURES DEFENDED.
,st.n lDy CABLE TO THE HERALDl
BRIGHToN, August 10, 1879.
The Rev. DIR. Talmage has been spending the
last few days at this fashionable summer resort.
He preached here to-day. The subject of the
sermon was ''The Glory of the Scriptures" DIR.
Talmage began leading up to his theme by
comparison of all the books of all ages with the
Bible. Old books, he sad went out OF date and
the interest in them had long ceased. Books
were human; they had their birth and their mid
die life Of usefulness and then came old age and
they would die. Not so with the Bible, which
started in the worlds infancy and grew under
theocracy and monarchy, and withstood the
storms of fire. 1t still lived, and at this mo-
ment there were ten thousand heralds Of the
cross with their hands on the free old English
Bible. The Bible was always right-right in
its authorization right in its style, right in its
doctrine, right in its effects As to its authen-
ticity there was not so much evidence that John
Milton wrote paradise Lost" as there was that
the Lord God Almighty, by the hands of proph-
cts, evangelists and apostles, wrote that book.
A book written by impostors would have been
secuted by everybody. If the Bible had been
an imposition the people would have rejected
it. With all their opposition how near had its
enemies come to destroying it! When they be-
gan there were only two or three thousand
copies of it, now there were two hundred mill
ions Again, hundreds of thousands of Chris
tian men and women had felt the power of the
Scriptures and been cured of the leprosy OF sin.
Was there no efficacy in such medcinel
M HOW TO READ THE SCRIPTURES.
DIR. Talmage next spoke of the different facts
stated in the Bible which had been long disbe-
lieved, yet finally confirmedby the discoveries
of science. Birthstone had been brought up
from the depths Of the Dead Sea, proving the
agency of that substance in the destruction of
Nineveh, taking three days to go around the
city, was denied until DR.. Layard proved it by
actual experiment at the ruins. Moses had
spoken of vineyards in Egypt and the idea was
scoffed at. Yet centuries later all the processes
of tending vines were found in sculptures dug up
from ruins. The Bible also right in style,
but many were wrong in their manner of reading
it. If one should take up an interesting book and
read one day from the tittieth page, another from
the hundredth and another from the first, he
would never get a complete understanding of it.
Yet that was the way most people read the Bible.
An angel from heaven reading it in that way
could not understand it. The Bible, like most
palaces, had an entrance and an exit. Genesis
was the door to go in by and Revelation the
doom to 60 out. man in reading ordinary
business letter began with "Dear SIR and
ended with "Y0urs truly;" yet in Pauls
epistles-a letter written from the throne of
God to lost world-people dipped in here and
there and knew nothing about it,
There was q wonderful concseness in the
Bible. Every word was packed full of truth
every sentence was double-barrelled. Nine
tenths of all the good literature of the age was
merely the Bible diluted. The variety of the
book suited il to all classes and occupations.
/ God had prepared it for all zones. The Ara
bian would read it on his dromedary, the Lap
lander on his swift sled and the Swiss girl
reclining amid Alpine crags.