Sharp County record., 1881-05-26
Sunday.ScilOOl Lessons.
DR.. Newman on the Antiquity Of the
Bible.

The announcement that the Rev. DR..
j. 2. Newman, of the Central Methodist
Church, would occupy the pulpit at the
Church of the Divine Paternity, on
Sunday last, attracted an unusually
large congregation to the latter place of
worship. Before the services were
commenced the body of the spacious
ediice was filled to overilowing, as were
also the galleries, while scores content
ed themselves with standing room in
the aisles. Among the congregation
were General Grant, Collector Merritt
and many other prominent persons.
DR.. Newman chose as the subject of his
discourse "The Sacred Books of the
World" the text being, "God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners
spake in times past unto the fathers by
the prophets hath in these last days
spoken unto us by His Son, whom He
hath appointed heir of all things, by
whom also He made the worlds. :
HebreoOS, .. I. 2.
1t is the bold assertion of modern in
fidelity, said the Doctor, that there are
sacred books in the world older than
our Bible, containing truths more i'm
portant and exerting an influence more
salutary. There can be no doubt that
some have been in error in supposing
that all the revelations of God to man
are confined to little patch of land
called Palestine, to handful of Hebrew
prophets, and to a dozen inspired
apostles. 1t is equally false that God
had neglected mankind for 1000 years,
and then in spasm of love had sent
His Son into the world. The text cor
rects these two errors. Gods pater-
nifty of His human children would lead
Him to reveal Himself in all the ages
and to all nations. But in His infinite
wisdom He saw fit to make the He
brew Nation the custodian of an inspir-
ed record, confirmed by prophecy and
avouched by miracles; and it is grand
fact that Christianity is as old as the
race, for Christ made himself the con-
temporary of all the sages of antiquity
when He said, Before Abraham was,
| am" While we make these generous
concessions, as worthy the fatherhood
of God, it is worth our while to take up
the guantlet which modern infdelity
has thrown as to the comparative an
tiquity of the seven sacred books now
esteemed by different portions of man
kind as Divine revelation. can argue
but a single point, which is that of
priority of time. 1t amounts to an in
ternational law that the discoverer of a
new country is esteemed the lord there
of, and the author of a benefcent truth,
whether in science or religion, has a
prescriptive right to the honors that
flow therefrom. We take advantage of
this recognized law in our argument
to-day.
1t is a chronological fact, about which
there is no dispute, that Moses lived
and wrote the Pentateuch 1900 years
B. c., which gives the Pentateuch a
clear margin of 800 years older than the
oldest of the other sacred books in the
world. The Tri-pitikas, of the Budd-
hists, contain sublime morals and pure
aspirations with some noble precepts.
But Buddha lived not earlier than the
sixth century B. C.-nearly one thou
sand years after Moses and four hun
dred years after David and Solomon.
Some assert that there are ancient Chi
nese records, that the Chinese were
laying the foundations of their empire
when, according to Moses, the AL
mighty was creating the heavens and
the earth. But native and foreign Chi
nese scholars agree that there are no
authentic Chinese records extant earlier
than eleven centuries B. G. 1t is the
opinion of DR.. Legge, that the Chinese
Nation had no existence prior to two
thousand years before our era, at which
time Abraham was a prince, a saint, and
a gentleman. Confucius died in the year
476 B. Cone thousand one hundred
years after Moses, and three hundred
years after Isaiah. The sacred books
of the Hindoos are lauded as older and
purer than our Bible and as superseding
the necessity of our New Testament,
But they contain nothing which our
Scriptures do not contain, while they
do contain many things unworthy of
God. 1t is generally conceded that the
simple religious hymns of the Rig-veda
are not older than about the time of
David eleven centuries B. G. The
Hindoos are foreigners in India. About
that time they came from the Valley of
the Euphrates, or east of the Caspian
Sea, and they are part of our Indo-
Germanic race; and within one hundred
years thereafter Solomon's kingdom
the whole Valley of the Eu-
pirates, and within three hundred years
thereafter the Hebrews were -carrlad
captiveS, with their Psalms of David,
into that valley and the kingdom of
Persia, There is in Bombay, India,
the wealthy religious community of
Parsees, the followers of the great
Loroaster, who is the author of their
bible called the Zenda.Vesta. Next to
our Bible this is the grandest of all the
sacred books in the East, and next to
Moses Zoroaster is the grandest of re-
Iigious characters. He was Persian
and lived and taught twelve centuries
before Christ-some three hundred
years after Moses. There can be no
question that all these eminent men
were provdential agents, raised up to
be the religious teachers of their peo-