The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-09-22


brief | know him well; you all knew
him. He was an Out-and-out rational
lst Give me time and will show yor
titty thousand people just like him il
Brooklyn, and New YOTk-men who be-
lleVe no more about God and the Bible
and eternity than they can rea.
son out with their little intellects
Elisha, at Gods command, had prophe.
sled plenty of fine -four Oh the morrow
'PreposterOus!" said the skeptical no.
blemen. Where is it to come from
Why, every hole aud corner of the city
mas been ransacked for flour. We have
eaten up the horses; aye, we are canni-
balls, and have eaten children and men
There is no prospect that the Assyrians
viii lift the siege; and yet, Elisha, you
insult my common sense and my reason
by telling me that tomorrow the mar
ket Will be glutted with bread supplies,
Away with your nonsense" Yet, not
Wlthstanding it seemed unreasonable,
the fine flour came, and because of his
unbelief the nationalist of Samaria Der.
lshed. Men and women of God, at this
point, the great battle of Christianity
is to be fought. The great foe of Chris
tianity to-day is ratiOnalism, that comes
out from our schools and universities
and magazines and newspapers to scOff
at Bible truth and caricature the old re-
ngiOn of Jesus. 1t says Jesus is not
God, for it is impossible to explain how
he can be divine and human at
the same time, The Bible is not in
spired, for there are in it things that
they don't like. Regeneration is farce;
there is good enough in us, and the only
thing is to bring it out. Development
is the wOrd-deveIOpment. The Gar
den OF Eden is fairy story, and no
more to be believed than the Arabian
Nights or Gulliver's Travels or Robinson
CrusOe. We all started as babOons, and
are blood relations to that monkey
squirming about on the top of that
hand-Organ. Lazarus was not dead
when Christ pretended to raise him-he
was only playing dead. The water was
not changed into wine at the wedding,
but Christ brought in some wine that
he had found elsewhere to make up for
the deficiency, Christ did not walk on
the sea, but only on the shore, so near
that 1t seemed as if he really were on
the water.
What is still more alarming is that
Christian men dare not meat this ridi-
cule. There is not one Christian man
in five that can, unblanchep, stand in
the presence of all this raillery, saying:
II believe in the whole Bible and in
every single statement it makes"
Christian men try to soften the Bible
down to suit the skeptics. The Skeptics
sneer at the dividing of the
Red Sea, and the Christian goes
to explain that the wind
blew hurricane from one direction a
good while until all the water piled up,
and besides that, it was low water any
how, and so the Israelites went through
without any trouble. Why not be frank
and say: 81 believe the Lord God Al
mighty came to the brink of the Red
Sea, and with His right arm swung
back the billOws on the right side, and
with His left arm swung back the bill
lows on the left side, and the abashed
water stood up hundreds of feet high,
while through their CLASSY wall the sea
monsters gazed with affrighted eyes on
the passing ISraelites?" "Oh," you say,
these ratiOnalists would laugh at me-"
Then let them laugh The Samaritan
skeptic laughed at Elisha; but when.
under the rush of the people to get their
bread, the unbeliever was trampled to
death, whose turn was it to laugh then?
The nationalist comes to you saying:
How about Jonah and the whale? Do
you really believe that fish story?"
There were never as many Nantucket
fishermen after one whale as there
have been ratiOnalists finging harpOOns
at the Mediterranean sea mOnste; and
from that one whale they have got sufi-
cient Oil to light ten thousand souls to
perditiOn. A skeptic tells you that JO-
nah would have been killed in the pro-
cess of swallowing, and he could not
any how have lived three days in such
close quarters, but would have been
smOthered by poor ventilation. How
the good Christians Immediately go to
work and try to explain the whole
thing by natural law to please the ra-
tiOnalists, and say that a whale is an
fish, that every little
while it comes to the surface, and that
the whale that swallowed Jonah did the
same thing, and thus got a supply for
itself and the prophet! Why not rather
say that God can do anything, and he
could take Jonah through the whales
throat, although the whales throat
would not have been large enough or
to let him pass, and could have
kept him alive in the whale five years
without any air if he had chosen to.
Who made the whaleP God. Who
made Jonah? God. Then he could do
anything he pleased with either of
them.
The moment you begin to explain
away the miraculous and supernatural
you surrender the Bible. Take the su-
pernatural out of the Bible and you
make it collection of lies and hum
bugs, in preference to which choose