Smyrna times., 1883-08-29
The Lonely People and Their
Lonely Book.

The Hebrews were a hermit nation.
They lived lonely, without companion
or fellow. They received from their
they gave to their neighbors
no sympathy or kinship of heart.
They had one grand idea, that of God,
one personal, supreme, jealous God;
and they had from him one Book,
jealousy supreme and regally authori-
tative; one Book, only one, their pecu-
liar and strange Book. Because they
were a people of one God and one
Book we look back and we see them
the world looks up and sees them tow
ering high and isolated above the |
buried and sand-strewn ruins of the |
Kingdoms and empires that surrounded |
them.
Do we consider how unique is that |
Hebrew race and that Hebrew Book? |
We cannot explain it except by the
story of the revelation which it con-
tains how that insignificant little hand
full of men, holding the space of a few
counties in one Of our states, surround
ed by people who gave themselves up
to the grOssest paganism, could have
grasped and held the sublime convic-
ton of one God. Only to this one
people, no different in race from the
people around them, not equal in
native endowment to the royal races of
the world, was God so clearly manifest
ed that he was apprehended as the one
only supreme Creator God! What
was there i'll that little strip of sea-
shore, with no harbor, no commerce.
that narrow line of land bounded by
the sea on the west and by little
stream on the east running from a
fresh pond in the north to u salt pond
in the south, stirred by the stimulus of
no foreign intercOurse-a race of escap-
ed slaves, of peasant farmers, what was
there in their endOwments that gave
promise of the intuition which should
see duty and see God as no other race
has ever done except as it borrowed its
inspiration from that inspiration which
possessed that Jewish people? All!
there we have the answer! The in
| spiration which possessed them came
by the revelation of God. 1t came to
them in Gods wise ordination, not to
the quick -witted world-encompassing
Phenician traders from the ports of
Tyre and Sidon; not to their stately
masters, whose pyramids have seemed
worthy to be a revelation from God
not to that proud and fierce people of
Assyria to which Palestine was only
one of hundred conquered satrapies
not to that miracle of geniuses, many
harbored Greece; not to imperial and
sturdy ROme-it came not to the
worlds great races but to one of the
smallest of them all, one of the most
insignificant, because God would have
it so, and because thus should we see
that it was not by human wit but by
the very revelation of God.
Do we ever fairly consider the lone
illness of that lonely peoples Book
Think how it stands out alone. Wha
J fellow, what companion had it? Wha
have we had that was cneval will
those Hebrew Scriptures? What wa
there by which they could be confirm
ed? Go back to the beginning of tn
century and ask yourselves what hat
then survived of its contemporary
: literature with which it could be com
; pared. Egypt had left nothing, only
: few lines of one historian rescued b
i the Christian historian Eusebiu!
+ Babylon and Nineveh had saved moth
: ing, not a line, except similar fragment
! of one historian preserved by Josephu
Il or Eusebius. Persia? Persia Onl
! began to be as the Jewish history wa
y ending. Greece? Rome? There We
IL no Greece nor Rome when the splendi
II Jewish prophets were proclaiming th
e one Jehovah.
'e Here, then, appears this one BOO
y full of wondrops history, on who's
u marvellous revelation our own fullC
Christian faith is built, and we WEI
asked "What evidence have you of i
- truth? What is there to confirm it,
III We were told that its history was falls
le that it was late product full of error
v. that Xenophon and Arrian told diffe
~ ent stories, which were truer than Ol
pt Bible. What could we do? We cou
y bring no confirmatory proof; for the
y isting. 1t was all buried in the gra'
le of the forgotten and irrecoverable pa!
d But behold q wonder. The ear
y opens its mouth. Our own generati,
u, has seen uncovered the monuments
st Egypt, Assyria, and Palestine, viii
u abupdantly prove the truth of t
Jewish history. No longer a lone
as record, the Old Testament is suppo
'e' ed by the exhumed records of the kin
en- of Egypt and Babylon and Ninev
IL and Moab. We are now shown in t
ws Boulaq Museum the very body of t
ne Egyptian king who oppressed Isra
iIs We know the names of the father a
lie the grandfather of Arioch, King
al Elassar, who fought in the confedera
$50 againstthe King OfSodom, Alta hundr
yes points oonfrmatory evidence has be
eF- dug out of Assyrian ruins. In the d
~ when the lonely Book was attacked
,hI unbelief, there appeared out of t
we very ground hosts of defenders. Go
We; providence supports his Book
~ NJ Independent.