Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-09-07
Sunday.SchoOl Lessons.
THE ONLY BOOK OF A LONELY
PEOPLE.

The Hebrews were a hermit nation.
They lived lonely, without companion
or fellow. They received from their
neighbors, 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, jealous
ly supreme and regally authoritative;
one Book, only one, their peculiar and
strange Book. Because they were 3
people of one God and one Book we
look back and we see them the world
looks up and sees them towering hich
and isolated above the buried and sand
Strewn ruins of the kingdoms and en-
pires that surrounded them.
DO we consider how unique is that
Hebrew race and that Hebrew Book?
We can not explain it except by the
story of the revelation which it contains
how that insignificant handful of men.
holding the space of a few counties in
one of our States, surrounded by peo-
pie who gave themselves up to the gross
est paganism, could have grasped and
held the sublime conviction 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 manifested that He
was apprehended as the one only SUI
preme Creator God! What was there in
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 run
ming from fresh pond in the north to
salt pond in the south, stirred by the
stimulus of no foreign intercourse-a
race of escaped slaves, of peasant far
mers, what was there in their endow-
ments that gave promise of the intu-
ition which should see duty and see
God as no other race has ever done ex-
cept as it borrowed its inspiration from
that inspiration which possessed that
Jewish people? All! there we have the
answer! The inspiration which pos
sessed 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 pyra-
mids have seemed worthy to be a reve-
lation from God; not to that proud and
fierce people of Assyria to which Pales-
tine was only one of a hundred con-
quered 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 oil
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 loneli
ness of that lonely peoples Book:
Think how it stands out alone. What
fellow, what companion had it? What
have we had that was coeval with those
Hebrew ScripturcsP What was there
by which they could be confirmed? &C
back TO the beginning of the century
and ask yourselves what had then sur.
vived of its contemporary literature
with which it could be compared.
Egypt had left nothing, only few lines
of one historian rescued by the Christian
historian Eusebius. Babylon and Min.
even had saved nothing, not a line, ex-
eept similar fragments of one historian
preserved by Josephus or Eusebius.
Persia? Persia only began to be as the
Jewish history was ending. Greecef
Rome? There was no Greece nor Rome
when the splendid Jewish prophets were
proclaiming the one Jehovah.
Here, then, appears this one Boon full
of wondrous history, on whose marvel.
Gus revelation our own fuller Christian
faith is built, and we were asked: 'What
evidence have you of its truth? What
is there to confirm it? We were told
that its history was false, that it was 9
late product full of errors, that Keno.
phon and Arrian told different stories,
which were truer than our Bible What
could we do? We could bring no con.
firmatory proof; for there was none
There was no evidence existing. 1t wa:
all buried in the grave of the forgotten
and recoverable past.
But behold wonder. The eartl
opens its mouth. Our own generation
has seen uncovered the monuments o.
Egypt, Assyria and Palestine, which
| abundantly prove the truth of the Jew
ish history. No longer lonely record
the Old Testament is supported by the
eAnumeu TecoruS OF the hlnSS OF Egyp
and Babylon and Nineveh and Moab
We are now shown in the Boulaq Muse
um the very body of the Egyptian King
who oppressed Israel. We know the
names of the father and the grand
father of Arioch, King of Elassar. who
fought in the tconfederacy against the
King of Sodom. At hundred points con
frmatory evidence has been dug out o.
Assyrian ruins. In the day when the
lonely Book was attacked by unbelief
there appeared out of the ground hosts
of defenders. Gods providence sup
ports His Book Y. Independent.