Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1884-05-14
The Inspiration of the Bible.
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK.

A lecture by II. l.. Hastings, before the Massa
| chusetts Annual Convention OF the Y. NJ. ..ASSo
Citations, at Spencer, October 13, 1881.
| CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK.
l said to this gentleman, "The Bible
does not say any such thing!" He re
piled that it certainly did; but l an
swered that it did not say any such
thing He insisted that it did. "Well, ,
said 1, "fnd it !" And when you ask
an in6del to find anything in the Bible,
you generally have him. He could not
find the place; so l turned over to the
eleventh chapter of Numbers, and there
read that instead of the birds being
packed like cord-wood on the ground,
three feet deep, the account says that
the Lord brought the quails from the
sea, and let them fall by the camp, as
it were 1.-TWO cubits high," or about
three feet high upon, or aboUe the face
of the earth. That ls, instead of flying
overhead and out of reach, they were
brought to about three feet high, where
any one could take as many of them as
he chose. And this skeptical friend
had got the birds packed solid, three
feet deep, over territory forty miles
across. AS if | should say that flock
of wild geese flew as high as church
spire, and some one should insist that
they were packed solid from the ground
up a hundred feet high This is a
sample of the kind of arguments inf
dels bring to prove that the Bible is
not true!
The book, to my mind, bears the
marks of inspiration in the foresight
which it exhibits This book foretells
things. You cannot do that. You
cannot tell what will be next year, or
next week "The spirits" cannot tell
who will be the next president, or gov
ernor, or emperor. They may tell q
great many things which are past.
They may tell you who your grand
mother was, and may copy the inscrip-
tion on your grandfather's grave-stone,
and may tell things which are written
in the family record. They may re-
veal many things in the past-for the
devil knows about the past-but they
cannot fortell the future. did hear of
one spiritual medium who foretold her
own death, and she died within few
hours; but when they got the stomach
pump, they pumped out of her stomach
poison enough to kill two or three
That kind of prophecy requires no
omniscient foresight.
Years ago talked with an infidel in
Plymouth, Massachusetts, and he
wanted me to give him some evidence
that the Bible was true. After some
conversation, / loaned him little vol
ume, an abridgement of "Keith on
Prophecy" Some ten years after, as
/ took my seat in railway train, he
came and sat down beside me and be-
gan to talk, and he said: "If you want
that book you can have it; but no one
else can have it at any price" 1t had
knocked his infdelity into atoms, and
he was believer in Christ, and men,
ber Of the church.
The revelations Of prophecy are facts
which exhibit the divine omniscience.
So long as Babylon is in heaps; so long
as Nineveh lies empty, void, and waste;
so long as Egypt is the basest of king
doms; so long as Tyre is a place for
the spreading of nets in the midst of
the sea; so long as Israel is scattered
among all nations; so long as Jerusa-
lem is trodden under foot Of the Gen
tiles; 80 long as the great empires of
the would march on in their predicted
course,-so long we have proof that
one Omniscient Mind dictated the pre-
dictions of that book, and prophecy
came not in old time by the will man"
We call this Bible book; but here
are sixty-six different books, written by
thirty or forty different men. A man
may say, IL do not believe in the book
of Esther" Well, what of that ? We
have sixty-fve others left. What will
you do with them? A man says, 81
find fault with this chapter, or with
that" Suppose you do? If you were
on trial for murder, and had sixty six
witnesses against you, suppose you i'm
peach one of them, there are sixty-fve
left; impeach another, and you still
have sixty -four; impeach another, and
you have sixty-three-surely enough
to hang you if you are guilty. Do you
not see that you cannot impeach this
book unless you do it in detail ? Each
book bears its own witness, and stands
by itself on its own merits; and yet
each book is linked with all the rest.
Blot out one, if you can. / am inclin-
ed to think it would be difficult TO do
this. This book seems built to stay to-
gether; it is inspired by one Spirit.
The authorship Of this book is won
derful. Here are words written by
by kings, by emperors, by princes, by
poets, by sages, by philosophers, by
fishermen, by statesmen, by men
learned in the wisdom of Egypt, edu-
Gated in the schools of Babylon, trained
up at the feet of rabbis in Jerusalem.
1t was written by men in exile. in the
desert, in shepherds tents, in "green
pastures" and besides "stil waters"
Among its authors we find the tax
gatherer, the herdsman, the gatherer
of sycamore fruit; we find poor men,
rich men, statesmen, preachers, exilss,
captains, Legislators, judges; men of
every grade and class are represented
in this wonderful volume, which is IN
reality library, filled with history,
genealogy, ethnology, law, ethics, pro-
phecy, poetry, eloquence, medicine,
sanitary science, political economy,
and perfect rules for the conduct of
personal and social life. 1t contains
all kinds of writing; but what a jum-
bic it would be if sixty-six books were
written in this way by ordinary men.
Suppose. for instance, that we get
sixty-six medical books written by
thirty or forty different doctors Of
various schools, believers in allopathy,
homeopathy, hydropathy, and all the