The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1888-08-22
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIvINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON.
Subject: "Is Orthodoxy Stale and
Observation-Disclosures at the
Chautauqua IN. ~ Assembly
OF Religious Educators.

A great London fog has come down upon
some of the ministers and some Of the
churches in the shape of what is called ''ad-
vanced thought" in Biblical Interpretation.
All of them, and without any exception,
deny the full inspiration OF the Bible.
Genesis is an allegory, and there are many
myths in the Bible, and they philosophize
and guess and reason and evolute until they
land in a great continent Of mud, from
be able to eXtricate themselves.
The bile is not only divinely inspired, but
it is divinely protected in its present shape.
You could as easily, without detection, take
from the writings of Shakespeare Hamlet,
and institute in place thereof Alexander
Smiths drama, as at any time during the
last fifteen hundred years, a man could have
made any important change in the Bible
without Immediate detection. If there had
been an element Of weakness, or of de-
ception, or Of disintegration, the
Book would long ago have fallen to
pieces If there had been one loose brick or
cracked easement in this castellated truth,
surely the bombardment of eight centuries
would have discovered and broken through
that imperfection. The fact that the Bible
stands intact, Notwithstanding all the furi-
GUS assaults on all sides upon it, is proof to
me that it is miracle, and every miracle is
of God.
''But,n says some one, ''while we admit
the Bible is of God, it has not been under.
stood until our time" My answer is that if
the Bible be letter from God, our Father, to
man, His child, is it not strange that that
letter should have been written in such q
way that it should allow seventy genera
tions to pass away and be buried before the
letter could be understood? That would be
a very bright Father who should write q
H. snfa n
His children not understandable until
q thousand years after they were buried and
forgotten! While as the years roll on other
beauties and excellencies will unfold from the
Scriptures, that the Bible is such dead
failure that all the Christian scholars for
1900 years were deceived in regard to
vast reaches of its meaning, is q demand
upon my credulity so great that if | found
myself at all disposed to yield to it I should
tomorrow morning apply at some insane
asylum as unfit to 60 alone.
Who make up this precious group Of ad-
vanced thinkers to whom God has made es-
pecial revelation in our time Of that which
He tried to make known thousands Of years
ago and failed to make intelligible? Are they
10 distinguished for unworldliness, piety and
scholarship that it is to be expected that they
would have been chosen to fix up the defec-
tive work of Moses and Isaiah and Paul
and Christi Is it all possiblea I won
der on what mountains these mod.
ern eXegetes were transhgured!
wonder what star pointed down to their birth
placel Was it the North Ster, or the Even
ing Star, or the Dipper? As they came
through and descended to our world did Mars
blush or Saturn lose one of its ringsa When
find these modern :.wiseacres attempting to
improve upon the work Of the Almighty and
to interlard it with their wisdom and to sug,,
gest prophetic and apostolic errata, 1
am flied with disgust insufferab;e
Advanced thought, which propose5 to
tell the Lord what He ought to have
said thousands Of years ago, and would have
said if He had been as wise as His nin.tenth
century critics! All this comes of living
away back in the eternities instead Of .SSS. l
have two wonders in regard to these men.
The first is how the Lord got along without
them before they were born. The second
wonder is how the Lord will get along with
out them after they are dead.
.'But," say some, do you really
hIosn think the YssrpsnFss pstsr are bstory nr er
as guidance. Gibbon and Josephus and
Prescott record in their histories a great
many things they did not approve OF. When
George Bancroft puts upon his brilliant his
torical page the account of an Indian massa-
Gre does ne approve of that massacre! There
are scores of things in the Bible which neither
God nor inspired men sanctioned. Either as
history or as guidance the entire Bible was
inspired of God.
But" says some one, "don't you think
that the copyists might have made mistakes
in transferring the divine words from one
manuscript 20 another" Yes, no doubt there
were such mistakes; but they 10 more affect
the meaning of the Scriptures than the mis-
spelling of word or the ungrammatical
structure of q sentence in last will and
testament affect the validity or the meaning
of that will. All the mistakes made by the
copyists in the Scriptures do not amount to
any more Importance than the difference be-,
tween your spelling in q document the word
will and testament of God to our lost world,
and it bequeaths everything in the right way.
although human hands may have damaged
the grammar or made unjustiiable interpo'
lation.
These men who pride themselves in our
day on being advanced thinkers in Biblical
Interpretation will all of them end in athe'
ism if they live long enough, and ! declare
here to-day they are doing more in the differ
ent denominations of Christians, and through
aa the hndsph xeE f2 s e hs
betterment than five thousand Robert
Ingersolls could 10. Taat man who stands
inside castle is fur more dangerous if he can
be an enemy than five thousand enemies out
side the castle. Robert g. Ingersoll assails
the castle from the outside These men who
denominations are fighting the truth from
the inside. and trying to shove back the
bolts and swing open the gates.
Now, am in favor of the greater freedom
Of religious thought and discussion. would
have as much liberty for heterodoxy as for
ortho loxy. If should change my theories
Of religion should preach them out and out.
but not IN the building where am accus-
TONED to preach. for that was erected by
people who believe in an entire Bible, and it
would be dishonest for me to promulgate sem
timsnts different from those for which th at
building was put up. When we enter any
denomination as ministers Of religion we take
a solemn VOW that we will preach the senti-
nents OF that denomination. II we change
our theories, as We have a right to change
them. then there is world several thousand
miles in circumference, and there are hun.
dreds Of halls and hundreds of academies OF
music where we can ventilate our sentiments.
remember that in all our cities, in time
of political agitation, there are the Republi.
can headquarters and the Democratic head.
quarters Suppose 1 should 60 into one Of
these headquarters pretending to be in sym
Eathy with their work, at the same time
electioneering for the opposite party. would
soon find that the centrifugal force was
greater than the centripstal! Now, if q
man enters demo nination Of Christians,
taking solemn OATH as we all do. that we
will nromulgats the theories of that denom-
luaJlon, ana tnen the man shall proclaim
some other theory. he has broken his oath,
and he is an out.and out perjurer. Never
theless, I declare for largest liberty in re-
igious discussion. I would no more have
the attempt to rear q monument to Thomas
Paine interfered with than 1 would have in
terfered with the lifting Of the splendid mon.
ument to Washington. Largest liberty for
the body, largest liberty for the mind, largest
liberty fo the soul.
Now, want to show you, as a matter Of