Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1888-08-06
LIVING ORTHODOXY.
DR.. TALNAGES SERMON At CHAUTAUQUA
YESTERDAY.
The Great London Fog Of Advanced Thought
HstsrOtOxy, II Leads 10 the Regions Of the
LOst-Ths Grand Triumphant Death
Of the Christian.

=
national meeting of religious educator
and students held in this place. His ser
mon to-day, which was delivered to al
audience imposing in numbers and intelli
gence, was from the following text. in tn
book of jeremiah, ch. vi, v. 16: ASK 70
the good paths, where is the good way
and walk therein, and ye shall find res
for your SOULS" and answered the ques
tion: us Orthodoxy stale and unreason
ablep" Following is verbatim report o
it:
A great London fog has come dowl
upon some of the ministers and some o
the churches in the shape of what is callet
advanced thought" in biblical ipterpre
tation. Ali of them, and without any ex
ception, deny the full inspiration Of th'
Bible. Genesis is an alleaory, and Their
are many myths in the Bible, and they
philosophize and guess and reason ant
evolute until they land in great CONT
nent of mud, from which, fear, for al
eternity they will not be able to extricat,
themselves.
The Bible is not only divinely inspired
but it is divinely protected in its presen
shape. You could as easily, without de
lection, take from the writings of Shakes
peare Hamlet, and institute in place
thereof Alexander Smiths drama, as al
any time during the last fifteen hundred
years man could have made any import
ant change in the Bible without imme
diate detection. If there had been ar
element of weakness, or of deception, or o.
disintegration, the Book would long agc
have fallen to pieces. If there
had been one loose brick OF
cracked easement in this castellated truth
surely the bombardment of eight cen
turies would have discovered and broker
through that imperfection. The fact that
the Bible stands intact, Notwithstanding
all the furious asssuks on all sides upon
it, is proof to me that it is q miracle, and
every miracle is of God.
"But," says some one, while we admit
the Bible is of God, it has not been un'
derstood until our time" My answer is
that if the Bible be letter from God, oul
Father, to man. His child, is it not strange
that that letter should have been written
in such way that it shonld allow seventy
generations to pass away and be buried be.
fore the letter could be understood? Tha,
would be very bright father who should
write letter for the guidance and intelli.
gence of his children, not understandable
until thousand years after they were
buried and forgotten! While as the years
roll Oh other beauties and excellencies
will
UNFOLD FROM THE SCRIPTURES,
that the Bible is such dead failure that
ali the Christian scholars for eighteen hun
dred years were deceived in regard to vast
reaches of it's meaning, is demand upon
my credulity 30 great that if found my
self at all disposed to yield to it should
tomorrow morning apply at some Insane
Asylum as unfit to &, alone.
Who make up this precious group of ad-
vanced thinkers to whom God has made
especial revelation in our time of that
which He tried to make known thousands
of years ago and failed to make intelligi-
bic? Are they so distinguished for un-
worldliness, piety, and scholarship that il
is to be expected that they would have
been chosen to fix up the defective work
of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and Christ?
Is it at all possible? I wonder ou
what mountain these modern
exegetes were transfgured? l
wonder what star pointed down to their
birthplace? Was it the North star or the
evening star or the Dipper? As they came
through and descended 20 our world did
Mars blush or Saturn lose one of it's rings?
When l find these modern wiseacres at
tempting to improve upon the work of the
Almighty and to interlard it with their
wisdom, and to suggest prophetic and apos-
tolic errata, am filled with a disgust in
suffsrable. Advanced thought, which pro-
poses 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 nineteenth century critics. All this
comes of living away back in the eterni-
ties instead of 1888. 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 il
how the Lord will get along without them
after they are dead.
But" say some, "do You really think
THE scriptures ARE INSPIRED THROUGH.
oUTp"
Yes, either ss history or guidance. Glib.
bon and Josephus and Prescott record in
their histories a great many things they
did not approve Of When George Bran
croft puts upon his brilliant historical page
the account OF an Indian massacre, does he
approve of that massacre? There are
scores of things in the Bible which neither
God nor inspired men sanctioned. Eitrer
as history or as guidance the entire Bible
was inspired OF God.
But" says some one, don't you
think that the copyist might have made
mistakes in transferring the divine words
from one manuscript to another?" Yes,
no doubt there was such mistakesr but
they no more affected the meaning of the
Scriptures than the misspellipg Of word
or the ungrammatical structures Of SEN
tence in the last will and testament
affecting 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 between your spelling in doc
ument the word forty, forty, or
fo-u-r-t-y. This book is the last will and
testament of God to our lost world, and
it btqueaths everything in the right way,
although human hands may have damaged
the grammar or made uDjustifsble inter
polation.
Now, am in favor Of the greatest free
dom of religious thought and discussion.
l would have as much liberty for hetero-
doxy 90 for orthodoxy. II Ishould change
my theories of religion / should preach
them ont and out, hut not in the building
where am accustomed to preach, for that
was erected by people who believe in an
entire Bible, and it woald be dishonest for
me to promulgate sentiments different
from those for which that building was
put mp.
Now, want to show you, as matter OF
advocacy for what believe to be the right,
THE sPLEyDORs OF ORTHODOXY.
Many have supposed that its disciples are
people OF fat skulls. and no reading, and