Daily Yellowstone journal., 1888-08-12

spired and Divinely Protected.
CuAUTAUoUA, N. Y, Aug. 5.-The
Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage, d. D., of
Brooklyn, is present for the twelfth time
at the national meeting of religious edu-
Gators and students held yearly in this
place. His sermon today, which was
delivered TO an audience imposing in
numbers and intelligence, was from the
following text, in the book Of jeremiah
Vi, 10: "Ask for the old paths, where
is the good way, and walk therein, and
We shall find rest for your souls" and
answered the question: 'Is Orthodoxy
Stale and Unreasonable?' Following is
a verbatim report of il:
A great London fog ; has come down
upon some Of the ministers and some of
the churches inthe shapeof what is called
"advanced thought in biblical interpre-
tation. 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 great
continent of mud, from which, / fear,
for all eternity they will not he able to
extricate themselves.
The Bible is not only divinely inspired.
but it is divinely protected in its present
shape. You could as easily, without de-
lection, take from the writings of Shake
spear 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 i'm
portant change in the Bible without i'm
mediate detection. If there had been an
element Of weakness, or Of deception. or
of disintegration, the book would long
ago have fallen 10 pieces. If there had
been one loose brick or cracked easement
in this castellated truth. surely the bonn
bardment Of eight centuries would have
discovered and broken through that i'm
perfection. The fact that the Bible
stands intact, notwithstanding all the
furious assaults on all sides upon it, is
proof TO me that it is a 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 il the Bible be a letter from God, our
Father, to man, his child, is itnot strange
that that letter should have been written
in such a way that il should allow sew
enty generations to pass away and be
buried before the letter could be under
stood: That would be a very bright fa-
ther who should write letter for the
guidance and intelligence Of his children,
not understandable until q thousand
years after they were buried and forgot
ten! While US the years roll on other
beauties and exccllencies will unfold from
the Scriptures, that the Bible is such a
dead failure that all the Christian scholars
for eighteen hundred years were deceived
in regard to vast reaches Of i;s meaning,
is demand upon my creiulity so great
that il found myself at all disposed to
yield to il ] should tomorrow morning
apply at some insane asylum as unfit TO
go alone.
Who make up this precious group Of
advanced thinkers TO whom God has
made especial revelation in our time of
that which lac tried tomake known thou
sands of years ago and failed 10 make in
telligible: Are they SO distinguished for
unworldliness, piety and scholarship that
it is 10 be expected that they would have
been chosen to fix up the defective work
of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and Christ 7
l. it at all possiblel wonder on what
mountain these modern exegetes were
transfigured! | wonder what star
pointed down to- their birthplace? Was
1t the North star, or the evening star, or
the Dipperi As they came through and
descended TO our world did Mars blush
or Saturn lose one Of its riisysl When /
find these modern wiseacres attempt
ing to improve upon the work of the Al
mighty and 30 interlard ii with their
wisdom and TO suggest prophetic and
apostolic errata, am filed with a dis.
gust instirerable. Advanced thought,
which proposes 10 tell the Lord what he
ought 10 have said thousands of years ago.
and would have said il he had been as
wise rs his Nineteenth century critics'
All this comes Of living away back in the
eternitics instead OF 1888. | have two
wonders in regard to these men. The
first one is how the Lord got along with
out them before they were born. The
second wonder Is how the Lord will get
along without them after they are dead.
"But, say some, "do you really think
the Scriptures are inspired throughout
Yes, either as history or ms guidance.
Gibbon and Josephus and Prescott record
In their histories great many things
they did not approve Of When George
Bancroft puts upon his brilliant histor'
ical page the account Of ar Indian mas
sacre, does he approve Of that massacrc9
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." saws some one, "don't you
think that the copyists might have mas.e
mistakes in transferring the divine worus
from one manuscript TO anothcri' Yes,
no doubt there were such mistakes; but
they no more affect the meaning Of the
Scriptures thnn the misspelling Of word
or the ungrammatical structure Of
sentence IN last win and testament af-
feet the validity or the meaning Of that
will. Al tho mistakes made by the
copyists in the Scriptures do not amount
10 ans mont importance than the differ.
cnco between your spelling In q docu-
mont the word forty, forty or fourt,,
m ~ -. A. tI. Inot ,,.f1l n,,1 taato t,,.s,t