The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1888-08-23
rALMAGE'S SERMON.

The Weekly Disoourses Of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher. &
Subjects els Orthodoxy Stale
md UnrensOnable?' Preached
mt the Chautauqua IN. NJ As.
sembly Of Religious Educators.
TEXT: ASK for the Old paths, ,chers q
ehe good ,cay and ,oalk therein, and 10 shau
INA rest for your souts.-Jeremiah w., l6
great London fog has come down upon
some OF the ministers and some OF the
churches in the shape Of what is called lad
vanced thought" in Biblical Interpretation.
All OF them, and without any exception,
deny the full inspiration of the Bible.
Geness Is an allegOry, and there are many
myths in the Bible, and they philosophize
and guess and reason and evoluto until they
land in great continent of mud, from
which, fear, for all eternity they will not
be able to extricate themselves.
The Bible is not only divinely inspired, but
u is divinely protected in its present shape
You could as easily, without detection, take
nom tho 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. II there had
been an element of weakness, or Of de-.
ception, or of disintegration, the
Book would long ago have fallen to
pieces II there had been one loose Lrick 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 flri-
GUS 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, "whils VIC 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
way that it should allow seventy genera
tions to pass away and be buried before the
letter could be understood! That would be
very bright Father who should write a
letter for the guidance and intelligence of
His children not understandable until
thousand years after they were buried and
forgotten! While rs the years roll on other
beauties and excel,enc:es will unfold from the
Scriptures, that the Bible is such a dead
failure that all the Christian scholars for
1900 years were deceived in regard to
vast reaches of its meaning, is demand
upon my credulity so great that If ! found
myself at all disposed to yield to it should
10 morrow morning apply at some insane
asylum as unfit to go alope.
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
20 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 Christ. Is it all possblel I won
der on what mountains these mod
ern exegetes were transfgureds
place' Was it the North Star, or the Even
ing Star, or the Dipperl As they came
through and descended to our world did Mars
blush or Saturn lose one of its rings? When
l 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
Advanced thought, which proposes 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
cen ury criticsl All this comes of living
away back in the eternities 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 is how the Lord will get along with
out them after they are dead.
But" say some, do you really
think the Scriptures are inspired
throughout Yes either as history or
as guidance. Gibbon and Josephus and
Prescott record in their histories a great
many things they did not approve Of. When
George Bancroftputs upon his brilliant his
torical page the account of an Indian massa-
are scores of things in the Bible which neither
God nor inspired men sanctioned. Either as
history OF as guidance the entire Bible was
inspired Of God.
Put" says some one, 'don't you think
that the copyists might have made mistakes
in transferring the divine words from one
manuscript 10 anotherT Yes, no doubt there
the meaning of the Scriptures than the mis-
spelling of word or the ungrammatical
structure of sentence in a 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 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 unjustifable interpo
lation.
These men who pride themselves in ou
day on being advanced thinkers in Biblica
Interpretation will all of them end in athe
ism if they live long enough, and l declar'
here to-day they are doing more in the differ
ent denominations of Christians, and through
and and I'm nmdsrina % % The assff .ca1ss q The world
betterment than five thousand Rober
Ingersolls could do. That man who stand
inside castle II far more dangerous il he cal
be an enemy than five thousand enemies out
the castle from the outside. These men VIII
pretend to be advanced thinkers in all tn
denominations are fighting the truth from
the inside, and trying to shove back tn
bolts and swing open the gates
Now, l am in favor of the greater freedom
Of religious thought and discussion. Iwoult
have as much liberty for heterodoxy as fo
orthodoxy. II should change my theories
Of religion should preach them out and out
but Dt in the building where | am accus
toned to preach, for that was erected by
people who believe in an entire Bible. and il
would be dishonest for me to promugats sen
timents different from those for which tn al
building was put up. When we enter an,
denomination as ministers Of religion we TAX
-
ments OF that denomination. If we chang
our theories, as we have a right to chang
them, then there is a world several Thousand
miles in circumference, and there are hun
dreds of halls and hundreds of academies o
| music where we can ventilate our sentiments
Iremember that in all our cities in tim,
Of political agitation. there are the Republi
can headquarters and the Democratic head
quarters. Suppose l should 60 into one o.
these headquarters pretending to be in sym
pathy with their work, at the same tim,
electioneerng for the opposite party. woult
soon find that the centrifugal force wa,
greater than the centripetall Now, il
man enters denomination OF Christians
taking solemn oath. as we all do, that W,
will promulgate the theories OF that demon
tnation, and then the man shall proclaim
some other theory. he has broken his oath
and he is an out-and out perjurer. Never
theless, | declare for largest liberty in re
| ligious discussion l would no more hav,
the attempt to rear a monument to Thoma
| Paine interfered with than would have in
terfered with the lifting of the splendid mon
ument to Washington. Largest liberty TO
the body, largest liberty for the mind .larges
| liberty for the soul.
Now, want to show you, as a matter o
adw->acy for What believe to be the right
the splendors of orthodoxy. Many have sup
posed that its disciples are people OF fla
skulls, and no reading, and behind th
age, and the victims of gulibi ity. l shal
| show you that the word orthodox,