Dodge City times., 1888-03-29
TALMAGES SERMON.
a Discourse on the Authenticity and
Genuineness of the Bible.
The Greatest of All Books. Adapted to
Every Condition in Life and the
One source of Soiacc When
All Else Fail.


Second Presbyterian Church, st. Louis,
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took for his SUBJ
ject ''The Authenticity Of the Bible," his
text being:
The statutes OF tie Lord are right-Psalm
xix. 8.
He said:
Old books go out Of date. iThen they
were written, they discussed questions
which were being discussed: they struck
at wrongs which had long ago ceased, or
advocated institutions which excite not
our interest Were they books Of history,
the facts have been gathered from the i'm
perfect mass. better classified and more
lucidly presented. Were they books Of
poetry. they were interlocked with wild
mythologies, which have gone up from the
face of the earth like laists AT sunrise.
Were they books OF morals, civilization
will not sit at the feet Of barbarism,
neither do we want Sappho, Pythagoras
and Tully to teach US morals. What do the
masses of people care now. fer the pathos
of Simonides, or the sarcasm OF Atenander,
or the gracetuiness Of Philemon, or the
wit of Aristophanes; Even the old books
we have left, with % few eXcep-
tions, have but very ltle effect upon
our times. Books are human; they have
time to be born t. :, are fOnGled, they
grow in strength, they have middle life
of usefulness, tnen comes old age, they
totter and die. Many of the National
libraries are merely the cemeteries Of
dead books. Some of them lived dagitiouS
lives and died deaths of ignOminy. Some
were virtuous, and accomplished glorl-
Gus mission. Some went into the ashes
through inquisitorial fires. Some found
their funeral pile IN sacked and plundered
cities. Some were neglected and
died as foundlings at the door of science.
Some expired in the authors study, 9TH
ers in the publishers hands. Ever and
anon there comes into your possession an
old book, its author forgotten and its USE
fulness done, and with leathern lips it
seems to say: Il wish l were dead"
Monuments have been raised over poets
and philanthropistS. Would that some
tall shaft might be erected in honor Of the
worlds buried books. The worlds au-
thors would make pilgrimage thereto, and
poetry and literature and science and re-
ligion would consecrate it with their
tears.
Not so with one old book. 1t started in
the worlds infancy. 1t grew under theoc-
racy and monarchy. 1t wiJhstood storms
of fire. 1t grew under prophets mantle
and under the fsherman's coat of the
apostles. In Rome, in Ephesus, and Jeru-
salem, and Patmos. Tyranny issued
edicts against it, and infidelity put out the
tongue, and Mohammedauism from its
mosques hurled its anathemas, but the old
Bible lived. 1t crossed the British Chan
mel, and was greeted by Wickliffe and
James l. 1t crossed the Atlantic and
struck Plymouth Rock, until like that Of
Horeb it gushed with blessedness.
Churches and asylums have gathered
all along its way, ringing their
bells, and stretching out their
hands of blessing; and every Sabbath
there are 10000 heralds Of the cross with
their hands on this open, grand, free, old
English Bible. But it will not have ac-
complished its mission until it has
climbed the icy mountains of Greenland,
until it has gone over the granite cliffs of
China, until it has thrown its glow amid
the Australian mines, until it has scat
tered its gems among the diamond dis
tricts of Brazil, and all thrones shall be
gathered into one throne, and all crowns
by the fires of revolution shall be
melted into one crown, and this book
shall at the very gate of Aeaven have
til then will this glorious Bible have ac-
complished its mission.
In carrying out, then, the idea of my
text, ''The statutes of the Lord are right"
/ shall show you that the Bible is right in
authorization. that it is right in style,
that it is right in doctrine, that it is right
in its effects. Can you doubt the authen-
ticity of the Scriptures: There is not so
l. lot oil
the ''Lady of the Lake." not so much evi-
dence that Shakespeare wrote ''Hamlet;"
not so much evidence that John Milton
wrote ''Paradise Lost''-as there is evil
dence that the Lord God Almighty, by the
hands of the prophets, evangelists and
apostles, wrote this book. Suppose a book
now to be written which came in conflict
with great many things. and was written
by bad men or imposters, how long would
such book stand. 1t would be secuted
by everybody. Aud | say, if that Bible
had been an imposition-if it had not been
written by the men who said they wrote it
if it had been a mere collection of false
hoods. do you not suppose that it would
have been Immediately rejected by the
people? If Job. and Isaiah. and jeremiah,
and Paul. and Peter, and John were i'm
posters, they would have been secuted by
generations and nations. If that book has
come down through fires of centuries with
out q scar, lit is because there is nothing in it
destructible. How near have they come
to destroying the Bible? When they began
their opposition, there were two thousand
or three thousand copies of it. Now there
are two hundred million, as far as can
calculate. These Bible truths, notwith-
standing all the opposition, have gone in
to all languages-into the philosophic
Greek, the flowing Italian, the graceful
German, the passionate French, the pict-
uresque Indian, and the eXhaustless An
glo-Saxon. Under the painters pencil,
the birth and the crucifxion. and the res
direction glow on the walls of palaces: or
under the engraver's knife speak from the
mantel of the mountain cabin: while
stones, touched by the sculptor's chisel.
start up into preaching apostles and as
cending martyrs. Now. do you not sup
pose, if that book had been an imposition
and falsehood. it would have gone down
under these ceaseless fires of opposition.
Further. suppose that there was a great
pestilence going over the earth, and hun
dreds Of thousands of men were dying Of
that pestilence. and some one should find
medicine that cured ten thousand people.
would not everybody acknowledge that
that must be a good medicine: Why.
some one would say: ''Do you deny it:
There have been ten thousand people
cured by it," l simply state the fact that
there have been hundreds of thousands of
Christian men and women who say they
have felt the truthfulness of that Book.
and its power in their souls. 1t has cured
them of the worst leprosy that has came
down on our earth, namely, the leprosy of