The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-09-06
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
People Who Believe the Bible in
Spots Only.
Orthodoxy Neither Stale Nor Unreason-
able - Freedom of Thought-Two
Death-Bed Scenes-Important
Questions Answered.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took the sub
Ject of Orthodoxy" for recent sermon,
which we give herewith. His text was:
Ask for the old paths. where is the good way,
and walk therein, and We shall find rest for
your souls. Jeremiah, vi, 16
And answered the question: us ortho-
doxy stale and unreasonable"
A great London fog has come down
upon some of the ministers and some Of
the churches in the shape of what is
called advanced 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 great
continent of mud, from which, fear, for
all eternity they will not be able to extrl-
cate 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 Shakes
peare's 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 impor-
tant change IN the Rible without imme-
diate detection. If there has been an
element of weakness, or of deception, or
OF disintegrahon, the Book would long
ago have fallen to pieces. II 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 oil the
furious assaults on all sides upon it, is
proof to me that it is miracle, and every
miracle is of God.
s.But," says some one, s'while we adj
NIT the Bible is of God, it has not been
understood until our time" My answer
is, that if the Bible is a 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 al
low seventy generations to pass away and
be buried before the letter could be I'M
derstood? That would be very bright
father who should write letter for the
guidance and intelligence of his children
not understandable until q thousand years
after they were buried and forgotten.
While, as the years roll on, other beauties
and excelences will unfold from the
Scriptures, that the Bible is such dead
failure that all the Christian scholars for
eighteen hundred years were deceived in
regard to vast reaches of its meaning, is
a demand upon my credulitv SO great
that if found myself at all disposed to
yield to it, l should tomorrow morning
apply at ONE insane asylum as unfit to
go 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 intelli-
gible? Are they so distinguished for I'M
worldliness, piety and scholarship that it
is to be expected that they would have
been chosen to fix up the defective work
of Moses, aud Isaiah, and Paul, and
Christi Is it at all possible? l wonder
on what mountain these m odern axegetes
were TRANSPORTED? l wonder what star
pointed down to their birthplace? Was
ii the north star, or the evening star, or
the dipper9 AS they came through and
descended to our world did Mars blush or
Saturn lose one of its rings? When I
find these modern wiseacres attempting
to improve upon the work of the Almighty
and to interlard it with their WIS.,
dom and to suggest prophetic and apos-
tolic errata, / am filed with "a disgust in
siderable. 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 1883. Ihave two wonders
in regard to these men. The first one is
how the Lord got along without them be-
fore 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.as guidance.
Glbbon and Josephus and Prescott record
In their histories a great many things
they did not approve sof. When George
Bancroft puts upon his brilliant his
tor1cal page the account of an Indian
massacre. does he approve of that mas
sacres There ale 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, you think
that the copyists might have made mis-
takes In transferring ths Divine words
from one manuscript to another?" Yes.
no doubt there were such mistakes: but
they no more affect the meaning of the
Scriptures than the misspelling of a
word or the ungrammatical structure of a
sentence in last will and testament af-
feet 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 diff err
ence between your spelling in docu-
Inent the word forty or fourty. This
book is the last will and testament of
God to our lost world, and it bequeaths
every thing in the right way, although
human hands may have damaged the
grammar or made unjustifiable inter-
polation.
Now, ! am in favor OF the greatest free
dom OF religious thought and discussion.
would have as much liberty for hetero-
doxy as for orthodoxy If should change
my theories of religion I should preach
them out and out, but not in the building
where am accustomedtc preach, for that
was erected by people who believe in an
entire Bible, and it would be dishonest
for me to promulgate sentiments dir
ferent from those for which that building