Milford chronicle., 1888-08-10
ORTHODOXY.
REV. 7. DE WITT TALMAeE AT
cHAUTAUoUA.

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 ye shall
find rest for your souls, and answered the
question; ''Is Orthodoxy Stale and Unrea-
sonablef Following is a verbatim report
OF It:
A great London fog has come down upon
some of the ministers and some Of the
churches in the shape Of what is called "ad-
| vanced thought in biblical Interpretation.
| All Of them, and without any exception,
deny the full inspiration Of the Bible. Gene
sis is an allegory, and there are many myths
In the Bible, and they philosophize and guess
AND reason and evolute until they land in a
great continent Of mud, from which, fear,
for all eternity they will not be able to extri-
cate themselves.
The Bible is not only divinely inspired,
but il is divinely protected in its present
shape. You could as easily, without detec-
tion, take from the writings Of Shakespeare
"Hamletn and institute in place thereof Alex
ander Smiths drama rs 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 brick or cracked easement in
this castellated truth, surely the lombard
ment of eight centuries would have discov-
cred and broken through that imperfection
The fact that the Bible stands intact, not
Withstanding all the furious assaults on all
sides upon it, is proof to me that it is a mir
acle, and every miracle Is Of God.
'But," says some one, ''while we admit the
Bible is Of God, It has not been understood
until our time" My answer IS that if the
Bible be 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 allow seventy generations
to pass away and be buried before the letter
could be understoodg That would be very
bright father who should write q letter for
the guidance and intelligence of his children,
not understandable until thousand years
after they were buried and forgotten While
as the years roll on other beauties and excel
lencies will unfold from the Scriptures, that
the Bible is such a dead failure that oil the
Christian scholars for eighteen hundred 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 toit / should tomorrow morning apply
at some insane asylum as unfit to 60 alone
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 inteligible2 Are
they so distinguished for unworldliness, piety
and scholarship that it is to be expected thai
they would have have been chosen to fix up
the defective work of Moses and Isaiah and
Paul and Christi Is it at all possiblel !
wonder on what mountain these modern ex-
egetes were transfguredl 1 wonder what
star pointed down to their birthplacel Was
it the North star or the evening star or the
Dipperl As they came through and de-
scended to our world did Mars blush
or Saturn lose one Of its ringsl When
I find these modern wiseacres attempt
ing to improve upon the work Of the
Almighty and to interlnrd it with their wis
dom and to suggest prophetic and apostolic
errata, am filled with a disgust insuffer-
able. Advanced thought which proposes to
tell the Lord what he ought to have said
thousands Of years ago, and would have said
if no had been as wise as his Nineteenth cen
tury critics! All this comes of living away
back in the eternities 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 viii 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 Bancroft puts
upon his brilliant historical page the account |
OF an Indian massacre, does be approve of |
that massacre7 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," says some one, 'don't you think |
that the'copyists might have made mistakes |
In transferring the divine words from one |
manuscript to anotherr Yes, no doubt there !
were such mistakes; but they no more affect |
the meaning Of the Scriptures than the mis- |
spelling of a word or the ungrammatical |
structure Of q sentence in a last will and tes-
lament affect the validity or the meaning of |
that will. All the mistakes made by the cop
yists in the Scriptures do not amount to any /
more Importance than the difference between |
your spelling in document the word forty /
''forty" or "fourtyn This book is the last |
AvBl and testament Of God to our lost world, |
and it bequeaths everything in the right /
way, although human hands may have dam
aged the graIrlnar or made unjustifiable in
terpolatioD.
These men who pride themselves in our
day on being advanced thinkers in biblical /
interpretation will all Of them end in athe- /
ism, II they live long enough, and declare |
hero today they are doing more In the.
different denominations Of Christians, and |
throughout the world, for damaging Chris
tianity and hindering the cause Of the worlds
betterment than five thousand Robert Inger-
soils could do. That man who stands inside
castle is far more dangerous, If he be an
enemy, than five thousand enemies outside
the castle. Robert G. Ingersoll assails the
castle from the outside. These men who pre-
tend TO be advanced thinkers in all the de-
nominations are fighting the truth from the
inside and trying to shove back the bolts and
swing open the gates.
Now, am In favor Of the greatest freedom
Of religious thought and discussion. would
have as much liberty for heterodoxy as for
If l should change my theories
Of religion should preach them out and out,
but not in the building where l am accus-
toned to preach, for that was erected by
people who believe in an entire Bible, and it
would be dishonest for me to promulgate
sentiments different from those for which
that building was put up Wien we enter
any denomination as ministers of religion
we take O solemn vow that we will preach
the sentiments Of that denomination. If we
change our theories, as we have a right to
change them, then there is a world several
thousand miles IN circumference, and there
are hundreds Of halls and hundreds Of acad-
emies Of music where we can ventilate our
sentiments.
remember that in all our cities, in time
of political agitation there are the Republi-
can headquarters and the Democratic head
quarters. Suppose l should 60 into one Of
these headquarters pretending to be in SYM
pathy with their work, at the same time
for the opposite party
would soon find that the centrifugal force
was greater than the centripetali Now il a