The Middleburgh post. [volume] (Middleburgh, Snyder Co., Pa.) 1883-1916, 1888-08-09
THE BIBLE.
SERMON ny DIR. TALMAoE.
The Inexbaustibie Wealth of Mean
ing I'm tho Book OF Books.

@eyooo WoW uH uuf meretn, amaze shall
ind rest for pour souts.--Jeremiah vi, 10
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.
Genes.s Is an allegory, and there are many
myths in the Bible, and they phiosophize
and guess and reason and evoute until they
land IN a great continent of mud, from
which, fear, for all eternity they will not
be able TO extricate themselves
The Is bic is not only divinely inspired but
II is divinely protected in its present share.
You could as easily, without detection. take
from the writings Of Shakespeare Hamlet,
and institute in place thereof Alexander
Smiths drama, as at any time during the
last fifteen hundred years. man could have
made any important change in the Bible
without immediate detection IL there had
been an element of weakness or of de-
ception, or OF dsintegration. the
Book would long ago have fallen 10
pieces II there had been one loose rick or
cracked easement in this castellated truth.
surely the bombardment of eight centuries
would have discovered and broken through
that imperfecton The fact that tho Bible
stands intact, notwithstanding all the furi-
Gus assaults on all sides upon il, is proof to
me that it is miracle, and every miracle is
Of God.
"But," says some one, "whle we admit
tne blDle IL Ol pou, III mas not been under
stood until our time" My answer is that IL
the Bible be n letter from God, our Father to
man, His child, is IL not strange that that
letter should have been written in such a
way that IL should allow seventy genera
tions to pass away and he buried before the
letter could be understood, That would be
a very bright Father who should write a
letter for the guidance and intelligence of
His children not understandable until
n thousand years after they were buried and
L.. . 1t
beauties and excellencies will unfold from the
Scriptures that the Bible is such 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
tomorrow morning apply at some insane
asylum as unfit TO go alone.
Who make up this precious group OF ad-
vancei thinkers to whom God has made cs-
pecial revelation in our time of that which
He tried to make known thousands of years
ago and failed to make intellgihle, Are they
80 distinguished for unworldiness, 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 Christi Is it all possible, l won
der on what mountains these mod
ern exegetes were transiguredi /
wonder what star pointed down to their birth
place! Was it the North Star, or the Even
4 through and descended to our world did Mars
blush or Saturn lose one of its rings. When
| I find these modern ,wiseacrcs attempting to
improve upon the work OF the Almighty and
to interard it with their wisdom and to sug-
gest prophetic and apostolic errata, |
am filed with disgust insufferab,e
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
nanft nrifi AL 10 90 Iaxy,.,s
away back in the eternites instead of 1883. |
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
put then. after they are dead.
think the Scriptures are inspired
throughout Yes, either as history or
rs guidance. Gibbon and Josephus and
Prescott record in their histories great
nany things they did not approve OF. When
ieorge Bancroft puts upon his brilliant his
orical page the account of an Indian massa-
(re, does he approve OF that massacre' There
re scores of things in the Bible which neither
;od nor inspired men sanctioned Either as
istory or as guidance the entire Bible was
bspred of God.
But" says some one, "don't you think
bat the copyists might have made mistakes
transferring the divine words from one
anus ript another" Yes no doubt there
pre- such mistakes; but they no more affect
e meaning of the Scriptures than the mis-
ellng OF word or the ungrammatical
rdcture OF sentence in n last will and
ttament aAect the validity or the meaning
tnat Will. All the mistakes made 10y the
ryistS in the Scriptures do not amount to
" more Importance than the difference be-
leen your spelling in n document the word
", forty or fourty. This book is the last
ami testament of God to our lost world,
un IL belueaths everything in the right way,
hough human hands may have damaged
M grammar or made unjustiiable interpo
Ion.
hese men who pride themselves in our
ON being advanced thinkers in Biblical
frpretation will all of them end in athe-
II they live long enough, and | declare
to-day they are doing more in the differ.
denominations of Christians, and through
the world, for damaging Christianity
hIndering the cause of the worlds
ermant than five thousand Robert
trsols could do. That man who stands
le castle is far more dangerous il he can
n enemy than five thousand enemies out.
the castle Robert G.. Ingersol assails
castle from the outside. These men who
END TO be advanced thinkers in all the
nlhatlons Ias are fighting the truth from
inside. and trying to shove back the
anu swing open the gates
Nv, am In favor of the greater freedom
ilsious thought and discussion. Iwould
as much liberty for heterodoxy as for
~ ououiu my tneOTleS
iisloh should preach them out and out
i9t IN the building where l am accus-
20 preach, for that was erected by
VINO believe in an entire Bible and il
I've dishonest for me TO promugite sen.
us dlferert from thoss for which tn at
llng was put up. When we enter any
ulnatlon as ministers OF religion we take
inn vow that we will preach the sent-
OF That denomination. IL we change
heorles, as we have a right to change
theh there is n world several thousand
~ circumference, and there are hun
VI nails and hundreds of academies OF
Mnere we can ventilate our sentiments.
nethoer ,at that in all our cities, in time
tl,al agitation, there are the Republic
eau4uarters and the Democratic head
suppose | should go into one of
heanquarters pretending to be in sym
with their work. at the same time
ahesring for the opposite party. would
.'u that the centrifugal force was
than the centripetaI Now. II n
hters denomination of Christians,
a solemn oath. as we all do, that we
onulgate the theories OF that denom-
and then the man shall proclaim
p!her theory, he has broken his oath
Is an out-and out perjurer. Never,
! declare for largest liberty in re-