St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1888-08-18
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
People Who Believe the Bible In
Spots Only.
Orthodoxy Neither stale Nor Unreason.
able - Freedom If ThOugat-Two
Death Bed Sco..es Important
Questions Answered.

Yect Of Orthodoxy" for a 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, Is.
And answered the question:: SIS ortho-
Aoxy 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, I 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 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 disintegr alton, the Book would long
ago have fallen to pieces. If 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 all the
furious assaults on ell sides upon it, is
proof to me that it is miracle, and every
miracle is Of God.
But" says some one, ''while we ad.
NIT the Bible is of God, it has not been
understood until our time" My answer
Is, that if the Bible is 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 a very bright
father who should write letter for the
guidance and intelligence of his children
not understandable until thous and 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
. demand upon my credulitv SO great
that il found myself at all disposed to
yield to it. 1 should tomorrow morning
apply at ONE insane asylum as unfit to
no alone.
Who make up this precious group Of adj
vanced thinkers to whom God has m sde
especial revelation in our time of that
which He tried to make known thousands
Of years ago, and failed to make intelIi-
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, and Isaiah, and Paul, and |
Christi Is it at all possible? I wonder |
On what mountain these modern axeg etes |
were TRANSPORTED? l wonder what star |
pointed down to their birthplace? Was
Ii the north star, or the evening star, or
the dipper? AS they came through and !
descended to our world did Mars blushs or
Saturn lose one of its rings? When [ |
ind these modern wiseacres attempting /
TO improve upon the work Of the Almighty |
a"sl to interlard it with their WIS.,
ium and to suggest prophetic and apos-
tolic errata, am filled with disgust in
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
Bis nineteenth century critics! All this
ZONES of living away back in the eterni-
ies instead OF 1883. have two wonders
u regard to these men. The first one is
how the Lord got along without them be-
ore they were born. The second wonder
S how the Lord will get along without
hem after they are dead.
ssBut.'' say some, edo you realty think
he Scriptures are inspired throughout"
Yes, either as history or as guidance. Il:
5ibbon and Josephus and Prescott record
n their histories great many things Il
hey did not approve Of. When George
Bancroft puts upon his brilliant his
orical page the account Of an Indian
massacre, does he approve of that mas
acre? There al 9 scores Of things in the
Bible which neither God nor inspired
men sanctioned. Either as history or as
Guidance, the entire Bible was inspired
Il God. /,
"But, says some one, ''don't you think
hat the copyists might have made mis-
axes in transferring the Divine words
rom one manuscript to another?" Yes, |
ia doubt there were such mistakes; but |
Hey no more affect tbs meaning of the .
vriptures than the misspelling of a
bird or the ungrammatical structure of
entence in last will and ties lament af-
Yct the validity or the meaning Of that | {
Jill. All the mistakes made by the
opyists in the Scriptures do not amount
q any more Importance than the diff err
Ice between your spelling in docu-
emit the word forty or fourty. This
box is the last will and testament Of ,
bod to our lost world, and it bequeaths |
kery thing in the right way, although
Imam hands may hgve damaged the !
lation. !
Now, am in favor o. the greatest free. {
BIN of religious thought and discussion.
would have as much liberty for hetero- |
oxy as for orthodoxy. II should change J
by theories of religiof. should preach .
hem out and out, but NIT in the building I
7here am accustomedG preach, for that |
Tas erected by people AAo believe in an
ntire Bible, and it would be dishonest ]
or me to promulgate sentiments diff |
erent from those for which that building | {
ras put up. When we enter any denom- s
nation as ministers Of rel1g1 N we take
solemn VOW that we will pfscnbs, the r.
entiments Of that denomination. hbwe {
hange our theories, as we have righG j. IA
hange them, then there Is world sew II
raj thousand miles in circumference, and al
here are hundreds of halls and hundreds III
e academies of music WheI we can venti- {