Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1888-09-01
REV DR.. TALMAGE.
THE BROORLHN DrvINEs SUNDAY
SERMON.

Jtnu rest JOf your SOutS.-Jeremldn w., 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 lad
yanced 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 extricate themselves.
The Bible is not only divinely inspired, but
It is divinely protected in its present shape
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. II there had
been an element Of weakness, or of de-
ception, or OF dsintegration, the
Book would long ago have fallen TO
pieces If there had been one loose trick or
cracked easement in this castellated truth,
surely the bombardment of eight centuries
would have discovered and broken through
that imperfection. The fact that the Bible
stands intact, notwithstanding all the furi-
GUS assaults on all sides upon it, is proof to
me that it is miracle, and every miracle is
of God.
But" says some one, "while we admit
the Bible is of God, IL has not been under
stood until our time" My answer is, that if
the Bible be 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 genera
tons to pass away and be 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
a thousand years after they were buried and
forgottenl While as the years roll on other
beauties and excellencies will unfold from the
Scriptures, that the Bible is such a 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 adj
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 intelligible! Are they
so distinguished for unworldlineSs 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 possibe. / won
der on what mountains these mod
ern exegetes were TRANSFORMED
wonder what star pointed down to their birth
place? Was it the North Star, or the Even
ing Star, or the Dipper. AS they came
through and descended to our world did Mars
blush or Saturn lose one of its ringsl When
find these modern .wiseacres attempting to
improve upon the work Of the Almighty and
to interlard it with their wisdom and to sug-
gest prophetic and apostolic errata,
am filed with a disgust insufferabie
Advanced thought, which proposes to
tell the Lord what He ought to have
caid md ~
said il He had been as wise as His nineteenth
century critics. All this comes Of living
away back in the eternities instead of 1888. l
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
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 his
toricai page the account of an Indian massa-
ere, does he approve of that massacrel 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, tdon't Won think
that the copyists might have made mistakes
in transferring the divine words from one
manuscript 10 anotherP Yes, no doubt there
were such mistakes; but they no more affect
the meaning Of the Scriptures than the mis-
spelling of word or the ungrammatical
structure OF a sentence in a last will and
testament affect 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 difference be-
tween your spelling in document the word
forty, forty or fourty. This book is the last
will and testament of God to our lost world.
and it bequeaths everything in the right wav.
although human hands may have damaged
the grammar or made unjustifable interpo-
lation.
These men who pride themselves in our
day on being advanced thinkers in Biblical
Interpretation will ali of them end in athe-
ism II they live long enough, and declare
here to-day they are doing more in the differ
ent denominations of Christians and through
out the world, for damaging Christianity
and hindering the cause Of the worlds
betterment than five thousand Robert
ingersolls could do. That man who stands
inside castle is far more dangerous if he can
be an enemy than five thousand enemies out.
SIDE the castle. Robert g. Ingersoll assaiIs
the castle from the outside These men who
pretend TO be advanced thinkers in all thu
denominations 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 greater freedom
OF religious thought and discussion. would
nave as much liberty for heterodoxy as for
rtboioxy. II should change my theories
ofreligion should preach them out and out,
but not in the building where am accus-
TONED to preach. for that was erected by
people who believe in al entire Bible, and il
would be dishonest for me 10 promuIgate sen
timents different from those for which tn at
building was put up. When we enter any
denomination as ministers OF religion we take
solemn vow that we will preach the seuti-
ments OF that denomination II we change
our theories as we have right 10 change
them. then there is world several thousand
miles IN circumference, and there are hun.
dreds Of halls and hundreds of academies OF
music where we can ventilate our sentiments.
Iremember that in all our cities. in time
OF political agitation, there are the Republi-
can headquarters and the Democratic head
quarters. suppose | should go into one of
these headquarters pretending TO be in sym
Tathy with their work, at the sans time
electioneering for the opposite party. would
soon find that the centrifugal force was
greater than the centripstali Now. IL A
man enters denomination Of Christians
taking a solemn OATH as we all do. that we
VIII promulgate the theories Of that demon.
nation, and then the man shall proclaim
some other theory, he has broken hts oath.
and he H. an olitand out perjurer. Never.
Lheless, declare for largest liberty ia re-