Milford chronicle., 1888-12-28

d
tion and the brushing Away of the Old
Religion Of Christ-Are Prayers An
swered?
BROOKLYN, Dec. sS.-At the Tabernacle
today the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.,
read and expounded chapter about the
multiplication Of loaves and fishes. The
opening hymn Was;
The morning light IS breaking,
The darkness disappears.
Dr. Talmage took as the subject Of his ser
mon, "A Bad Boil Cured" The text was:
81 have heard thy prayer; behold, win heal
thee And Isaiah said, Take a lump Of iigs.
And they took and laid it on the boil and he
recovered. III Kings. Xxx, 5, Z.
Luxurious living is not healthy. The
second generation Of kings, and queens, and
lords. and princes is apt to be brainless and
invalid The second crop Of grass is almost
always short Royal blood is generally
scrofulous You will not be surprised, then,
TO hear that King Hezekiah had disorders
which broke out in a carbuncle, virulent and
deathful The Lord told him he must die;
he did not want to die. He turned his face
to the wall, so that his payer would not
be interrupted, and cried to God for his
life. God heard the prayer and an
swered it, saying: behold, l viii heal
thee Bot there was human instrumentality
to be employed. This carbuncle needed a
"cataplasm" That is a tough word we use
to show how much we know II in the pull
pit we always used words the PEOPLE under
stood, we never should have any reputation
for learning. Well, this carhuncle needed a
"cata plasm,n which is q poultce. Your old
mother, who dOctored her own children in
the time when physicians were not as plenty
as they arc now, will tell you that the very
best poultice is fig, and that was what she
used upon the carbuncle Of King Hezekiah.
The power of God, accompanied by this
human instrumentality, cured the king.
In this age Of discovery, when men know
so much il almost kills them, and write so
wisely it almost kills US, it has been found
out that prayer to God is a dead failure All
things are arranged according to inexorable
law. There Is no use in praying to God for
rain in time Of drought. The "weather
probabilities in the morning papers will de-
cido the question, rain or no rain, and the
whole nation in prayer before God would
not bring down a single drop am not now
speaking Of an imaginary theory, but of that
which is believed by ten thousand times ten
thousand men.
If sickness comes to your household, 1t will
depend entirely upon ventilation, good diet,
aud the skill of the doctors, as to whether
your child gets we'll The father might pray
all day, and the mother might pray all night
lit would not have any effect upon the case.
If squills, belladonna, paregoric and Cruel do
the work, your child will get well if not,
not. There is a cast iron God seated at the
head of the universe, holding in the cold
h1t, -
whichhothing can break away.
Men and women Of God, at this point the
great battle of Christianity is to be fought
The great foe of Christianity to day is ration
alism, that comes out from our schools, and
universities, and magazines and newspapers,
to scott at Bible truth and caricature the old
religion of Jesus. 1t says Jesus is not God,
for it is impossible to explain how he can be
divine and human at the same time. The
Bible is not inspired, for there are things in
it that they don't like. Regeneration is
farce: there is good enough in us, and the only
thing is to bring it out Development is the
Yord-deYelopmeut. The Garden of Eden isa
fairy story and no more TO be believed than the
"Arabian Nights, " or "Gullver's Travels, or
"Robinson Crusoen We all started as ba-
booas, and are blood relations to that monkey
squirning about on the top Of that hand or
gan. Lazarus was not dead when Christ pre-
tended to raise him; he was only playing
dead The water was not changed into wine
at the wedding, but Christ brought in some
wine that he had found elsewhere to make
up tho deficiency. Christ did not walk on
the sea, but on tho shore, so near that it
seemed as if ne really were on the water.
What is still more alarming is, that Chris
tian men dare not meet this ridicule. There
is not one Christian man in five that can, un-
blanched, stand in the presence of all this rail-
lery, saying: II believe in the whole Bible,
and in every single statement that it makes" "
Christian men try to soften the Bible down to
suit the skeptics. The skeptics sneer at the
dividing Of the Red sea; and the Christian
goes to explaining that the wind blew hur7
ricane from one direction a good while,
until all the water piled up; and besides, that
it was low water anyhow, and so the Israel
ties went through without any trouble.
Why not be frank and say: II believe the
lord God Almighty came to the brink Of the
Red sea, and with his right arm swung back
the pillows on the right side, and with his
left arm swung back the. billows on
tho left side, and the abashed water
stood up hundreds of feet high,
while through their CLASSY wall the
sea monsters gazed with aifrighted eyes on
the passing IsrealitesGn The nationalist comes
to you saying; "How about Jonah and the
whalcf Do you really believe that fish
stOryT' There were never so many Nan
tucket fishermen after one whale as there
hayo been rationalists flinging harpoons at
the Mediterranean sea monster, and from that
one whale they have got enough oil to light
ten thousand souls to perdition. A skeptic
tells you that Jonah would have been killed
IN this process Of swallowing, and that he
could not, anyhow, have lived three days in
such close quarters, but would have been
smotbered by the poor ventilation. How the
good Christians Immediately go to work, and
try to explain tine whole thing by
natural laws, SO as to please the ration
alists, and say that a whale is an
air breeding fish; that every little
while it comes to the surface, and that the
whale that swallowed Jonah did the same
ching and thus got a supply for itself and
for the prophet Why not rather say that
God can do anything; and be could take
Jonah through the whales throat, although
the throat would not have been half largo
enough ordinarily to let him pass, and could
have kept him alive in the whale five years
without any air, If he had chosen tol Who
made the whalel God. Who made Jonahl
God. Then he could do anything be pleased
with either of them.
WHAT REMAINS OF THE BIBLE WITHOUT
MYsTERYl
The moment you begin to explain away
the miraculous and supernatural you surren-
der the Bible. Take the supernatural out Of
the Bible, and you make it a collection Of
lies and hrmbugs, in preference to which /
choose "Esop's Fables. They are what they
pretend to be-fables. Dit if, after all that the
Bible declares, Jesus is not God, and Lazarus
was not raised from the dead, and tho water
was not turned into wine, and the Red sea
was not divided, and In answer to prayer
Hezekiah's boil did not get well, then the b.
BILE is the worst fraud ever perpetrated In
Gods universe
Ahl my friends, have we been mistakenl
Does God hear snd answer prayer, or does he /
mott Hezekiah was sick unto deathi he
prayed for mis- life; God heard him, and
added fifteen years to that lifetime The /
prayer saved him-the lump Of figs applied