Sharp County record., 1888-08-23
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
People Who Believe the BlOle IN
Spots Only.
Orthodoxy Neither stale Nor Unr"a7on-
able freedom of ThouGht-TWo
Death Bed SceneS-Im3ortaht
Questions Answered

Rev, T. Dewitt Talmlge took the sub
ioct Of "OrtLolOXy" FOR a recent 9e''n'H'
which we give herewith. His text was
AsI, for the old paths, where is the good way,
and walk therein, and ye shall hud rest Io'
YOUR souls. .--Jerrmiah vi, II.
And answered the question: rs orIno-
doxv stale and unreasonabLe"
4 GREAT London fog has come down
mon some Of the ministers and some OF
the churches in the shape of what IS
called advanced thought in blolcai
Interpretation. All Of them, and without
apv exception, deny the full Inspiration
os fine Bible. Genesis is an auegory' ana
there are many myths in the Bible ana
thev plflosoplize and guess and reason
and evolute until they land IN great
continent of mud from which, lear' LOT
all eternity they will not be able TO eXtrl-
cate thems Ives,
The Bible is not only Givinely inspired,
but it is divinely protected IN us present
shane. You could as easily without de-
lection. take from the writings OF SNAKES
naora,, Hamlet and institute IN place
thereof Alexander Smiths drama as al
any time during the last fifteen hunureu
Years man could have made any lmpor-
tan+ change IN the Rible without lmme-
dia+a detection. Il there has been an
element of weakness, or Of deceplon' OF
of disintegration, the Book WouIl long
AGO have fallen to pieces II there ''ao
beeD one loose brick or cracked easement
in this castellated truth, surely the bonn
bardment of eight centuries would nave
discovered and broken through that I'M
nerfection. The fact that the Bible
stands intact. Notwithstanding all the
furious assaults on all sides upon H. Is
proof to me that it is a miracle, and ever!
miracle is Of God.
"But," saws some one, "while we adj
nit the Bible is Of God, it has not been
understood until our time" Ny answer
is. that if the Bible is a letter from Nod'
orr Father. to man, His child, is it not
strange that that letter should have been
written in such a way that it should a.
low seventy generations to pass away anu
be buried before the letter could be un-
derstood? That would be a very bright
father who should write a letter for the
guidance and intelligence Of his children
not understandable until atho1saud years
after they we're 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 Ior
eighteen hundred years We're deceived IN
regard to vast reaches Of itS meaning IS
demand upon my crelulity 50 great
that if found myself at all disposed to
Weld to it, I should tomorrow morning
apply at ONE insane asylum as unfit to
90 alone.
/ Who make up this precious group OF ad-
yanced thinkers to whom God has made
especial revelation in our time Of that
which He tried to make known thousands
Of years ago, and failed TO- make lntelll-
gfble? Are they 50 distinguished for un-
! Yorldliuess, pi2ty and scholarship that It
< TO Be expected that they would have
been chosen to fix mp the defective work
of Moses, and Isaiah, and Paul, and
Christ? Is it at all possible: l wonder
on what mountain these modern aXegeteS
/ were tranSfgured? l wonder what star
pointed down to their birthplace? Was
| il the north star, or the evening star, or
/ the dipper? As they came through and
7 descended to our world did Mars blush or
/ Saturn lose one Of its Tings2 When |
/ find these modern wiseacres attempting
to improve upon the work Of the Almighty
and to interlard it with their WIS.,
/ . .. 81 ,4rI,,hatip and
tolic errnta am filed with q disgust IN
sufferable. Advanced thought which pro-
poses to tell the Lord what He ought to
have said thousands of years ago, and
would have said il He had been as wise as
His nineteenth century critics, All this
comes Of living away back in the eterni-
ties instead OF 1885 | have two wonders
in regard to these men. The first one IS
how the Lord got along without them be-
fore they were born. The second wonder
is how the Lord will get along without
them after they are dead.
/ "But," say some "do you really think
the Scriptures are inspired throughout"
Yes. either as history or rs guidance.
/ Gibbon and Josephus and Prescott record
in their histories great many things
they did not approve Of, When George
Bancroft puts upon his brilliant his
torical page the account Of an Indian
massacre, does he approve Of that mas
sacre? There ale 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, "dou' you think
that the copvists might have made mis-
takes in transferring tha Divine words
from one mluuscrip. to another" Yes,
no doubt there were such mistakes; but
they no more affect the meaning of the
Scriptures than the misspelling of a
word or the ungrammatical structure Of a
sentence in a last will and testament al
feet 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 diff err
ence between your spelling in a docu-
ment the word forty or fourty. This
book is the last will and testament of
God to our lost world. ana it bequeaths
every thing in the right way, although
human hands may have damaged the
grammar or made uliustfable inter-
polation.
NOw l am in favor Of the greatest free
dom of religious thought and discussion,
. l would have as much liberty for hetero-
/ doxy as for orthodoxy. # should change
my theories Of religion | should preach