Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-08-15
Ills Orthodoxy Stale and I'm
reasonable ?"
L GREAT roc HAS COME DOWN UP
ON SOME MINISTER'S AND
CHURCHES.
so-CALLED ADVANCED THOUGHT
ARE THE SCRIPTURES INSPIRED
THE BIBLE IS THE LAST WILL AND
TESTAMENT OF GOD TO OUR
LOST WORLD.
DR.. TALMAeE's SERMON, SUNDAY, AUG. 5th.

CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y :, August 5.-The Rev
" T. Dewitt Talmage, DID,, of Brook
lyn, is present for the twelfth time al
the national meeting of religious educators
and students held yearly in this place. Hit
sermon to-day, which was delivered to ar
audience imposing in numbers and intelli.
gence was from the following text, in the
book of jeremiah, ch. vi, v. is: "Ask for
the old paths, where is the good way, and
walk therein and ye shall find rest for your
SOULS" aud answered the question, SIS Or.
thodoxy Stale and Unreasonable ?" Fol.
lowing is verbatim report Of it:
A great London fog has come down upon
some of the ministers and some of the
churches in the shape of what is called tad
vanced 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 philosophise
and guess and reason and evolute until they
land in a 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 detec-
tion, take from the writings of Shakespeare
Hamlet, and institute in place thereof Alex
ander:: Smiths dramas, as at any time during
the last fifteen hundred years man could
have made any important change in the
Bible without immediate detection. If there
had been an element of weakness, or of de-
ception, or of disintegration, the Book
would long ago have fallen to pieces. If
there had been one loose brick or cracked
easement in this csstellated truth, surely
the bombardment of eight centuries would
have discovered and broken through that
The fact that the Bible stands
intact, notwithstanding all the furious as
saults on all sides upon it, is proof to me
that it is miracle, and every miracle is of
God.
sBut," says some one, "whle we admit
the Bible is of God, it has not been un der
stood until our time" My answer is, that
if the Bible be letter from God our Faith
er, to man, His child, is it not strange that
that letter should have been written in such
a way that 1t should allow seventy genera
tions to pass away and be buried before the
letter could be understood ? That would be
a very bright father who should write let
ter for the guidance and intelligence of his
children, net understandable until thou
sand years after they were buried and for
gotten! While as the years roll on other
beauties and excellencies will unfold from
the Scriptures, that the Bible is such dead
failure that all the Christian scholars for
eighteen hundred years were deceived in re-
gard to vast reaches of its meaning, is de-
mand upon my credulity so great that if I
found myself at all disposed to yield
to it I should tomorrow morning apply at
some insane asylum as unfit to go alone.
Who make up this precious group of ad-
vanced thinkers to whom God has made
especial revelation in our time of that which
He tried to make known thousands of years
agn and failed to make ineligible Are
they so distinguished for unworldliness,
piety and scholarship that it is to be expect
ed that they would have been chosen to fix
up the defective work of Moses and Isaiah
and Paul and Christ Is it at all possible?
l wonder on what mountain these modern
exegetes were transfgured? ] wonder what
star pointed down to their birthplace? Was
it the North star, or the evening star, or the
Dipper? As they came through and de-
scended to our world did Mars blush OF
Saturn lose one of its rings? When find
these modern wiseacres attempting to i'm
prove upon the work of the Almighty and
to interlard it with their wisdom and to
suggest prophetic and apostolic errata, am
filed with digust insufferable. Advanced
thought, which proposes to tell the Lord
what He ought to have said thousands oi
years ago, and would have said if He bad
been as wise as His nineteenth century
critics All this comes of living away back
in the eternities instead of 1888. have two
wonders in regard to these men. The first
one is how the Lord got along without them
before they were born. The second won
der 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 as 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 historical page the account
of an Indian massacre, does he approve OF
that massacre? 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, "don't you think
that the copyists might have made mistakes
In transferring the divine words from one
manuscript 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 ungram-
matical structure of a sentence in 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 between your spelling in
document the word forty, forty or forty
This book is the last will and testament of
God to our lost world, and it bequeaths ev-
erything in the right way, although human
hands may have damaged the grammar or
made upjustifable Interpolation.
These men who pride themselves in our
day on being advanced thinkers in Biblical
will all of them end in athe-
ism, if they live long enough, and declare
here to day they are doing more in the dlf-
ferent denominations of Christians, and
the world, for damaging Chris
tianity and hindering the cause OF the
worlds betterment than five thousand Rob
ert Ingersolls could do. That man who
stands inside castle is far more dangerous
if he be an enemy than five thousand enc
mics outside the castle. Robert q. IDger-
cOli LILO CdStl0 lEOul buO OdooANSs
These men who pretend to DO advanced
thinkers in all the denominations are fight
ing the truth from the inside, and trying to
shove back the bolts and swing open the
gates.
Now, am in favor of the greatest free
dom of religious thought and discussion l
would have as much liberty for hets1odoxy
as for orthodoxy. IF I should change my
4 nanIInc nr rotininr, I cbC1,1A 1,roonh tlQrm
out and out, but not in the building where
am accustomed to preach, for that was
erected by people who believe in an entire
Bible, and 1t would be dishonest for me to
sentiments different from those
for which that building was put up. When
VIC enter any denomination as ministers Of
religion we take solemn VOW that we will
preach the sentiments of that denomination.
If we change our theories, as We have a
right to change them, then there is a world
several thousand miles in circumference,