The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-08-06
ORTHODOXY NOT STALE.
ADVANCED THOUGHT" THE LON
DON FOG OF CHURCADOM.


-
Talmage a Strong Believer In the Full
Inspiration of the ble-Orthodoxy
Conquering the World While Heresy
Has It's First Square Inch Yet to Sub
iugate.
CHAUTAuoUA, N ", Aug. 5.-The Rev.
I. Dewitt Talmage, D. d., ct Brooklyn, is
present for the twelfth time at the national
meeting of religious educators and students
held yearly in this place His sermon
to-day, which was delivered to an audience
imposing in numbers and intelligence. was
from the following text, in the book of
Jeremiah, vi, 16: "Ask for the old
paths, where is the good way ami walk
therein, and ye shall find rest for your
souls," and answered the question: is
Orthodoxy Stale and Unreasonable" Fol-
lowing is verbatim report of it:
A great London fog has come down upon
some or the ministers aud some of the
churches in the shape of what is called
advanced thought in biblical interpreta-
tion. All of them, and without any excep-
ton, deny the full inspiration of the Bible.
Genesis Is an allegory, and there are many
myths in the Bible, and they philosophers
and guess and reason and evOlute until thoy
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 de-
lection, take from the writings of Shakes
peare 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 If
there had been an element of weakness, or
deception, or of disintegration, 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
bombardment of eighteen centuries would
have discovered and broken through that
imperfection. The fact that the Bible
stands intact, notwi,h outstanding all the furi-
ous assaults on all sides upon it, is proof to
me that it is a miracle, and every miracle
is of God.
''Rut," says some one, "whlle we admit
the Bible is of God, it has not been under
stood until our tune" My answer is, that
if the Bible be a 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
generations to pass away and be buried
before the letter could be understoods That
would be very bright father who should
write letter for the guidance and intelli-
gence of his children, not understandable
until thousand years after they we're
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 eighteen hundred years were
deceived in regard to vast reaches of its
min fy .,.I,
so great that if l found myself at all dis
posed to yield to it | should tomorrow
morning al ply 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 ago and failed to make inteligible9
Are they so distinguished for unworldliness.
piety and scholarship that it is to be ex-
pected that they would have been chosen to
fix up the detective work of Moses and
Isaiah and Paul and Christi Is it at ell
posSibles | wonder on what mountain these
modern exegetes were transfigured? | won
der what star pointed down to their birth
placei Was it the North star, or the even
ing star, or the Dipperl As they came
through and descended to our world did
Mars blush or Saturn lose one Of its ringss
When / find these modern wseacre; at
tempting to improve upon the work of the
Almighty, aud to interlard it with their
wisdom and to suggest prophetic and apos-
tolic errata, / am filled with disgust in
sufferable. Advanced Thought, which pro-
poses to tell the Lord what he ought
to have said thousands of years ago, AMI
would have said if he he had been as wise
as his nineteenth century critics. All this
comes OF living away back in the eternities
instead of 1883. / have two wonders ia re-
gard to these men The first one is how
the Lord got along without them before
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 as guidance Glib
bon and Josephus and Prescott record i'm
their histories a great many things they
did not approve of. When George Bancroft
puts upon his brilliant historical page tho
account of an Indian massacre. does he ap-
prove 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 copvistS might have made mis-
takes in transferring the divine words from
one manuscript to anotherp Yes, no doubt
there were such mistakes; but they no more
affect the meaning of the Scriptures than
the misspelling of word or the ungram-
matical structure of n sentence in n 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 a
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 way, although
human hands may have damaged the
grammar or made unjustifable interpola-
tion.
These men who pride themselves IN our
day on being advanced thinkers in biblical
Interpretation will, all OF them, end in
atheism, if they live long enough, and de-
clare here to-day they are doing more IN
the different denominations of christians.
and throughout the world, for damaging
christianity and hndering tho 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 one
mics outside the castle. Robert G. Inger-
soil assails the castle from tho outside
These men who pretend to bo 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.