The Mankato free press., 1888-08-10
ORTHODOXY.
REV. 7. oE WITT TALMAoE At
CHAuTAUoUA.

ObxhODOA LIE
REV. 7. oE WITT TALMAoE At
cHAuTAuouA
The Celebrated Brooklyn Divine Answers
the Question. ''b Orthodoxy Stale and
UnreasonabIe?"-rhe Bible Divineiy In
spired and Divinely Protected.
CHAUTAUoUA, N. z. Aug. 6.-The Rev.
7. De Witt Talmage, DID,, Of Brooklyn. Is
present for ehe twelfth time at the national
meeting Of religious educators and students
held yearly In this place. His sermon today,
which was delivered to an audience imposing
in numbers and intelligence, was from the
following text, in the book Of Jeremiah
vi, l6: "Ask for the old paths, where Is
the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall
find rest for your souls, }" and answered the
question: sis Orthodoxy Stale and Unrear
sonabler Following b verbatim report
Of 1t:
A great London fog has come down upon
some of the ministers and some of the
churches In the shape Of what Is called "ad-
vanced thought" in biblical Interpretation.
All Of them, and without any exception,
deny the full inspiration Of the Bible Gene
sis Is an allegory, and there are many myths
in the Bible, and they philosophize and guess
and reason and evolute until they land In a
great continent Of mud, from which, I fear,
for all eternity they win not be able to extri-
cate themselves
The Bible is not only divinely inspired,
but 1t Is divinely protected In its present
shape You could as easily, without detec-
ton, take from the writings Of Shakespeare
Hamlet" and institute In place thereof Alex
ander Smiths drama as at any time during
the last fifteen hundred years a 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 disintegration, the book would
long ago have fallen to pieces II there had
been one loose brick or cracked easement In
this castellated truth, surely the lombard
ment Of eight centuries would have discov-
cred and broken through that imperfection.
The fact that the Bible stands intact, not
withstanding all tho furious assaults on ell
sides upon 1t, Is proof to me that 1t Is a mir
acle, and every miracle is Of God
"But," )" says some one, "while we admit the
Bible Is Of God, IL has not been understood
until our time" My answer Is that If the
Bible be q letter from God, our Father, to
man, his child, Is 1t not strange that that
letter should have been written In such a
way that it should allow seventy generations
to pass away and be buried before the letter
could be understood That would be very
bright father who should write letter for
the guidance and intelligence Of his children,
not understandable until q thousand years
after they were buried and forgottenl While
as the years roll on other beauties and excel
lencies will unfold from the Scriptures, that
the Bible Is such dead failure that all the
Christian scholars for eighteen hundred years
were deceived In regard 10 vast reaches Of its
meaning, Is demand upon my credulity SO
great that II found myself at all disposed to
yield toit should tomorrow morning apply
at some insane asylum as unfit to 60 alone.
Who make up this precious group Of ad-
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 intelhgiblei Are
they so distinguished for unworldliness, piety
and scholarship that It is to be expected that
they would have have been chosen to fix up
the defective work Of Moses and Isaiah and
Paul and Christi Is IL at all possiblei
wonder ON what mountain Sheee modern ex-
egetes were transfguredi ] wonder what
star pointed down to their birthplacei Was
IL the North star or the evening star or the
Dipperi As they came through and de-
scended to our world did Mars blush
or Saturn lose one Of its ringsi When
find these modern wiseacres attempt
ing to improve upon the work Of the
Almighty and to interlard it with their wis
dom and to suggest prophetic and apostolic
errata, am filed with a disgust insuffer-
able Advanced thought, which proposes to
tell the Lord what he ought to have said
thousands Of years ago, and would have said
II he had been as wise as his Nineteenth CEN
tury criticsi Ali this comes Of living away
back In the eternities instead Of 1888 I
have two wonders In regard to these men
The first one Is how the Lord got along with
out 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, edo 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 historical page the account
of an Indian massacre, does he approve Of
that massacrei 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,n says some one, "don't you think
that the copyists might have made mistakes
In transferring the divine words from one
manuscript to anotherF Yes, no doubt there
were such mistakes; but they no more affect
the meaning Of the Scriptures than the mis-
spelling of O word or the ungralnmatical
structure Of sentence In a last will and tes-
lament affect the validity or the meaning of
that win. All the mistakes made by the cop
yists in the Scriptures do not amount to any
more Importance than the difference between
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
way, although human hands may have dam
aged the grammar or made unjustifable In
These men who pride themselves in our
day on being advanced thinkers I'm biblical
interpretation win all Of them end In athe-
ism, II they live long enough, and I declare
here today they are doing more In the
different denominations Of Christians, and
throughout the world, for damaging Chris
tianity and hindering the cause Of the worlds
betterment than five thousand Robert Inger-
soils could do. That man who stands inside
castle Is far more dangerous, IL he be an
enemy, than 6ve thousand enemies outside
the castle. Robert g. Ingerson assails the
castle from the outside. These men who pre-
tend to be advanced thinkers in all the de-
nominations 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 greatest freedom
Of religious thought and discussion. would
have as much liberty for heterodoxy as for
orthodoxy II should change my theories
of religion 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 an entire Bible. and ID
would La dishonest for me to promulgate
sen: IS different from those for which
that !.;... ding was put up. When we enter
any denomination as ministers Of religion
we take q solemn VOW that we viii preach
the sentiments Of that denomination. II wo
change our theories, az we have a right to
change them, then there Il world several
thousand miles In circumference, and there
are hundreds of halls and hundreds cf acad-
emies Of music where We can ventilate our
sentiment2
remember that in all our cities, In time
Of political agitation there are the Republi-
can headquarters and the Democratic head
quarters. Suppose should 60 into one of
these headquarters pretending TO be in sym
pathy with their work at the same time
electioneering for the opposite party. !
would soon Hnd that the centrifugal force
was greater than the centripetali Now, II q
man enters denomination Of Christians,
taking solemn oath, as we all do, that we
win promulgate the theories OF that denom-
nation, and then the man shall proclaim
some other theory, he has broken his oath,