The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1889-01-03
RATIONALISM.
This Is the Great Danger to Religion
That DIR. Talmage Sees Ahead ut
Present.

Doll Cureu Inc IeXG Wus' nave hc"Ae
thy prayer; behold, l will heal thee. And
Isaiah said: Take a lump of figs. And they
took and laidt on the boil, and he recov-
ered."-IIKings, Xxx, 81.
Luxurious living is not healthy. The Sec
ond 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 prayer would not be in
terrupted, and cried to the Lord for his life.
God heard the prayer and answered it, say
ing: "Behold, will heal thee" But there
was humble instrumentality to be employed
This carbuncle needed a "cataplasm." That
is q tough word We use to show how much
we know. fin the pulpit we always used the
words the people understood wenever should
have any reputation for learning. Well, this
carbuncle needed a cataplasm, which is
poultice. Your old mother, who doctored
her own children in the time when physicians
were not plenty as they are now, will tell you
that the very best poultice is a fg and that
was what was used upon the carbuncle of
King Hezekiah. The power of God, accom-
panied by this human instrumeutality, cured
the king
In this age of discovery, when men know SO
much it almost kills them, and write SO wise
| ly it almost kills u.s. it has been found out
| that prayer to God is a dead failure. All
things arranged according to inexorablelaw.
| There is no use in praying to God for rain in
time ofdrought The weather robabilities"
in the morning papers will decide the ques-
tion, rain or no rain, and the whole nation
in prayer before God would not bring down
single drop. am not not speaking of an
| imaginary theory, but of that which is be-
lieved by ten thousand times ten thousand
| men.
Ifsickness comes to your household. ii will
depend entirely upon ventilation, good
diet, and the skill of the doctors, as to wheth-
er your child gets WELL The father might
pray all day and the mother might pray all
night-it 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 cast iron God seated at
the head of the universe, holding in the cold
grasp of his metal fingers band of law from
which nothing 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 today is ration.
| alism, that comes out from our schools, and
! universities, and magazines and newspapers,
| 70 Ho$ 10 frI1t nT1IO orIno f11po hn n1H
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 q
farce; there is good enoughin US, and the only
| word-development. The Garden of Eden is
| fairy story, and 70 more to be believed
| than the Arabian Nights or Gulliver's Trav-
els or Robinson Crusoe. We all started as
balloons, and are blood relations to that
! hand-organ. Lazarus was not dead when
Christ pretended 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 the deficiency. Christ did not walk
| on the sea, but on the shore, so near that is
| seemed as if he 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,
unblanched, stand in the presence of all this
raileery, saying: II believe in the whole
Bible, and in every single statement 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 hurricane from one direction a good
while, until all the water piled up; and be-
sides, that it was low water anyhow, and SO
the Israelities went through without any trou-
| ho ho1io
the Lord God Almighty came to the brink OF
the Red Sea, and with his right arm swung
back the billows on the right side and with
his left arm swung back the pillows on the
left side, and the abashed water stood up
hundreds of feet high, while through their
CLASSY walls the sea monsters gazed with of
frighted eyes on the passing Israelities?" The
nationalist comes to you saying: Chow
about onah and the whale? Do you really
believe that fish story?" There we're never
so many Nantucket fisherman after one
whale as there have been rationalists flinging
harpoons at the mediterranean sea-monster,
and from that one whale they have got
enough oil to light 1000 souls to perdition.
A skeptic tells you that Jonah would have
been in the process of swallowing. and
that he could Efeet5, anyhow, have lived three
days in such close quarters, but WTeuld have
been smothered by the poor ventilation.
How the good Christians Immediately go to
work and try to explain the whole thing by
natural laws so as to please the rationalists,
and say that a whale is an airbreathina
fish; that every little while it comes to
the surface, and that the whale that swal-
lowed Jonah did the same thing, and
thus got q supply for itself and for the
prophet. Why not rather say that God can
do anything; and he could take Jonah
through the whales throat, although the
throat would not have been halflarge enough
ordinarily to let him pass, and could have
| baVk n1sr h. 1nIo R,yn
out any air if he had chosen to? Who made
the whale? God. Who made Jonah? God
Then he could do anything he pleased with
either of them.
The moment you begin to explain about
the miraculous and supernatural, you sur
render the Bible. Take the supernatural out
of the Bible, and-you make it O collection Of
lies and humbugs, in preference to which
choose Aesop's Fables. They are what they
pretend to be-fables. But if, after all that
the Bible declares, Jesus is not God, and
La Zarus was not raised from the dead, and
the water was not turned into wine, and the
Red Sea was not divided, and in answer tc
prayer, Hezekiah's boil did not get well, ther
the Bible is the worst fraud ever perpetrated
! in Gods universe
Ali my friends have we been mistaken
Does God hear and answer prayers or does
he not2 Hezekiah was sick unto death; HI
prayed for his life; God heard him, anG
l added Is years to that lifetime ThC
prayer saved him-the lump of figs applied
being merely the God-appointed human
instrumentality. But" says some one, 81
e don't believe the Bible" Ahl then we will
have to part company for four or five minu
{ tes, for 1t is useless to try to argue with any
man with whom you cannot stand upo1
, common ground. In any argument, if yol
! would be successful there must be some com
, mon data to start from. 1t is foolish tt
try to prove to a man that twice three ar,
: six, provided he does not admit the multi
s plicatjop table, or that two and two ar
Q four, If he does not admit the addition table
e Ny first address, therefore, is to those who
= do believe in the Bible. ] want to tell yo,
e that prayer is the mightiest of all remedies
J, and that allopathic and homeopathic, ant
= the eelectric schools viii yet acknowledge it
s Here are two cases of sickness precisely alike
!, the same kind of medicine is given to botl
8 Of them, and in the same quantities. TIL
one patient Tecoyers and the other does not
y Why2 God blesses the one remedy, and doe
n v a H.. - n ~