Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-04-04


ter from the storm. However. nothing
more than ordinary animal instinct was
necessary. Have you never been in the
country when an August thunderstorm
was coming up and heard the cattle moan
at the bars to get in? and seen the af-
| frighted fowl go upon the perch at noon
day, and heard the affrighted dog and cat
| calling at the door, supplicating entrance!
And are you surprised that in that age of
the world, when there were fewer places
OF shelter for dumb beasts, at the mutter-
ing and rumbling and flashing and quak-
ing and darkening of an approaching
deluge, the animal creation came moaning
and bleating to the sloping embankment
reaching up to the ancient Great Eastern
and passed in: have owned horses and
cattle and sheep and dogs, but I never
had horse or a cow or a sheep or dog
that was so stupid it did not know enough
to come in when it rained.
And then, that one window in the ark
which afforded such poor ventilation to
the creatures there assembled-that small
window in the ark which excites so much
mirthfulness on the part of infidels. II they
knew as much Hebrew as you could put
on your little finger nail they would have
known that that word translated means
widow course a whole range of lights.
Those ignorant infidels do not know a
window pane from twenty windows.
Then the infidels say that the ark landed
on mountain II, 900 feet high. and that,
of course as soon as the animals came
forth they would all be frozen in the ice.
That is geographical ignorance! Ararat
is not merely the name for a mount
ain, but for a billy dis rict, and it
may have been hill 100 feet high, or 500,
or 900 feet high on which the ark alight-
ed. Noah measured the depths of the
water above the hill, and it is fifteen
cubits, or twenty-seven feet
All! my friends, this story of the ark is
no more incred BILE than if you say to me
Last summer l was among the hills of
New England, and there came on the most
terrific storm ever saw, and the whole
country was flooded. The waters came
up over the hills, and to save our lives we
got in boat on the river, and even the
dumb creatures were so affrightened they
came moaning and bleating until we let
them in the boat"
We are not dependent upon the Bible
for the story of the food entirely. ALI
ages and all literatures have traditions,
broken traditions, indistinct traditions,
but still traditions. The old books of the
Persians tell about the flood at the time of
Ahriman, who so polluted the earth that
it had to be washed by great storm.
The traditions of the Chaldeans say tina
in the time when Xisuthrus was King
there was a great flood, and he put his
family and his friends in a large vessel
and all outside of them were destroyed,
and after while the birds went forth and
they came back and their claws were
tinged with mud. Lucian and Ovid, cell
ebrated writers, who had never seen the
Bible, described flood in the time of
Deucalion. He took his friends into a
boat. and the animals came running to
him in pairs. So all hands, and all ages,
and all literatures, seem to have a broken
and indistinct tradition of a calamity
which Moses, here incorporating Noah's
account, so grandly, so beautifully, so &C.
curately, so solemnly records.
My prayer is that the God who created
the world may create US anew in Christ
Jesus; and the God who made light three
days before the sun sbone may kindle in
our hearts light that will burn on after
the sun has expired; and that the God
who ordered thu ark built and kept open
more than 100 years that the antediluvians
might enter it for shelter, may graciously
incline US to accept the invitation which
this morning rose in music from the
throne, saying: "Come thou and all thy
house into the ark"
Another hard thing to be understood !:
The story that the sun and moon stood
still to allow Joshua to complete his vic
tory. Infidel scientists declare that an
impossibility. But if a man have brain
and strength enough to make a clock, can
he not start it and stop it, and start it
again and stop it again? If God had
strength and wisdom to make the clock of
the universe, the great ma chinery of the
worlds, has he not strength enough and
wisdom enough to start it and stop it, and
start it again and stop it again? Or stop
one wheel, or stop twenty wheels, or stop
all the wheels? Is the clock stronger than
the clockmaker? Does the corn thresher
know more than the machinist? Is the
universe mightier than its God? But peo-
pie ask how could the moon have been seen
to stop in the daytime? Well, if you have
never seen the moon in the daytime it is be-
cause you have not been a very diligent
observer of the heavens. Beside that, it
was not necessary for the world literally
to stop. By unusual refraction Of the
SUMS rays the day might have been pro-
Ionged. So that while the earth continued
on its path in the heavens, it figuratively
stopped. You must remember that these
Bible authors used the vernacular of their
own day, just as you and l say the sun
went down. The sun never goes down.
We simply describe what appears to the
human eve. Besides that the world, our
world could have literally stopped with
out throwing the universe out of balance.
Our world has two motions-the one
around the sun and the other on its own
axis. 1t might have stopped on it's own
axis, while at the same time it kept on its
path through the heavens. So there was
no need of stellar confusion because our
world slackened its speed or entirely
stopped in its revolution on its own axis.
That is none of the business of Jupiter, or
Mars, or Mercury, or Saturn, or the Dipper.
Beside that within the memory of man
there have been worlds that were born
and that died. A few years ago astrom-
ers telegraphed, through the Associated
Press, to all the world-the astronomers
from the City of Washington-that an
other world had been discovered. Within
a comparatively short space Of time,
astronomers tell US, thirteen worlds have
burned down. From their observatory
they notice first that the worlds look like
other worlds, then they become a deep
red, showing they were on fire; then they
became ashen, showing they were burned
down; then they entirely disappeared,
showing that even the ashes were scat
tered. Now, / say, if God can start a
world, and swing a world, and destroy a
world, He could stop one or two Of them
without a great deal of exertion, or He
could by unusual refraction Of the suns