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

able to explain that dark day. Now, II
God can advance the night earlier than its
time, can He not adjourn the night until
after its time! / often used to hear my
father describe a night think he said it
was in lSSS-when his neighbors aroused
him in great alarm. All the heavenly
bodies seemed to be in motion. People
thought our earth was coming to its de-
slruction. Tens of thousands Of stars
| shooting. No astronomers have ever been
able to explain that star shooting. Now,
does not your common sense teach
you that il God could start and stop
tens OF thousands of worlds or meteors,
He could start and stop two worlds: Ii
God can engineer train of 10000 worlds
or meteors, and stop them without acci-
dent or collision, can not He control two
carriages of light, and by putting down
golden brake stop the moon: Under this
explanation, instead of being skeptical
about this sublime passage of the Bible,
you will, when you read it, feel more like
going down on your knees before God as
you read: "Sun, stand thou still above
Gideon, and thou moon in the valley Of
Ajalon-"
Then there is the Bible statement that q
whale swallowed Jonah and elected him
upon the dry ground in three days. If
you will go the museum at Nantucket,
Mass, you will find whale large enough
to swallow a man. l said to the janitor,
while l was standing in the museum:
| why it does not seem from the looks of
this skeleton that that story in the book
Of Jonah is SO very improbable, does itt"
| o, no." he replied. lit does not" There
is cavity in the mouth of the common
whale large enough for a man to live in.
There have been sharks found again and
again with an entire human body in
them.
Beside that, the Bible says nothing about
a whale. 1t says, THE Lord prepared
great fish," and there are scientists who
tell us that there were sea monsters in
other days that make the modern whale
seem very Insignificant l know in one
place in the New Testament it speaks Of
the whale as appearing in the occurrence
L have just mentioned, but the word may
just as well be translated "sea monster"-
any kind of sea monster. Procupius says,
in the year $50, a sea monster was slain
which had for fifty years destroyed ships.
L suppose this sea monster that took care
of Jonah may have been one of the
great sea monsters that could have
| easily taken down a prophet and
he could have lived there three days if
he had kept in motion so as to keep
the gastric juices from taking hold of
him and destroying him, and at the end Of
three days the monster would naturally
be sick enough to regurgitate Jonah. Be-
side that, my friends, there is one word
which explains the whole thing. 1t says:
Thn nd ALI 8
shin carpenter prepare a vessel to carry
Texan beeves to Glasgow, l suppose it can
| carry Texan beeves; if a ship carpenter
prepare a vessel to carry coal to one of the
Northern ports, suppose it can carry coal;
il ship carpenter prepare a vessel to
carry passengers to Liverpool, suppose
IL can carry passengers to Liverpool; and
il the Lord prepared a fish to carry one
passenger, | suppose it could carry a pas
senger and the ventilation have been all
right.
So all the strange things in the Bible
can be explained if you wish to have them
explained. And you can build them into
a beautiful and healthful fire for your
hearth, or you can with them put your inn
mortal interests into conflagration. But
you had better decide about the vsracity
of the Bible very soon. l want this MORN
ing to caution you against putting off
making up your mind about this book.
Ever since 1II2 there has been great dis
| cussion as to who was the author of
Junius' Letters, those letters so full of
sarcasm and vituperation and power.
The whole English Nation stirred up
| with it. More than a hundred volumes
written to discuss the question: ''Who
was Junius?" ''Who wrote the letters of
Junius?" Well, it is an interesting ques-
| ton to discuss, but still, after all it makes
| but little practical difference to you and
| to me who Junius was, whether Sir Philip
| Francis, or Lord Chatham, or John Horne
| Tooke, or Horacs Walpole, or Henry
| Grattan, or any one of the forty-four men
| who were seriously charged with the
| authorship. But it is an absorbing ques-
ton, it is a practical question, it is an
/ overwhelming question 10 you and to me,
the authorship of this Holy Bible-whether
| the Lord God of Heaven and earth or a
| pack of dupes, scoundrels or impoStors,
We can not afford to djourn that question
| a week or day or an hour, any more
| than a sea captain can afford to say:
well, this is a very dark night. l
have really lost my bearings; there is a
| light out there. / don't know whether it
| is lighthouse or a false light on the
shore; l don't know what it is; but Phi
| just go to sleep and in the morning l'll find
| out" In the morning the vessel might be
| on the rocks and the beach strewn with
| the white faces of the dead crew. The
| time for that sea captain to find out about
| the lighthouse is before he goes to sleep.
| o. my friends, L want you to understand
| that in our deliberations about this Bible
we are not at calm anchorage, but We are
rapidly coming toward the coast, coming
with all the furnaces ablaze, coming at the
| rate of seventy heart throbs a minute, and
1 must know whether it is going to be har.
Dor or shipwreck.
Twas so glad to read in the papers OF
the fact that the steamship Edam had
come safely into harbor. A week before
the Persian Monarch, blowing its way to-
ward the Narrows, hundred miles out
saw signals of distress, bore down upon
the vessel, and found it was the steamship
Edam She had lost her propeller. She
had 200 passengers on board. The merci-
full captain of the Persian Monrrch en-
deavored to bring her in, but the tow line
broke. He fastened it again, but the sea
was rough and the tow line broke again.
Then the night came on and the merciful
captain of the Persian Monarch "lay to-"
thinking in the morning he could give
rescue to the passengers. The morning
ing came, but during the night the steam
ship Edam had disappeared, and the
captain of the Persian Monarch brought
his vessel into harbor saying how sad he
felt because he could not give complete
rescue to that lost ship. am glad that
afterward another vessel saw her and
brought hsr into safety. But when saw
the story of that ship Edam. drifting.