The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-03-20

ment and obliteration.
Well, my friends, just as poor botch
does the world always make of extin-
gushing righteousness. Superstition
rises up and says: 81 will just put an
end to pure religion" Domitian slew
forty thousand Christians, Diocletian
slew eight hundred and forty-four thou
sand Christians. And the scythe of
persecution has been swung through all
the ages, and the flames Missed, and the
guiDotine chopped, and the Bastile
groamed, but did the foes of Christianity
exterminate it? Did they exterminate
Alban, the first British sacrifice; or
Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John
OldcaStle, the Christian nobleman; or
Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; or Anne
Askew, or Sanders, or Cranmer? Great
work of determination they made of it.
just at the time when they thought
they had slain all the royal family of
Jesus, some Joash would spring up and
out, and take the throne of power and
WELD very scepter of Christian doE1in-
ion.
Infidelity says: ''I'll just exterminate
the Bible" and the Scriptures were
thrown into the street for the mob to
trample on, and they were piled up in
the public squares and set on fire, and
mountains of indignant contempt were
hurled on them, and learned universe
ties decreed the Bible out of existence.
Thomas Paine said: SIN my Age of
Reason have annihilated the Script
ures. Your Washington is a pusillan-
imous Christian, but 1 am the foe of
Bibles and of churches.
0, how many assaults upon that
Word! All the hostilities that have
ever been created on earth are not to be
compared with the hostilities against
that one Book. Said one man, in his
intidel desperation, to his wife: 'You
must not be reading that Bible," and
he snatched it away from her her. And
| though in that Bible was a lock of
hair of the dead child-the only child
that God had ever given them-he
| pitched the book with it's contents into
the fire, and stirred it with the tongs,
and spat on it, and cursed it, and said:
Susan, never have any more of that
| damnable stuff here!'
How many individual and organized
| attempts have been made to extermi-
nate that Bible! Have they done it?
Have they exterminated the American
Bible Society? Have they exterminated
the British and Foreign Bible Society?
Have they exterminated the thousands
/ OF Christian institutions, whose only
object it is to multiply copies of the
! Scriptures, and throw them broadcast
around the world? They have extermi-
mated until instead of one or two comics
OF the Bible in our houses we have eight
or ten, and we pile them up in the corners
OF our Sabbath-school rooms, and send
great boxes of them everywhere. If they
get on as well as they are now going
on in the work of determination, 1 do
not know but that our children may live
to see the millennium! Yea, if there
should come time of persecution in
which all the known Bibles of the earth
| should be destroyed, all these lamps of
light that blaze in our pulpits and in
our families extinguished-in the very
day that infdelity and sin should be
holding jubilee over the universal ex-
function, there would be in some closet
OF a backwoods church secreted copy
OF the Bible, and this Joash OF eternal
literature would come out and come up
and take the throne, and the Athaliab
OF 1ntidelity and persecution would f1y
out OF the back door of the palace and
drop her miserable carcass under the
hoofs of the horses of the Kings stables.
You can not exterminate Christianity!
You can not kill Joash!
The second thought hand YOU from
my subject is, that there are opportuni-
ties IN which we may save royal life.
You know that profane history is re-
plete with stories of strangled mon
archs and of young Princes who have
been put out of the way. Here is the
story OF young King saved. How Je-
hosheba, the clergyman's wife, must
have trembIed as she rushed into the
imperial nursery and snatched up Joash.
how she hushed him, lest by his cry he
hinder his escape. Fly with him! Je-
hosheba, you hold in your arms the
cause of God and good government.
Fail, and he is Sian. Succeed. and Won
turn the tide of the worlds history in
OAAS AA6AV OAIOCGlOH Ii seems as II be-
tween that young King and his assas-
sins there is nothing but the frail arm
OF woman. But why should we spend
our time in praising this bravery of ex-
petition when God asks the same thing
OF you and me? All around us are the
imperiled children of a great King.
They are born of Almighty parentage,
and will come to throne or crown, if |
permitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, |
goes forth to the massacre. Murderous |
temptations are out for the assassina-
tlon- Valens, the Emperor, was told |
that there was somebody in his realm |
who would usurp hts throne, and that |
the name of the man who should be the |
nsurper would begin with the letters It. |
ii. +. o. D., and the edict went forth |
from the Emperor's throne: Kill |
every body whose name begins with T.
II. Z. O. D." And hundreds and thou /
sands were slain, hoping by that massa-
ere to put an end to that one usurper.
But sin is more terrific in it's denuncia-
ton. Itmatters not how you spell your
name, you come under its knife, under
its sword, under its doom, unless there
be some omnipotent relief hrouorbt tn