The Brookhaven leader., 1890-01-23

Alban, the first British sacrlhce; 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 mp and
out, and take the throne Of power and
WELD very scepter of Christian domin-
ion.
Infidelity says: ''Ill- 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
noun tains Of indignant contempt were
hurled on them, and learned UNIVERSE
ties decrced the Bible out of existence.
Thomas Paine said: "In my Age of
Reason / have annihilated the Script
ures. Your Washington is pusillan-
imous Christian, but l am the foe OF
Bibles and Of churches.
o, 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
infidel 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 lock of
hair of the dead child-the only child
that God had ever given them-he
pitched the book with its 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 copies
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 we'll as they are now going
on in the work of determination, | 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 infidelity and sin should be
holding jubilee over the universal ex-
tinction, there would be in some closet
of 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 Athaliah
of infidelity and persecution would fly
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. Hero is the
story of young King saved. How Je-
hosheba, the clergyman's wife, must
have trembled 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 you
turn the tide of the worlds history in
the right direction. 1t seems as if 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 III praising this bravery of ex-
petition when God asks the same thing
of you and me? All around US are the
imperiled children of 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
tempta tons are out fOp the assassina
ton. Valens, the Emperor, was told
that there was somebody in his realm
who would usurp his throne, and that
the name of the man who should be the
usurper would begin with the letters T.
II. E. O. d., and the edict went forth
from the Emperor's throne: xiii
every body whose name begins with t.
II. E. 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 its denuncia-
ton. 1t matters not how you spell your
name, you come under its knife, under
its sword, under it's doom, unless there
be some omnipotent relief brought to
the rescue. But, blessed be God. there
is such thing as delivering royal soul.
Who will snatch away Joash?
This afternoon, in your Sabbath
school class, there will be Prince of
God-some one who may yet reign as
King forever before the throne; there
will be some one nyour class who has
corrupt physical inheritance; there will
be some one in your class who has
father and mothCt who do not know
how to pray; there will be some one in
your class who is destined to command
in church or State-some Cromwell to
dissolve parliament, some Beethoven
to touch the worlds harp strings, some
John Howard to pour fresh air into the
lazaretto, some Florence Nightingale to
bandage the battle wound, some Miss
Dix to soothe the crazed brain, some
John Frederick Oberlin to educate the
Ia