Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1891-04-16
A PLAGUE OF UNBELIEF.
THE MOVING CAUSE OF ALL THE
PLAQUES OF CITIES.
DIR. TalmAge's Mastery Contrast of the
Effects of Christianity and Agnosticism.
The Glorious Results of Living Faith.
What Has InfideIity Done?

The Glorious Results OF Living Faith.
What Has InfideIity Done?
NEW YORK, April g. Continuing his
course of sermons on "The Ten Plaques of
the Cities" Rev. Dr. Talmage today took
for his subject "The Plague of Infidelity."
The discourse was delivered to large and
appreciative audiences at the Brooklyn
Academy Of Music in the forenoon and the
New York Academy of Music in the even
ing. The text was Romans iii, 4, "Let
God be true, but every man liar"
That is il God says one thing and the
whole human race says the opposite, Paul
would accept the Divine veracity. But
there are many in our time who have dared
arraign the Almighty for falsehood. In
fidelity is not only plague, but it is the
mother Of plaques.
1t seems from what we hear on all sides
that the Christian religion is huge blum
der; that the Mosaic account of the creation
is an absurdity large enough to throw all
nations into rollicking guffaw; that Adam
and Eve never existed; that the ancient
food and Noah's ark were impossibilities;
that there never was a miracle; that the
Bible is the friend of cruelty, of murder, of
polygamy, of all forms of base crime; that
the Christian religion is woman's tyrant
and mans qualification; that the Bible
from lid to lid is fable cruelty, hum
bug, sham, lie; that the martyrs who
died for its truth were miserable dupes;
that the church of Jesus Christ is
properly gazetted as a fool; that when
Thomas Carlyle. the skeptic, said. "The
Bible is a noble book" he was dropping
into imbecility; that when Theodore Parker
declared in Music hall, Boston, "Never
boy or girl in all Chrstendom but was
profted by that great book" he was be-
coming very weak minded; that it is some
thing to bring blush to the cheek of
: every patriot that John Adams, the father
of American independence, declared, "The
Bible is the best book in all the world;"
and that lion hearted Andrew Jackson
turned into a sniveling coward when he
said, "That book, sir, is the rock on which
our republic rests;" and that Daniel Web
ster abdicated the throne of his intellectual
power and resigned his logic, and from
being the great expounder of the constitu-
ton and the great lawyer of his age turned
into an idiot when he said, 'My heart as
sures and treasures me that the gospel OF
Jesus Christ must be divine reality.
From the time that at my mothers feet
or on my fathers knee l first learned to
lisp verses from the sacred writings they
have been my daily study and vigilant con-
temptation, and if there is anything in my
style or thought to be commended the
credit is due to my kind parents in instill-
ing into my mind an early love of the
Scriptures" and that William H. Seward,
the diplomatist of the century, only showed
his puerility when he declared, "The whole
hope of human progress is suspended on
the ever growing influences of the Bibles"
and that it is wisest for us to take that
book from the throne in the affections of
uncounted multitudes and put it under
our feet, to be trampled upon by ha-
tired and Kissing contempt; and that
your old father was hoodwinked and
cajoled and cheated and befooled when
he leaned on this as a staff after his
hair grew gray, and his hands were
tremulous, and his steps shortened as he
came up to the verge of the grave; and that
your mother sat with pack of lies on her
lap pwhile reading of the better country, and
of the ending of all her aches and pains,
and reunion not only with those of you
who stood around her, but with the chill
dren she had buried with infinite heart
ache, so that she could read no more until
she took off her spectacles and wiped from
them the heavy mist of many tears. Alas!
that for forty and fifty years they should
have walked under this delusion and had
it under their pillow when they lay a-dying
in the back room, and asked that some
words from the vile page might be cut upon
the tombstone under the shadow of the old
country meeting house where they sleep
today waiting for resurrection that will
never come.
This book. having deceived them, and
having deceived the mighty intellects of
the past, must not be allowed to deceive
our larger, mightier, vaster, more stupen-
dous intellects. And so out with the book
from the court room, where it is used in
the solemnization of testimony. Out with
it from under the foundation of church
and asylum. Out with it from the domes
tic circle. Gather together all the Bibles
the children's Bibles, the family Bibles,
those newly bound, and those with lid
nearly worn out and pages almost obliter-
ated by the fingers long ago turned to
dust-bring them all together, and let us
make bonfire of them, and by it warm
our cold criticism, and after that turn un-
der with the plowshare of public indigna-
tion the polluted ashes of that loathsome
adulterous, obscene, cruel and deathful
book which is SO antagonistic to mans
liberty, and woman's honor, and the
worlds happiness.
AGNOsTICs ATTACK THE VERY LIFE.
Now that is the substance of what inf
deity proposes and declares, and the at
tack on the Bible is accompanied by great
jocosity, and there is hardly any subject
about which ulcre mirth is kindled than
about the Bible like fun; no man was
ever built with keener appreciation of it,
There is health in laughter instead of harm
physical health, mental health, moral
health, spiritual health - provided you
laugh at the right thing. The morning is
jocund. The Indian with its own mist bap-
tizes the cataract Minnehaha, or Laughing
Water. You have not kept your eyes open
or your ears alert if you have not seen the
sea smile, or heard the forests clap their
hands, or the orchards in blossom week
aglee with redolence. But there is a laugh
ter which is deathful, there is a laughter
which has the rebound of despair. 1t is
not healthy to giggle about God or chuckle
about eternity or smirk about the things
of the immortal soul.
You know what caused the accident
years ago on the Hudson River railroad
It was an intoxicated man who for joke
pulled the string Of the air brake and
stopped the train at the most dangerous
point of the journey. But the lightning
train. not knowing there was any impedi-
ment in the way, came down, crushing out
of the mangled victims the immortal souls