The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1891-04-17
INFIDELITY DETHRONED.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Attacks
the Mother of Moral Plaques.
Inhdellty Arraigned and Found Wanting
In All the Glorious Attributes
that Makes Christianity
Constant Blessing.


Constant Blessing.
The following discourse on "The
Plague of Inidelity," which he charac-
terized as 1.-The mother of plaques" ," was
delivered by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage
In Brooklyn and New York city, from
the text:
Let God be true, but every man a liar-Ro-
mans iii., 4.
That is, if God says one thing and
| the whole human race says the oppo-
site, Paul would accept the Divine
veracitY. But there are many in our
time who have dared arraign the Al
| mighty for falsehood. Infidelity 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 a
huge blunder; 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 flood
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 stultifica-
ton; that the Bible from lid to lid is a
fable, cruelty, hum bug, a sham, a
lie; that the martyrs who died
for its truth were miserable
dupes; that the church of Jesus
Christ Is properly gazetted as
fool; that when Thomas Carlyle, the
slzeptic, said, ''The Bible is a noble
book" he was dropping into inbecility;
that when Theodore Parker declared in
Music hall, Boston, ''Never a boy or
girl in all Christendom but was profited
by that great book" he was becoming
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, 1.-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
Webster abdicated the throne of his in
tellectual power and resigned his logic,
and from being the great expounder of
the constitution and the great lawyer
of his age, turned into an idiot, when
he said: MY heart assures and reas-
sures me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ
must be Divine reality. From the
time that at my mothers feet, or on
my fathers knee, first learned to lisp
verses from the sacred writings, they
have been my daily study and vigi-
liant contemplation, and if there is
anything in my style or thought
to be commended the credit is due
to my kind parents in Installing into my
mind an early love of the Scriptures"
and that William Ii. Seward, the diplo-
matist of the century, only showed his
puerility when he declared; '"The
whole hope of human progress is sus-
pended on the ever-growing influences
of the Bible;'' and that it is wisest for
us to take that book from the throne
in the affections of uncounted multi
tudes, and put it under our feet to be
trampled upon by hatred 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 a pack of lies on her
lap while reading of the better country,
of the ending of all her aches and
pains, and reunion not only with those
who stood around her, but with the
children she had buried with infinite
heartache, 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 de-
fusion and had it under their pillow
when they lay a-dying in the back
room, and asked that some words from
the old book might be cut upon the
tombstone under the shadow of the old
country meeting house where they
sleep to-day, waiting for a resurrection
that will never come. This book, hav-
ing deceived the mighty intellects of the
past, must not be allowed to deceive
our larger, mightier, vaster, most stu
pendous 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 domestic
circle. Gather together all the Bibles
the children's Bibles, the family BIZ
bles, those newly bound, and those
with lid nearly worn out and pages al
most obliterated by the fingers long
ago turned to dust-bring them all to-
gether, and let us make bonfire of
them, and by it warm our cold criti-
cism, and after that turn under with
the pIowshare of public Indignation the
polluted ashes of that loathsome, adul-
ferrous, obscene, cruel and deathful
book, which is so antagonistic to mans
liberty, and woman's honor, and the
worlds happiness.
Now, that is the substance of what
infidelity proposes and declares, and the
attack on the Bible is accompanied by
great jocOsity, and there is hardly any
subject about which more mirth is kim
died than about the Bible. / like fun;
no man was ever built with a 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 baptizes
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
4 L 1,,1~@v