The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1891-04-08
INFIDELTY
Not Only a Plague, But the Mother
Of Plaques.
DR.. Talmnge breaches About Some OF the
Evil Effects of Unbelief-What Re.
ligion Has Done in Good
Works as Compared
with Infldelity.

course last SUNDAY, line Plague OF In
deity" The text was Romans, ILL, 4:
"Let God be true, but every man
liar" Following is the sermon:
That is if 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. Infdelity is not only a
plague, but it is the mother of plaques.
It seems from what we hear on all
sides, that the Christian religion is
huge blunder; that the Mosaic account
Of the creation Is an absurdity large
enough to throw all nations into rollick-
ing guffaw; that Adam and Eve never
existed; that the ancient food and
Noah's Ark were impossibilities; that
there never was 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 a fable, a cruel
ty a humbug, q sham, q lie; that the
martyrs who died for its truth were mis-
orable dupes; that the Church Of Jesus
Christ is properly gazetted as fool;
that when Thomas Carlyle, the skeptic,
said: 1.-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
Christendom but was profited by that
great book, he was becoming very weak
minded; that It is something to bring a
blush TO the cheek of every pa
triot 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 re-
public rests" and that Daniel Webster
abdicated the throne Of his intellectual
power and resigned his logic, and from
being the great expounder of the Con-
stitution and the great lawyer OF his
age, turned into an idiot, when he said,
my heart assures and reassures me
that the gospel of Jesus Christ must be
q 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 vigilant contemplation,
and II there is anything in my style or
thought to be commended, the credit is
due TO my kind parentsin instilling into
my mind an early love Of the Scrip
tures;" and that William II. Seward, the
diplomatist of the century, only showed
his puerilitv when he declared, "The
whole hope Of human progress is sus-
pended on the evergrowing influences
the Bible;" and that II 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 hatred and kissing contempt,
and that your old father was hood
winked, and cajoled, and cheated, and
befooled, when he leaned on this as a
staf 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 q pack of lies on her
lap while reading of the better coun-
try, 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 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 the delusion and
had IL under their pillow when they lay
s-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, having deceived them, and
having deceived the mighty intellects
Of the past, must not be allowed 10 de-
ceive our larger, mightier, vaster, more
stupendous intellects. And so out with
the book from the court ro IN, where II
In used In the solemnization OF testimony.
Out with II from under the foundation
of church and asylum. Out with
II from the domestic 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 obliterated
by the fingers long ago turned to dust
bring them all together, and let MS make
. bonfire OF them, and by IL warm our
cold criticism, and after that turn under
with the plowshare OF public indigna-
ton the polluted ashes Of that loath-
some, adulterous, obscene, cruel, and
deathful book which is so antsgonistic
to mans liberty, and woman's honor,
and the worlds happiness.
Now that Is the substance Of what in
fidelity 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 kin
died than about the Bible. | like fun;
no man was ever built with keener APP
probation Of Il. There Is health in
laughter instead OF harm = physical
health, mental health, moral health, ,spir-
itual health-provided you laugh at the
right thing. Themorning is jocund. The
Indian with his own mist baptises the
eataract Minnehaha, or laughing water.
You have not kept your eyes open, or
your ears alert II you have not seen the
sea smile, or heard the forests clap their
hands, or the orchards In blossom week
aslee with redolence. But there is a
laughter which is deathful, there Is n
laughter which has the rebound OF de-
spair. II Is not healthy TO giggle about