The Penn's Grove record., 1891-04-17
REV. DR.. lALMAGE'S SERMON.
rhs Brooklyn Dtvine's Sunday
SERMON.
Subject: "A Plaque Of Insdeltv.'

lhat Is II 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 f~slsehood. 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 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
flood and Noah's ark were impossibilities;
that there never was a miracle; hat the
Bible is the friend Of cruelty, of murder, Of
polygsmy, 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 cruelty, a 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 a fool; that when
Thomas Carlyle, the skeptic, said, "Ths
Bible is a noble book" he was dropping
into imbecility; 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 be-
coming very weak minded; that 1t is some4
thing to bring a blush to the cheek of
every patriot that John Adams, the father
sof 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 hat Daniel Webster abs
dictated the throne of his intellectual 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 a divine reality. From the time that at
my mothers feet or or my fathers knee !
lrst learned to lisp verses from the sacred
writings they have been my daily study and
~vigilant contemplation, and II there is any,
thing in my style or thought to be commend
ed the credit is due to my kind parents in in
stilling Into my mind an early low of tho
Scriptures;' and that William II. Seward,
the ~diplomatist Of the century, only showed
bis 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 throng 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 hoodwinked and cajoled
and cheated and befooled when he leaned On
this as a staff after his hair grew gray, and
his hands were t%remulous, and his steps
buOTteutu dS uo NdiuC ny w thc Fuf s0 VI tAu
grave; and that your mother sat with a pack
Of lies on her lap while 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
children she had buried with infinite heart
ache, so that she could read no more until
she took of her spectacles and wiped from
them the heavy mist of many tears. AlasI
that for forty and fifty years they should
have walked under this delusion and had
1t 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
to-day waiting Tor a resurrection that will
never come.
This book, having deceived them, and hav-
ing deceived the mighty intellects of the
past, must not be allowed to deceive our
larger, mightier, vaster, more stupendous
intellects. And so out with the book from
the court room, where 1t is used in the solemn
ization of testimony. Out with 1t from un-
der the foundation Of church and asylum
Out with it 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 al
most obliterated by the fingers long ago
turned to dust-bring them all together, and
let us make q bonfire of them, and by ii
warm our cold criticism, and after hat turn
under with the plowshare of public indig-
nation the polluted ashes Of that loathsome,
adulterous, obscene, cruel and beautiful book
which is so ~antagonistic to mans liberty, and
and woman's honor, and the worlds
happiness. "
Now that is the substance Of what fnfidel-
ity 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 kindled 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-physicai 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 CT your ears alert il 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
laughter which has the rebound of despair.
1t is not healthy to giggls 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. 1t was
an intoxicated man who for a joke pulled the
string of the air brake and stopped the rain
at the most dangerous point Of the journey.
DuI Lut u a ASb ALO"A IL "
was any impeachment In the way, came down,
crushing out of the mangled victims the i'm
mortal souls that went speeding instantly to
God and Judgment. 1t was only a joke. He
thought It would be such fun to stop the
train. He stopped it. And so infdelity is
chiefly anxious to stop the long train Of the
Bible, and the long train of the churches,
and the long train of Christian influences,
while coming down upon us are death, judg-
ment and eternity. coming a thousand miles
a minute, coming with more force than all
the avaianches that ever slipped from the
Alps, coming with more strength than all
the lightning express trains that ever whis-
tied or shrieked or Numbered across the con-
tinent.
Now In this jocularity Of infdel thinkers 1
cannot join, and ] propose to give you some
reasons why ! cannot be an infidel, and so l
will try to help out of this present condition
any who may have been struck with the
awful plague of skepticism.
First, l cannot be an infidel because inf
deity has NO good substitute for the conso-
lation 1t proposes to take away. You know
chief consolation from this book. What
would you think of a crusade Of this sorti
Suppose a man should resolve that he would
organize a conspiracy TO destroy all the
medicines from all the ~apotheearies and from
all the hospitals Of the earth. Tit work ID
done. The medicines are taken, and they
are thrown INTO the river, or the lake, or the
sea.
A patient wakes up at midnight in a par
oxysm of distress, and wants an anodyne.
'sOh,n says the nurse, ''the anodynes are all
destroyed; we AVE no drops to give you
but instead of that III read you a book on
the absurdities Of morphine and the absur-
dities of all remedies" But the man contin-
ues to writhe in pain, and the nurse says:
an continue to read you some discourses on
~anodynes, the cruelties Of ~anodynes, the in.
decencies of anodynes, the absurdities Of
anodynes. For your groan I'll give you a
laugh
Here In the hospital Is a patient having a
gangrened limb amputated. He says: 'Oh,
for etheri Oh, for chloroforml' The doc
tor says: "Why, they are all destroyed; we
don't have any more chloroform or ether,
but I have got som etbins greet deal bet
eer. IN READ you q patupuiee against
James Y. Simpson. the discoverer OF chloro-
torn as an anssthetic, and against Drs. Ag-
new and Hamilton and Hosack md Mott
and Harvey and Abernethy." But" says
the man, II must have soms ansssthetica."
"No,1 says the doctor, they are all de-
ytroyed, but We have got something a great
deal better" what is thatY' Fun"
Fun about medicines. Lie down, all ye pa
dents in Bellevue Hospital, and stop your
groaning, all ye broken hearted Of all the
nties y quit your crying; We have the