Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-09-26


my Redeemer hveth." Then [ go to
Ezekiel and find Christ presented there
as ssa plant of renown," and then | turn
over to Isaiah and Christ is spoken of "as
a sheep before her shearers' It is Jesus
all the way between Genesis and Malachi.
| Then turn over in the New Testament
and it is Christ in the parable, it is
Christ in the miracle, it is Christ IL the
evangelist's story, it is Christ in the
apostles epistles and it is Christ i'll the
trumpet peal Of the Apocalypse. know
there are a great many people who do
not find Christ in the Bible.
Here is man who studies the Bible
as historian. Well, if you come as
| historian, you will find in this book how
the world was made. how the seas fed
to their places. how empires were estab-
lished, how nation fought with nation,
javelin ringing against harbegeon, until
the earth was CHASTITY with the dead.
You will see the coronation of princes,
| the triumph of conquerors, and the world
turned upside down and back again and
| down again, cleft and SCARED with
great agonies of earthquake and tempest
and battle. It is a wonderful history,
putting to the blush all others in the ac-
curacy Of its recital and in the stupen-
| dous events it records. Homer and Thu
| cvdides and Gibbon could make great
| stories out Of little events; but it took a
| Moses to tell how the heavens and the
earth were made in one chapter, and to
give the history of thousands Of years
upon two leaves.
MISUSE OF THE BIBLE.
There are others who come to the
Bible merely as antiquarians. Ii you
come as an antiquarian, you will lind
great many odd things in the Bible
peculiarities of manner and custom,
marriage and burial; peculiarities Of
dress, tunics, sandals, crisping pins.
amulets and girdles and tinkling orna
Tnents If YOU come to look at military
arrangements. you will find coats OF
mail and javelins and engines OF war
and decentralization and encampments.
If you look for peculiar musical instru-
lnents, you will find psalteries and shig-
ionoths and rams horns. The anti
ouarian will find in the Bible curiosities
in agriculture, and in commerce, and III
art, and in religion that will keep him
absorbed a great while. There are
those who come to this Bible as you
would to cabinet of curioSltles, and
you pick up this and say, ''What strange
sword that is!'' and ''What a peculiar
hat this ISL and '.What an unlocked
for lamp that ISL and the Bible to such
becomes a British museum.
Then there are others who find moth
| ing in the Bible but the poetry. Well,
| if you come as a poet, you will lind III
| this book fau1tless rhythm, and bold i'm
agery, and startling antithesis, and rap
turous lyric, and sweet pastoral, and
| instructive narrative, and devotional
| psalm; thoughts expressed in style
more solemn than that of Montgomery,
more bold than that of Milton, more ter
| rible than that of Dante, more natural
| than that of Wordsworth, more impas-
| stoned than that of Pollock, more tender
! than that of Cowper, more weird than
| than that of Spenser. This great poem
| brings all the gems of the earth into its
| coronet. and it weaves the flames of
| Judgment in its garland and pours eter-
| nal harmonies in its rhythm.
Everything this book touches it makes
| beautiful, from the plain stones Of the
summer thrashing floor, and the daugh-
tiers of Major filling the trough for the
|
up to the psalmist praising God with
diapason of storm and whirlwind. and
| Job leading forth Orion, Arcturus and
the Pleiades. 1t is wonderful poem,
and a great many people read it as they
10 Thomas Moore's ''Lalla Rookh," and
| Walter SCOTS Lady of the Lake and
| Tennysoas ''Charge of the Light Bri-
| gade" They sit down, and are so alb
sorbed in locking at the shells on the
| shore that they forget to look off Oh the
| great ocean of Gods mercy and saliva
ton.
| Then there are others who come to
! this book as skeptics. They marshal
passage against passage, and try to get
| Matthew and Luke in quarrel, and
would have discrepancy between what
Paul and James say about faith and
works, and they try the account of
Moses concerning the creation by
| modern decisions in science, and resolve
| that in all questions between the scien-
| tifc explorer and the inspired writer they
| will give the preference to the geologist.
| These men-theSe spiders, | will say
| suck poison out of the sweetest flowers.
| They fatten their infidelity upon the
| truths which have led thousands to
| heaven, and in their distorted vision
| prophet seems to war with prophet, and
| evangelist with evangelist, and apostle
| with apostle, and if they can find some
| bad trait of character in a man of God
mentioned in that Bible these carrion
| crows cav and flap their wings over the
carcass. Because they cannot under
| stand how the whale swallowed Jonah
| they attempt the more wonderful feat of
| swallowing the monster whale of mod
ern skepticism. They do not believe it
| possible that the Bible story should be
| true which says that the dumb ass spake,
| while they themselves prove the thing