The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-10-01

~ ID SliI III VIC E'ebi o.
BILE, it is Christ ia tie miracle, it is
Christ in the evangelist's story, it is
| Christ in the Apostles epistles, and it is
| Christ in the trumpet peal Of the Apoc-
alypse. l know there are 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 en-
pires were established, how nation
fought with nation, javelin ringing
against harbegeon, until the earth was
CHASTITY with the deed. 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.
1t is wonderful history, putting to the
blush all others in the accuracy of its
recital, and in the stupendous events
it records Homer, and Thucydides
and Gibbon could make great stories
| out of little events but it took 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
There are others who come to the
Bible merely as antiquarians. If you
come as an antiquarian you will find
great many odd things in the Bible; pc
culiarities of manner and custom, mar
riage and burial; peculiarities of dress,
TUNES, sandals, crisping-pins, amulets
and girdles, and tinkling ornaments. 1t
you come to look at military arrange
ments you will find coats of mail, and
javelins and engines of war, and cir
cumvallation and encampments. Ii you
look for peculiar musical instruments,
you will find psalteries, and shigio-
moths, and rams horns. The anti
quarian will find in the Bible curiosi-
ties in agriculture, and in commerce,
and in art, and in religion, that will
keep him absorbed great while. There
are those who come to this Bible as you
would to cabinet of curiosities, and
you pick up this and say: ''What
strange sword that ISL and s'What
peculiar hat this is!' and ''What an I'M
looked-for lamp that isl" and the Bible
to such becomes British museum.
Then there are others who find moth
ing in the Bible but the poetry. Well,
if you come as poet, you will find in
this book faultless rhy tim, and bold
imagery, and startling antithesis, and
rapturous lyric, and sweet pastoral and
instructive narrative, and devotional
psalms, thoughts expressed in a style
more solemn than that of Montgomery,
more bold than that of Milton, more
terrible than that of Dante, more natu-
raj than that of Wordsworth, more inn
passioned than that of Pollock, more
tender than that of Cowper, more weird
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 rythm. Every
this book touches it makes beautiful,
from the plain ones of the summer
threshing floor, and the daughters of
Major filing the trough for the camels.
and the fish pools of Heshbon, up to the
Psalmist praising God with diapason of
storm and whirlwind, and Job leading
forth Orion, Arcturus and the Pleiades.
1t is a wonderful poem, and a great
many people read it as they do Thomas
Moore's Italia Rookh,' and walter
SCOTS Lady of the Lake, and Tenny
sons s'Charge of the Light Brigade"
They sit down, and are SO absorbed in
looking at the shells on the shore that
they forget to look off on the great
ocean of Gods mercy and salvation.
Then there are others who come to
this book as slzeptics They marshal
passage against passage, and try to get
Matthew and Luke in a 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-
tific 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 thou
sands to Heaven, and in their distorted
vision, prophet seems to war with
prophet, and evangelist with evange-
list, and apostle with apostle; and
if they can find some bad trait of
character in man of God mentioned
in that Bible, these carrion crows cav
and flap their wings over the carcass.
Because they cannot understand how
the whale swallowed Jonah, they at
tempt the more wonderful feat of swal-
lowing the monster whale of modern
sl1epticism They do not believe it pos
sible that the Bible story should be true
which says that the dumb ass spalxe,
while they themselves prove. the thing
possible by their own utterances. | am
amused beyond bounds when hear one
of these men talking about future
life just ask man who rejects that
Bible what heaven is, and hear him
befog your soul. He will tell you that
heaven is merely the development of
the internal resources If a man; it is an
efi1orescence of the dynamic forces into
a state of ETHEREAL and transcendental
lucubration, in close juxtaposition to
the ever present twas" and in the great
sto be- and the everlasting 'No"