Connecticut western news., 1892-09-29

cydides 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.
 MISUSE OF THE BIBLE.
 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 peculiarities of manner aud custom, marriage and burial; peculiarities of dress, tunics, sandals, crisping pins, amulets and girdles and tinkling orna- ments. If you come to look at military arrangements, you will find coats of mail and javelins and engines of war and circumvallation and encampments. If you look for peculiar musical instru- ments, you will find psalteries and shig- ionoths and rams horns. The anti quarian will find in the Bible curiosities in agriculture, and in commerce, and in art, and in religion that will keep him absorbed 8 great while. There are those who come to this Bible as you would to a cabinet of curiosities, and you pick up this and say, "What a strange sword that isp' and "What a peculiar hat this isr' and "What an unlocked for lamp that isl' and the Bible to such becomes British museum.
 Then there are others who find noth- ing in the Bible but the poetry. Well, if you come as a poet, you will find ill this book faultless rhythm, and bold inn agery, and startling antithesis, and rap turous lyric, and sweet pastoral, and instructive narrative, and devotional psalm; thoughts expressed in 8 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 it's 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- ters of Manor filling 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. It is wonderful poem, and great many people read it as they do Thomas Moore's "Lalla Rookh, and Walter Scott's 'Lady of the Lake" and Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Bri- gade." They sit down, and are so ab- sorbed in looking at the shells on the shore that they forget to look off on the great ocean of Gods mercy and saliva tion.
 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 geelogist, These men-these spiders, will say suck poison out of the sweetest flowers. They fatten their infdelity 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 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 moro wonderful feat ot 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 possible by their own utterances.
 am amused beyond bounds when l hear one of these men talking about a 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 of a man; it is an ef- florescence of the dynamic forces into state of ethereal and transcendental lu- cubration, in close juxtaposition to the ever present twas" and the great "to be- and the everlasting ''no." Consider ing themselves wise, they are fools for time, fools for eternity.
 AS TO VAIN OSCILLATIONS.
 fhen there is another class of persons who come to the Bible as controversial fsts. They are enormous Presbyterians CT fierce Baptists or violent Methodists. They cut the Bible to suit their creed instead of cutting their creed to suit the Bible. If the Scriptures think as they do, well; if not, so much the worse for the Scriptures. The Bible is merely the whetstone on which they sharpen the dissecting knife of controversy. They come to 1t as government in time of war comes to armories or arsenals for weapons and munitions. They have de- clared everlasting war against all other sects, and they want so many broad swords, so many muskets, so many howitzers, so many columbiads, so much grape and canister, so many fieldpieces with which to rake the field of dispute, for they mean to get the victory though the heavens be darkened with the smoke and the earth rent with the thunder. What do they care about the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ?
 l have seen some such men come back from an ecclesiastical massacre as proud of their achievements as an Indian war rior boasting of the number of scalps he has taken. have more admiration for