The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1892-09-27

my Redeemer liveth." Then / go to
Ezekiel and find Christ presented there
as "a plant of renown," and then l turn
over to Isaiah and Christ Is spoken of las
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 in the
evangelist's story, it is Christ in the
apostles epistles and it is Christ in the
trumpet peal of the Apocalypse. l know
there are a great many people VINO do
not find Christ in the Bible.
Here is a man who studies the Bible
as historian. Well, if you come as a
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. 1t Is 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
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 and 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 decentralization and encampments.
If you look for peculiar musical instru-
lnents, you will find psalteries and shig-
ionoths and rams horns. The anti
duarian will find in the Bible curiosities
in agriculture, and in commerce, and In
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 curios1ues, and
YOU pick up this and say. That strange
sword that is!' and What a peculiar
hat this isl-' and what an unlocked
for lamp that is" 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 ss q poet, you Will ma In
this book faultless rhythm. and bold i'm
asery, and startling anttthesis, 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 harlnonies in its rhythm
EVERYTHING this book touches IL makes
beautiful, from the plain stones of the
summer thrashing floor, and the daugh-
tiers of Major 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. 1t is a wonderful poem,
and great many people read it as they
! do Thomas Moore's ''Lalla Rookh,S and
Walter SCOTS Lady of the Lake" and
Teunvson's Charge of the Light Bri-
yade." They sit down, and are so alb
sorbed in looking at the shells on the
shore that they forget to LOOK or on the
great ocean of Gods mercy and saliva
ti6n.
Then there are others who come to
this book as skeptics. 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
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 infdelity upon the
truths which have led thousands K
heaven, and in their distorted vision
prophet seems to wax with prophet, and
evangelist with evangelist, and apostle
with apostle, and if they can find some
bad trait of character in a man of Coz
mentioned in that Bible these ca-rior
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 o.
swallowing the monster whale of mod
ern skepticism. They do not believe il
possible that the Bible story should bC
true which says that the dumb ass spake
while they themselves prove the thing
possible by their own utterances-
am amused beyond bounds when
hear one of these men talking about 6
future life. Just ask q man who rejects
| bot laaxay, &c oT16 haar In N