Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1892-09-26

! 20 back and look af the writings Of
Job and hear him exclaim, II know thai
my Redeemer liveth.r Then 90 tt
Ezekiel and find Christ presented there
as plant of renown," and thenI turn
over TO Isaiah and Christ is spoken Of las
sheep before her shearers." II is Jesus
AL the way between Genesis and Malachi
Then turn over in the New Testament
and IL is Christ iu the parable, it is
Christ in the miracle, it is Christ in the
evangelist's story. IL is Christ IN the
lni,ostles epistles and 1t is Christ in the
iruinpet peal of the Apocalypse. know
ilcre are a great many people who do
Tot find Christ in the Bible.
Here Is man who studies the Bible
as historian. Well, IL 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,
Ijnvelin ringing against barbegeon, 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 a wonderful history,
putting to the blush all others in the ac-
euracy Of its recital and in the stupen-
dous events it records. Homer ani Thu
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. st
There are others who come to the
Bible merely rs antiquarians. If you
come as an antiquarian, you will find
great many odd things Ia the Bible
peculiarities of manner and custom,
marriage and burial; peculiarities Of
dress, tunics, sandals, crispiny pins,
amulets and girdles and tinkling orna-
nents. II you come to look at military
arrangements, you, will find coats of
mail and javelins and engines of war
and decentralization and encainpments.
II you look for peculiar musical instru-
ments, you will find psalteries and shig
ionoths and rams horns. Tie anti
quarian 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 ,curiosities, and
you pick up this and say, "Whats a strange
sword that isr and "What 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 moth |
ing in the Bible but the poetry Well,
If you come as poet, you will find in |
this book faultless 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 a 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 Nahor filling the trough for the
camels, and the fish pools of Heshbon,
up to the psalmist praising God with
iiapason OF storm and whiriwind, and
Job leading forth Orion, Arcturus and
he Pleiades. 1t is wonderful poem,
md great many people read it as they
10 Thomas Moore's 'Lalla Rookh, /" and /,
Walter Scott's LADY of the Lake." and |
rennyson's "Charge Of the Light Bri-
yade." They sit down, and are so alb
,orbed in looking at the shells on the
,hore that they forget to look off on the
great ocean of Gods mercy and saliva
ion.
Then there are others who come to !
his book as skeptics. They marshal
passage against passage, and try to get
and Luke in quarrel, and
would have discrepancy between what
Paul and james say about faith and
works, and they try the account of {
Noses concerning the creation by {
modern decisions in science, and resolve
hat in all questions between the scien- {
ific explorer and the inspired writer they {
will give the preference to the geologist.
These men--these spiders, will say~-
uck poison out of the sweetest flowers. !
They fatten their infidelity upon the {
ruths which have led thousands to
'eaven, and in their distorted vision I
'rophet seems to war with prophet, and {
vangelist with evangelist, and apostle c
With apostle, and IL they can find some /
ad trait Of character In man Of God s
nentioned in that Bible these carrion
rows cav and flap their wings over the ?
arcass. Because they cannot under {
tand how the whale swallowed Jonah 4
hey attempt the more wonderful feat of n
the monster whale of mod c
I'm skepticism. They do not believe II v
ossible that the Bible story should be II
'ue which says that the dumb ass spake, d
lille they themselves prove the thing
ossible by their own utterances. I,
am amused beyond bounds when l h
ear one of these men talking about q d
lture life. just ask n man who rejects I
lat Bible what heaven is, and hear him b
sfog your SOUL He will tell you that "
'aven is merely the development Of the al
ternal resources OF man; 1t is an ef- h
presence Of the dynamic forces into q OF
ate of ethereal and transcendental lu- ii
lhra finn In elnea irxfo,noa,t;nn 40 Al. | n.