Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1892-10-01
trumpet peal of the Apocalypse. 1 know
there are great many people who do
not find Christ in the Bible.

as q nlSCOf1an. wen, IL you come Us u
historian. You will find in this book how
the world was made, how the seas fled
to their places, how empires were estab-
lishel, how nation fought with nation,
iavelin ringing; against harbegeon. until
tho earth was CHASTITY with the dead.
You Will see the coronation of princes,
the Triumph Of conQuerors, and the world
turned upside down aud back again and
down again, cleft and SCARED with
great ;tgonies of earthquake and tempest
and battle. 1t lisa wonderful history,
putting to the blush all others in the ac-
curacy OF us recital and in the stupen-
dous events it r. cords. Homer and Thu
cydides and G:Ebon could make great
stories ont of little events; but it took a
Moses to tell how the heavens and the
eurth were made IN one chapter, and to
give the history of thousands OF years
upon two-lcuycs.
MISUSE OF TIE. gIDLE.
There are others, who come to the
aBibleanprely rs antiqnarians. you
come as an antiquarian, yon will find u
great many odd things i'll the Bible
peculialities of manner and custom,
marriage and burial; peculiarities Of
dress, tunics, sandals, crisping pins,
amulets and gir,lles and tinEling DRILL
ments. If you come to look at military
arrangements. you will find coats Of
mail and javclins and engines of war
and decentralization and cncampmcnts.
Ii you look for peculiar musical instru-
ments, you will lind psalteries AMI shig-
ionoths and rams horns. The anti
ouarian will fird i'll the Bible curiosities
in agriculture, and in commerce, and in
crt, and in religion that will keep him
absorbed great while. There arc
those who como to this Bible as you
would to cabinet of curiosities, and
You nick up tiiis and say, what u strange
sword that isl" and What a peculiar
hat this is!' and What an unlocked
for lamp That isr' and the Bible to such
becomes u British museum.
Then there are others who find moth
ing in the Bible but the poetry. Well,
if you come as i poet, you will lind IN
this Look faaltlcss rhythm, ard bold lm-
agory, and startling untiLhcsis, 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, moro ter
rjble than that of Dante, more natural
than that Of Wor,lswcrth, more impas-
stoned than that OF Pollock, more tender
than that of Cowper, more weird than
tl.;:n that of Speuser. This great poem
brings all the gems of the earth into Its
curoaet, and it weayes the flames OF
Judgment in its garland and pours eter-
nal harmonips III It's rhythm.
Everything ti:is book touches it makes
beautiful, from tic plain stones Of the
summer tllraaliins floor, and the dauSh-
tiers of N;lhor filing the trough for the
cancls. and tho fish pools of Hesnbon,
up to The psalinist praising God with
diapason of storm and whirlwind, and
Job leading forth Orion, Arcturus and
the Pleiadcs. 1t is u wonderful poem,
and a great many people read it as they
do Thomas Eloorc's ''Lalla Rookh," and
Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake, and
Tennyson's Charge of tho Light Bri-
gadc.." They sit down, and are so alb
sorbed in looking ut the shells on the
shore that they forget to look off on the
CROFT ocean of Gods mercy and saliva
tion.
Then there are others who come to
this book rs skcptics. They marshal
massage against passage, and try to get
Matthew and Luke il quarrel, and
would havo 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 aud the inspired writer they
will give the preference to the geolosist.
These moa-these spiders, will say
suck poison out of the sweetest flowers.
They fatten their inidelity 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 tho dumb ass spakc,
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 alnan who rejects
that Eible what heaven is, and hear him
befcg your soul lie will tell you that
heaven is merely the development of the
Internal resources CT a man; it is an eff
Gorescence of the dynamic forces into u
state of ethereal and transcendental lu-
cubration, III close iuxtaposition to the
ever present 'swas" and the great "to
be" and the everlasting mo-" Consider
ing themselves wise, they are fools for
time, fools for eternity.
AS TO VAIN DESIGNATIONS.
Thei, there is another class of persons
who come to tic Bible as controversial
lists. They are enormous Presbyterians
or fierce Baptists or violent Methodists.
They cut the Bible to suit their creed
instead of cutting their creed to suit the
Bible. If thc.>Scriptures think as they
do, well; if not, so much the worse for
the Scriptures. The Bible is merely the
MILESTONE on which they sharpen the
dissectirg knife of controversy. They
come to it as q government in time OF
war comes to arlnories or arsenals Tor
l,,,, II