The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-10-07

accuracy of its recital and the stipend
GUS events it records. Homer and Thu
cydides and Gibbon could make great
stories out of little events, but it took
a 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 a
great many odd things in the Bible;
peculiarities of manner and custom,
marriage and burial; peculiarities OF
dress, TUNES, sandals, crisping pins,
| amulets and girdies, and tinkling orna-
ments. If you will come to look at
military arrangements, you will find
coats of mail, and javelins and engines
of war, and decentralization and en-
campments. If you look for peculiar
musical instruments, you will find
psalteries, and shiglonoths, and rams
horns. The antiquarian will find in
the Bible curiosities in agriculture, and
in commerce, and in art, and in relig-
ion, that will keep him absorbed a
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 IS" and What peculiar hat this
is" and "What an unlocked for lamp
that ISL and the Bible to such becomes
a British museum.
Then there are others who find moth
ing in the Bible but the poetry. Well,
If You come as 4 poet, you will find in
this book faultless rhythm, and bold
imagery, and startling autithesis, and
rapturous 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
terrible than that of Dante, more
natural than that of Wordsworth. more
imprisoned 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
eternal harmonies in its rhythm. Every
thing this book touches it makes beauti-
full, from the plain stones of the summer
threshing floor, and the daughters of
Major filling the trough for the camels,
and the fish pools of HeShbon, up to
the psalmist praising God with diapa-
son of storm and whirlwind, and Job
leading forth Orion, Arcturus and the
Pleiades- 1t is a won ierfil pen AMI
a great many people read it a the do
Thomas Moore's 'Lalla Eolkh," and
Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake"
and Tennyson'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 skeptics They marshal pas
sage against passage and try to get Mat
thew 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 con-
corning the creation by modern deci-
sions In science, and resolve that in all
questions between the scientific ex-
plorer and the inspired writer they will
give the preference to the geologist
These men-these spiders, l will say
suck poison ont of the sweetest flowers
They fatten their infidelity upon the
truths which. have led thousands to
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
modern skepticism. They do not be-
lieve it possible that the Bible story
should be true which says that the
dumb ass spal1e, while they themselves
prove the thing possible by their own
l am amused beyond
bounds when hear one of these men
talking about a future life. just ask a
man who rejects that Bible what Heav-
en- is and hear him befog your soul
He will tell you that Heaven is merely
the development of the internal re-
sources of a man: it is an effiorescence
of the dynamic forces into a state of
ETHEREAL and transcendental lucubra-
ton, in close juxtaposition to the ever
present was" and the great ito be-
and the everlasting no" Considering
themselves wise, they are fools for time,
fools for eternity
Then there is another class of per-
sons who come to the Bible as contro-
They are enormous Pres
byterians or fierce Baptists, or violent
Methodists. They cut the Bible to suit
their creed, instead of cutting their
creed to suit the Bible If the Script
ures 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 dissecting knife of
They come to it as gov
eminent in time of war comes to arm
cries or arsenals for weapons or NUM- |
tons They have declared everlasting |
war against all other sects, and they |
want so many broadswords, so many |
SO many howitzers, so many |
SO much grape and canister,
so many feld-pieces with which to rake |
the field of dispute, fo- they mean to |
get the victory, though the heavens be |
iarkened 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 achieve
neuts as an Indian warrior boast ting of |
the number of scalps he has taken. l
have more admiration for a man who |