The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-09-29

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage delivered
the following sermon in the Brooklyn
tabernacle, taking for his text:
Lord. increase our faith--Luke XVII, 5.
what a pity he is going there" said
my friend, most distinguished gen
eral Of the army, when he was told
that the reason for my not being pres
ent on certain celebrated day in
Brooklyn was that on that day had
sailed for the Holy Land. why dc
you say that?' inquired some one. Ny
military friend replied: ''Oh, he viii
be disillusioned when he gets amid the
squalor and commonplace scenes OF
Palestine, and his faith will be shaker
in Christianity" The great general
misjudged the case. went to the Holy
Land for the one purpose of having my
faith strengthened, and that was the re.
suit which came of it. In all our Jour
neyings, in all our readings, in all our
associations. in all our plans, augmen-
tation, rather than the depletion of oul
faith, should be our chief desire. 1t is
easy enough to have our faith de.
stroyed- i can give you a recipe for
its obliteration. Read infidel books,
have long and frequent conversations
with slSeptics, attend the lectures Oh
those antagonistic to religion, give
full swing to some bad habit. and your
faith will be so completely gone that
you will laugh at the idea that you
ever had any. If you want to ruin
Your faith, you can do it more easily
than you can do anything else. After
believing the Bible all my life, / can
see plain way by which, in six weeks,
could enlist my voice and pen and
heart and head and entire nature in
the bonn bardment of the Scriptures
and the church and all / now hold
scacred. That it is easy to Danish
soon and forever all respect for
the Bible, 1 prove by the fact
that SO many have done it. They
were not particularly brainy, nor had
especial force of will. but they so thor
oughly accomplished the overthrow of
their faith that they have no more idea
that the Bible is true, or that Christi
anity amounts to anything, than they
have in the truth of the arabian
Nights Entertainments" or the exist
ence of Don Quixote's sEwindmills I"
They have destroyed their faith so
thoroughly that they never will have
q return of it. Fifty REVEALS of reli-
gion may sweep over the city, the town,
the neighborhood where they live, and
they will feel nothing but a silent or
expressed disgust There are persons
in this house to-day who twenty years
ago gave mp their faith and they will
never resume it. The black and deep
toned bell of doom hangs over their
head. and take the hammer of that
bell, and strike it three times with
all my. might. and il sounds, Wool
Woel Woe But my wish, and the
wish of most of you, is the prayer ex-
pressed by the disciples of Jesus Christ,
in the words of my text: Lord, in
crease our faith"
The first mode of accomplishing this
is to study the Bible itself. / do not
believe there is an infidel now alive
who has read the Bible through. But
as so important a document needs to be
read at least twice through in order
that it may be thoroughly understood,
and read in course, / now offer one
hundred dollars reward to any infidel
who has read the Bible through twice
and read il in course. But / can not
take such a mans word for it, for there
is no foundation for integrity, except
the Bible, and the man who rejects the
source of truth, how can / accept his
truthfulness? So 1 must have another
witness in the case before / give the
reward. must have the testimony of
some one who has seen him read it all
through twice. Infidels fish in this
Bible for incoherences and contradic-
tions and absurdities, and if you find
their Bible, you will see interlineations
in the Book of Jonah an some of the
chapters of that unfortunate prophet
nearly worn out by much use, and
some parts of Second Samuel or First
Kings you will find him with finger
marks, but the pages which contain
the ten commandments and the psalms
of David and the Sermon on the Mount
and the Book of John, the Evangelist,
will not have a single lead-pencil
stroke in the margin, nor any finger
marks showing frequent perusal. The
father of one of the presidents of the
United States was a pronounced in
fdel. i knew it when many years ago
accepted his invitation to spend the
night in his home. Just before retir-
ing at night he said, in jocose way:
Il suppose you are accustomed to read
the Bible before going to bed, and here
is my Bible from which to read" He
then told me what portions he would
like to have me read, and he only
asked for those portions on which he
could easily be facetious.
You know you can make fun about
any thing. 1 suppose You could take
the last letter your father or mother
ever wrote and find something in the
grammar, or the spelling, or the
tremor Of the penmanship about which
TO be derisively critical. The internal
evidence of the truthfulness of the
Bible is so mighty that no one man
out of the billion six hundred millions
of the worlds present population, or
the vaster millions of the past. ever
read the Bible in course, and read it
prayerfully and carefully, but was led
to believe il. John Murray, the Ia
nous book publisher Of Edinburgh.
and the intimate friend of Southey,
Coleridge, Walter Scott, Canning and
Washington Irving, bought of Moore,
the poet, the memoirs of Lord Byron"
and they were to be published after
Byron's death. But they were not fit
to be published, although Murray had
paid for them ten thousand dollars.
That was a solemn conclave when
eight of the prominent literary people of