News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-09-21
aoc,,,oont ,-,ro1Ied nv arcbenoIooist

Before T. e WOclU Tolls Oh DIS lar 1nUO
the twentieth century as it has already
rolled into the nineteenth On infdel
will be a man who does not believe his
own senses, and the volumes now crit
ical and de1unciatory of the Bible, If
not entirely devastated by the book
worms, will be taken down from the
shelf as curiosities of ignorance or idiocy.
All success to the pickaxes and crow
bars and powder blasting of those apos-
ties of archaeological exploration. l like
the ringing defiance of the old Huguenots
to the assailants of Christianity: Pound
away, you rebels! Your hammers break,
but the anvil of Gods word stands"
How wonderfully the old book hangs
together. 1t is library made up of &c
books and written by at least SO authors.
1t is supernatural thing that they have
stuck together. Take the writings of any
other 80 authors, or any 10 authors, or any
5 authors, and put them together, and
how long would they stay together?
Books of elegant extracts" compiled
from many authors are proverbially
short lived. never knew one such book
which, to use the publishers phrase,
had life In 1t Tor hve years.
Why is it that the Bible, made up Of
the writings of at least 80 authors, has
kept together for long line of centu-
ries when the natural tendency would
have been to fly apart like loose sheets of
paper when gust of wind blows upon
them? 1t is because God stuck them to-
gether and keeps them together. But for
that Joshua would have wandered off in
one direction, and Paul into another, and
Ezekiel into another, and Habakkuk into
another, and the 80 authors into 80 direc-
tons.
Put the writings of Shakespeare and
Tennyson and Longfellow, or any part
of them, together How long would they
stay together? No book bindery could
keep them together. But the cannon of
Scripture is loaded now with the same
ammunition with which prophet and
apostle loaded it.
Bring me all the Bibles of the earth
into one pile, and blindfold me SO that I
cannot tell the difference between day
and night, and put into my hand any
one of all that Alpine mountain of sacred
books, and put my finger on the last page
can tell you what is on the next page
namely, the first chapter of Exodus; or
while thus blindfolded put my finger on
the last chapter of Matthew and let me
know it, and l will tell you what is on
the next page-namely, the first chapter
of Mark. in the pile of 500, 100000
Bibles there will be no exception. In
other words, the book gives me conf
Gcace by it3 supernatural adhesion of
writing to writing.
Even the stoutest ship sometimes shifts
its cargo, and that is what made our
peril the greater in the ship Greece of
the National line when the cyclone
struck us of the coast of Newfoundland,
and the cargo of iron had shifted as the
ship swung from larboard to starboard,
and from starboarI to larboard. But,
thanks be to God, this old Bible ship,
though it has been in thousands of years
of tempest, has kept its cargo of gold
and precious stones compact and sure,
and in all the centuries nothing about
it has shifted. There they stand,
shoulder to shoulder, David and Solo
mon and Isaiah and jeremiah and
and Amos and Obadiah and Jonah and
Micah and Nahum and Habakkuk and
Zephaniah and Haggai and Zechariah
and Malachi and Matthew and Mark
and Luke and John and Paul and Peter,
all there, and with q certainty of being
there until the heavens and the earth,
the creation of which is described in the
first book of the Bible, shall have Col
lapsed, and the white horse of the con-
queror, described in the last book of the
Bible, shall raw the dust in universal de-
molition. B. that tremendous fact my
faith is REINFORCED.
The discussion is abroad as to who
wrote those books of the Bible called
the Pent; ,euch, whether Moses or
Hilkiah or Ezra or Samuel or jeremiah
or another group of ancients. None of
them wrote it. God wrote the Penta-
teuch, and in this day of stenography
and typewriting that ought not to be
difficult thing to understand. The great
merchants and lawyers and editors and
business men of our towns and cities
dictate nearly all their letters; they only
sign them after they are dictated. The
prophet and evangelist and apostle were
Jehovah's stenographers or typewriters.
They put down only what God dictated;
he signed it afterward. He has been
writing his name upon it all through the
vicissitudes of centuries.
THE PRAYER OF FAITH.
But 1 come to the height of my sub
ject when say the way to REINFORCE
our faith is to pray for it. So the disci-
Piles in my text got their Astounding
faith. Lord, increase our faith" Some
one suggests, "Do you really think that
prayer amounts to anything?" 1 might
as we'll ask you, is there line of tele-
graphic poles from New York to Wash
ington, is there a line of Geographic
wires from Manchester to London, from
Cologne to Berlin? All the people who
have sent and received messages ON those
lines know of their existence. So there
are millions of souls who have been in
constant communication with the cap
ital of the universe, with the throne of
the Almighty, with the great God him.
self, for years and years and years.
There has not been a day when sup
plications did not flash up and blessings
did not flash down. Will some igno-
ramus, who has never received tele-
gram or sent one, come and tell us that
there is no such thing as telegraphic
communication? Will some one who
has never offered prayer that was
heard and answered come and tell us
that there is nothing in prayer? 1t may
not come as we expect it, but as sure as
an honest prayer goes up a merciful
answer will come down.
During the blizzard of four or five
years ago, you know that many of the
telegraph wires were Frustrated, and |
telegraphed to Chicago by the way Of
Liverpool, and the answer after awhile
came round by another wide circuit
and so the prayer we offer may come
back in a way we never imagined, and
if we ask to have our faith increased,
although it may come by widely diff
ferent process than that which we ex-
pccted, our confidence will surely be
augmented.
Oh, put it in every prayer you ever
make between your next breath and
your last gasp, Lord, increase our
faith"-faith in Christ as our personal
ransom from present guilt and eternal
catastrophe; faith in the omnipotent
Holy Ghost; faith in the Bible, the
truest volume ever dictated or written
or printed or read; faith in adverse
providences, harmonized for our best
welfare; faith in a judgment day that
will set all things right which have for
ages been wrong.
Increase our faith, not by a fragile ad-
dition, but by an infnitude of recupera-