The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1893-09-22

ceiving and still expecting nothing but
confirmation from all such sources. What
supports the Palestine Exploration soci-
etyg Contributions from churches and
Christian benefactors. l saw the marks
of the shovels of that exploring society
amid the ruins Of ancient Jericho and
all up and down from the Dead sea to
Cesarea Philippi. "Dig awayp says the
church of God, "and the deeper you dig
the better like"
The discovered monuments Of Egypt
have chiseled ON them the story of the
sufferings of the Israelites in Egyptian
bondage, as we find 1t in the Bible
there, in imperishable stone, representa-
tons OF the slave, of the whips and
of the taskmasters who compelled the
making of bricks without straw. Ex-
humed Nineveh and Babylon, with their
dusty lips, declare the Bible true Ma
poleons soldiers in the Egyptian CAM
paign pried up stone, which you may
find in the British museum, stone, as
/ remember it, presenting perhaps two
feet of lettered surface 1t contains words
In three languages. That stone was the
key that unlocked the meaning of all
the hieroglyphics of tombs and obelisks
and tells over and over again the same
events which Moses recorded.
The sulphurous graves of Sodom and
Gomorrah have been identified. The re-
mains of the tower of Babel have been
found. Assyrian documents lifted from
the sand and Behistun inscription hun
dreds of feet high up on the rock echo
and re-echo the truth of Bible history.
The signs of the time indicate that al
most every fact of the Bible from lid to
lid will find its confederation in ancient
city disentombed, or ancient wall
cleared from the dust of ages, or ancient
document unrolled by archeologist.
Before the world rolls on as far into
the twentieth century as it has already
rolled into the nineteenth an infdel
will be a man who does not believe his
own senses, and the volumes now crit
ical and denunciatory 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. like
the ringing defiance of the old Huguenots
to the assailauts 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 Sc
books and written by at least 80 authors.
1t is supernatural thing that they have
stuck together. Take the writings of any
other 80 authors, or any 10 authors, or any
authors, and put them together, and
how long would they stay together?
Books of elegant extracts" compiled
from many authors are proverbially
short lived. l never knew onesuch book
which, to use the publishers phrase,
'.had life in it" for five 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 /
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
of Genesis and let me know it, and l
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 will tell you what is on
the next page-namely, the first chapter
of Mark. In the pile of 5O0,000,O00
Bibles there will be no exception. In
other words, the book gives me conf
dence by its supernatural adhesion of
writing to writing.
Even the stoutest shipsometimes 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 off the coast of Newfoundland,
and the cargo of iron had shifted as the
ship swung from larboard to starboard,
and from starboard 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
Ezekiel and Daniel and Hosea and Joel
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 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 paw the dust in universal de
molition. By that tremendous fact my
faith is REINFORCED
The discussion Is abroad as to who
wrote those books Of the Bible called
the Pentateuch, whether Moses Oh
Hilkiah or Ezra or Samuel or Jeremiah
or another group Of ancients. More o.
them wrote it. God wrote the Penta
touch, and in this day Of stenography
and typewriting that ought not to be {
difficult thing to understand. The grea
merchants and lawyers and editors ant
business men of our towns and cite
dictate nearly all their letters; they only
sign them after they are dictated. TIL,
prophet and evangelist and apostle wer,
Jehovah's stenographers or typewriters
They put down only what God dictated
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