The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-09-18

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lid will find It's zorro boration in ancient
CITY diseut0mbed, or ancient wall, cleared
from the dust of ages, or ancient docu-
meut uur0lcd by archUOlOElst. Before
the world rolls on as far into the TWEEN
tieth century as IL has already rolled into
the nineteenth an intidel will be a man
who does not believe his own senses, and
the volumes now critical and deuunciatOry
Of the Bible, if not entirely devastated
I by the book worms, will be taken down
from the shelf as curiOsitcs Of ignorance
or idiOcy. All success to the pickaXes
and crow-bars and powder-blastlng
of those apostles Of archaeological
exploration I like the ringing defiance
Of the old HuguenOts to the assallants
Of Christianity. 'Pound away, you
rebels! Your hammers break, but the
anvil Of Gods word stands" How won
derfully the old book hangs together 1t
is a library made up of siXty-slX books
and written by at least thirty-nine
authors. 1t IS supernatural thing that
they have stuck together. Take the
writings of any other thirty-nine authors,
or any ten authors, or any i've authors,
and put them together, and how long
would they stay tOgetherl Books Of ''ele-
CANT extracts" compiled from many
authors are proverbially short-llved. l
never knew one such book, which, to use
! the publishers phrase, had life in it,
] lbL 1ANG y Hllos WY ID ~ eAA'hb bliC tSA'4N1
made up Of the writings of at least thirty
nine authors has kept together for long
/ line Of centuries when the natural ten
! dency would have been to fly apart like
| loose sheets Of paper when a gust of wind
blows upon them2 1t is because God stuck
! them together and keeps them together.
| But for that Joshua would have
wandered off in one direction, and
/ Paul into another, and Eze-
kiel into another and Luke into
another, and Habaku6 into another, and
| the thirty-nine authors into thirty-nlne
| directions Put the writings OF Shake
| speare and Tennyson and Longfellow, or
any part of them together; how long
would they stay together3 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 fin
ger on the last page of Genesis, and let me
know it, and | can tell you what is on the
next page, namely, the first chapter of Elk
! odus, or while thus blindfolded, put my
! finger on the last chapter of Matthew, and
! let me know il. and | will tell you what is
| on the next page, namely, the first chapter
| of Mark. In the pile of 800 0OO, 600 Bibles
there will be no exception. In other
words, the book gives me confidence by
| its supernatural adhesion of writing to
writing. Even the stoutest ship some
| times 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 New
| fOundland, and the cargo of IRON had
| shifted as the ship swung from larbOard
/ hoo IL lFfFs
| board But thanks be to God this old
! Bible ship, though it has been in thou
! sands 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 Solomon
| and Isaiah and jeremiah and Ezekiel and
! Daniel and Hosea and Joel and Amos and
| Obadiah and Jonah and Micah and
| Nahum and Habbakuk and Zephaniah
and Haggai ana Zachariah and Malachi
and Matthew and Mark and Luke and
John and Paul and Peter, all there, and
with a 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 collapsed,
| and the white horse of the conqueror
described in the last book of the Bible
shall paw the dust in universal demoli-
| ton. 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 or
| Hill1iah or Ezra or Samuel or jeremiah.
or another group of ancients None of
! them wrote it, God wrote the Penta-
touch, and in this day of stenography and
| typewriting that ought not TO be a diff
cult thing to understand. The great mer-
chants and lawyers and editors and bust
ness 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
Jehovahs 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
Tcissitudes of centuries
But 1 come to the heigth of my subject
when I say the way to reinforce our faith
is to pray for it, So the disciples
in my text got their Astounding faith
| Lord, increase our faith Some one
suggests: "DO youreally think that pray
er amounts to anything?n | might as
well ask you is there line of telegraphiC
poles from New York to Washington, is
there 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 con
slant communication with the capital of
the universe, with the throne of the AL
mighty, with the great God himself, for
years and years There has not been a
day when supplications did not fash up
and blessings did not flash down. VIII
some ignoramus, who has never received
a telegram or sent one, come and tell us
that there is no such thing as Geographic
communication Win some one
who has never offered a
prayer that was heard and an
swered come and tell us that there is
nothing in prayerl 1t may not come as
we expect it, but as sure as an honest
prayer goes up. 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, England, and the answer,
after while 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 differ
ent process than that which we expected,
our confidence will surely be augmented.
Oh, put in every prayer you ever make
between your next breath and your last
gasp: Lord, increase our faithn-faith
in Christ as our personal ransom from
present guilt and eternal catastrophe: