Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-09-22

see many witnesses present TO day In
the courtroom. and / call you TO the
witness stand, but | have only sec
ond of time for any one of you. AS
you pass along just give one sentence
in regard TO Christianity. 'Under
God il has changed my entire nature"
says one. at brought me from
drunkenness and poverty to sobriety
and good home" says another at
solace1 me when l lost my child"
says another. at gave me hope Of
future treasures when my property
was swept off by the last panic" says
another 1t HIS given me peace
and a satisfaction more t. me than a l
the world besides" says another. 1T
has been TO me light, and music, and
frag ance, and radiant antici patton"
says another. All. s op the procession
of witnesses. Enough! Enough! All
those voices of the past and the pres
ent have nightly increased our faith.
Again our belief is reinforced by
archaeological exploration. We must
confess that good men at one time
were afraid of biologists hammer and
chemists crucible and chpologst's
investigation, but now intelligent
Christians are receiving and still OK
pectiDg nothing but confirmation from
all such sources. What supports the
Palestine Exploration Society,"" Con-
tributions from churches and chris
tian beuefactorS. | saw the MARKS of
the shovels Of that exploring o :iety
amid the ruins of ancient Jericho and
all up and down from the ID al sea To
CeSarea Phillippi. Dig away says
the church of God, land the deeper
you dig he better | like The dis.
covered monuments of Egypt have
chiselled on them the story Of the suf-
ferings of the lsraelites in Egyptian
bondage, as we find il in the bible;
there. in imperishable stone, repre-
sensations of the ave, of the
whips and of the tlsk-masters who
compelled the making of bricks with
out straw. Exhumed Nincveh and
Babylon, with their dusty lips, de-
clare the bible true. Napoleon's sol
diers in the Egyptian campaign pried
up n stone, which you may find in the
British museum, a stone, as ! reIncm-
Der II, presenting perhaps two feet Of
lettered surface. IT contains words in
three languages. That stone was the
key that unlocked the meaning of all
the hieroglvphics of tombs aad ODE
lisks, and tells Over and over again the
same events which Moses recorded.
The sulphurous graves / Sodom and
Gomorrah have been identiGe :. The
remains OF the tower + Babel have
been found. Assyrian documents
lifted from the sand and BChisun in
scription, hundreds { ( feet high up on
the rock echo and re-echo the truth
of bible history. The signs of the time
indicate that almost every fact of the
hih1n la 40 1f1 rxiI Er,A
confederation in ancient city olsen
tom ed. or ancient wall. cleared
from the dust of ages, or ancient docu-
ment unro.led by archaeologiSt. Be-
fore the world rolls on as far into he
twentieth century as it has already
rolled into the nineteenth an inidel
will be man who does not bel eve
his own senses, aud the volumes now
critical 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 sues ess to the p ckaXs and
crow bars and powder blasting of
those apo ties of archaeological c.
plordtion. l Ike the ringing defa ce
OF the old Hugenots TO the ASSISTANTS
of Christianity: Pound away, YOU
rebels. Your hammers break, but The
anv / of Gods word stands" How
wonderfully the old book hangs
together. 1t is a library made
up of siXty-six books and writ
ten 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 five authors. and
put them together, and how long
would they stay together? Books of
elegant extracts" compiled from
many authors are proven bially short
lived. | never knew one such book,
which to use the publishers phrase,
had life in it, for five Yeas. Why is
it that the bible, made up of the
writings of at least thirty-nine
authors, has kept together for long
line of centuries when the natural
tendency would have been to fly apart
like loose sheets of paper when
gust of wind blows upon them? II is
because God stuck them together
and keeps them together. But for
that Joshua won d have wandered off
in one direction, and raul into
another, and Ezekiel into another,
and Luke into another, and Hab-
bakuk into another, and the
tnlrty nine authors INTO thirty
nine directions. Put the writings OF
Shakespeare and Tennysou ami Long
fellow, or any part of them, together;
how long would they stay together?
No book biudery could keep them to-
gethcr. But the cannon of scripture
is loaded now with the same ammuni-
ton with which prophet and apostle
loaded it. FIRING ne all the bibles
of the earth into one pile, and bind
fold me so that / cannot tell the
difference between day and ght, and
put into my hand any one OF all that
Alpine mo;ntain OF sacred ooks, and
put my finger 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 Exodus,
or while thus biindfolded, put my
finger on the last chapter of Natthew,
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
five hundred million bibles there
will be no exception. In other
words, the book gives me confiden, c
by its 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
shin Grnecp of tua National limo w hon