Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1893-09-21


psychologists investigation, but now In
telligent Christians are receiving and still
expecting nothing but confirmation from
ali such sources. What supports the Pal
estne Exploration society? Contributions
from churches and Christian benefactors.
| saw the marks Of the shoves OF that
exploring society amid the ruins of ancient
Jericho, and all up and down from the
Dead sea to CRsarea Philippi. dig awayW
says the church of God, and the deeper
you dig the better like"
Thediscovered monuments of Egypt have
chiseed on them the story of the sufTering5
of the Israelites in Egyptian bondage, as
we find it in the Bible there, in imperish-
able stone, representations of the slave of
the whips and of the taskmasterS who
compelled the making of bricks without
straw. EXhumed Nineyeh and Babylon,
with their dusty lips, declare the Bible
true. Napoleons soldiers in the Egyptian
campaign pried mp stone, which you may
find in n British museum, "A stone, as re-
member 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 hero
glyphics of tombs and obelisks and tells
over and over again the same event. which
Moses recorded.
The sulphurous graves of Sodona and
Gomorrah have been identified. The re-
mains of the tower of Babel have been
found Assyrian documents lifted from
the sand and sehistun inscription, hun
dreds of feet high mp on the rock, echo and
re-echo the truth Of Bible history. The
signs of the time indicate that almost 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 ar
chRologist.
Before the world rolls on as far into the
twentieth century as it has already rolled
I into the nineteenth, an infdel will he a man
who does not believe his own senses, and
| the volumes now critical and denunciatory
of the Bible, il not entirely devastated by
| the bookworms, will be taken down from
the shelf as curiosities of ignorance or lido
cy. All success to the pickaXes and crow
| bars and powder blasting of those apostles
of archaeological exploration. l like the
ringing defiance of the old Huguenots to
the assalants of Christianity: Pound
away, you rebels! Your hammers break,
! but the anvil of Gods word stands"
How wonderfully the old book hangs to-
gctherl 1t is a library made up of &c books
and written by at least 80 authors 1t ia n
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 it, for
five years.
Why is it that the Bible, made up of the
writings of at least 80 authors, has kept to-
gether for long line of centuries when
the natural tendency would have been to
fly apart like loose sheets of paper when a
gust of wind blows upon them? 1t is be-
cause God stuck them together and keeps
them together. But for that Joshua would
have wandered off in one direction, and
Paul into another, and Ezekiel int another
and Luke into another and Habak kuk in
to another, and the 80 authors into 80 direc-
tions. 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 m,
all the Bibles of the earth into one pile
and blndfold 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 Tx
odus. or while thus blindfolded, put my
finger on the last chapter of Matthew, anC
let me know it, and | will tell you what il
on the next page-namely, the first chapte
Of Mark. In the pile of 500,000000 Bibles
there will be no exception.
In other words, the book gives me conf
dence by its supernatural adhesion 0
writing to writing. Even the stoutest shiI
sometimes ships its cargo, and that is wha
made our peril the greater in the shil
Greece of the National line when the cy
clone struck us off the coast of Newfound
land and the cargo of iron had shifted a
the ship swung from larboard to starboar,
and from starboard to larboard. But
thanks be to God, this old Bible ship
though it has been in thousands of years o
} tempest, has kept its cargo of gold ant
precious stones compact and sure, and il
all the centuries nothing about it ha
shifted. There they stand shoulde
to shoulder, David and Solomon ant
: Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel an,
Daniel and Hosea and Joel and Amo
and Obadiah and Jonah and Micha ant
Nahum and llabakkuk and Xephaniah an'
Hasgai aud Zechariah and Malachi ant
Matthew and Mark and Luke and job
} md Paul and Peter, all there, ant
with certainty of being there unit
the heavens and the earth, the creation
Df which is described in the first book q
the Bible, shall have collapsed, and tn
, white horse of the Conqueror described i
5 the last book of the Bible shall paw til
dust in universal demolition. By tina
3 tremendous fact my faith is REINFORCED.
| The discussion is abroad as to who wrot
: those books of the Bible called the Pent,
7 teuch, whether Moses or Hilkiah or Err
or Samuel or jeremiah or another group
( aucients. None of them wrote it. Go
I wrote the Pentateuch, and in this day
! stenography and typewritin9 that ougl
not TO be a difficult thing to understand
5 The great merchants and lawyers and e,
< itors and business men of our towns an
e cities dictate nearly all their letters; the