The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1895-06-14
THE LONDONDERRY SITTER.

flty, tno hotner maintained nor lnteg-
rity, the SONS grew mp and entered pro-
fessions and commercial iife, adjoining
every sphere in the life in which they
lived, and the daughters went into fam
lilies where Christ was honored, and all
that was good and pure and righteous
reigned perpetually, For 30 years that
family endured the Scriptures Not one
of them ruined by them,
No Gliding Of Sill.
Now II you will tell mo of family
where the Bible has been read twice
day for 30 years, and ths children have
been brought up in that habit, and the
father went to ruin, and the mother
went to ruin, and tho sons and daugh-
tiers were destroyed by tiff you will
tell me of one such incident. l will
throw away my Bible or will doubt
your veraoity. tell you if man is
shocked with what he calls the indelica-
cies of the word of God he IL prurient
in his taste and imagination. If n man
cannot read Solomon's Song without
impure suggestion, he is sither in his
heart or in his life libertine.
The Old Testament description of
wiekedness, uhcleanness of ali sorts, is
furbosely and righteously disgusting
account, Instead of the Byronic and the
Partisan vernaculaf, Which makes sin
attractive instead of appalling. When
those old prophets point you to ]aZa-
fetto, you understand it is n lazaretto.
When man having begun to do right
falls back into wickedness and gives up
Ills integrity, the Bible does not say he
was overcome by the fasetatims of the
festive board, or that he surrendered TO
convivialities, or that he became n lit
tie fast in his habits. will tell you
what the Bible says, "The dog is turned
NJ his own voplit again and the SOW
that was washed to her wallowing in
the mire." No gliding Of I,iquity. No
garlands ON deaths head. No pound
ing away with u<s;lver mallet at iniq-
atty when it needs an iron sledge ham
ner;
[ tait easily understand how people
brooding over the description Of nnclean-
ness in the Bible may get morbid in
mind until they are as full of it as the
wings, and the beak, and the nostril,
and the claw of a buzzard are full of the
odors of carcass, but what is wanted
IS not that the Bible be disinfected, but
That sot, the critic, have your mind and
heart washed with cafGolie acid.
l tell you at this point in my dis
course that man who does not like
this book, aud who is critical as to its
contents, and who is shocked and out
ragged with its descriptions, has never
been soundly converted The laying on
ef tho hands Of presbytery or episcopa-
81 does bot always change mans
heart, and men Sometimes get into the
pulpit, as well as into the pGwi never
having been changed radically by the
sovereign grace of God. Get your heart
right and the Bible will be right The
trouble is men $ natures are not brought
into harmony with the word of God.
All, my friends, expurgation of the
heart is What is wanted
You cannot make mo believe that the
Scriptures, which this moment lie on
the table Of the purest and best men and
women of the age, and which were the
dying solace of your kindred passed
into the skies, have in them faint
which the strongest microscope of hon
est criticism could make visible. If men
are uncomfortable i'll their indignation
when the integrity Of wife or child is
assailed, and judges and jurors as far as
! possible excuse violence under such
prpvocation, what ought to be the over
whelming and long resoundihg thunders
of condemnation for any man who will
stand in Christian pulpit and assail
the more than virgin purity of inspira
ton, the well beloved daughter Of God?
Masterpieces of Inspiration.
Expurgate the Bible You might as
well go to tho old picture galleries in
| Dresden and in Venice and iii Rome
and expurgate the old paintings. Per-
haps you could find a foot of Michael
! Angeles Last Judgment" that might
be improved Perhaps you could throw
more expression into Raphaels MA
donna" Perhaps you tould put more
pathos into Rubens' Descent from the
Cross. Perhaps you could change the
crests Of the waves in Turner's "Slave
Ship. F." Perhaps you might go into the
old galleries of sculpture and change
the forms and the posture of the statues
Of Phidias and Praxiteles. Such an ICON
oclast would very soon find himself in
the penitentiary. But it is worse van
dalism when man proposes to refash-
ion these masterpieces Of inspiration and
to remodel the moral giants of this gal
lery Of God
Now, let us divide off. Let those peo-
pie who do not believe the Bible and
who are critical of this and that part of
it go clear over to the other side. Let
them stand behind the DEVILS guns.
There can be no compromise between in
fidelity and Christianity. Give us the
out and out opposition of infidelity rath-
er than the work of these hybrid theolo-
gians, these mongrel ecclesiastics, these
half evoluted people, who believe the
Bible and do not believe it, who accept
the miracles and do not accept them,
who believe in the inspiration of the
Scriptures and do not believe in the in
spiration Of the Scriptures-trimming
their belief ON one side to suit the skep-
ticism of the world, trimming their be-
lief on the other side to suit the pride
of their own heart, and feeling that in
order to demonstrate their courage they
must make the Bibh the target and
shoot at God.
Bible Heroes.
There is one thing that encourages
me very much, and that is that the Lord
made out to manage the universe before
they were born, and will probably be
able to make out to manage the uni
verse little while after they are dead.
WhileI demand that the antagonists OF
the Bible and the critics of the Bible &C
clear over where they belong, on the
DEVILS side, ask that all the friends Of
this good book come out openly and
above board III behalf of it, that book
which was the best inheritance you ever
received from your ancestry, and which
will Io fbe hoct loo, Nv xo,, will 1oovf