Connecticut western news., 1895-06-13

reigned perpetually. For 30 years that family endured the Scriptures. Not one of them ruined by them.
 No Gliding of Sin.
 Now, if you will tell me of family where the Bible has been read twice a day for 80 years, and the children have been brought up in that habit, and the father went to ruin, and the mother went to ruin, and the sons and daugh- ters were destroyed by tiff you will tell me of one such incident, I will throw away my Bible or will doubt your veracity. I tell you if a man is shocked with what he calls the indelica- cies of the word of God he is prurient in his taste and imagination. If man cannot read Solomon's Song without impure suggestion, he is either in his heart or in his life hbertine.
 The Old Testament description of wickedness, uncleanness of all sorts, is purposely and righteously disgusting account, instead of the Byronic and the Parisian vernacular, which makes sin attractive instead of appalling. When those old prophets point you to laza- retto, you understand it is lazaretto. When a man having begun to do right falls back into wickedness and gives up his integrity, the Bible does not say he was overcome by the fascinations of the festive board, or that he surrendered to convivialities, or that he became lit tie fast in his habits. I will tell you what the Bible says, "The dog is turned to his own vomit again and the SOW that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." No gliding of iniquity. No garlands on a deaths head. No pound ing away with silver mallet at iniq- uity when it needs an iron sledge ham, mer.
 I can easily understand how people breeding over the description of unclean- 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 buzzard are full of the odors of carcass, but what is wanted is not that the Bible be disinfected, but that you, the critic, have your mind and heart washed with carbolic acid.
 I tell you at this point in my dis 
 this book, and 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 of the hands of presbytery or episcopa- cy does not always change a man s heart, and men sometimes get into the pulpit, as we'll as into the pew, 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 s natures arc not brought into harmony with the word of God. An, my friends, expurgatiDn of the heart is what is wanted!
 You cannot make me 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 taint which the strongest microscope of hon. est criticism could make visible. If men are uncomfortable in their indignation when the integrity of wife or child is assailed, and judges and jurors as far as possible excuse violence under such
 
 whelming and long resounding thunders of condemnation for any man who will ttand in a Christian pulpit and assail the more than virgin purity of inspira- tion, the well beloved daughter of God? Masterpieces of Inspiration. Expurgate the Biblel You might as we'll go to the old picture galleries in Dresden and in Venice and in Rome and expurgate the old paintings. Per haps you could find foot of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" that might be improved. Perhaps you could throw moro expression into Raphael's "Ma- donna" Perhaps you could put more pathos into Rubens' Descent from the Cross" Perhaps you could change the crests of the waves in Turner's "Slave Ship" 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 a man proposes to refash- ion these masterpieces of inspiration and to remodel the moral giants of this gall | 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- ar 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 Bible 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. | While demand that the antagonists of the Bible and the critics of the Bible go clear over where they belong, on the devils side, I ask that all the friends of this good book come out openly and above board in behalf of it, that book which was the best inheritance you ever received from your ancestry, and which will be the best legacy you will leave to your children when you bid thee good by as you cross the ferry to the golden city. .r... Young man, do not be ashamed of | your Bible. There is not virtue but it