Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1895-06-14

words, This chapter not NJ 10 redd
There has been plenty Of opportunity
during the last half century privately
TO expurgate the Bible. Do you know
any case Of such expurgation? Did not
your grandfather give it to your father,
and did not your father give it to you!
Besides that / am opposed TO the ex-
purgation of the Scriptures, because the
so called indelicacies and cruelties OF
the Bible have demonstrated no evil re-
suit. A cruel book will produce cruelty.
An unclean book will produce un-
cleanness. Fetch me victim. Out Of
all Christendom and out Of all the ages
fetch me a victim whose heart has been
hardened to cruelty or whose life has
been made impure by this book. Show
me one. One Of the best families / ever
knew Of, for 30 or 40 years, morning
and evening, bad all the members gath
cred together, and the servants Of the
household, and the strangers that hap
pened to be within the gates-twice a
day, without leaving out chapter or
verse, they read this holy book, morn
ing by morning, night by night. Not
only the older children. but the little
child who could just spell her way
through the verse while her mother
helped her, che father beginning and
reading one verse and then all the mem
bers Of the family in turn reading a
verse. The father maintained his integ-
rity, the mother maintained her integ-
rity, the sons grew up and entered pro-
fessions and commercial life, adOrning
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 80 years that
family endured the Scriptures. Not one
Of them ruined by them.
No Gliding q Sin.
Now, il 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 10 ruin, and the sons and daugh-
ters were destroyed by tiff you will
tell me Of one such incident, l will
throw away my Bible or I will doubt
your veracity. I tell you if a man Is
shocked with what he calls the indelca-
cies Of the word Of God he is prurient
in his taste and imagination. If man
cannot read Solomon's Song without
impure suggestion, be is either in his
heart or in his life libertine.
Tie Old Testament description OF
wickedness, uncleanness Of all sorts, IS
purposely and righteously disgusting
account instead Of the Byronic and the
Partisan 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
conyivialities, or that he became lit
tie fast in his habits. Twill 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
0arlands on deaths head. No pound
ing away with silver mallet at iniq-
uity when it needs an iron sledge ham,
mer.
can easily understand how people
brooding 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 a 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.
tell you at this point in my dis
course that a man who does not like
this book, and who is critical as to It's
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 mans
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 are not brought
into harmony with the word Of God f.
All, my friends, expurgation 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 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
proyocation, what ought to be the over
whelming and long resounding thunders
of condemnation for any man who Will
stand in a Christian pulpit and assail
the more than virgin purity of insplra-
ton, the we'll beloved daughter OF God!'
Masterpieces Of Inspiration
Expurgate the Bible! You might as
we'll go to the old picture galleries .n
Dresden and in Venice and IN Rense
and e1purgate the old paintings. Per-
haps you could find foot of Michael
Angeles Last Judgment" that might
be improved Perhaps you could throw
more 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 "Slayel
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
10 remodel the moral giants of this gal
lery Of God.
Now, let us divide off. Let those peo-