Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1895-06-15

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 I 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 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 80 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 a
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, the 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-
LESSONS and commercial life, adjoining
every sphere in the life in which they
lived, and the daughters went into fam
lies where Christ was honored, and all
chat was good and pure and righteous
reigned porpetually. For 80 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-
tiers were destroyed by lift you will
tell me Of one such incident, will
throw away my Bible or will doubt
your veracity 1 tell you if 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 ibertine.
The 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 Il lazaretto.
When a mai having begun to do right
falls back into wickedness and gives up
his integrity, the Bible does not say he
was overcome by the destinations of the
festive board, or that he surrendered to
convivialities, or that he became q lit
tie fast in his habits. 1 will tell you
what the Bible says, 1.-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 deaths head. No pound
ing away with silver mallet at iniq.
uity when 1t needs an iron sledge ham,
mer.
I eil55--snde rstanl. how people
brooding over the description Of ussoiS.--.
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
1 tell you at this point in my dis
course that a man who does not like
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 episcopal
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 mems 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 me believe that the
Scriptures, which this moment lie Oh
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 a faint
which tho 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
provocation, what ought to be the over
whelming and long resounding thunders
of condemnation for any man who will
stand in Christian pulpit and assail
the more than virgin purity of inspira-
ton, the we'll beloved daughter of God?
Masterpieces of Inspiration.
Expurgate the Bible! You might as
well go to the old picture galleries in
Dresden and iu Venice and in Rome
and expurgate 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 i'll 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 Pra1iteles. Such an icon-
oclast would very soon find himself in
the penitentiary. But it Is worse van