The Canton times. (Canton, Miss.) 1893-1906, 1895-06-21

OF Tile blDle have demonstrated no
evil result. A cruel book will pro-
duce crnelty--an unclean book will
produce uncleanliness. Fetch me a
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 thirty or forty years,
morning and evening, had all the
members gathered together, and the
servants of the household, AID eae
strangers that happened to be within
the gates-twice day, without leav-
ing ont chapter or verse. they read
this holy Book, morning by morning,
night by night. Not only the older
children, but the little child who
could just spell her way though the
verse while her mother helped her.
The father beginning and read
ing one verse, and then all the
members of the family in turn
reading verse. The father main
tanned his integrity. the mother main
tanned her integrity, the sons grew up
and entered professions and CONNER
cial life, adjoining every sphere in the
life in which they lived, and the daugh-
ters went into families where Christ
was honored, and all that was good
and pure and righteous reigned per-
petually. For thirty years that family
endured the Scriptures. Not one of
them ruined by them.
The Old Testament description of
wickedness, uncleanness of all sorts,
is purposely and righteously disgust
ing account, instead of the Byronic
and the Partisan vernacular, which
makes sin attractive instead of appall-
ing. When those old prophets point
you to a lazaretto, you understand it is
a lazaretto. When man having be-
gun to do right falls back into
wickedness and gives up his in
tegrity, the Bible does not say
he was overcome by the fascina-
tions of the festive board, or that he
surrendered to convivialities, or that
he became little fast in his habits.
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 guiding
of iniquiry. No garJands on deaths
head. No pounding away with sill
yer mallet at iniquity when it needs
an iron sledge-hammer.
can easily understand how people,
brooding over the description of un-
cleanness in the Bible, may get NOR
bid in mind until they are as full of it
as the wings and the beak and the nos
tril and the claw of buzzard is full
of the odors of carcass; but what is
wanted is not that the Bible be disin.
fected, but that you, the critic have
your mind and heart washed with car
bolic acid.
l tell you at this point in my dis
course that man who does not like
this Book, and who is critical as to its
contents, and who is shocked and out
ragged with it's descriptions, has never
been soundly converted. The laying
on of the hands of presbytery or epis-
copacy does not always change 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 mans natures
are not brought into harmony with
the word of God. All! my friends, ex-
purgatiou of the heart is what is
wanted.
Expurgate the Bible! You might as
well 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
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
''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 iconoclast would very soon
find himself in the penitentiary. But
it is worse vandalism when man pro-
poses to refashion these masterpieces
of inspiration, and to remodel the
moral giants of this gallery of God.
OF all the works of Dore, the great
artist, there was nothing SO impress
sive as his illustrated Bible. What
scene of Abr ahamic faith. of Edenio
beauty, of dominion Davidic, or
Solomonic, or miracle, of parable, of
nativity, or of crucifxion, or of last
Judgment but the thought leaped
from the great brain to tina
skillful pencil, and from skillfull
pencil to canvas immortal. The
NJ Al