The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1895-08-03

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ead. No pounding away with sill
Ter mallet at iniquity when it needs
AN iron sledge-hammer.
can easily understand how people,
brooding over the description of I'M
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 a carcass; but what is
wanted is not that the Bible be disiu'
fected, but that you, the critic have
your mind and heart washed with car
bolic acid.
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 its descriptions, has never
been soundly converted. The laying
on of the hands of presbyrery 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.
Now, let us divide off. Let those
people who do not believe the Bible,
and who are critical of this and that
part of it, get clear over on the other
side. Let them stand behind the
DEVILS guns There can be no com
promise between infidelity and Chris
tianity. Give us the out and
out opposition of infidelitv rather
than the work of these hybrid
theologians, these mongrel &C.
clesiastics, these half-evoluted people,
who believe the Bible and who 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 inspiration OF the
Scriptures-trimming their belief on
one side to suit the pride of their own
heart, and feeling that in order to dem
onstrate their courage they must make
the Bible a target and shoot at God.
Young man. do not be ashamed of
your Bible. There is not virtue but
it commends, there is not sorrow but
it comforts, there is not good law on
the statute book of any country but it
is founded on these Ten Command
ments. There are no drawer, grander
people in all the earth than the heroes
and the heroine which it biographies.
OF all the works of Dore, the great
artist, there was nothing SO impress
sive as his illustrated Bible. What
scene of Abrahamic faith, of Edenic
Solomonic, or miracle, of parable, of
nativity, or of crucifxion, or of last
Judgment but the thought leaped