The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1899-12-07

exactly with ours-testtmony given by
the enemy Of the Bible and the enemy
Of Christianity. The catalogue is now
just like the catalogue then. Assault
ed and spit on and torn to pieces and
burned, yet adhering. The book today,
in three hundred languages. confront
ing four-fifths of the human race in
their own tongue. Four hundred mil
lion copies Of it in existence. Docs
not that look as if this book had been
divinely protected, as IL God had
guarded it all through the centuries?
Nearly all the other old books are
mumified and are lying in the tombs of
old libraries, and perhaps once in 20
years some man comes along and picks
up one of them and blows the dust Off,
and opens it, and finds it the book he
does not want. But this old book, much
of it forty centuries DID, stands today
more discussed than any other book,
and it challenges the admiration of all
the good and the spite and the venom
and the animosity and the hyper-criti-
cism of earth and hell. appeal to
your common sense,if book so divine
ly guarded and protected in its pres
ent shape, must not be in just the way
that God wants it to come to us, and
if it pleases God, ought it not to please
us?
Not only have all the attempts to
detract from the book failed but all
the attempts to add to it. Many at
tempts were made to add the apochry-
phal books to the Old Testament The
Council of Trent, the Synod of Jerusa-
lem, the bishops of Hippo, all decided
that the apochryphal books must be
added to the Old Testament. They
must stay in" said those learned men:
but they stayed out. There is not an
intelligent Christian man that today
Will put the Book of Maccabees or the
Book of Judith beside the Book of
Isaiah or Romans. Then a great many
said: I'VE must have books added to
the New Testament" and there were
eplstles and gospels and apocalypses
written and added to the New Tesla
ment. but they have all fallen out. You
cannot add anything. You cannot sub
tract anything to the divinely protect
ed book in the present shape. Let no
man dare to lay his hands on it with
the intention of detracting from the
book, or casting out any of these holy
pages.
am also opposed to this proposed
eXpurgation of the Scriptures for the
fact that in proportion as people be-
come self-sacriticing and good and holy
and consecrated, they like the book as
1T is. | have yet to find man or a
woman distinguished for self-sacrifice,
for conservation to God, for holiness OF
life, who wants the Bible changed.
Many of us have inherited family BIZ
bles. Those Bibles were in use twenty,
forty. fifty, perhaps hundred years in
the generation. Today take down
these family Bibles, and find out if
there are any chapters which have
been erased by lead pencil or pen, and
If in any margins you can find the
words. This chapter not fit to read"
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 IL to your
father. and did not your father give it
to you?
BESIDE that, l am opposed to the ex-
purgation of the Scriptures because the
so-called indelicacies and cruelties of
the Bible have demonstrated no evil
result. A cruel book will produce
cruelty-an unclean book will produce
uncleanness. 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 l ever knew, for thirty or
forty years, morning and evening, had
all the members gathered together,an
the servants of the household, and the
strangers that happened to be within
the gates-twice day, and without
leaving out chapter or verse, they
read this holy book, morning by morn
ing, night by night. Not only the elder
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, then all the members of the fam
lily in turn reading verse. The father
maintained his integrity, the mother
maintained her integrity, the sons
grew up and entered professions and
commercial life, adjoining every sphere
in the life in which they lived, and the
daughters went into families where
Christ was honored, and all that was
good and pure and righteous reigned
perpetually. For thirty years that
family endured the Scriptures. Not
one of them ruined by them.
Now, if you will tell me of family
where the Bible has been read twice
day for thirty years, and the children
have been brought up in that habit,
and the father went to ruin, and the
mother wer.. to ruin, and the sons and
daughters were destroyed by tiff you
will tell me of one such incident, viii
throw away my Bible, or l will doubt
your veracity. tell you. if a man is
shocked with what he calls the indeli-
cacies Of the Word of God. he is pruri-
ent in his taste and Imagination. If
a man cannot read Solomon's Song,
without impure suggestion, he is either
in his heart or in his life, libertine.
Tie Old TaStament descrintion Of