The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-11-02

tile groaned, but did the foes of Chris
tianity exterminate 1T? Did they ex-
terminate AIban, the first British sacri-
John Oldcastle, the Christian noble
man, or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr,
or Anne Askew or Sanders or Gran
mer? Great work of determination
they made oft. Just at the time when
hey thought they had slain all the
royal family Of Jesus some Joash
would spring up and out and take the
throne of power and WELD a very scep-
ter Of Christian dominion.
Infidelity says, II will exterminate
the Bible" and the Scriptures were
thrown into the street for the mob to
trample on, and they were piled up in
the public squares and set on fire, and
mountains of indignant contempt were
hurled on them. and learned universe
ties decreed the Bible out of existence.
Thomas Paine said: In my Age of
Reason I nav annihilated the Scrip
lures. Your Washington is a pusillan-
imous Christian. but 1 am the foe of
Bibles and of churches" Oh, how
many assaults upon that world All
the hostilities that ave ever been Gre
ated on earth are not to be compared
with the hostilities against that n
book. Said one man in his infide de-
s~peration to his wife, You must not
be reading that Bible" and he snatch
ed it away from her. And though in
that Bible was a lock of hair of the
dead child-the only child that God had
ver given them-he pitched the book
with its contents into the fire and stir
red it with the tongs M spat on it
and cursed it and said, Susan, never
have any more of that damnable stuff
here"
PROSPERITY OF TIE BIBLE.
How many individual md organized
attempts have been made to extermi-
nate hat Bible? Have its enemies
done it? Have they exterminated the
American Bible society? Have they
exterminated the British and Foreign
Bible society? Have they eX~terminated
the thousands of Christian institutions
whose only object it is to multiply
copies of h Scriptures and spread
them broadcast around h world?
They have exterminated until instead
of one or two copies of h Bible in our
houses We have eight or ten. and We
pile them up in the corners of our Sab
bath school rooms and send great boxes
of them everywhere. If they get on
as well as they are now going on in
the work of determination, L do not
know blu that our children nay live
to see the millennium Yea, if there
should come a time of persecution in
"lllCIl oil Lie hIlOWl blDlGS OIL In6 GdTCn
should be destroyed, all these lamps
of life that blaze in our pulpits and in
our families extinguiShed, in the very
day that nfidelity and sin should be
holding jubilee over h universal eX-
tinction there would be in some closet
of a backwoodS hurch a secreted copy
of h Bible, and this Joash of eternal
literature would come out and come up
and take the throne, and the Athaliah
of infidelity and persecution would fly
out the back door of the palace and
drop her miserable carcass under the
hoofs of the horses of the kings stables.
You cannot eXterminate Christianity!
You cannot kill Joashi
The second thought 1 hand you from
my subject is that there are oppor-
tunities in which we may save royal
life. You know that profane history
is replete with stories of strangled mon
archS n of young princes who have
been put out of the way. Here is the
story of a young king saved. How
J~ehOsheba, the clergyman'S wife, must
have trembled as she rushed into the
imperial nursey and snatched up
Joash! How she huShed him lest by
his cry he hinder the escape! Fly with
him, Jehosheba! You hold in your
arms the cause of God and good gov
eminent. Fall, and he is slain. Sue
coed, and you turn the tide of the
worlds history in the right direction.
1t seems ais if between that young
king n his assassins there is nothing
but the frail arm of a oma But
why should we spend u time in prais-
ing this bravery of expedition when
God asks h same thing of you and
me? ,AH around us the imperiled
children of a great king. They are
come to Il throne or a crown if per-
mitted. But sin, the old Athaliah, goes
forth to the massacre. MurderOuS
temptations are out for the aSSaSSina-
ton. Valens, the emperor, was told
that there was somebody in his realm
who would usurp his throne and that
the name Of the man who should be
the usurper would begin with the let
tiers 7, H, E, o, d, and the edict went
forth from the emperor'S throne, Kill
everybody whose name begins with T,
H, E, o, d." And hundreds and thou
sands were slain, hoping by that a
sacre to put an end to that one usurper.
But sin is more terrific in it's denuncia-
ton. 1t matters not how you spell
you name, o came under its knife,
under its sword, under it's doom, I'M
less there be some ,Omnipotent relief
brought to the rescue. But, blessed be
God, here is such a thing as deliver
ing a royal o Who will snatch away
JoaSh?
INSTRUCTION FOR CHILDREN.
This afternoon in your Sabbath school
class there will be a prince Of God,
some one who may yet reign as king
forever before the throne; there will
be SOME n in you class who has a
corrupt physical inheritance; there will
be some n in your class who has a
father and mother who do not know
how to pray, there will be some one in
your class who is destined to command
in church or state. some Cromwell to
dissolve a parliament, some Beethoven
to touch h worlds harp strings, some
John Howard to pour fresh air in the
lazaretto, some Florence Nightingale
to bandage the battle wounds, some
Miss Dix to Soothe the crazed brain,
some John Frederick Oberlin to edu-
cate the beSotted, some David Brain
erd to change the Indians Warhoop to
a Sabbath three-fourths of Christen-
dom, some John Knox to made queens
turn pale, some Joash to demolish
idOlaltry and strike for the kingdom OF
heaven. There are sleeping in your