Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1903-11-12
SOME EVIDENCES.
OUR REGULAR SUNDAY SERMON.
Handed Down From Generation to
Generation.

Church OF this city, preached strong SER
mon Sunday y, morning on "Is the. Old Book
and strongest churches in the land. It
was presided over for thirty years by Dr.
George Dana Boardman, who was succeed
ed about eight years ago by DIR. Upper.
Two years ago, at a cost of nearly 500, 900,
magnificent cent house Of worship was erected
and $l50,0O0 endowment laid aside. The
congregations are very large, especially in
the evening. The text for this sermon was
from First Thessalonians ii-l3: eve thank
God without ceasing because when We
received the word of God ye received it
not 4th as the the word word Of If G but as It is in
said:
Ancient history has preserved the ira
dition that when, thirty centuries ago, the
city of Troy was sacked by the Greeks,
the conquerors made the general proclaim
alton that each Of the inhabitants thereof
property especially dear to his own heart.
Taking. advantage of the offer, Aeueas
selected his household gods and carried
them in triumph and for JOY to place
of safety. So pleased were the Greeks
by this unaffected act OF p,ety that they
lowing him to save one other thing, when,
returning in haste, he bore off On his
shoulders his aged father, whose wisdom
and affection constituted for him a price
less inheritance.
Were the traditions thus related to re-
ilege granted every genuine Christian be-
lever, in supposed season Of calamity
and privation, to make selection of that
one possession most hignly priced by him,
both because of its intrinsic value and its
immortal influence, the truest wisdom
an inexplicable choice. This choice would
not be silver or gold, military fame or
civic honor, profound learning or match
less eloquence; this choice would not be
even father or mother, husband or wife,
son or daughter, friend or lover. precious
the one thing wisely chosen if the choice
were made both for time and eternity.
What then would the one thing be?
Strange as 1T may seem to many, the
calm. firm. heaven guided, intelligent
choice of the earnest, thankful Christian
certain book--a book ancient and artless,
elevating and ennobling, divine and dur
| able.
AS I utter this sentence you anticipate
the designation | am about to make. You
need not be told that. This book is no
Odyssey, Milton's Odes nor Snarespeare's
| plays; no work of mere history, neither
| Livy nor Tacitus, Hallam nor Hume; no
work of mere philosophy. neither Bacon
nor, Hamilton. Descartes nor Locke; no
book Of mere biography, neither Plutarch
book Of mere romance. neither George
Eliot nor Scott, Bulwer nor Thackeray !;
no book Of mere ethics, neither Plato nor
Seneca, Paily nor Balm; no book of Chris
tian morality and meditation. neither
Thomas KemRgis' Imitation of Christ"
er's ''Homilies" nor Paschal's Thoughts
great and good as are many if not all
of these, immortal works some of them,
rising like grand and majestic mountain
peaks, catching and presenting to the
world the glorious splendors of the high
| all else of mans creation burn into ashes
or buried in the sea, if at their expense
we might save to our hearts and lives
here and hereafter that one single book,
which has an origin and q character and
/ a mission and destiny as far above every
work of mans creation as the skies are
above the clouds-that book whose Eau
thor is God, whose subject is man, whose
object is salvation, whose end eternity
that book of which Pollock, in an out
burst of poetic fervor and Christian faith,
SO feelingly writes:
Mercy took down, and in the night of
Stood. casting on the dark and gracious
And forever more beseeching men with
tears
And earnest sighs, to hear, believe and
live.
Surely, brethren, this must he the book
of all books, which, while full and rich
with the sweetest strains of poetry, the
most memorable deeds Of history, the most
inexhaustible stores of philosophy, the
most thrilling incidents of biography, the
loftiest principles of ethical and moral
| rs nf fc, foo.
lures Of chiefest glory, but rather this:
That for centuries it has gone up and down
this world of ours, relieving human con-
sciences, illuminating human intellects, re-
deeming human spirits, transforming hu-
man lives, and tnat, in so beautiful and
glorious a degree, that the thinking world
is beginning to accept the statement of
Schleimermacher, "To abolish the Bible
is to pluck up ly the roots all that is
noblest and truest and divinest in the
worlds civilization.
Oh! If there is one prayer that I offer
up daily with more constancy and Iervor
of soul than another in our age OF theo-
logical ferment and unrest, it is this: God,
Keep me as an ambassador of Christ and
the great brotherhood Of Christian believ-
ers, true now and always to the infsliible
Word of the Lternal God AS in the past,
supernatural revelation has had to con-
tend against the sophisms of Hume and
| Tie transcendental philosophy OF Ger
many, SO to-day, all about US there are
those who battle against the idea Of liv-
| ing, personal, omnipotsnt Jehovah, who
can and does freely and fully communi-
cate with His children; and to-day there
is call long and loud for those who ac-
cept the Bible as the full and satisfactory
oracle from heaven, to stand up and out
against all these attacks, and chat. too,
with convictions strong and unshaken.
And well may we do so when even the
| French skeptic, Rousseau, gives such tes-
timony as this: 1.-THE majesty OF the
Scriptures astonishes me, the holiness OF
the evangelists speaks to my heart. the
whole Bible has such strong and striking
characters Of truth, and is, moreover, SO
nerfectly illimitable, that if it had been
the invention of genius. the invention
would have been greater than the greatest
heroes"
Take the one question OF the Godhead
and the light thrown upon it by. the sacred
Scriptures. As DR.. Stuart Robinson has
eloquently said, '"rhc Bible maintained the
unity of Gcd amid all the darkness of the
Western polytheism; the vivid personality
OF God amid all the sophistry Of the East
Lern pantheism; and ineffable purity OF