The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-06-21
AN OLD ONE UP AGAIN.

Once again the old story of Jonah and the whale has come forward to be talked about and disputed over. just as has for many centuries for anything we know to the contrary. This time the action of a Missouri preacher has renewed the old disputation, and the incident is a queer one in some of it's aspects. As the story goes, this preacher subscribed s5.O00 to a certain Missouri college. There were no con- ditions to the donation, as We under stand the case. but when the time came for payment the preacher refused to settle, giving as his reason that the college was teaching heritical doctrines. He was firm and devout believer in the ScripturaI account of the whale swallowing Jonah, and when he was informed that the college teachings discredited the story he declared he wouldn't pay cent to an institution that refused to teach the Bible liter ally. Finally the matter got into the courts and was at length compro- missed by the preacher paying half the subscribed amount and giving up his belief in the truth of Jonah and the whale. Tn short. he gave up s2,5oe and also gave up the whale. as the whale is said to have given up the unfortunate-or fortunate-Jonah.
 Now wasn't that a pretty mess for a preacher to get himself mixed up in? If he really believed the Bible story he was a heretic as well as hypocrite when he disavowed 1t Co save the money, while. on the other hand. if he had never believed the story he proved himself a swindler by trying to evade payment on the ground that the college was heretical for teaching it. Either way we look at it the preacher shows up in a bad light. The incident leads The Kansas City Journal to say: For a great many centuries the whale and Jonah have come down the ages as the irrefutable evidence of cred ulity's length of days. The man who believes the story to be literally true at this stage of the worlds history does himself injustice by giving up any part of this magnificent power to resist the undermining influences of the pass Ing of aeons. To sacrifice the whale for a paltry $2,500 when whales are getting scarcer and scarcer all the time and when whaling" stories like that of which Jonah was the hero are fad ing gently into the oblivion of the worlds mental lumber garrets, is to present curious commentary on hu- man nature as 1t has come down to us from the days when the whale did or did not swallow the prophetic son of Amittai.
 The Journal fs inclined to look with something like contempt on all who take the Jonah and whale story as being literally true. but it ought to know, if 1t does not that many thous- ands of good. devout and intelligent people believe all that Is set forth in the Bible just as they find it printed in the book. They take the Scrip lures as they are. because they feel that if they discard one portion they will not know when to stop, and is there not reason in their position? If one will watch and read carefully he will find that there is no stopping place when one begins to expurgate the Bi- ble to suit himself. For example. one doesn't believe the story of the deI- uge; another scouts at the Idea of Aaron's rod turning to a serpent and swallowing the rods of the magicians; another disbelieves the account of the Red Sea opening so that the Israelites passed through on dry land; another doubts the story of Elijah's ascent; others do not accept the story of Eze- kiel causing the dry bones to live, and thus it goes on. The Bible is full of miracles. and if one man disbeIieves one of them and another refuses to be- lieve another, and so on, how long would 1t be before the book Christians revere and believe in would become a thing of shreds and patches?" Sup pose each one who reads the Bible should cut out all that he fails to comprehend. and all that he is not will ling to accept as literally true-it would not be a great while. we sus- psct, until there would be none of 1t left.
 And that is the trouble about Jonah and the whale as 1t is written; many do not believe it because they cannot understand 1t. Naturalists tell us that