The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-26
TALMAGES SERMON
BY THE REV FRANK DEWITT rALMAen. D. D.

Wherever you see the church in olden
 times grow powerful in a temporal sense,
 then 1t became tyrannical and oppressive,
 and if any man refused to join it he was
 looked upon as an enemy to his country
 In olden times the question of a man's membership in the church did not turn
 upon whether he loved Christ and has His
 spirit but whether he believed in the
 teeh1icalfties of a sectarian creed which had been the product Of human ingenuity
 and had little to do with the great pur-
 pose of Christs gospel.
 But there is another fact which has
 split up the hard, rocky soil of the earth
 for the gospel harTests-that is, some Of
 the ablest men of this century have come
 out unequivocally in their testimony to
 the truth of the Bible and the immorta-
 ity of the soul. The more fully science
 has gone on in it's investigations the more
 the Bible is accepted in its simplicity, the
 more the greatest men of light and learn
 ing are ready to accept it. This fact $
 not a matter of doubt; it is susceptible of
 proof.
 About a year ago the editor of a popd-
 lar magazine published the answers to a
 series of questions which he had sent out
 to a thousand members of the medical profession. One of the questions he asked was, Do you believe in immortal ity?' There were no answers to that in quiry, and of these every physician but F answered in the affirmative. Think of that Some of us have supposed that the medical profession was made up of ma terialists Five hundred and eighty eight physicians out of 500 confessed that they believed in the immortality of the soul. And without any doubt the larger pro- portion of those men also believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ
 What is true of the medical profession fe of 1ax of the law is also true to a large extent in reference to students of physical sci- ence Said prominent college president to me some time ago, My ambition IS to give my college the best course of sci ence it is possible for it to have, for believe the more we understand the sci- ences the more we will believe in the Holy Bible" The mightiest re-enforce- ment today we have for Bible truth is the archeologists hammer and the geolo- | gist's crowbar-Newton and Faraday and Agassiz and Joseph Henry and Sir Will liam Dawson and Professor Sayre, the leaders of scientific thought, all firm be- lievers in God and his Book.
 Science on Side of Religion.
 I want to read the powerful testimony Sir William Dawson. one of the greatest geologists of our time, gave some time l ago before body of students: T have | read reeently-and 1 confess, with feel | ings of contempt-dscussions respecting 1 the supposed limitations of the knowl- | edge of Jesus. Did he know the data of | modern criticism? Was he acquainted | with the discoveries of modern science? | The fly alighting on my hand might as | well attempt to understand the thoughts | passing through my brain as criticism to | gauge in this way the mind of Jesus. To | me as a student of 50 years of nature, of man and of the Bible such discussions seem most frivolous since our Lords as we have it in his discourses Is altogether above and beyond our science | and philosophy, transcending them as much as the vision of an astronomer | armed with one of the great telescopes 1 of our time transcends the unaided vision. Christ viewed things from a standpoint of | his own and through a different medium from that of the atmosphere of this world | His difficulty appears to be to convey heavenly thoughts to us through the im- perfect language in which we speak of l heavenly thoughts Oh, my brother, is 1t not tremendous fact that some of the l great leaders of modern scientific thought | are the firmest believers in the doctrine l of the divine incarnation of Jesus Christ? | If men like Sir William Dawson speak | words like these, is it too much to say | that we, the rank and file of the human | race, are as a great white harvest field | ready for the gospel sickle?
 And this white Harvest is not confined | simply to our own land or to what we | call civilized countries The forest lands | and the most remote people are rapidly | being brought into touch with our nation.