Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1888 — “ADVANCED THOUGHT.” [ARTICLE]

“ADVANCED THOUGHT.”

ORTHODOXY THE RELIGION TO LIVE AND DIE BY. Taka the Old HIM* In It* Kin tret r Not tn Par h— A<lvauee<t Thinker* * HI «lianre to the Itettei niaot of the World. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Chatauqua/fMihday. Subject: "IA-Orthodoxy Stale and Unreasonable?” Text, Jeremiah vi., 10: “Ask for the old paths, where is the good wav,and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” lie said: A great London fog has come down upon some of the ministers and some of the churches id, the shape of what is called “advanced thought” in I» blical interpretation/ All of them, and without any exception deny the full inspiration of the Hiblei Genesis is an allegory and them are riianv myths in the Bible, and they, philosophize uiuL reason and evolute until they land in a great continent of mud, from which, I fear, for all eternity they will not be able to extricate themselves.

The Bible is not only divineiy inspired but it is divinely protected in its pres* , ent shape. You could as easily, without detection, take from the writings of Shakespeare “Hmulct,” and substitute IBplaee thereof Adain Smiths drama, as at any time during the last fifteen hundred years a man could have made any important cl range in the Bible without immediate detection. If there had been an element of weakness, or of deception, or of disintegration,the Book would long ago have fallen to-pieces. If there had been one lpose brick or cracked casement in this castellated truth, surely the bombardment of eighteen centuries would have discoveied and broken through that imperfection. The fact Thatthe-Bilde stands intact, notwith--standing all the furious attacks on "all sides upon it, is proof to me that it is a miracle, and every miracle is of God. “But,” some one, “while we admit that the Bible is of God, it has not been understood until our time.” My answer is, that if the Bible be a letter from God, our Father, to man, His child, is it not strange that the letter should have been written in such a way that it should allow seventy generations to pass? away and be buried before the letter could be .understood? That would be a very bright father who should write a letter fer tile guidance and’ intelligence of his children, not understandable until a thousand years after they were buried and forgotten? While as the years roll on other beauties and excellencies will unfold from the Scriptures, that the Bible is such a dead failure that all the Christian scholars for eighteen hundred years were deceived in regard to vast reaches of its meaning is a demand upon my credulity so great that if I found myself at all disposed to yield to it I should to-morrow morning apply at some insane asvlum as unfit to go alone.

Who make ftp this precious group of advanced thinkers to whom God has made especial revelation in our time of that which He tried to make known thousands of years ago and failed to make intelligible? Are they so distinguished for unworldliness, piety and scholarship thm it is to be expected that they would have been chosen to fix up the*defective work of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and Christ? Is it at all possible? I wonder on what mountain these modern exegetes were transfigured?- I wonder what star pointed down to their birthplace? Was it the North star, or the Evening star, or-the Dipper? As they came through and deseendedto our world did Mars blush or Saturn lose one of his rings? When I find these modern wise acres attempting to improve upon the work of the Almighty and to interlard it with their wisdom and to suggest prophetic and apostolic errata I am tilled with a disgust insufferable. Advanced thought, which proposes to tell the Lord what He ought to have said thousands of years ago, and would have said if He had been as wise as His nineteenth Centura* critics! All this comes of living away hack in the eternities instead of IBS'S'. “F have two wonders in regard to these men. The first one is how the Lord got along without them before they* were born. The second wonder is how the Lord will get along without them after they are dead. . ••But,” say some, “do you really think the Scriptures fire inspired throughout,?” Yes, either as history or guidance. Gibbon, and Josephus and Prescott record in their histories a great many things they did not approve of. When George Bancroft puts upon his brilliant historical page the account of an Indian massacre, does he approve of that massacre! There are scores of things in the Bible-which God nor inspired man sanctioned. Either as history or as guidance the entire Bible was inspired, of God.

“But,” says some one, “dcin't you think that the 'copyists might have made mistakes in transferring the divine words from one manuscript to another?” Yes, no doubt there were such mistakes; but they no more affect the meaning of the Scriptures tlian the misspelling of a word or the ungramatical structure of a sentence in a last will and testament affect the validity or the meaning of that will. All the mistakes made by the copyists in the Scriptures do not amount to any more importance than the difference between your spelling in a document the word forty, forty or fourty. This book is the last will anil testament of God to our lost world, and it bequeaths every thing in the right way, although human hands may have damaged the grammar or made unjustifiable interpolation.

These menwbo pride themselves in our day on being advanced thinkers in Biblical interpretation, will, all otthem, end in atheism, if they live long enough, and I declare here to-day they are elding more in the different denominations of Christians, and throughout the world for damaging Christianity and hindering the cause of the world's betterment "than five thousand Robert Ingersolls could. That man who stands inside a castle is far more dangerous if be be an enemy than five thousand enemies outside the castle, Robert G. Ingersoll assails the castle from the outside. These men who pretend to be advance thinkers in all the denominations are fighting the truth from the inside, and trying to shove back the bolts and open the gate*. Now, 1 am in favor of the greatest freedom of religious thought and discussion. I would have as much liberty for heterodoxy as for orthodoxy, ffl should change my theories of religion 1 should preach them out and out, but

not in the building where I am accustomed to preach, for that was erected by people wS6 believe, in an entire Bible, and it would be dishonest for me to promulgate sentiments different from those for which that building was put up. When we enter any denomination as ministers of religion take a solemn vow that we will preach the sentiments of that denomination. If we change our theories, as we have n right to change them, then there is a world several thousand miles in circumference, and there are hundreds of halls and academies eg musiy where we can ventilate our sentiments. I remember that in alUour cities, in time of political agitation; there are the Ttepublicijn head-quarters and the Democratic.... head-quarters. Suppose Jr [ should go into oneoftjiese head-quarters pretending to be in sympathy with their work, at the same time electioneering for the opposite party. I would soon find that the centrifugal force was greater than the centripetal! Now, if a man enters a denomination of Christians, taking a solemn oath, as we all do, that we will- promulgate the theories of that denomination, and then the man shall pro-, claim some other theory, lie has broken his oatln and he is an out-and-out perjurer. Nevertheless, 1 declare for largest liberty ifrreligious- discussion. I would no more have the attempt to rear a monuihent to Thomas Paine interfered with than I would have interfared with the lifting of the slendidmonument to Washington. Largest liberty for the body, largest liberty for thimind, largest liberty for the soul. Now, 1 want to show you, as a matter of advocacy for what 1 believe to be the right, the splendors of orthodoxy. Many have supposed that its desciples are people of flat skulls, and no rearing, and bell i fid the age, and the victims of gullibility. I shall show you that the word orthodoxy stands for the greatest splendors outside - of heaven. Behold the splendors of its achievements. All the missionaries of .the Gospel the world round are men who believe in an entire Bible. Gail the roil of all the missionaries who are to-day enduring sacrifices in the ends of the earth for the cause of religion and the world’s betterment, and they all believe in an entire Bible, Just as soon as I missionary begins to doubt whether there ever was a Garden of Eden, or whether there is any such thing as future punishment, lie comes right home from Beyrout or Madrass and goes into the insurance business! All the missionary societies this day are officered by orthodox men, and are supported by orthodox churches

Orthodoxy, beginning with the Sandwich Islands, has captured vast regions of barbarism for civilization, while heterodoxy has to capture the first square inch. Blatant for many years in Great Britain and the United States, and strutting about with a peacockian braggadocio, it has yet to capture the first continent, the first State, the first township, the first ward, the first space of ground as big as you could cover with the small end of a pin. Ninety-nine out every hundred of the Protestant churches of America were built hv people who believed in an entire Bible. The pulpit now may preach some other gospel, but it is a heterodox gun on an orthodox carriage. The foundations of all the churches that are of very great use in this world to-day were laid by men who believed the Bible from lid to lid, anff if I can not take it in that way I will not pike it at all—just as if I received a letter that pretended to come from a friend, and part of it was his and part somebody else’s, and it wxs a sort of literary mongrelism. I would throw the garbled sheets into the waste basket. No church of very great influence today hut was built by those who believed in an entire Bible. Neither will a church last long built on a part of the Bible. You have noticed, I suppose, that;** a man begins to give up the Bible he is apt to preach in some ball, and he has an audience while he lives’, and when he dies the church dies, If I thought that my church in Brooklyn was built on a quarter of a Bible, or half a Bible, o? three-fourths of a Bible, or ninety-nine one-hundredths of a Bible, I would expect.it to die; but when I know it is built On the entire Word of God, I know it will last two hundred years after you"" and I sleep the last sleep. Oh, the splendors of an orthodoxy, which with ten thousand hands and ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand Christian churches, is trying to save the world. In Music Hall, Boston, foe many years stood Thoodore Parker battling orthodoxy, giving it, as some supposed that time, its death wound. He was the most fascinating man I ever heard or ever expect to hear, and I came out from bearing him thinking, in my boyhood way, “Well, that’s the death of the Church.” On that Same street, and riot far from being opposite, stood Park Congregational Church, called by its enemies “Hell-fire Corner.” Theodore Parker died and his church died with him; or, if it is in existence, it is so small you can not see it with the naked eye. Park Congregational Church still stands on “Hell-fire Corner,”, thundering away the magnificent truths of this glorious orthodoxy just,,as though Theodore Parker had never iived. All that Boston, or Brooklyn, or New York, or the world ever got that is worth having came through the wide aqueduct of orthodoxy from the throne of God.

Behold the splendors of character built up by orthodoxy. Who had„the greatest human intellect the world ever knew? "Paul. In physical stature insignificent: in mind, head and shoulders above all,the gianty -of the age. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Who was the greatest poet the ages ever saw, acknowledged to be so hotlv., by infidels and Christians? John Milton, seeTilw more without eyes than anybody evgr saw with eyes. Orthodox from to heel. YjilKf#as!hegfullmliitifiii inn tn<?world liHever seen? so acknowledged bv infidels as well as Christians, Martin Luther. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Behold the splendors of orthodoxy in its announcement of Palace and Penitentiary. Palace with gates on all sides, through which all may enter and live on celestial luxuries world without end,and all for the knocking and the asking. A palace grander than if all the Alhambra* and the Versailles and the Windsor Castles the Winter Gardens and the imperial abodes of all the earth were heaveiFujHnto one architectural glory. At the other end of the universe;! Penitentiary where men who want their sins canhave them. Would it be lair that you and I should have our choice of Christ and the palace, and other men be denied their choice of sin and eternal degradation? Palace and Penitentiary! “The first of no use unless you have the last., Brooklyn and New York would be

better places to live in wiih Ravmondstreet Jail.the tombs and Sing Sing, and j all the small-pox hospitals emptied on | tlfatn, than heaven would’he if there ‘ were ho, hell. Palace and Penitentiary*! If I see a man witlra full howl of sin, and he thirsts,, for it, and his whole nature craves it, and he takes hold with [ both hands and pressesrthat.bowl to his ! lips, and then presses it hard between j his teeth, and the draught begins to pour its sweetness down his throat, shall we ] snatch away the bowl,nndjcrkth©;mmj lip to the gate of heaven, and push liim | in if he does not want to go and sit down and sing psalms forever? No. God has r made you and me completely free that we need not go to heaven unless we prefer it. Not more free,,to sbar than free, to sink. Nearly all the heterodox, people I. j know believe all are coming out at * the I same destiny; without regard to faithor j character we allncoming out at the shining gate. There they are, aIL in glory together! Thomas Paine and George AVhitefield, Jezebel and Mary Lyon, Nero and Charles Wesley. Charles Guiteau and James A. Garfield, John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln—all in glory* together! All the innocent men, women and children who were massacred, side by side with their murderers. If weare all coming out at the 'same destiny, without regard to chareter, then it is true. ~J turn away from such a debauched heaven. Against that caldron of piety and blasphemy, philanthropy and assassination, self-sacrifice -amLbeastliness, I place the two destinies olthe BibleMoreAUiLand farever and forever apart. ~ .

’Bvhohl also the splendor of the Christian orthodox death-beds. Those who deny the Bible, or deny any part of it, never die well. They either go out in darkness or the go out ’in silence portentous. You may* gather upjall the biographies that have come forth since the art of printing was invented, and I challenge you to show me a triumphant death of a man who rejected the Scriptures, or rejected any part of them. Here I make a great wide avenue. On the one I put the deathbeds of those who beloved in an entire Bible. On the other side of that avenue I.,nut the death-beds of those who rejected part of the Bible, or rejected all of the Bible. Now, take mv arni and let us 7>ass through this dividing avenue. Look off upon the right side. 1 lert»*are the death-beds on the right Side of this avenue, “Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” “Free graee!” “Glory, glory*!” “I am sweeping through the gates washed in the blood of the Lamb!” “The chariots are coming!” “I mount, I fly!” “Wings, wings!” “They are coming for men!” “Peace, be still!” Alfred Cookman’s death-oed, Richard Cecil’s death-bed. Commodore Foote’s death-bed, your father’s death-bed, your mother’s deathbed, y*our sister’s death-bed, your child’s deatli-oed. Ten thousand radiant, songful death-beds of those who believed an entire Bible.

Now, take my arm and let us go through that avenue, and look off upon the other side. No smile of hope. No shout of triumph. No face supernaturally illumined. Those who reject any part of the Bible never die well. No beckoning angels to cofne. No listening for the celestial escort. Without any exception they go out of the world because they are pushed out, while on the other hand the list of those who believed in an entire Bible and gone out of the.world in triumph is a list,so long it seems interminable. Oh, is not that a splendid influence, this orthodoxy, which makes that which must otherwise be the most dreadful hour of life —- the last hom—positively paradisaical? Young men, old men, middle-aged men, take sides in this contest between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. “Ask for the old paths, walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” But you follow this crusade against any part of the Bible —first of all you will give up Genesis, which is as true as* Matthew; then you will give up all the historical parts of the Bible; then after a while you will give up the miracles; then you will find it convenient to give up the Ten Commandments; and after a while yon will wake up in a fountainless, rockless, treeles- desert swept of everlasting sirocco. If you are laughed at you can afford to be laughed at for standing bv the Bible just as God has given it to you and miraculously preserved it. a Do not jump overboard from the stanch old Great Eastern of old-fashion-ed orthodoxy until there is something ready to take you up stronger than the fantastic yawl*which has painted on the side “Advanced Thought,” and which leaks at the prow and leaks at the stern, and Ras a steel pen for one oar and a glib tongue fo| the other oar, and now tips over this way and tips over that way, until you do not know whether the passengers will land in the breakers of .despair or on the sinking sand of infidelity and atheism.

lam in full sympathy with the advancements of our time, hut this world will never stdvance a single inch beyond this old Bible. God was just as capable of dietatingdhe truth to the prophets and apostles as He is capable of dictating the truth to the modern apostles and' prophets. God has not learned anything in a thousand years. He knew just as much when He gave the first dictation as He does now, giving the last dictation, if He is giving any dictation at all. So I will stick to the old paths. Naturally a skeptic and preferring new things old,’ I never so much as to-day felt the truth of the entire Bible, especially as I see into what spectacular imbecility men rush when they try to chop up the Scriptures with the meatax of their own preferences, now calling upon philosophy, now calling on the Church, now calling on God, now 7 ! calling on the devil. I prefer the thick, warm robe of the old religion—old as God—the robe which has kept so many warm amid the cold pilgrimage of this life and amid the chills of death. Tne old robe rather than the thin, uncertain gauze offered us by these wiseacres who believe the Bible in spots. Let me die the death of the righteous.