Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — Who is Right—The Bible or the Skeptics? [ARTICLE]

Who is Right—The Bible or the Skeptics?

Do you tell me that this book, that has gone through the persecution of infernal contempt, is a human book? Suppose that some great plague should smite the earth, and a medicine should be discovered that Would cure 10,0v0 people in a day; and suppose that thousands of persons stood up and testified that they took that remedy, and It has cured them. Now, I ask you whether you will depend upon the testimony of millions of Christians throughout the earth who have proved the effitacy of the medicine for the soul, provided in the Bible, or whether you will take the testimony ot a few skeptics who confess that they never even tasted the medicine ? The Bible said there was a city called Petra, which was built out of solid rock. The skeptics said there was no such - city; but, after diligent exploration, it was discovered fashioned in the solid rock; one street, six miles long, built in the rock—the very street along which once marched imperial pomp; temples fashioned out of colored stone, some of which had actually blushed into the crimson of the rose, and some paled into the whiteness of the lily. Thus, with architecture, in column, in pediment, and in tablature God has written the truth of the Bible. The Bible declared that Sodom and Gomorrah would be by fire and brimstone. The skeptic said: There is nothing in the elements that could possibly produce such a shower as that. Lieut. Lynch went forth; he explored the Dead Sea, which, by an evolution of Nature, has overflowed the site of those two cities, and he dropped his fathomingirons to the bottom of the sea, and brought up great masses of sulphur and brimstone, the remains of the horrible tempest that swept over those two cities. Who is right—the Bible or the skeptics? The Bible said there was a city called Ninewh, three days’ journey round, that would be destroyed by fire and water. The skeptics said that no each city as that could be found, that could be destroyed by two such antagonistic elements. Layard and his party went forth in their explorations, and they found the city of Nineveh actually three days’ journey round, as they computed the days’ journey in the olden times, and that the city had really been destroyed by fire and water, the River Tigris being used to destroy a part of the city, while in other parts they found the remains of a fiery Conflagration in heaps of charcoal, that were excavated, and in calcined slabs of gypsum. Who was right about Nineveh —the Bible or the skeptics ? The Bible speaks of the fine grapes in Egypt. “What a fallacy and an absurdity!” exclaimed the infidels; “there are no grapes in Egypt. ” Explorers went down into the underground vaults, to the subterranean cellars, and there they found all the processes of culturing the vine and treading out the grape, showing that the process was perfectly familiar to the people, and that in Bible times they did raise'grapes in Egypt, whether they raise them there now or not. Who was right —the skeptics or the Word of God? When I consider all the arguments to prove the authenticity of God’s Word, I am constrained to fall back upon the exclamation of the Psalmist, “Thestatutes of the Lord are right,” — Dr. Talmage.