Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1897 — TESTIMONY OF ROCKS. [ARTICLE]

TESTIMONY OF ROCKS.

REV. DR. TALMAGE ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE. fA Sermon of Interest to All, Showing that Geology Confirms the Truth of the Word of God—The Rock of Ages —Never Yet Upset. Our Washington Pulpit. The throngs coming to Dr. Talmage’s preaching services at the First Presbyterian Church in Washington are all the time increasing and far beyond the capacity of his church to hold. In this sermon he discusses a subject interesting to all —viz., “The Geology of the Bible;or, God Among the Rocks.” The text is 11. Samuel vi., 6,7: “And when they came to Nachpn’s threshing floor Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. A-nd the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error, and there he died by the ark of God.” A band of music is coming down the road, cornets blown, timbrels struck, harps thrummed and cymbals clapped, all led on by David, who was himself a musician. They are ahead of a wagon on which is the sacred box called the ark. The yoke of oxen drawing the wagon imperiled it. Some critics say that the oxen kicked, being struck with the driver s goad, but my knowledge of oxen leads me to say that if ori a hot day they see a shadow of a tree or wall, they are apt to suddenly shy off to get the coolness of the shadow*. I think these oxen so suddenly turned that the sacred box seemed about to upset and be thrown to the ground. Uzzah rushed forward and laid hold of the ark to keep it upright. But he had no right to do so. A special command had been given by the Lord that no one save the priest under any circumstances should touch that box. Nervous and excited and irreverent, Uzzah disobeyed when he took hold of the ark, and he died as a consequence. In all ages, and never more so than in our own day, there are good people all the time afraid that the Holy Bible, which is the sacred ark of our time, will be upset, and they have been a long while afraid that science, and especially geology, would overthrow it.

While we are not forbidden to touch the holy book and, on the contrary, are urged to fondle and study it, any one who is afraid of the overthrow of the book is greatly offending the Lord with his unbelief. The oxen have not yet been yoked which can upset that ark of the world’s salvation. Written by the Lord Almighty, he is going to protect it until its mission is fulfilled and there shall be no more need of a Bible because all its prophecies will hav§ been fulfilled and the Jiuman race will have exchanged worlds. A trumpet and a violin are very different instruments, but they may be played in perfect accord. So the Bible account of the creation of the world and the geological account are different—one story written on parchment and the other on the rocks and yet in perfect and eternal accord. The word “day,” repeated in the first chapter of Genesis, has thrown into paroxysms of criticism many exegetes. The Hebrew word “yoni” of the. Bible means sometimes what we call a day, and sometimes it means ages. It may mean 24 hours or 100,000,000 years. The order of creation as written in the book of Genesis is the order of creation discovered by geologists’ crowbar. So many Uzzahs have been nervously rushing about for fear the strong oxen of scientific discovery would upset the Bible that I went somewhat apprehensively to look into the matter, when I found that the Bible and geology agree in saying that first were built the rocks, then .the plants greened the earth, then marine creatures were created from minnow to whale, then the wings and throats of aerial choirs were colored and tuned, and the quadrupeds began to bleat and bellow and neigh. Now, it requires no stretch of imagination to realize that God could have taken millions of years for the bringing of the rocks and the timbers of this world together, yet only one week more to make it inhabitable and to furnish it for human residence. Remember also that all up and down the Bible the language of the times was used—common parlance—and it was not always to be taken literally. Just as we say every day that the world is round when it is not round. It is spherical—flattened at the poles and protuberant at the equator. Prof. Snell, with his chain of triangles, and Prof. Varin, with the shortened pendulum of his clock, found it was not round. But we do not become critical of any one w’ho says the world is round. Let us deal as fairly with Moses or Job as we do with each other. Everlasting Right.

But for years good people feared geol.ogy. and without any imploration on their part' apprehended - that the rocks and mountaimTwould fall on them until Hugh Miller, the elder of St. John’s Presbyterian church in Edinburgh and parishioner of Dr. Guthrie, came forth and told the world that there was no contradiction between the mountains and the church, and O. M. Mitchell, a brilliant lecturer before he became brigadier general, dying at Beaufort, S. C„ during our civil war, took the platform and spread his map of the strata of rock in the presence of great audiences, and Prof. Alexander Winchell of Michigan University and Prof. Taylor Lewis of Union College showed that the “without form and void” of the first chapter of Genesis was the very chaos out of which the world was formulated, the hands of God packing together the land and tossing up the mountains into great heights and flinging down the seas into their great depths. Before God gets through with this world there will hardly be a book of the Bible that will not find confirmation either in archaeology or,geology. Exhumed Babylon, Ninevah, Jerusalem, Tyre and Egyptian hieroglyphics are crying out in the ears of the world: “The Bible is right! All right! Everlastingly right!” Geology is saying the same thing, not only confirming the truth about ■the original creation, but confirming so many passages of the Scripture that I can only slightly refer to them. But you do not really believe that story of the deluge and the sinking of the mountains under the wave? Tell us something we can believe. “Believe that,” says geology, “for how do you account for those seashells and seaweeds and skeletons of sea animals found on the top of some of the highest mountains? If the waters did not sometimes rise about the mountains, it how did those seashells and seaweeds and >- skeletons of sea animals get there? Did ' you put them there?

But, now, you do not really believe that story about the storm of fire and brimstone whelming Sodom and Gomorrah, ans enwrapping Lot’s wife in such saline incrustations that she halted, a sack of salt? For the confirmation of that story the geologist goes to that region, and after trying in vain to take a swim in the lake, 1 so thick with salt he cannot swim it —the lake beneath which Sodom and Gomorrah lie buried, one drop of the water so full of sulphur and brimstone that it stings your tongue, and for hours you cannot get/ rid of the nauseating drop—the scientist then digging down and finding sulphur on top of sulphur, brimstone on top of brimstone, while all round there are jets and crags and peaks of salt, and if one of them did not become the sarcophagus of Lot’s wife, they show you how a human being might in that tempest have been halted and packed into a white monument that would defy the ages. But, now, you do not reaiiy oeneve that New Testament story about the earthquake at the time Christ was crucified, do you? Geology digs down into Mount Calvary and finds the rocks ruptured and aslant, showing the work of an especial earthquake for that mountain, and an earthquake which did not touch the surrounding region. Go and look for yourself, and see there a dip and cleaverage of rocks as nowhere else on the planet, geology thus announcing an especial earthquake for the greatest tragedy of all the centuries —the assassination of the Son of God. Confirmed by Geology. But you do not really believe that story of the burning of our world at'the last day? Geology digs down and finds that the world is already on fire and that the center of this globe is incandescent, molten, volcanic, a burning coal, burning out toward the surface, and the internal fires have so far reached the outside rim that I do not see how the world is to keep from complete conflagration until the prophecies concerning it are fulfilled. The lava poured forth from the mouths of Vesuvius, Mount Etna and Cotopaxi and Kilauea is only the regurgitation from an awful inflammation thousands of miles deep. There are mines in Pennsylvania and in several parts of the world that have been on fire for many years. These coal mines burning down and the internal fires of the earth burning up, after awhile these two fires, the descending and the ascending, will meet, and then will occur the universal conflagration of which the Bible speaks when it says, “The elements shall melt with fervent heat the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” Instead of disbelieving the Bible story about the final conflagration, since I have looked a little into geology, finding that its explorations are all in the line of confirmation of that prophecy. I wonder how this old craft, of a world can keep sailing on much longer. It is like a ship on fire at sea, the fact that the hatches are kept down the only reason that it does not become one complete blaze —masts on fire, ratlins on fire, everything from cutwater to taffrail on fire. After geology has told us how near the internal fires have already burned their way toward the surface, it ought not to be a surprise to us at any time to hear the ringing of the fire bells of a universal conflagration. Oh, I am so glad that geology has been born! Thank God for the testimony of the rocks. I this day proclaim the banns of a marriage between geology and theology, the rugged bridegroom and the fairest of brides. Let them join their hands, and “whom God hath joined together let not man put asuiustt.”

Never Yet Upset. If anything in the history or condition of the earth seems for the time contradictory of anything in geology, you must remember that geology is all the time correcting itself and more and more coming to harmonization with the great book. In the last century the French Scientific Association printed a list of eighty theories of geology which had been adopted and afterward rejected. Lyell, the scientist, announced fifty theories of geology that had been believed in and afterward thrown overboard. Meanwhile the story of the Bible has not changed at all, and if geology has cast out between 100 and 200 theories which it once considered established we can afford to wait until the last theory of geology antagonizing divine revelation shall have been given up. Now, in this discourse upon the geology of the Bible, or God among the rocks, I charge all agitated and affrighted Uzzahs to calm their pulses about the upsetting of the Scriptures. Let me see! For several hundred years the oxen have been jerking the ark this way and that and pulling it over rough places and trying to stick it in the mud of derision and kicking with all the power of their hoofs against the sharp goads and trying to pull it into tlie cool shade away from the heats of retribution from a, God “who will by n<? means clear the guilty. Yet have you not noticed that the book has never been upset? The only changes made in it were by .its learned friends in the revision of the Scriptures. The book of Genesis has been thundered against by the mightiest batteries, yet you cannot to-day find in all the earth a copy of the Bible which has not the fifty chapters of the first copy of the book of Genesis ever printed, starting with the words “In the beginning God” and closing with Joseph's coffin. Fierce attack on the book of Exodus has been made because they said it was cruel to drown Pharaoh and the story of Mount Sinai was improbable. But the book of Exodus remains intact, and not one ofus, considering the cruelties which he would have continued among the brick kilns of Egypt, would have thrown Pharaoh a plank if we had seen him drowning. And Mount Sanai is to-day a pile of tossed and tumbled basalt, recalling the cataclysm of that mountain when the law,, was given. And, as to those Ten Commandments, all Roman law, all German law. all English law, all American law worth anything are squarely founded on them. So mighty assault for centuries has been made on the book of Joshua. It was said that the story of the detained sun and moon is an insult to modern astronomy, but that book of Joshua maybe found to-day in the chapel of every university in America, in defiance of any telescope projected from the roof of that university. The book of Jonah has been the target of ridicule for the small wit of ages, but there it stands, with its four chapters inviolate, while geology puts up in its museums remains of sea monsters capable of doing more than the one which swallowed the recreant prophet. There stand the 1,089 chapters of the Bible notwithstanding all the attacks of ages, and there they will stand until they sarivel up in the final fires, which geologists say are already kindled and glow hotter than the furnaces of an ocean steamer as it puts

out from New York Narrows for Hamburg or Southampton. » The God of the Rocks. The geology of the Bible shows that ottr religion is not a namby pamby, nerveless, dilettantish religion. It was projected and has been protected by the God of the rocks. Religion a balm ? Oh, yes. Religion a soothing power? Oh, yes. Religion a beautiful sentiment? Oh, yes. But we must have a God of the rocks, a mighty God to defend, an omnipotent God to achieve, a force able to overcome all other forces in the universe. Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley is he, combination of all gentleness and tenderness and sweetness? Oh, yes. But if the mighty forces now arrayed for the destruction of the nations are to be met and conquered, we must have a God of the rocks. The “Lion of Judah’s tribe,” as well as the “Lamb who was slain.” One hundred and thirty times does the Bible speak of the rock as defense, as armament, as refuge, as overpowering strength. David, the palmist, lived among the rocks, and they reminded him of the Almighty, and he ejaculates, “The Lord liveth; blessed be my rock.” “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” And then,/ as if his prayer had been answered, he feels the strength come into his soul, and he cries out, “The Lord is my rock.” “He shall set me up upon a rock.” How much the rocks have had to do with the cause of God in all ages! In the wilderness God’s Israel were fed with honey out of the rock. How the rock of Horeb paid Moses back in gushing, rippling, sparkling water for the two stout strokes with which he struck it! And there stands the rock with name —I guess the longest word in the Bible —sela-ham-mahlekoth, and it was worthy of a resounding, sesquipedalian nomenclature, for at that rock Saul was compelled to quit his pursuit of David and go home and look after the Philistines, who were making a flank movement. There were the rocks of Bozez and Seneh, between which Jonathan climbed up and sent flying in retreat th-q garrison of the uneircumcised. And yonder see David and his men hidden in the rock of Odullam fund Engedi.

Divine Deliberation. But while I go on with my study of the geologj' of the Bible, ortGod among the rocks, I get a more intelligent and helpful idea of divine deliberation. These rocks, the growth of thousands of years, and, geology says, of millions of years, ought to show the prolongation of God’s plans and cure our impatience because things are not done in short order. Men without seeing it become critical of the Almighty and think, Why does he not do this and do that and do it right away? We feel sometimes as if we could not wait. Well, I guess we will have to wait. God is never in a hurry except about two things. His plans, sweeping through eternity, are beyond our comprehension. They have such wide circle, such vastness of., revolution, such infinitude that we cannot compass them. Indeed he would not be much of a God whom we could thoroughly understand. That would not be much of a father who had no thoughts or plans larger than his babe of 1 year could coinpass. If God takes millions of years to make one rock, do not let us become critical if he takes twenty years or a century or several centuries to do that which we would like to have done immediately. Do not repeat the folly of those who conclude there is no God or that he is not in sympathy with the right and the good because he does not do certain things in the time we set apart for their performance. Do not let us hold up our little watch, with its tiny hour hand and minute hand, and by it try to correct the clock of the universe, its pendulum taking 500 years to swing this way and 500 years to swing that way. Do not let us set upour little spinning wheel beside the loom in which God weaves sunrises and sunsets and auroras. <We have the best of authority for saying that “one day with •the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” Do not expert that Uzzah’s oxen, even if they do not shy off, but go straight ahead, can keep up with the fire shod lightnings. Truth of the Omnipotent. But concerning all the vast things of God’s government of the universe be patient with the carrying out of plans beyond our measurement. O man! O woman! So far as your earthly existence is concerned, only the insect of an hour, be not impatient with the workings of the Omnipotent and the Eternal!” And now, for your solace and your safety, I ask you to come under the shelter, and into the deep clefts, and the almighty defense of a rock that is higher than you, higher than any Gibraltar, higher than the Himalayas—the Rock of Ages—that will shelter you from the storm; that will hide you from your enemies; that will stand when the earthquaLes of the last day get their pry under the moufitamfi OUd huri jnto geaa boiling wltn tlie fires which are already burning their way out from redhot centers toward the surfaces which are already here and there spouting with fire amid the quaking of the mountains under the look and touch of him of whom it is said in the sublimest sentence ever written: “He looketh upon the mountains, and they, tremble. He toucheth the hills, and they smoke.” Hie you one and all to the Rock of Ages. And now as before this sermon on the rocks I gave out the significant and appropriate hymn, “How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord” I will give out after this sermon on the rocks the significant and appropriate hymn: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee! Copyright. 1897.