296. Splendors of Orthodoxy
Splendors of Orthodoxy
Jer_6:16 : ’93Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’94
A great London fog has come down upon some of the ministers and some of the churches in the shape of what is called ’93advanced thought’94 in Biblical interpretation. All of them, and without any exception, deny the full inspiration of the Bible. Genesis is an allegory, and there are many myths in the Bible, and they philosophize and guess and 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 divinely inspired, but it is divinely protected in its present shape. You could as easily, without detection, take from the writings of Shakespeare ’93Hamlet,’94 and institute in place thereof Alexander Smith’92s drama, as at any time during the last fifteen hundred years a man could have made any important change 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 loose brick or cracked casement in this castellated truth, surely the bombardment of eight centuries would have discovered and broken through that imperfection. The fact that the Bible stands intact, notwithstanding all the furious assaults on all sides upon it, is proof to me that it is a miracle, and every miracle is of God.
’93But,’94 says some one, ’93while we admit the Bible is of God, it has not been understood until our time.’94 My answer is, that if the Bible be a letter from God, our Father, to man, his child, is it not strange that that letter should have been written in such a way that he 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 for the 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 excellences 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 Bloomingdale Insane Asylum as unfit to go alone.
Who make up 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 that 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 descended to our world did Mars blush or Saturn lose one of its rings? When I find these modern wiseacres 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 filled 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 century critics! All this comes of living away back in the eternities instead of 1898. I 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.
’93But,’94 say some, ’93do you really think the Scriptures are inspired thought?’94 Yes, either as history or as doctrine. 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 neither God nor inspired men sanctioned. Either as history or as guidance the entire Bible was inspired of God.
’93But,’94 says some one, ’93don’92t you think that the copyists might have made mistakes in transferring the divine words from one manuscript to another?’94 Yes, no doubt there were such mistakes; but they no more affect the meaning of the Scriptures than the misspelling of a word or the ungrammatical 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, ’93forty’94 or ’93fourty.’94 This book is the last will and testament of Christ to our lost world, and it bequeaths everything in the right way, although human hands may have damaged the grammar or made unjustifiable interpolation.
These men who pride themselves in our day on being advanced thinkers in Biblical interpretation will all of them end in atheism, if they live long enough, and I declare here they are doing more in the different denominations of Christians, and throughout the world, toward damaging Christianity and hindering the cause of the world’92s betterment than five thousand infidels could do. That man who stands inside a castle is far more dangerous if he be an enemy than five thousand enemies outside the castle. The infidel assails the castle from the outside. These men who pretend to be advanced thinkers in all the denominations are fighting the truth from the inside, and trying to shove back the bolts and swing open the gates.
Now, I am in favor of the greatest freedom of religious thought and discussion. I would have as much liberty for heterodoxy as for orthodoxy. If I should change my theories of religion I should preach them out and out, but not in a Christian church, erected by people who believe in an entire Bible, for it would be dishonest for me to promulgate sentiments different from those for which such a building was put up. When we enter any denomination as ministers of religion we take a solemn vow that we will preach the sentiments of that denomination. If we change our theories, as we have a right to change them, then there is a world several thousand miles in circumference, and there are hundreds of halls and hundreds of academies of music where we can ventilate our sentiments.
In these cities, in time of political agitation, there are the Republican headquarters and the Democratic headquarters. Suppose I should go into one of these headquarters 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 proclaim some other theory, he has broken his oath, and he is an out-and-out perjurer. Nevertheless, I declare for largest liberty in religious discussion. I would no more have the attempt to rear a monument to Thomas Paine in New York interfered with than I would have interfered with the lifting of the splendid monument to Washington in Wall street. Largest liberty for the body, largest liberty for the mind, largest liberty for the soul.
Now, I want to show you, as a matter of advocacy for what I believe to be the right, the splendors of orthodoxy. Many have supposed that its disciples are people of flat skulls, and no reading, and behind the age, and the victims of gullibility. I will 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. Call the roll of all the missionaries who are today enduring sacrifices in the ends of the earth for the cause of religion and the world’92s betterment, and they all believe in an entire Bible. Just as soon as a missionary begins to doubt whether there every was a Garden of Eden, or whether there is any such thing as future punishment, he comes right home from Beyrout or Madras, and goes into the insurance business! All the missionary societies of 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 sharp pin. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Protestant churches of America were built by 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 today were laid by men who believed the Bible from lid to lid, and if I cannot take it in that way I will not take 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’92s, and the other part somebody else’92s, and it was a sort of literary mongrelism, I would throw the garbled sheets into the waste basket.
No church of very great influence today but 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 as soon as a man begins to give up the Bible he is apt to preach in some hall, and he has an audience while he lives, and when he dies the church dies. If I thought that the church was built on a quarter of a Bible, or a half of a Bible, or three-quarters of a Bible, or ninety-nine one-hundredths of a Bible, I would have no faith in its continuance; but when I know it is built on the entire Word of God, I know it will last a thousand 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, for many years stood Theodore Parker battling orthodoxy, giving it, as some supposed at that time, its death wound. He was the most fascinating man I ever heard or ever expect to hear, and I came out from hearing him thinking, in my boyhood way, ’93Well, that’92s the death of the Church.’94 On that same street, and not far from being opposite, stood Park Congregational Church, called by its enemies ’93Hell-fire Corner.’94 Theodore Parker died, and his church died with him; or, if it is in existence, it is so small you cannot see it with the naked eye. Park Congregational Church still stands on ’93Hell-fire Corner,’94 thundering away the magnificent truths of this glorious orthodoxy just as though Theodore Parker had never lived. 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 by orthodoxy. Who had the greatest human intellect the world ever knew? Paul. In physical stature insignificant; in mind, head and shoulders above all the giants of the age. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Who was the greatest poet the ages ever saw, acknowledged to be so both by infidels and Christians? John Milton, seeing more without eyes than anybody else ever saw with eyes. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Who was the greatest reformer the world has ever seen, so acknowledged by infidels as well as by Christians? Martin Luther. Orthodox from scalp to heel.
Then look at the certitudes. O man, believing in an entire Bible, where did you come from? Answer: ’93I descended from a perfect parentage in Paradise, and Jehovah breathed into my nostrils the breath of life. I am a son of God.’94 O man, believing in a half-and-half Bible’97believing in a Bible in spots, where did you come from? Answer: ’93It is all uncertain; in my ancestral line away back there was an orangoutang and a tadpole and a pollywog, and it took millions of years to get me evoluted.’94 O man, believing in a Bible in spots, where are you going to when you quit this world? Answer: ’93Going into a great to be, so on into the great somewhere, and then I shall pass through on to the great anywhere, and I shall probably arrive in the nowhere.’94 That is where I thought you would fetch up. O man, believing in an entire Bible, and believing with all your heart, where are you going to when you leave this world? Answer: ’93I am going to my Father’92s house; I am going into the companionship of my loved ones who have gone before; I am going to leave all my sins, and I am going to be with God and like God forever and forever.’94 Oh, the glorious certitudes of orthodoxy!
Behold the splendors of orthodoxy in its announcement of two destinies!’97palace 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 Alhambras and the Versailles and the Windsor castles and the Winter Gardens and the imperial abodes of all the earth were heaved up into one architectural glory. At the other end of the universe a penitentiary where men who want their sins can have them. Would it be fair 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 with Raymond Street Jail and the Tombs and Sing Sing, and all the small-pox hospitals emptied on us than heaven would be if there were no perdition. Palace and penitentiary. If I see a man with a full bowl of sin, and he thirsts for it, and his whole nature craves it, and he takes hold with both hands and presses that bowl to his lips, and then presses it hard between his teeth, and the draught begins to pour its sweetness down his throat, shall we snatch away the bowl and jerk the man up to the gate of heaven, and push him in if he does not want to go and sit down and sing psalms forever? No. God has made you and me so completely free that we need not go to heaven unless we prefer it. Not more free to soar than free to sink.
Nearly all the heterodox people I know believe all are coming out at the same destiny; without regard to faith or character we are all coming out at the shining gate. There they are, all in glory together. Thomas Paine and George Whitefield, Jezebel and Mary Lyon, Nero and Charles Wesley, Charles Guiteau and James A. Garfield, John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln’97all in glory together! All the innocent men, women, and children who were massacred, side by side with their murderers. If we are all coming out at the same destiny, without regard to character, then it is true. I turn away from such a debauched heaven. Against that cauldron of piety and blasphemy, philanthropy and assassination, self-sacrifice and beastliness, I place the two destinies of the Bible forever and forever and forever apart.
Behold also the splendors 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 they go out in silence portentous. You may gather up all 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 side I put the death-beds of those who believed in an entire Bible. On the other side of that avenue I put the death-beds of those who rejected part of the Bible, or rejected all of the Bible. Now, take my arm and let us pass through this dividing avenue. Look off upon the right side. Here are the death-beds on the right side of this avenue. They exclaim, ’93Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!’94 ’93Free grace!’94 ’93Glory, glory!’94 ’93I am sweeping through the gates washed in the blood of the Lamb!’94 ’93The chariots are coming!’94 ’93I mount, I fly!’94 ’93Wings, wings!’94 ’93They are coming for me!’94 ’93Peace, be still!’94 Alfred Cookman’92s deathbed, Richard Cecil’92s deathbed, Commodore Foote’92s deathbed. Your father’92s deathbed, your mother’92s deathbed, your sister’92s deathbed, your child’92s deathbed. 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 for angels to come. 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 went 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’97the last hour’97positively paradisaical?
Young men, old men, middle-aged men, take sides in this contest between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. ’93Ask for the old paths, walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’94 But you follow this crusade against any part of the Bible’97first 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 then after a while you will wake up in a fountainless, rockless, treeless desert swept of everlasting sirocco. If you are laughed at you can afford to be laughed at for standing by the Bible just as God has given it to you and miraculously preserved it.
Do not jump overboard from the staunch old Umbria of old-fashioned orthodoxy until there is something ready to take you up stronger than the fantastic yawl which has painted on the side ’93Advanced Thought,’94 and which leaks at the prow and leaks at the stern and has a steel pen for one oar and a glib tongue for the other oar, and now tips over this way and then tips over that way, until you do not know whether the passengers will land in the breakers of despair or on the sinking sands of infidelity and atheism.
I am in full sympathy with the advancements of our time, but this world will never advance a single inch beyond this old Bible. God was just as capable of dictating the truth to the prophets and apostles as He is capable of dictating the truths to these 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 sceptic, and preferring new things to old, I never so much as this morning 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 meat-axe of their own preferences, now calling upon philosophy, now calling on the Church, now calling on God, now calling on the devil. I prefer the thick, warm robe of the old religion’97old as God’97the robe which has kept so many warm amid the cold pilgrimage of this life and amid the chills of death. The old robe rather than the thin, uncertain gauze offered us by these wiseacres who believe the Bible in spots.
On July 27th, 1814, at seventy-two years of age, expired Isabella Graham. She was the most useful woman of her day amid the poor and sick, at the head of the orphan asylums and Magdalen asylums, and an angel of mercy in hospital and reformatory. Dr. Mason, one of the mightiest men of his day, said at her funeral that she was mentally and spiritually the most wonderfully endowed person he had ever met. She was an impersonation of the most orthodox orthodoxy. Her last word was peace. As a sublime peroration to my sermon, I will give an extract from her last will and testament, showing how one who believes in an entire Bible may make a glorious exit:
’93My children and my grandchildren I leave to my covenant God, the God who hath fed me all my life with the bread that perisheth and the bread that never perisheth, who has been a Father to my fatherless children and a husband to their widowed mother thus far. And now receiving my Redeemer’92s testimony, I set to my seal that God is true; and believing the record of John that God hath given to me eternal life and this life is in His Son who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot unto God, and being consecrated a priest forever hath with His own blood entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for me. I also believe that He will perfect what concerns me, support and carry me safely through death, and present me to His Father, complete in His own righteousness, without spot or wrinkle. Into the hands of this redeeming God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I commit my redeemed spirit.’97Isabella Graham.’94
Let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like hers. ’93Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen and Amen!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage