512. Infidelity Answered

Infidelity Answered

Eph_4:18 : ’93Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.’94

It seems, from what we have recently heard, that the Christian religion is a huge blunder; that the Mosaic account of the creation is an absurdity large enough to throw all nations into rollicking guffaw; that Adam and Eve never existed; that the ancient flood and Noah’92s ark Were impossibilities; that there never was a miracle; that the Bible is the friend of cruelty, of murder, of polygamy, of impurity, of all forms of base crime; that the Christian religion is woman’92s tyrant and man’92s stultification; that the Bible from lid to lid is a fable, a sham, a lie; that the martyrs who died for its truth were miserable dupes; that the Church of Jesus Christ is properly gazetted as a fool; that it is something to bring a blush to the cheek of every patriot that John Adams, the father of American Independence, declared ’93the Bible the best book in all the world;’94 and that, iron, lion-hearted Andrew Jackson turned into a snivelling coward when he said, ’93That book, sir, is the rock on which our Republic rests,’94 and that Daniel Webster abdicated the throne of his intellectual power and resigned his logic, and from being the great expounder of the Constitution and the great lawyer of his age, turned into an idiot when he said, ’93My heart assures and reassures me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. From the time that at my mother’92s feet, or on my father’92s knee, I first learned to lisp verses from the sacred writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation, and if there is anything in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures;’94 and that William H. Seward, the diplomatist of the century, only showed his puerility when he declared, ’93The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influences of the Bible;’94 and that it is the wisest for us to take that book from the throne in the affections of uncounted multitudes, and put it under our feet to be trampled upon by hatred and hissing contempt; and that your old father was hoodwinked and cajoled and cheated, and befooled, when he leaned on this as a staff after his hair grew gray, and his hands were tremulous, and his steps shortened as he came up to the verge of the grave; and that your mother sat with a pack of lies on her lap while reading of the better country, and of the ending of all her aches and pains, and reunion not only with those of you who stood around her, but with the children she had buried with infinite heartache so that she could read no more until she took off her spectacles and wiped from them the heavy mist of many tears. Alas! that for forty and fifty years they should have walked under this delusion and had it under their pillow when they lay a-dying in the back room and asked that some words from the vile page might be cut upon the tombstone under the shadow of the old country meeting-house where they sleep waiting for a resurrection that will never come. This book, having deceived them, and having deceived the mighty intellects of the past, must not be allowed to deceive our larger, mightier, vaster, more stupendous intellects.

Out with the book from the courtroom, where it is used in the solemnization of testimony! Out with it from under the foundation of church and asylum! Out with it from the domestic circle! Gather together all the Bibles, the children’92s Bibles, the family Bibles, those newly-bound and those with lid nearly worn out and pages almost obliterated by fingers long ago turned to dust’97bring them all together and let us make a bonfire of them and by it warm our cold criticism and after that turn under with the ploughshare of public indignation, the polluted ashes of that loathsome, unclean, cruel and deathful book, which is so antagonistic to man’92s liberty and woman’92s honor and the world’92s happiness.

’93Stop!’94 says some silly old man. ’93Stop!’94 says some weak-minded woman. ’93Stop!’94 says some small-brained child. ’93Perhaps you had better give the Bible a trial before you condemn it.’94 Well, we will give it a trial. I empanel this whole audience as a jury to render their verdict in this case’97Infidelity, the plaintiff, versus Christianity, the defendant. Twelve jurors are ordinarily enough in a case, but in this case, vaster in importance than any other, I empanel the whole American people as a jury, and I ask them to affirm that they will well and truly try this issue of traverse joined between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant, so help you God.

The jury empaneled, call your first witness. Let him be the champion sceptic, agnostic, infidel’97the leader of his school. ’93Here!’94 Swear the witness. But how are you to swear the witness? I know of only two ways of taking an oath in a courtroom. The one is by kissing the Bible, and the other is by lifting the hand. I cannot ask him to swear by the Bible, because he considers that a pack of lies, and, therefore, it could give no solemnity to his oath. I cannot ask him to lift the hand, for that seems to imply the existence of a God, and that is a fact in dispute. So I swear him by the rings of Saturn, and the spots on the sun, and the caverns in the moon, and the Milky Way, and the nebular hypothesis, that he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in this case between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant. Let me say that I shall deal with the plaintiff not as a private character, but only as a public teacher.

You say: ’93Why answer the champion blasphemer of America?’94 Am I afraid that Christianity will be overborne by this scoffing harlequinade? O! no. Do you know how near he has come to stopping Christianity? I will tell you how near he has come to impeding the progress of Christianity in the world? About as much as one snowflake on the track will impede the half-past five o’92clock Chicago lightning express train. Perhaps not so much as that. It is more like a Switzerland insect floating through the air impeding an Alpine avalanche. Within the last twenty years this infidel leader has done his most conspicuous stopping of Christianity, and he has stopped it at the following rate: In the first fifty years of this century, there were three million people who professed the faith of Christ. In the last ten years, there have been three million people connecting themselves by profession with the Church of Christ. In other words the last ten years have accomplished as much as the first fifty years of this century.

My fear is not that he will arrest Christianity. I preach these sermons for the benefit of individuals. There are young men who through his teachings have given up their religion and soon after gave up their morals. Infidel teachings triumphant would fill all the penitentiaries, and the gambling hells and houses of shame on the continent’97on the planet. No divine system of morals, and in twenty years we would have a hell on earth, eclipsing in abomination the hell that the infidels have so much laughed at. My fear is not that Christianity in general shall be impeded, but I want to persuade these young men to get aboard the train instead of throwing themselves across the track.

But that trial comes on. The jury has been empaneled. The first witness has been called. In the opening sentences of my sermon, I gave the infidel plaintiff’92s charges against Christianity. Now, it is a principle settled in all court-rooms, and among all intelligent people, ’93false in part, false in all.’94 If a witness is found to be making a misrepresentation on the stand, it does not make any difference what he testifies to after it; all goes overboard. The judge, the jury, every common-sense man says, ’93false in part, false in all.’94 Now, if I can show you, and I will show you, the Lord helping me, that the plaintiff makes misrepresentations in one respect, or two respects, or three respects, I will demand that, as intelligent men and as fair-minded women, you throw overboard his entire testimony. If he will misrepresent in one thing, he will misrepresent all the way through. ’93False in one, false in all.’94

In the first place, he raises a roistering laugh against the Bible, by saying: ’93Is this book true? The gentleman who wrote it said that the world was made out of nothing; I cannot imagine nothing being made into something.’94 In nearly all his lectures he begins with that gigantic misrepresentation. Refer to your memory that you may see it is an atheistic misstatement’97a misstatement from stem to stern, and from cutwater to taffrail, and from the top of the mainmast down to the barnacles on the bottom. If he had taken some obscure passage, he would not have been so soon found out; but he has taken the most conspicuous, the most memorable, the most magnificent passage, all geological and astronomical discovery only adding to its grandeur. ’93In the beginning.’94 There you can roll in ten million years if you want to. There is no particular date given’97no contest between science and revelation. You may roll in there innumerable ages, if you want to. Though the world may have been in process of creation for millions of years, suddenly and quickly, and in one week, it may have been fitted up for man’92s residence.

You are not compelled to believe that the world was made in six of our days. It may not have been a day of twenty-four hours, the day spoken of in the first chapter; it may have been God’92s day, and a thousand years with him are as one day. ’93And the evening and the morning were the first day’94’97God’92s day. ’93And the evening and the morning were the second day’94’97God’92s day. ’93And the evening and the morning were the sixth day’94’97God’92s day. You and I living in the seventh day, the Sabbath of the world, the day of Gospel redemption, the grandest day of all the week in which each day may have been made up of thousands of years.

Can you tell me how a man can get his mind and soul into such a blasphemous twist as to scoff at that first chapter of Genesis, its verses billows of light surging up from sapphire seas of glory! Come now, and let the infidel scoffer laugh at the fact that the world is made out of nothing. He rings his changes on that word ’93nothing.’94 He has gone all through the cities telling what every man, woman, and child of common sense knows is a misrepresentation. There is as much difference between the plaintiff’92s statement and the truth as between nothing and omnipotence.

Now, I will take this misrepresentation, and I nail it so high that North, South, East and West may see it and remember it. Wilful misrepresentation! Now I demand, gentlemen of the jury, that you throw overboard this entire testimony. False in part, false in all’97all that he has testified to in the past, all that he will testify to in the future, all overboard, by the common rule of evidence.

I take a step further in the impeachment of this witness. He swoops upon the third and fourth verses of the same chapter in caricature and says: ’93Ha, ha! the Bible represents that light was created on Monday, and the sun was not created until Thursday. Just think of it! a book declaring that light was created three days before the sun shone!’94 Here the infidel plaintiff shows his geological and chemical and astronomical ignorance. If he had asked any school boy on his way home from one of our high schools: ’93My lad, can there be any light without the shining of the sun?’94 the lad would have said: ’93Yes, sir; heat and electricity emit light independent of the sun.’94 Beside that, when the earth was in process of condensation, it was surrounded by thick vapors and the discharge of many volcanoes in the primary period, and all this obscuration may have hindered the light of the sun from falling on the earth until that Thursday morning. Beside that, he would say: ’93Mr. Plaintiff, do you not know that David Brewster and Herschel the astronomer, and all the modern men of their class, agree in the fact that the sun is not light, that it is an opaque mass, that it is only the candlestick that holds the light, a phosphorescent atmosphere floating around it, changing and changing, so it is not to be at all wondered at that not until that Thursday morning its light fell on the earth?’94

The lad would have gone on and told the infidel that by observation it has been found that there are burned out volcanoes in other worlds which, when they were in explosion and activity, must have cast forth an insufferable light, throwing a glare all over our earth. And the boy would have asked him also if he had ever heard of the Aurora Borealis or the Aurora Australis.

Captain Bonnycastle, coming up the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the 17th of September, 1826, was aroused by the mate of the vessel in great alarm from an unusual appearance. It was a starlight night, when suddenly the sky became overcast. In the direction of the highland of Cornwallis county, an instantaneous and intensely vivid light, resembling the Aurora, shot out on the hitherto dark and gloomy sea, on the lee bow, which was so brilliant that it lighted everything distinctly even to the mast-head. The light spread over the whole sea between the two shores, and the waves, which before had been tranquil, now began to be agitated. Captain Bonnycastle described the scene as that of a blazing sheet of awful and most brilliant light’97a long and vivid line of light that showed the face of the high, frowning land abreast. Long, tortuous lines of light showed immense numbers of large fish darting about, as if in consternation. The topsail, yard and mizzen-boom were lighted by the glare, as if gas-lights had been burning directly below them, and until just before daybreak, at four o’92clock, the most minute objects were distinctly visible.

This infidel plaintiff has only to go to one of our high schools to learn there are many sources of light besides the light of the sun. But if he had been in one of the classes in our high schools, a class in astronomy, or geology, or chemistry, the impatient teacher would have said to him: ’93Boy go down to the foot and be in disgrace for your stupidity!’94 This is not wilful misrepresentation in this case on the part of the plaintiff. He does not know any better. It is the most profound and most disgusting ignorance ever exhibited on a lecturer’92s platform in America, when he says there cannot be any light, or implies there cannot be any light, except that which comes from the sun.

In the first case which I showed you it was wilful misrepresentation. In this case it is ignorance, geological, and astronomical, and chemical. But whether wilful or ignorant misrepresentation, either and both will impeach the plaintiff as incompetent to give testimony in this case between Infidelity and Christianity.

I take a step further in impeaching this witness against Christianity. He sharpens all his witticisms to destroy our belief in the ancient deluge and Noah’92s Ark. He says that from the account there, it must have rained eight hundred feet of water each day in order that it might be fifteen cubits above the hills. He says that the ark could not have been large enough to contain ’93two of every sort,’94 for there would have been hundreds of thousands of creatures! He says that these creatures would have come from all lands and all zones! He says there was only one small window in the ark and that would not have given fresh air to keep the animals inside the ark from suffocation! Then he winds up that part of the story by saying that the ark finally landed on a mountain seventeen thousand feet high. He says that he does not believe the story. Neither do I! There is no such story in the Bible. I will tell you what the Bible story is. I must say that I have changed my mind in regard to some matters which once were to me very mysterious. They are no more mysterious. This is the key to the facts. This is the story of an eye-witness, Noah, his story incorporated afterward by Moses in the account. Noah described the scene just as it appeared to him. He saw the flood and he fathomed its depth. As far as eye could reach everything was covered up, from horizon to horizon, or as it says, ’93under the whole heaven.’94 He did not refer to the Sierra Nevadas, or to Mount Washington, for America had not been discovered, or, if it had been discovered, he could not have seen so far off. He is giving the testimony of an eye-witness. God speaks after the manner of men when he says everything went under, and Noah speaks after the manner of men when he says everything did go under. An eye-witness. There is no need of thinking that the kangaroo leaped the ocean, or that the polar bear came down from the ice. Why did the deluge come? It came for the purpose of destroying the outrageous inhabitants of the then thinly populated earth, nearly all the population probably very near the ark before it was launched. What would have been the use of submerging North and South America, or Europe, or Africa, when they were not inhabited?

The infidel plaintiff in this suit most grossly misrepresents when he says that in order to have that depth of water it must have rained eight hundred feet every day. The Bible distinctly declares that the most of the flood rose instead of falling. Before the account where it says, ’93the windows of heaven were opened,’94 it says, ’93all the fountains of the great deep were broken up.’94 All geologists agree in saying that there are caverns in the earth filled with water, and they rushed forth, and all the lakes and rivers forsook their bed. What am I to think, and what are you to think, of a man who, ignoring this earthquake spoken of in the Bible, as preceding the falling of the rain, and for the purpose of making a fresh laugh at the Bible, will say it must have rained over eight hundred feet every day? Taking the last half instead of the first half. The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and then the windows of heaven were opened.

Well, then, another thing, in regard to the size of the ark. Instead of being a mud-scow as some of these infidels would have us understand, it was a magnificent ship, three times the size of an ordinary man-of-war of our day. Well, Noah saw the animal creation going into this ark. He gave the account of an eye-witness. They were the animals from the region where he lived. There was a great number of them, and he gives the account of an eye-witness. They went in two and two of all flesh.

Several years ago, I was on a steamer on the river Tay, and came to Perth, Scotland. I got off and I saw the most wonderful agricultural show that I had ever witnessed. There were horses and cattle such as Rosa Bonheur never sketched, and there were dogs such as the loving pencil of Edwin Landseer never portrayed, and there were sheep and fowl and creatures of all sorts. Suppose that ’93two and two’94 of all the creatures of that agricultural show were put upon the Tay steamer to be transported to Dundee, and the next day I should be writing home to America and giving an account of the occurrence, I would have used the same general phraseology that Noah used in regard to the embarkation of the brute creation in the ark’97I would have said that they went in two and two of every sort. I would not have meant six hundred thousand. A common-sense man myself, I would suppose that the people who read the letter were common-sense people.

’93But how could you get them into the ark?’94 says the infidel with a great sneer. ’93How could they be induced to go into the ark? He would have to pick them out and drive them in, and coax them in.’94 Could not the same God who gave instinct to the animal inspire that instinct to seek for shelter from the storm. However, nothing more than ordinary animal instinct was necessary. Have you ever been in the country when an August thunder-storm was coming up and heard the cattle moan at the bars to get in? and seen the affrighted fowl go upon the perch at noonday and heard the affrighted dog and cat calling at the door, supplicating entrance? And are you surprised that in that age of the world, when there were fewer places of shelter for dumb beasts, at the muttering and rumbling and flashing and quaking and darkening of an approaching deluge, the animal creation came moaning and bleating to the sloping embankment reaching up to the great ship, and passed in? I have owned horses and cattle and sheep and dogs, but I never had a horse, or a cow, or a sheep, or a dog that was so stupid it did not know enough to come in when it rained! Yet the infidel plaintiff cannot understand how they could get in. It is amazing to him. And then that one window in the ark which afforded such poor ventilation to the creatures there assembled’97that small window in the ark which excites so much mirthfulness on the part of the great infidel. If he had known as much Hebrew as you could put on your little finger-nail, he would have known that that word translated window there means window course, a whole range of lights. This ignorant infidel does not know a window pane from twenty windows. So, if there is any criticism of the ark, there seems to be too much window for such a long storm. This infidel says that during the long storm the window must have been kept shut and hence no air. There are people in this house today who, all the way from Liverpool to Barnegat lighthouse, and for two weeks, were kept under deck, the hatches battened down because of the storm. Some of you, in the old-time sailing vessels, were kept nearly a month with the hatches down because of some long storm.

For the tenth or the fifteenth misrepresentation by this plaintiff, he says that the ark landed on a mountain seventeen thousand feet high, and that, of course, as soon as the animals came forth they would all be frozen in the ice! Here comes in his geographical ignorance. He does not seem to know that Ararat is not merely the name for a mountain, but for a hilly district, and that it may have been a hill twenty feet high, or a hundred feet, or two hundred feet high on which the ark alighted. But in order to raise a laugh against the Holy Scriptures, this infidel scoffer lifts the ark seventeen thousand feet high, showing an ignorance of just that altitude!

The flood that he describes is not Noah’92s flood; it is his own flood of hatred against God. It is not Noah’92s ark that he describes; it is his own ark with a whole flock of hooting owls of the midnight of Infidelity, whole nests of viperine and adderine venom against God, whole lairs of panthers, which, with spotted claw, if they could, would maul the eternal God to pieces. And there is only one small window in that ark and it opens into the blackness of darkness described by my text, ’93having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.’94

We are not dependent on the Bible for the story of the flood, entirely. All ages and all literatures have traditions, broken traditions, indistinct traditions, but still traditions of it. The traditions of the Chaldeans say that in the time when Xisurthus was king there was a great flood, and he put his family and his friends in a large vessel and all outside of them were destroyed, and after a while the birds went forth and they came back and their wings were tinged with mud. Lucian and Ovid, celebrated writers, who had never seen the Bible, described a flood in the time of Deucalion. He took his friends into a boat, and the animals came running to him in pairs. And so, all lands, and all ages, and all literatures, Egypt, Greece, Scythia, the Celts, Peru, Mexico, North America, and even the South Sea Islands’97all peopled from the original Asian stock’97seem to have a broken and indistinct tradition of a calamity which Moses, here incorporating Noah’92s account, so grandly, so beautifully, so accurately, so solemnly records.

But I must halt in this argument, as in a great trial sometimes an attorney will stop for lack of time to finish. I have only opened the door of the subject. I have impeached the infidel plaintiff for having misrepresented once, twice, thrice. I demand that you put into execution the principle of every courtroom, gentlemen of the jury, and throw overboard his entire testimony. ’93False in part, false in all.’94 I have only discussed the cleanest and best part of his infidelity. There are depths below depths, and I shall go on and say all I have to say on this subject.

My prayer is that the God who created the world, not out of nothing, but out of his own omnipotence, may create us anew in Christ Jesus; and that the God who made light three days before the sun shone, may kindle in our souls a light that will burn on long after the sun has expired; and that the God who ordered the ark built and kept open more than one hundred years that the antediluvians might enter it for shelter, may graciously incline us to accept the invitation which this morning rolls in music from the throne, saying: ’93Come thou and all thy house into the ark.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage