180. The Monarch of Books

The Monarch of Books

Psa_19:8 : ’93The statutes of the Lord are right.’94

Old books go out of date. When they were written they discussed questions which were being discussed; they struck at wrongs which have long ago ceased, or advocated institutions which excite not our interest. Were they books of history, the facts have been gathered from the imperfect mass, better classified and more lucidly presented. Were they books of poetry, they were interlocked with wild mythologies which have gone up from the face of the earth like mists at sunrise. Were they books of morals, civilization will not sit at the feet of barbarism; neither do we want Sappho, Pythagoras and Tully to teach us morals. What do the masses of the people care now for the pathos of Simonides, or the sarcasm of Menander, or the gracefulness of Philemon, or the wit of Aristophanes? Even the old books we have left, with a few exceptions, have but very little effect upon our times. Books are human; they have a time to be born, they are fondled, they grow in strength, they have a middle life of usefulness; then comes old age’97they totter and they die.

Many of the national libraries are merely the cemeteries of dead books. Some of them lived flagitious lives and died deaths of ignominy. Some were virtuous and accomplished a glorious mission. Some went into the ashes through inquisitorial fires. Some found their funeral pile in sacked and plundered cities. Some were neglected and died as foundlings at the door of science. Some expired in the author’92s study, others in the publisher’92s hands. Ever and anon there comes into your possession an old book, its author forgotten and its usefulness done, and with leathern lips it seems to say, ’93I wish I were dead.’94 Monuments have been raised over poets and philanthropists. Would that some tall shaft might be erected in honor of the world’92s buried books! The world’92s authors would make pilgrimage thereto, and poetry, and literature, and science, and religion, would consecrate it with their tears.

Not so with one old Book. It started in the world’92s infancy. It grew under theocracy and monarchy. It withstood storms of fire. It grew under prophet’92s mantle and under the fisherman’92s coat of the apostles; in Rome, in Ephesus and Jerusalem and Patmos. Tyranny issued edicts against it, and infidelity put out the tongue, and Mohammedanism from its mosques hurled its anathemas, but the old Bible still lived. It crossed the British channel and was greeted by Wickliffe and James I. It crossed the Atlantic and struck Plymouth Rock, until, like that of Horeb, it gushed with blessedness. Churches and asylums have gathered all along its way, ringing their bells and stretching out their hands of blessing; and every Sabbath there are innumerable heralds of the cross with their hands on this open, grand, free, old English Bible.

It will not have accomplished its mission until it has climbed the icy mountains of Greenland; until it has gone over the granite cliffs of China; until it has thrown its glow amid the Australian mines; until it has scattered its gems among the diamond districts of Brazil; and all thrones shall be gathered into one throne, and all crowns by the fires of revolution shall be melted into one crown, and this Book shall, at the very gate of heaven, have waved in the ransomed empires. Not until then will this glorious Bible have accomplished its mission.

In carrying out, then, the idea of my text’97’94The statutes of the Lord are right’94’97I shall show you that the Bible is right in authentication, that it is right in style, that it is right in doctrine, that it is right in its effects.

Can you doubt the authenticity of the Scriptures? There is not so much evidence that Walter Scott wrote ’93The Lady of the Lake;’94 not so much evidence that Shakespeare wrote ’93Hamlet;’94 not so much evidence that John Milton wrote ’93Paradise Lost;’94 not so much evidence that Bryant wrote ’93Thanatopsis;’94 not so much evidence that Tennyson wrote ’93The Charge of the Light Brigade,’94 as there is evidence that the Lord God Almighty, by the hands of the prophets, evangelists and apostles, wrote this Book.

Suppose a book now to be written which came in conflict with a great many things, and was written by bad men or impostors, how long would such a book stand? It would be scouted by everybody. And I say if that Bible had been an imposition; or if it had not been written by the men who said they wrote it; if it had been a mere collection of falsehoods, do you not suppose that it would have been immediately rejected by the people? If Job and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Paul and Peter and John were impostors, they would have been scouted by nations and generations. If that Book has come down through fires of centuries without a scar, it is because there is nothing in it destructible.

How near have they come to destroying the Bible? When they began their opposition there were two or three thousand copies of it. Now there are five hundred millions, as far as I can calculate. These Bible truths, notwithstanding all the opposition, have gone into all languages’97into the philosophic Greek, the flowing Italian, the rugged German, the passionate French, the picturesque Indian, and the inexhaustible Anglo-Saxon. Now, do you not suppose, if that Book had been an imposition and a falsehood, it would have gone down under these ceaseless fires of opposition?

Further, suppose that there was a great pestilence going over the earth, and hundreds of thousands of men were dying of that pestilence, and some one should find a medicine that cured ten thousand people, would not everybody acknowledge that that must be a good medicine? Why, some one would say: ’93Do you deny it? There have been ten thousand people cured by it.’94 I simply state the fact that there have been hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women who say they have felt the truthfulness of that Book and its power in their souls. It has cured them of the worst leprosy that ever came down on our earth, namely, the leprosy of sin; and if I can point you to multitudes who say they have felt the power of that cure, are you not reasonable enough to acknowledge the fact that there must be some power in the medicine? Will you take the evidence of millions of patients who have been cured, or will you take the evidence of the sceptic who stands aloof and confesses that he never took the medicine?

The Bible intimates that there was a city called Petra, built out of solid rock. Infidelity scoffed at it. ’93Where is your city of Petra?’94 Buckhardt and Laborde went forth in their explorations and they came upon that very city. The mountains stand around like giants guarding the tomb where the city is buried. They find a street in that city six miles long, where once flashed imperial pomp and which echoed with the laughter of light-hearted mirth on its way to the theatre. On temples fashioned out of colored stones’97some of which have blushed into the crimson of the rose, and some of which have paled into the whiteness of the lily’97aye, on column and pediment and entablature and statuary, God writes the truth of that Bible.

The Bible says that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone. ’93Absurd,’94 infidels year after year said; ’93it is positively absurd that they could have been destroyed by brimstone. There is nothing in the elements to cause such a shower of death as that.’94 Lieutenant Lynch’97I think he was the first man who went out on the discovery, but he has been followed by many others’97Lieutenant Lynch went out in exploration and came to the Dead Sea, which, by convulsion of nature, has overflowed the place where the cities once stood. He sank his fathoming line and brought up from the bottom of the Dead Sea great masses of sulphur, remnants of that very tempest that swept Sodom and Gomorrah to ruin. Who was right? the Bible that announced the destruction of those cities or the sceptics who for ages scoffed at it?

The Bible says there was a city called Nineveh, and that it was three days’92 journey around it, and that it should be destroyed by fire and water. ’93Absurd,’94 cried out hundreds of voices for many years; ’93no such city was ever built that it would take three days’92 journey to go around. Besides, it could not be destroyed by fire and water; they are antagonistic elements.’94 But Layard, Botta and Keith go out, and by their explorations they find that city of Nineveh, and they tell us that by their own experiment it is three days’92 journey around, according to the old estimate of a day’92s journey, and that it was literally destroyed by fire and water’97two antagonistic elements’97a part of the city having been inundated by the River Tigris, the brick material in those times being dried clay instead of burned, while in other parts they find the remains of the fire in heaps of charcoal that have been excavated from the calcined slabs of gypsum. Who was right, the Bible or infidelity?

Moses intimated that they had vineyards in Egypt. ’93Absurd,’94 cried hundreds of voices; ’93you can’92t raise grapes in Egypt; or, if you can, it is a very great exception that you can raise them.’94 But the traveler goes down, and in the underground vaults of Eilithya he finds painted on the wall all the process of tending the vines and treading out the grapes. It is all there, familiarly sketched by people who evidently knew all about it, and saw it all about them every day; and in those underground vaults there are vases still encrusted with the settlings of the wine. The vine did grow in Egypt, whether it grows there now or not.

Thus you see that while God wrote the Bible, at the same time He wrote this commentary, that ’93the statutes of the Lord are right,’94 on leaves of rock and shell, bound in clasps of metal, and lying on mountain tables and in the jeweled vase of the sea. In authenticity and in genuineness the statutes of the Lord are right.

Again, the Bible is right in style. I know there are a great many people who think it is merely a collection of genealogical tables and dry facts. That is because they do not know how to read the Book. You take up the most interesting novel that was ever written, and if you commence at the four hundredth page today, and to-morrow at the three-hundredth, and the next day at the first page, how much sense or interest would you get from it? Yet that is the very process to which the Bible is subjected every day. An angel from heaven, reading the Bible in that way, could not understand it. The Bible, like all other palaces, has a door by which to enter and a door by which to go out. Genesis is the door to go in and Revelation the door to go out.

These epistles of Paul the Apostle are merely letters written, folded up and sent by couriers to the different churches. Do you read other letters the way you read Paul’92s letters? Suppose you get a business letter, and you know that in it there are important financial propositions, do you read the last page first and then one line of the third page, and another of the second, and another of the first? No. You begin with ’93Dear Sir’94 and end with ’93Yours truly.’94 Now, here is a letter from the throne of God written to our lost world; it is full of magnificent hopes and propositions, and we read today a few verses in Revelation and to-morrow a passage in Genesis and the next day a verse in the Psalms, and of course we do not understand. Besides that, people read the Bible when they cannot do anything else. It is a dark day, and they do not feel well, and they do not go to business, and after lounging about for a while they pick up the Bible, and their mind refuses to enjoy the truth. Or they come home weary from the store or shop, and they feel, if they do not say, that it is a dull book. While the Bible is to be read on stormy days and while your head aches, it is also to be read in the sunshine and when your nerves, like harp-strings, thrum the song of health. While your vision is clear, walk in this paradise of truth, and while your mental appetite is good, pluck these clusters of grace.

I am fascinated with the conciseness of this Book. Every word is packed full of truth. Every sentence is double-barreled. Every paragraph is like an old banyan-tree with a hundred roots and a hundred branches. It is a great arch; pull out one stone and it all comes down. There has never been a pearl diver who could gather up one-half of the treasures in any verse. John Halsebach, of Vienna, every Sabbath, for twenty-one years, expounded to his congregation the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and yet did not get through with it. Nine-tenths of all the good literature of this age is merely the Bible diluted. Goethe, the admired of all sceptics, had the wall of his house at Weimar covered with religious maps and pictures. Milton’92s ’93Paradise Lost’94 is part of the Bible in blank verse. Tasso’92s ’93Jerusalem Delivered’94 is borrowed from the Bible. Spenser’92s writings are imitations of the parables. John Bunyan saw in a dream only what St. John had seen before in Apocalyptic vision. Macaulay crowns his most thrilling sentences with Scripture quotations. Thomas Carlyle is only a splendid distortion of Ezekiel; and wandering through the lanes and parks of this imperial domain of Bible truth, I find all the great American, English, German, Spanish, Italian poets, painters, orators and rhetoricians.

Where is there in the world of poetic description anything like Job’92s champing, neighing, pawing, lightning-footed, thunder-necked war horse? Dry-den’92s, Milton’92s, Cowper’92s tempests are very tame compared with David’92s storm that wrecks the mountains of Lebanon and shivers the wilderness of Kadesh. Why, it seems as if to the feet of these Bible writers the mountains brought all their gems, and the seas all their pearls, and the gardens all their frankincense, and the spring all its blossoms, and the harvests all their wealth, and heaven all its grandeur, and eternity all its stupendous realities; and that since then poets, and orators, and rhetoricians have been drinking from exhausted fountains, and searching for diamonds in a realm utterly rifled and ransacked.

This Book is the hive of all sweetness. It is the armory of all well-tempored weapons. It is the tower containing the crown jewels of the universe. It is the lamp that kindles all other lights. It is the home of all majesties and splendors. It is the marriage ring that unites the celestial and the terrestrial, while all the clustering white-robed denizens of the sky stand around rejoicing at the nuptials. This Book is the wreath into which are twisted all garlands; it is the song into which are struck all harmonies; it is the river into which are poured all the great tides of hallelujah; it is the firmament in which suns and moons and stars and constellations and universes and eternities wheel and blaze and triumph. Where is the young man’92s soul with any music in it that is not stirred with Jacob’92s lament, or Nahum’92s dirge, or Habakkuk’92s dithyrambic, or Paul’92s march of the resurrection?

I am also amazed at the variety of this Book. Mind you, not contradiction or collision, but variety. Just as in the song you have the basso and alto and soprano and tenor’97they are not in collision with each other, but come in to make up the harmony’97so it is in this Book; there are different parts of this great song of redemption. The prophet comes and takes one part, and the patriarch another part, and the evangelist another part, and the apostles another part, four parts, and yet they all come into the grand harmony’97’94the song of Moses and the Lamb.’94 God prepared the Book for all classes of people. For instance, little children would read the Bible, and God knew it; so He allows Matthew and Luke to write sweet stories about Christ with the doctors of the law, and Christ at the well, and Christ at the cross, so that any little child can understand them. Then God knew that the aged people would want to read the Book, so He allows Solomon to compact a world of wisdom in that Book of Proverbs. God knew that the historian would want to read it, and so He allows Moses to give the plain statement of the Pentateuch. God knew that the poet would want to read it, and so He allows Job to picture the heavens as a curtain, and Isaiah the mountains as weighed in a balance, and the waters as held in the hollow of the Omnipotent hand; and God touched David until in the latter part of the Psalms, he gathers a great choir standing in galleries above each other’97beasts and men in the first gallery; above them, hills and mountains; above them, fire and hail and tempest; above them, sun and moon and stars of light; and on the highest gallery arrays the hosts of angels; and then standing before this great choir, reaching from the depths of earth to the heights of heaven, like the leader of a great orchestra, he lifts his hands, crying: ’93Praise ye the Lord. Let everything that hath breath, praise the Lord;’94 and all earthly creatures in their song, and mountains with their waving cedars, and tempests in their thunder, and rattling hail, and stars on all their trembling harps of light, and angels on their thrones, respond in magnificent acclaim: ’93Praise ye the Lord. Let everything that hath breath, praise the Lord.’94

I remark again, the Bible is right in its doctrines. Man, a sinner; Christ, a Saviour’97the two doctrines. Man must come down’97his pride, his self-righteousness, his worldliness; Christ, the Anointed, must go up. If it had not been for the setting forth of the atonement, Moses would never have described the creation; prophets would not have predicted; apostles would not have preached. It seems to me as if Jesus in the Bible were standing on a platform in a great amphitheatre, as if the prophets were behind Him, throwing light forward on His sacred person, and as if the apostles and evangelists stood before Him, like footlights throwing up their light into His blessed countenance, and then as if all the earth and heaven were the applauding auditory.

The Bible speaks of Pisgah and Carmel and Sinai, but makes all mountains bow down to Calvary. The flocks led over the Judean hills were emblems of ’93the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world;’94 and the lion leaping out of its lair, was an emblem of ’93the lion of Judah’92s tribe.’94 I will in my next breath recite to you the most wonderful sentence ever written: ’93This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’94 No wonder that when Jesus was born in Bethlehem heaven sympathized with earth, and a wave of joy dashed clear over the battlements and dripped upon the shepherds in the words: ’93Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’94 In my next sentence every word weighs a ton: ’93God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’94 Show me any other book with such a doctrine, so high, so deep, so vast.

Again, the Bible is right in its effects. I do not care where you put the Bible, it just suits the place. You put it in the hand of a man seriously concerned about his soul. I see people often giving to the serious soul this and that book. It may be very well, but there is no book like the Bible. He reads the commandments and pleads to the indictment, ’93Guilty.’94 He takes up the Psalms of David and says: ’93They just describe my feelings.’94 He flies to good works; Paul starts him out of that by the announcement: ’93A man is not justified by works.’94 He falls back in his discouragement; the Bible starts him up with the sentences: ’93Remember Lot’92s wife,’94 ’93Grieve not the Spirit,’94 ’93Flee the wrath to come.’94 Then the man in despair begins to cry out: ’93What shall I do? where shall I go?’94 and a voice reaches him saying: ’93Come unto Me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’94

Take this Bible and place it in the hands of men in trouble? Is there anybody among you in trouble? Ah, I might better ask, are there any who have never been in trouble? Put this Bible in the hands of the troubled. You find that as some of the best berries grow on the sharpest thorns, so some of the sweetest consolations of the Gospel grow on the most stinging affliction. You thought that Death had grasped your child. Oh, no! It was only the heavenly Shepherd taking a lamb out of the cold. Christ bent over you as you held the child in your lap, and putting His arms gently around the little one, said: ’93Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’94

Put the Bible in the school. Palsied be the hand that would take the Bible from the college and the school. Educate only a man’92s head and you make him an infidel. Educate only a man’92s heart and you make him a fanatic. Educate them both together, and you have the noblest work of God. An educated mind without moral principle is a ship without a helm, a rushing rail-train without brakes or reversing rod to control the speed. Put the Bible in the family. There it lies on the table, an unlimited power. Polygamy and unscriptural divorce are prohibited. Parents are kind and faithful, children polite and obedient. Domestic sorrows lessened by being divided, joys increased by being multiplied. Oh, father, oh, mother, take down that long-neglected Bible, and read it yourselves and let your children read it!

There are so many who would have you believe that the Bible is an outlandish book, and obsolete. It is fresher and more intense than any book that yesterday came out of the great publishing houses. Make it your guide in life and your pillow in death.

After the battle of Richmond a dead soldier was found with his hand lying on the open Bible. The summer insects had eaten the flesh from the hand, but the skeleton finger lay on these words: ’93Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.’94 Yes, this Book will become in your last days, when you turn away from all other books, a solace for your soul. Perhaps it was your mother’92s Bible; perhaps the one given you on your wedding-day, its cover now worn out and its leaf faded with age; but its bright promises will flash upon the opening gates of heaven.

How precious is the Book divine,

By inspiration given;

Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine,

To guide our souls to heaven.

This lamp, through all the tedious night

Of life, shall guide our way,

Till we behold the clearer light

Of an eternal day.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage