190. The Folly of Infidelity

The Folly of Infidelity

Psa_53:1 : ’93The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’94

No one but a fool would say so, and he would not say it with his head, for it does not require any especial brain to see a design in all things, and hence a designer. But the heart, the wicked heart, the proud heart, is hurt at such a pure and overtowering existence. ’93The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.’94

Were there any prospect of success, and an army were organized to dethrone God, or drive him off of the edges of existence, the first division of the army would be made up of infidels. When the world slew Jesus Christ, it showed what it would do with the eternal God, if it could get its hands on him.

Prove a benevolent God and you prove a Bible. You cannot think of a good God not giving a revelation to his children. Atheism and infidelity are twin brothers. The war against the Bible and against God is no new thing. The infidels of our time are only dealing in the second-hand furniture of Paine, and Volney, and Hobbes, and Voltaire, save when they quote from themselves, and the most of their lectures are about one thing. It does not make any difference whether they call it the ’93Mistakes of Moses,’94 or ’93Skulls,’94 or the ’93Liberty of Man,’94 woman and child, or no name at all, it is the same lecture. There never were men who carried on so large a business on such a small capital, and that borrowed capital. They pick up one bone from Adam’92s skeleton and run with that bone through all their lectures, and it happens to be a rib, and the rib that was said to be the nucleus for the womanly creation; and they sharpen that rib, and flourish it, and gnaw on it, and gnaw on it, and hold on to it, as my grayhound for six months used to spend all his spare time in gnawing on a bleached and juiceless bone when he had plenty of good food offered him. Coming suddenly on him in the morning, I would find him gnawing that bone, though the day before I had thrown it over the fence, and he would keep on gnawing it; and look up to me as much as to say: ’93Sir, you don’92t know how much I am dependent for happiness upon this bone; I am an infidel.’94 People coming late to these lectures inquire of the janitor whether the lecturer has got to Adam’92s rib yet.

Garfield’92s assassin tried to laugh his case out of court, and the infidels try to laugh God and the Bible out of existence, and the one will be as successful as the other. This obliteration, or this attempt at obliteration, of God and the Bible is not fratricide, which is the murder of a brother, but worse than that. It is not an attempt at parricide, which is the murder of a father, but worse than that. It is not an attempt at matricide, which is the murder of a mother, but worse than that. It is not an attempt at regicide, which is the murder of a king, but worse than that. It is an attempt at decide, or the assassination of a God. The infidel hurls the chief force of his caricature and vulgarity at the first book of the Bible. He feels that if he can capture that gate he can iconoclast the whole temple.

I showed you in other discourses that, sometimes through wilfulness, and sometimes through astronomical, geological, geographical and chemical ignorance, the infidel grossly misrepresented three occurrences in the Bible, and then I said if he would misrepresent three, he would misrepresent three thousand, on the principle acknowledged in every courtroom, ’93False in part, false in all.’94 The atheist charges that when Moses spoke of God as creating the firmament, he showed his ignorance, for he thereby implied that the heaven, that the sky, was a solid affair, and he knew nothing about evaporation. Wise infidel! Ignorant Moses! But Noah Webster, and indeed all the lexicographers, agree in saying that the word firmament used in the Bible, instead of meaning a solidity, means an expanse’97instead of representing a metallic roof, it means stretching out and an extension.

The infidel goes on laughing at the statement, and says that the stars are represented by Moses as being fastened to this solid roof, and that he shows he knew nothing about astronomy because all reference made to other worlds is in five words: ’93He made the stars also.’94 And he says, therefore, it is evident that Moses was very ignorant and thought the other worlds were very small or a mere nothing, while this world was very great, when they are so much larger than this. ’93He made the stars also.’94 My friends, Moses did not write Genesis because he wanted to teach us astronomy any more than he wanted to teach us botany, or chemistry, or anatomy, or physiology, or any other modern science. His only idea was to give us the origin and the outfit of the world. Had the book gone into all these particulars, all the other sciences, fifty thousand volumes would not have contained the record, and sacred literature would have been cumbrous and unmanageable.

But we see again and again indicated in this book that these Bible writers, instead of being ignoramuses, as infidelity represents them, really knew a great deal more than many people who in this time deride them. Ages, thousands of years, passed along before the world found out the law of condensation and evaporation; but Job knew it. He described the process when he said: ’93He maketh small the drops of water; they pour out according to the vapor thereof.’94 In other words, it took the world thousands of years to find out what Job knew thousands of years before. For thousands of years people thought that the light of the sun came straight to our earth, and the law of refraction or the bending of the rays to the earth, is comparatively a modern discovery; but Job knew it. He says of the sunlight: ’93It is turned as clay to the seal.’94 The world struggling thousands of years to find out what Job knew at the start. ’93It is turned as clay to the seal.’94

The astronomers thought that they made a great discovery when they found out that the world, instead of being stationary, was in motion; but Isaiah knew it’97thousands of years before, had spoken of the orbit of the earth, the circle of the earth, indicating that it had a path through the heavens. For thousands of years it was thought that the earth was built on some solid foundation. Isaiah knew better. ’93He hangeth the earth upon nothing.’94 Long before Morey discovered the revolution of the wind currents, and the law of the trade winds, the Bible describes it: ’93The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returned again according to his circuits.’94 So that while we called General Myer ’93Old Probabilities,’94 Job was the first ’93Old Probabilities.’94 He described the currents of the air which after struggling and struggling and struggling for thousands of years, were found out by philosophers.

Ages passed along before the world knew anything about physiology; but Solomon speaks of the spinal cord as the silver cord, and thousands of years before Harvey found out the circulation of the blood, Solomon described it under a figure as the pitcher at the fountain, the pitcher carrying the crimson liquid up through the temple of the body. James Watt thought he was making a wonderful invention when he applied steam to the rail-carriage; but thousands of years before the prophet Nahum had described the lightning express train at night, and the jamming of the car coupling: ’93The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broad ways; they shall seem like torches; they shall run like the lightnings.’94 Professor Morse thought he was making a wonderful invention when he found out the magnetic telegraph; but Job describes electrical communication thousands of years before, when he says: ’93Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?’94

The great work of the great lawyers, the Black-stones, the Clarendons, the Hales, the Mansfields, the Currans, the Burkes, the Emmets, the Rufus Choates, the Daniel Websters’97all their works, all the English law, all American law, all Roman law, all the laws of all the nations that are worth anything founded on the ten sentences that a venerable lawyer of olden time recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. So these Bible authors, instead of being ignorant and behind the time, some of them were two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years before the time.

By the Leyden jar, and the voltaic pile, and the magnetic battery, and the microscope, and the telescope, and all philosophic apparatus toiling on and on and on until at last, at last, at last, Silliman, and Agassiz, and Joseph Henry, and Dr. Draper have actually caught up to antiquated Job and old Moses! Yet infidelity says they were ignorant. Moses knew nothing about astronomy and thought the sky was just a solid roof and that the stars were mere adornments hung up against it because he says, ’93He made the stars also.’94

I must, at the risk of spoiling the infidel’92s favorite joke and raising a snarl, snatch from him his favorite bone, while I tell you that there was no absurdity in woman’92s creation. The word translated ’93rib’94 is a general word meaning side. Stupendous ignorance on the part of an infidel critic who does not know that the word here translated ’93rib’94 simply means side. That man without knowing a word or a letter of Hebrew proposes to expound Genesis. As well might a man expound Sophocles not knowing a word of Greek, or Horace not knowing a word of Latin, or Richter not knowing a word of German, or William Shakespeare not knowing a word of English. From his side! How any man who has a good wife can find derision in the nearness and the solemnity of the relation there suggested, I cannot understand.

I will not quote Matthew Henry’92s overquoted theory about woman’92s being taken from the left side and near the door of the heart. I think she was taken from the right side and under the right arm, suggestive that he was to fight her battles for her and be her unfailing defense, and strike down her assailants, and avenge her honor. That is what fills a man with indignation unbounded, and makes him livid with rage when you say anything against his wife. You may abuse him, you may cheat him, you may defraud him, you may assault him, and he will forgive you; but you say anything against his wife’97if you propose to do it, you had better stand out of the reach of the right arm. From his side! From his side! that they might walk the path of life together. From his side, that when she steps in the deep wave of trouble he may hold her up. From his side, that when they stand by the little grave he may say to her, ’93Don’92t cry, we’92ll get our darling back again in the resurrection.’94 From his side’97his equal, his joy, his pride, his exultation, his care, his angelic ministry. To him the best being in all the earth. From his side! O! the tenderness, and the pathos, and the beauty, and the sublimity of the Mosaic account. You find no mirth in it. You who read the account of that recent marriage at Bennington’97how the two on the following day stood in the wreck of the Hudson River rail-train, and perished together, their two bodies taken up the aisle of the church, those who had been ushers at the wedding pall-bearers at the grave, letting the twain down in the same sepulchre. The conductor said she might have been rescued. His limbs were pinioned fast, but only her dress was fast. She might have been saved, but she would not come away from his side. From his side! Not so much mirth for you in that Mosaic account.

If you remember the two old people at the opposite ends of the table in the old homestead’97why did you put them in the village graveyard side by side? When your work is done, you will go up and find them side by side. Moses wrote a passage thrilling with centuries of magnificent power and rolling in eternal reverberation of grandeur, when he said, ’93From his side.’94 Not so much mirth in it for you’97not so much mirth in this Mosaic account for you who stood by the casket of the dead wife, and lifted the thin and wasted finger that was plump and round many years ago when you put the ring on, and as you stand there every unkind word you ever uttered in her hearing comes back with a sting in it, and you fold the hands that have done so many kind-nesses for you over the still heart, and all the memories of the past rush upon you in an agonizing farewell. It is not so funny to you. From his side! From his side! From his side!

The infidel critic goes on to say that the Bible lies because when the Jews went into Egypt there were seventy of them; they stayed there two hundred and fifteen years, and there were three millions; and he says according to that calculation there must have been sixty-eight children in each of the households. It seems a very funny thing to him. The fact is, instead of being there in Egypt two hundred and fifteen years, according to this erroneous statement, the Bible plainly declares they were there four hundred and thirty years, and the population of three millions was just the ordinary increase in all lands and in all ages. For the purpose of making an audience laugh, an infidel lecturer will cut off two hundred and fifteen years, in order that he may make that story about the enormous and improbable and impossible increase. In order that he may appear smart, he cuts off from the Jewish nation as much history as occurred, twice as much as occurred, between the Declaration of American Independence in 1776 and 1882. He says it is two hundred and fifteen years according to the Bible, when the Bible twice declares it was four hundred and thirty. Now I say that a man who will do that will do anything but be honest about the Word of God.

The infidel critic goes on to say that the Bible favors polygamy. He says to his audience: ’93Is there any man here who believes in polygamy? No. Then you are better than your God; for four thousand years ago He believed in it, and taught it, and upheld it.’94 Does the God of the Bible uphold polygamy, or did he? How many wives did God make for Adam? He made one wife. Does not your common sense tell you when God started the marriage institution, he started it as he wanted it to continue? If God had favored polygamy he could have created just as easily as he made one. At the very first of the Bible God shows himself in favor of monogamy and antagonistic to polygamy. Gen_2:24’97’94Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.’94 Not his wives, but his wife.

How many wives did God spare for Noah in the ark? Two and two the birds; two and two the cattle; two and two the lions; two and two the human race. If the God of the Bible had favored a multiplicity of wives he would have spared a plurality of wives. When God first launched the human race, he gave Adam one wife. At the second launching of the human race he spares for Noah one wife, for Ham one wife, for Sham one wife, for Japheth one wife. Does that look as though God favored polygamy?

God permitted polygamy. Yes; just as he permits today murder and theft and arson and all kinds of crime. He permits these things as you well know, but he does not sanction them. Who would dare say he sanctioned them? Because Presidents Hayes and Garfield permitted, and President Arthur permitted, polygamy in Utah, you are not, therefore, to conclude that they indorsed it, that they approved it, when on the contrary they denounced it. All the Jews knew that the God of the Bible was against polygamy, for in the four hundred and thirty years of their stay in Egypt there is only one case of polygamy recorded’97only one. All the mighty men of the Bible stood aloof from polygamy except those who, falling into the crime, were chastised within an inch of their lives. Adam, Aaron, Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Samuel, monogamists.

But you say: ’93Didn’92t David and Solomon favor polygamy?’94 Yes; and did they not get well punished for it? Read the lives of those two men and you will come to the conclusion that all the attributes of God’92s nature were against their behavior. David suffered for his crimes in the caverns of Adullam and Masada, in the wilderness of Maon, in the bereavements of Ziklag. The Bedouins after him, sickness after him, Absalom after him, Ahithophel after him, Adonijah after him, the Edomites after him, the Syrians after him, the Moabites after him, death after him, the Lord God Almighty after him. The poorest peasant in all the empire married to the plainest Jewess was happier than the king in his liaison with Bathsheba.

How did Solomon get along with polygamy? Read his warnings in Proverbs, read his self-disgust in Ecclesiastes. He throws up his hands in loathing and cries out: ’93Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’94 His seven hundred wives nearly pestered the life out of him. Solomon got well paid for his crimes’97well paid. I repeat that all the mighty men of the Scriptures were aloof from polygamy save as they were pounded and flailed, and cut to pieces for their insult to holy marriage. Yet you will hear men in the face of an audience declare the Bible approves of polygamy! If it does, why is it that in all the lands where the Bible predominates, polygamy is forbidden and in the lands where there is no Bible it is favored. Polygamy all over China, all over India, all over Africa, all over Persia, all over heathendom save as the missionaries have done their work; while polygamy does not exist in England and the United States, except in defiance of law, as in Utah, from which the President of the United States and the Congress are about to eject it. The Bible abroad, God-honored monogamy. The Bible not abroad, God-abhorred polygamy. And yet, infidelity says the Bible approves of polygamy. I take the ulcerous and accursed slander and hurl it back into its blasphemous teeth. God is against polygamy, the Bible is against polygamy, all Christendom is against polygamy. How much the atheistic opinion of the marriage institution is worth I leave you to judge when I tell you that in their publications an English authoress of blackened reputation is compared with Queen Victoria, to the depreciation of the latter. In other words, rather than Queen Victoria, the purest specimen of Christian womanhood on any throne in all the earth, infidelity prefers an authoress whose life was an offense to the marriage institution, and her example an insult to every pure woman in Christendom. As for myself, I have less admiration for the literary adulteress than I have for her who at nineteen years of age, informed that the crown of England was hers, knelt and asked the archbishop to pray for the blessing of God on her reign, and who rearing her princes and princesses in the faith of the Christian life, finds in her widowhood a consolation in that Gospel which comforted Prince Albert in his dying moments when with trembling lip in Windsor Castle she sang to him, ’93Rock of ages, cleft for me.’94 And who, whether in plain dress going out from the castle at Balmoral, or Osborne, to read the Scripture to the poor in the lane, or carrying some delicacy to tempt the invalid’92s appetite, or going down to Chiselhurst holds by the hand the banished empress standing by the casket of her dead boy, ’93the only son of his mother and she a widow,’94 or cables to the capital of our nation her anxiety about our wounded chief, and then sits down and writes with her own hand such comfort as only a widowed soul can give a widowed soul’97always and everywhere the same good, kind, sympathetic Christian woman for whom we Americans and Englishmen and Scotchmen, whether in earnest prayer or exhilarant huzza, are ready at all times to exclaim, ’93God save the Queen!’94 No; you shall not drag the Bible into the advocacy of polygamy, while on the fly leaf of a house publishing atheistic literature, on the fly leaf of that literature there are the advertisements of books and cards as obscene as any ever imported from Paris, the titles of which books I dare not recite in decent assemblage.

Before I get through with this course of Sabbath morning discourses on infidelity, I will show you that the Bible is the friend of all that is pure, and that Infidelity is the friend of all that is impure. This much-abused book is the only fit foundation for the household. The only wine that is fit to drink at the wedding is the wine which Christ makes. It may be an old-fashioned gift, but when your daughter takes the hand of another and goes forth to her new home, better than the ring of betrothal on her hand, better than the orange blossoms in her hair, better than the wedding march to which they keep step as they start on the journey of life, will be a well-bound copy of the Holy Scriptures, her name on the fly leaf with the inscription: ’93From father and mother on the marriage day.’94 I say, let it be well bound, for how many years of joy and sorrow and vicissitude it will have to serve! Let it be well bound.

Sir, you and I may give our fifty cents or our dollar to hear an infidel’92s lecture in which the Bible is caricatured and the Lord Jesus Christ insulted; but I tell you plainly the time will come when we would give the whole earth, if we owned it, for the cheer of its promises, and the whole universe, if we could, for the smile of his love. How black and terrible is departure from this life without this Gospel. One who had served the world and jeered at Christianity, and pronounced the Bible a cheat and a humbug, in the last hour, said: ’93It is so dark, it is so dark, it is so dark.’94 Then in the exhaustion, he lay quiet for a little while, and as his soul was going out of life, resumed the cry, but with fainter utterance, ’93It is so dark, it is so dark, it is so dark, it is so dark!’94 On the day when the coffin goes out of the front door, and down the front steps, it leaves a house very lonesome if there be no Bible on the stand and no Christ to stand at the desolated hearthstone.

I have noticed that on the dying bed there are apt to be four or five pillows in order to give easy position to the departing loved one’97rumpled and disheveled pillows. Sometimes it is one pillow under the head, and at other times another pillow. My brother, when you and I leave this world we want our choice of pillows. Let it not be a pillow of regrets, for that is stuffed with nettles. Let it not be a pillow of gloomy anticipations, for that is stuffed with nightshade. Rather let it be the soft, soothing, comforting pillow filled with what David, the Psalmist, in powerful metaphor has been pleased to call, ’93The feathers of the Almighty.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage