365. Slanders Against the Bible
Slanders Against the Bible
Mat_7:16 : ’93Do men gather grapes of thorns?’94
Not in this country; not in any county. Thorns stick, thorns bruise, thorns lacerate, but all the thorns put together never yielded one cluster of Catawba or Isabella grapes. Christ, who was the Master of apt and potent illustration, is thus setting forth what you and I well know, that you cannot get that which is pleasant and healthful and good from that which is bad. If you find a sound, large, beautiful cluster of grapes, you know that it was produced by a good grape-vine, and not from a tangle of Canada thistle. Now, if I can show you that this Holy Bible yields good fruit, healthful fruit, grand fruit, splendid fruit, you will come to the conclusion it is a good Bible, and all the arguments against it will go overboard. ’93Do men gather grapes of thorns?’94 Can a bad book produce good results?
I have read many of the complaints made concerning the Scriptures, and I classify all the complaints under four heads:
The Bible is an impure book, the Bible is a cruel book, the Bible is a contradictory book, the Bible is an unscientific book.
To prove that the Bible is an impure book, its enemies read certain portions of the Bible and say, ’93Now, that is not fit for the eye or the ear of the domestic circle.’94 They take Solomon’92s song, read certain portions, make their own interpretation, and then fling down the book and say, ’93The Scriptures are a polluted collection of writings.’94 My friends, there is one principle that no one will deny, and that is that an impure book has impure results. That cause produces that result. Now, you have known a great many people who read the Bible, among your own friends’97a great many’97who have been reading it for years. How many of them have had their morals despoiled? Did it make your father an impure man? Did it make your mother a bad woman? What effect had it upon your sister who died in the faith of the Gospel and who has been now some ten or fifteen years in heaven? Were their morals tarnished? Did they become impure of speech, impure of action?
Two hundred and fifty million copies of an impure book scattered among the nations! Why, there must have been a great many victims. Show me a thousand, show me five hundred, show me a hundred, show me fifty, show me five, show me two, show me one. I am not particular about the specimen you give me, whether man, woman, child, white, black, copper-colored, American, African, European, Asiatic. Just one specimen give me’97a man who was pure before made impure by the reading of the Scriptures. I am not confining you to this day. Go through all the thousands of years that have passed, and show me a victim. On the contrary, you know that the family institution is nowhere regarded except in Bible-reading countries. You know that the only foundation of the home institution is the Word of God. What is the difference between Sodom, Constantinople, Madras, Pekin on the one hand, and our American cities on the other? No difference except Bible and no Bible. I challenge all earth and hell for one victim of the two hundred and fifty million copies of what you say is an impure book! The charge falls flat in the presence of every Honest man.
Modern infidelity goes on and says the Bible is a cruel book, and its enemies read the stories of the ancient wars, and read passages from the lives of David and Joshua, and read about the extermination of the Canaanites, and then declare the Bible is in favor of laceration and manslaughter and massacre. Well, now, among your acquaintances who have read the Bible, have you noticed that in proportion as they became acquainted with the Scriptures and fond of the Scriptures they got cruel their habits? Have you ever known any of them to come out and practically say, ’93I have been reading the Bible, and of that story about the extermination of the Canaanites, and I am seized by a disposition to stab, and cut, and beat, and knock to pieces everything I can lay my hands on?’94 What has been the effect upon your children? As they became more and more fond of the Scriptures, have they become more and more fond of tearing off the wings of flies, and pinning grasshoppers, and robbing birds’92 nests?
If the Bible is a cruel book, you see that would be the direction of the result. So far from that, you know as well as I do that all the institutions of mercy’97not of cruelty’97but all the institutions of mercy were founded by Bible readers, Bible believers. When did this book put cruelty into the heart of George Peabody, or Miss Dix, or Florence Nightingale, or John Howard, or Abbott Lawrence? Go into a hospital. There are twenty Christian women binding up the wounds, giving the cordials, kneeling by the dying pillow, and saying, ’93Lord Jesus, receive this poor man’92s spirit.’94 Where does the cruelty of the Bible crop out in their lives? Do you find it in the gentleness of their step, or in the soft cadence of their voice, or their soothing words in the dying hour?
Oh! sirs, when you can make a rose leaf stab like a bayonet, when you can manufacture icicles out of the south wind, when you can poison the tongue with honey gotten from blossoming buckwheat, then you can find cruelty gotten out of this Bible. That charge falls flat in the presence of every honest man.
But the Bible, modern infidelity says, is a mass of contradictions, and they put chapter against chapter, and prophet against prophet, and apostle against apostle, and they say, ’93Now, if this is so, how can that be so?’94 Mr. Mill, who was a friend of the Bible, and who translated many parts of it, declared that he had found thirty thousand different readings of Bible passages, and he declared also that there was not one important difference, and no difference except what might be accounted for from the fact that the Bible came down from generation to generation, and was copied by many different hands, while at the same time I declare in your hearing this morning that all the Bible writers agree in the great cardinal doctrines of the Bible: God good, holy, just, forgiving, omnipotent. Man a lost sinner. Christ an all-glorious, all-sympathetic Saviour, ready to take the whole world to his heart. Two destinies’97one for believers, the other for unbelievers. Those are about the four great doctrines of the Bible, and all these writers agree in them. Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, or Haydn never wrote or heard a better harmony. Besides that, you are to remember that the Bible was written by many different persons in many different lands, and in different ages; and that these persons had no communication with each other, and that they did not know the great design of the Bible, and yet, after all, the fragments of their work have been gathered up from all lands and all ages, and been put together, and they make a complete harmony, so pronounced by the best scholars of this age.
It is as though some great cathedral were to be built and a hundred workmen were to be employed on it, and they were in many lands, and in different centuries, and these workmen had no communication with each other in regard to the grand design of the building; and yet, all their fragments of work brought together, it is a perfect architectural triumph, although the man who built a pillar knew nothing of the man who built the dome, and the man who built the doorway knew nothing of the man who lifted the arch. Yet a complete accord, a complete architecture, and a complete triumph.
Again, it is charged that the Bible is unscientific. It says that there was light before the sun was created. How is that possible? It intimates that the sun turns around the earth when the compliment is in the other direction. It says sun and moon halted, when their halting would have thrown the machinery of the universe out of gear. It says that water was turned into wine, and declares other absurdities and impossibilities. My friends, who told you that there was an unbridgable gulf between Science and Revelation? You answer, ’93Stuart Mill, Darwin, Tyndall, Renan.’94 Yes; they saw a discord between Science and Revelation. I can give you the names of men who tell you there is perfect accord between Science and Revelation; I could give you the names of men as much higher than those whom I have just mentioned as Mount Washington and the Mont Blanc are higher than the Ridgewood waterworks’97Herschel, Keppler, Leibnitz, Ross, Isaac Newton. Did you ever hear General Mitchell or Dr. Doremus lecture on the harmony between Science and Revelation? Science is a boy. Revelation a man. The boy thinks he knows more than the man, and asks many unanswered questions.
When Science is fully developed and becomes a man, perhaps it may know as much as Revelation. I say, perhaps. Voltaire said that the dissolving of the golden calf according to the Bible story was an impossibility’97a chemical impossibility. Just while he was declaring that gold could not be held in solution, the coiners, the gilders, the meteorologists of Paris were doing that very thing, and in fifty shops in Paris, at that very hour, gold was held in solution. So if you find a seeming discrepancy between Science and Revelation, you have only to wait.
The great temple of nature has two orchestras, the orchestra of Revelation and the orchestra of Science. The orchestra of Revelation has its musical instruments all strung, and it is ready for a burst of eternal accord. Science is only stringing its instruments. You will have to wait, but after a while it will be as in some of those cathedrals in Germany where they have an organ at one end of the cathedral and an organ at the other end, and they respond to each other; and, so it will be in the great temple of the universe; the orchestra of Revelation and the orchestra of Science will respond to each other, and into one wreath will be twisted the Rose of Sharon and the laurel of scholarly achievement, and the roar of the ocean will be the magnificent bass of the temple worshipers, and the earth itself will be found to be only the pedals of a great organ of which the heavens are the keyboard.
Now modern infidelity has not made out its case against the Bible as being impure, as being cruel, as being contradictory, as being unscientific. This plaintiff, Infidelity, has not made out its case against the Bible, the defendant, and I might in the court of your reason move for a nonsuit, but I will not take advantage of the circumstances, and I will give you some reasons why we believe this book is the right book, and the book from God, and an infallible book, and an indestructible book.
Why do you believe in the Bible? You say I got it from my parents. That is no reason. Hindoo children inherit the Shaster; that does not make the Shaster a divine book. The Mohammedan children inherited the Koran from their ancestors; that does not make the Koran a divine book. The fact that you got the Bible from your parents proves nothing. Yet there are unanswerable arguments on one side. In this day you want an argument, which you can carry into your banking houses and your stores, and your shops, and your factories’97a portable one, a quick one, a decisive one. In this day when the world is filled with infidel slang and the scurrility of scepticism and caricature, you want an argument. It is not for you, immortal man, to crouch when a sceptic scoffs at our holy religion. Now, I do not address you as theologians. We are not in a theological seminary. Many of you are busy men and have no time to elaborate this subject, and if God will help me, I will help you. Now, why do I take the Bible to be the Book of God? There are the two Testaments, the Old and the New. Take the New Testament first. Why do I adopt it? Why do I take it? Why do I believe it? Why do I receive it with all my heart? You can trace it right back. Jerome and Eusebius in the first century, Origen in the second century, gave lists of the writers of the New Testament, that list just corresponding with our list of writers of the New Testament, showing precisely as we have it they had it in the third and fourth centuries.
Where did they get it? From Iren’e6us. Where did he get it? From Polycarp. Where did Polycarp get it? From St. John, who was a personal associate of Jesus. The line just as clear as anything ever was clear. My grandfather gave a book to my father, my father gave it to me, I give it to my child. No difficulty in tracing that down from generation to generation.
I have a secular book. I find these people in the pews before me. I put this secular book into the hand of a gentleman in the congregation. He passes it to the person next him and that one to the next, and next and next until it comes to the end of the line. Is there any difficulty in tracing that secular book back to myself? Oh, no. This one will say he got it from such a one, that one from such a one, and this one will say he got it from me. Now this is the way we got the New Testament Gospel. It started from the heart of Jesus Christ, it went to St. John, from St. John to Polycarp, from Polycarp to Iren’e6us, from Iren’e6us to Origen, from Origen to Jerome, from Jerome to Eusebius, and he handed it down the ages. Just as a communion chalice is passed along from one to another, the chalice filled with the wine of the sacrament; just so this New Testament was handed down from one to another, and we drink of the new wine of the kingdom.
But say some, ’93Suppose they did write it; they may have been lying impostors.’94 Ah! I have to tell you no man ever died for a lie cheerfully and triumphantly. These men died for the truth. Did Matthew suffer anything for the truth? There was a shaft made and sharp edges of steel put upon it and he was punctured to death? Did Mark suffer anything for the truth? Horses were fastened to him and he was dragged through the streets until the flesh was drawn from the bones and he expired. Did Luke suffer anything for the truth? Hanged upon an olive tree for Christ’92s sake. Did Peter suffer anything for the truth? He was crucified, choosing to be crucified with his head downward. He said he was not worthy to be crucified in an upright position, like his Lord and Master. Did Paul suffer anything for the truth? Look into the Mamertine dungeon, a dungeon made under a dungeon, the only light and the only food coming through a hole in the dungeon above. He, an aged man, wanting warmth and light and food. Ask if he suffered any. See his head rolling over into the dust at the stroke of the executioner, and answer me if Paul suffered anything for the truth. Men do not die for a lie; they die for the truth. I trace this New Testament right down from Christ’92s time, from hand to hand, and from generation to generation, and I find it was written by men who died for their principles. It is not only true that it was written by these men, but it is true, also, that they were good men, earnest men, determined men.
’93Well,’94 you say, ’93you have got through with a small part of the Bible; how about the Old Testament? I accept the Old Testament because the prophecies described things hundreds and thousands of years ahead’97minutely and accurately described them. Who can foresee? God only. How far can you foresee? a thousand years? No. Not a hundred years, not five years, not an hour. William H. Seward, one of the most eminent men of his time, made a prophecy. He said, ’93The South will be conquered in thirty days.’94 The war went along four dreadful years. He said, ’93It will be a job that will be accomplished before breakfast.’94 Instead of that it was after midnight’97four years’92 midnight. You see human prophecies amount to nothing. The great Frenchman declared that the Napoleonic glories would go down from generation to generation. Where are those glories? All vanished.
But here are prophecies of things that occurred hundreds and thousands of years afterward. I want you to remember that Tyre and Nineveh and Babylon and Jerusalem were in full pomp and glory when these prophecies declared that they were going to be overthrown. Architecture in some of those cities that make your houses on Madison Square and Fifth avenue utterly insignificant. And yet these prophecies were made at that time in regard to the destruction of those cities. Suppose now a man should appear in the streets and say, ’93The East River will overflow and destroy Brooklyn, the Hudson River will overflow and destroy New York, and then there will be an earthquake, and the two rivers will dry up, and there will be harvests of corn raised there, and where Fulton street and Broadway are there will be pasture fields.’94
Why, the man would be pronounced insane. Yet the ancient prophets stood amid those glories of ancient times, and said they were all going to perish, and the city of Babylon was to become desolate. All proved true. Explore the place now. You cannot find a particle of vegetation there, and the ground blisters the feet of the explorer. The Bible said that in the ruins there would be wild beasts. True today. If you traveled and wanted to see the ruins of the city of Babylon, you would have to go fully armed, or have an armed escort, for lions prowl amid the ruins and come out of the lair where once were the reserved seats of the theatre. All proved true. Thousands of years ago foretold.
Tyre, they said, should be destroyed in the midst of its pomp and power. With a wall three hundred and fifty feet high and provisions for twenty years. The prophet says, ’93This is all going to come down, and the fishermen will dry their nets where this city stands.’94 True today. If you should go to its ruins, you would find fishermen drying their nets on the rocks. Turks, Tartars, and Saracens, who know nothing of the Bible, age after age fulfilling the prophecy. Go through Park Row, New York, and see the fulfillment of prophecies thousands of years ago. Why is it that a Jew in New York, or Brooklyn, or St. Petersburg, or Stockholm, or Vienna, or Paris, or Canton, is always distinguishable? An American goes to Europe, stays there a great while, and he loses his nationality. An Englishman comes to America and stays here a long while, and after two or three generations you do not descry the features of the Englishman. The Norwegian loses his nationality in any other country, the Swiss loses his, the Frenchman loses his, the Italian loses his. The Jew never. Why? Because this Book thousands of years ago said the Jews should be scattered all the world over and separated.
The Bible foretold a great Messiah should come. It described him, it told from what tribe he would come, from what family, at what time, and in what place. Ages passed on and the Messiah came, corresponding exactly with the description hundreds of years before, born in the very tribe that was foretold, in the very family, at the very time, in the very place. Now, I say that any honest-minded man will confess that all this prophecy must have been from God, divinely dictated, so that the prophecies you are ready to receive are the Word of God.
But you say there are many things that are not in the prophecies. Suppose you found a letter of yours in an envelope with ten or fifteen lying and indecent letters, how long would you allow your honest letter to stay in that envelope? You would snatch away your letter, or you would destroy the entire envelope. And do you suppose God would allow his prophecies to be fastened up with the writings of Job and Deuteronomy and the Book of Psalms and other parts of the Bible not belonging to the prophecies if they were bad things, if they were lying impositions? The fact that God allows all the other parts of the Old Testament to go side by side with the prophecies proves a great deal to every fair-minded man. God would not allow his fair daughter of prophecy to be affianced to this brigand of falsehood.
Now you accept the Old Testament and you accept the New Testament. What will you do with them? Will you surrender them? I want you to bear in mind that the most of this Bible was written by illiterate men, uneducated men. Where did they get their power? Why, when Thomas Babbington Macauley stood up in the British Parliament and wanted to finish a great sentence, or when he sat in his study writing on the ’93History of England,’94 and wanted to finish a great sentence’97why was it he quoted from the fishermen of Galilee? Why is it that those fishermen have more power than all the scholars of antiquity? They were divinely inspired. Besides that, you are to remember that this Bible has been under fire age after age, and yet it has not been damaged, nor has it lost one chapter, nor one verse. After all the bombardment of centuries they have not knocked a piece out of it as big as the small end of a sharp needle.
Oh! how the Book sticks together. Unsanctified geologists laid hold of the Book of Genesis. They were going to pull that out. But the Book of Genesis is there still. Unsanctified astronomers laid hold of the Book of Joshua because it seemed to interfere with some of their theories’97the moon over Ajalon standing still. Unsanctified anatomists and physiologists tried to pull the Book of Jonah away, and to harpoon that whale, but the Book of Jonah stands today, the very best illustration of the fact that when God tells a man to go to Nineveh he cannot get to Tarshish; that he will be upset, if necessary. God will send a cyclone upon the Mediterranean. Men have tried to pull away the miracles of Christ. How many have they pulled out?
They have taken absolutely nothing! Here is a perfect Bible. It seems that instead of destroying the Bible the chapters have been driven in and clenched on the other side by the hammers of eternity. The fact is, that the Book, so far from being destroyed, is going on until the fires of the last day, and when the fires of the last day are kindled, they will not find the Bible a bundle of loose letters, but a compact Book; and when the fires begin to burn on one side, they will burn from Genesis toward Revelation; then the other fires will burn from Revelation toward Genesis, and they will in all their course not find one chapter or one verse out of place. That will be the only time the world can afford to do without the Bible. What use, then, of Genesis, with its description of the making of the world, which is all destroyed? What use, then, of the prophecies? All are fulfilled. What use, then, of the evangelistic and Pauline description of Jesus Christ when we see him face to face? What use of the Book of Revelation, when we stand with our foot on the glassy sea, and our hand on the ringing harp, our forehead chapleted with eternal coronation amid the amethystine and twelve-gated glory of heaven, the emerald dashing its green against the beryl, the beryl dashing its blue against the sapphire, the sapphire throwing its light on the jacinth, the jacinth dashing its fire against the chrysoprasus, and we standing amid the chorus of ten thousand sunsets?
That will be the first time we will be able to do without the Bible, and yet I think they will have the old Book in heaven. I do not think the last copy will be destroyed. It is good enough to be there. The Lamb’92s Book of Life on the top of it, the Book of Judgment under it. Oh! yes. We cannot spare it then, after all. I want to hear some of these passages read in heaven after we have gathered up our dead children’97I want to hear these passages read, and want to point them out, the passages that comforted us on the day of interment. When we meet our friends in heaven we will want to talk over the trials of this life, and say, ’93Those were the promises that cheered us.’94 I want to hear David with his own voice read, ’93The Lord is my Shepherd.’94 I want in heaven to hear Paul read, ’93Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’94 I want to hear the archangel play Paul’92s Grand March of the Resurrection with the same trumpet with which he woke the dead. Oh, blessed Book! Good enough for earth, good enough for heaven. When I have no griefs to be solaced, when I have no sins to be pardoned, when I have no hope of heaven to be enkindled’97that will be the day, and that the hour, and that the minute, I will give up the Bible. Book of life, Book of comfort, Book of God, Book bespattered with the blood of the martyrs who died in its defense. Book sprinkled with the tears of a Christian ministry who were comforted by its promises. Dear old Book! Put it in the possession of every one of your children on their birthday. Have it on the centre-table of the parlor. Buy an extra copy for your own special use, for a time will come after a while when it will be a pleasant thing if they would gather up all the children’92s Bibles, and all the family Bibles, and all the pocket Bibles of the household, and put them under your head for a dying pillow. That would be a pillow fit for a king to die upon.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage