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About The Plattsmouth daily herald. (Plattsmouth, Nebraska) 1883-19?? | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 1888)
TUj?' DAILY HERALD: PLATTSMOUTII, NEBRASKA, MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 1883. ORTHODOXY. T. DE WITT TALMACE AT CHAUTAUQUA. Tli Celebrated Brooklyn Divine Answers tbe Question, "I Ortbodozy Stale and Unreasonable?" Tbe Hi bio Divinely In spired and Dlrlnely Protected. CnAfTACQtTA, N. Y., Aug. 5. The Rev. T. Do Witt Talmago, D. D., of Brooklyn, id present for tlio twelfth timo nt,tho national meeting of religious edu cators and students held yearly in this . place. IIi3 seruion today, which waa delivered to an audience iuijtosing in numbers and intelligence, was from, the following text, in the. Look of Jeremiah vi, 10: "Ask for the old paths, where is the gopd way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls," and answered the qu4tion: "Is Orthodoxy .Stale and Unreasonable?" Following is a verbatim report of it: A great Ixjiidon fog has come down v. n some of the ministers aud some, of the churches inthoshapcof what is called "advanced thought" in biblical interpre tation. All of them, and without any xception, deny the full inspiration of iho IJiblc. (Jones's id an allegory, and there are many myths in the l'ible, and they philosophize and guess and reasoa anil cvolute until they land in a great continent of mud, from which, I fear, f.r all eternity they will not 1 able to extricate themselves. The Bible is not only divinely inspired, but it is divinely protected in its present Bliapo. You could as easily, without de tection, take from the writings of Shake f?ar "Hamlet," and institute in place thereof Alexander Smith's drama, as at any time during the last liftecn hundred juitaanian could pate made any im portant change in the IJible without im mediate detection. If there had been an element of weakness, or of deception, or of di ;ir.tegration, tho book would long ago have fallen to pieces. If there had been one loose brick or cracked casement in tins castellated trutn, surely tlio ocp; bardment of eight centuries would have fli-overcd and broken through that ini jerfection. The fact that the Bible Jtiind intact, notwithstanding all the furious assaults on all tides upon if, is proof io mo that it is a miracle, and pvery miracle is of God. 'dint,' paya Scfme one, "while we admit " the Bible is of (Jod, it has not been un derstood until our time." "My answer is, that if tho Bible bo a letter from God, our Father, toman, his child, is it not strange that that letter should have been written In eijeh a way that it should allow serT L-nty generations io jmss away aiid Ihj buried before the letter could Ixj under stood? Tliat would be ' a very bright fa liter wlu) should write a letter for the guidance and intelligence of his children, not understandable until a thousand years after they were buried and forgot ten I While as the joars roll on other beauties and excellencies will unfold from the Scriptures, tliat the Bible is suh i ffead failure tlap all the christian schWar i'or eighteen huhjied years were deceived In regard to vast reaches of Us meaning, is a uemanu upon my creuuuiy so greui that if I found myself at all disposed to yield to it J should to-morrow morning apply ft t some insane asylum as unlit to gp' alone. - ' " - " : " "yVho make up tlds precious group of advanced thinkers to whom God has piadc especial revelation in our time of that winch, he tried tornake knoiyh fhou ridi of years ago and failed to make in telligible? Are they so distinguished for un world liness, piety and scholarship that it is to be expected that they would have been chosen to fix up tho defective work of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and Christ? Is it, at all possible? I wonder on what jnonntam these modern tr&egeies were transfigured? I wonder what star lointcd down to their birthplace? Was it the North star, or the evening star, the Dipper? As they came through and descended to our world did Mars blush or Saturn lose one of its rings? When I pud 'iheao- modern wiseacres attempt ing to improve upon tho work of the Al mighty and to interlard it with their wisdom and to suggest prophetic and apostolic errata, I am filled with a dis gust insufferable. Advanced thought, which proposes to tell the Lord what he ought to have soid thousands of years ago. and would have said if he had been as Wise os his Nineteenth century critk ' All thi3 comes of living away back in the eternities instead of 1S83. I have two wonders in regard to these men. The first one is how the Lord got along with out them lx?fore they were born. The t,econa wonder is how the Lord will get jlc-ng without them after they are dead. "" i-lint," say some, "do 'you really think the Scriptures are inspired throughout?" Yes, either as history or as guidance. Gibbon and Josephus and Prescott record in their histories a great many thing3 they did not approve of. When George Bancroft puts upon his brilliant histor ical rage the account of an Indian mas sacre, does he approve of that massacre? There are scores of things in tho Bible w hich 'neither God nor inspired men sanctioned. Either as history or as guidance the entire Bible was inspired of God. '-But," fays some one, "don't yeu think tliat the copyists might have made mistakes in" trattsf erring the divine words from pne manuscript to another?'' Yes, lio doubt there were such mistakes; but they no more affect the meaning of the Scriptures than the misspelling of a word or the ungrammatical structure of a sentence in a last will and testament af fect the validity or the meaning of that wilL All the mistakes made by the copyists in the Scriptures do not amount to any mere importance than tho differ ence between your" spelling in a 'docu ment the word forty, forty cr fourty. This book is the last will and testament of God to our lost world, and it be queaths everything in the right way, although human hands may have ur.:a aged the grammar or made unjustifiable interpolation. These men who pride themselves in our day on being advanced tlunkers in Biblical interpretation will all of them 'nd in atlieism. If they live long enough, -d I 'declare her today they are doing -e in the different denominations of "rrj, and throughout the world, Crrlitianity and hindpriirg That man who stands inside a castle Is far more dangerous if ho be an enemy than five, thousand enemies outside the castle. Robert G. Ingersoll assails the castle from the outside. These men vho pretend to be advanced thinkers in all tho denomination are fighting tho truth from tho inside, and trying to 6hovo back tlio bolts and 6wing open the gates. Now I am in favor of the greatest free dom of religious thought and discussion. I would have as much liberty for hetero doxy as for orthodoxy. If I should change my theories of religion I should preach them out and out, but not in tho building where I am accustomed to preach, for tliat was erected by ieople who U-lievo in an entire Bible, and it would bo dishonest for mo to promulgate sentiments different from those for which that building was put up. When wo enter any denomination sli ministers of religion we take a solemn vow that wo will preach tho sentiments of that de nomination. If wo change our theories, as we liave a right to change them, then there is a world several thousand miles in circumference, and there are hundreds of halls and hundreds of academies of music where wc can ventilate our senti ments. I remember that in all our cities in time of political agitation there are the Republican headquarters and the Demo cratic headquarters. SupjKJse I should go into ono of these headquarters pre tending to bo in sympathy with their work, at tho same time electioneering for the opposite party. I would soon find that tho centrifugal force was greater than the centripetal 1 Now, if a man enters a denomination of Christians, tak ing a solemn oath, as ho will do, that he will promulgate the theories of that de nomination, and then the man shall pro claim some other theory, he has btvVei) his oath and he s ai out ana out perjurer. Nevertheless, 1 declare for largest liberty Jn religious discussion. I would no more have tho attempt to rear a monument to Thomas Paine interfered with than 1 would have interfered with the lifting of the splendid monument to Washington, Largest liberty for the ho.ly, largest lib1 erty for the mind, largest liberty for the soul. Now, I want to show you, as a matter of advocacy for what I believe to be the right, tho splendors of orthodoxy. Many have supposed tliat its disciples are peo ple of flat skulls,' and no reading, and be hind tho age, and the victims of gullibil ity. shall fchow you thai tho word or thodoxy stands for the greatest splen dors outside of heaven. Behold the splendors of the achievements. All the missionaries of the Gospel the world round are men who believe an uiue Bible. Cal". lh& roll of - all hQ. Vision aries who are today enduring sacrifices in the ends of the earth for tho cause of re ligion and the world's betterment, and they all believe in an entire Bible, Just as soon us a missionary begins to doubt whether there ever was a Garden ci Eden, or whether there is any such thing as future punishment, he comes right home from Beyrout or Madras, and Of into the insurance business AM "tho missionary societi6s" this' day ate Officered by orthodox men, and are support ty crtUcdM5 churchen. Orthodoxy, beginning with the Sand wich Islands, has captured vast regions of barbarism for civilization, while heteiwdoxy has to capture the iirst square inch. Blatant for many years in Tireat Britain and the United States, and strut ting about with a peacockian braggado cio it has yet to capture the first conti nent, the. first state, the 'first ' 'township, tho first ward, the first space of ground as big as you could cover with the small end of a sharp pin. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Protestant churches of America were built by people who be lieved in an entire Bible. The pulpit now may preach, eonie o.ther gospel ,'bui it is " a 'lietcrouox gun on on orthodox carriage. The foundations of ail the churches that are of very great use in this world today were laid by men who believed the Bible from lid to lid, and if I cannot take it in that way I will not take it at all; jusfc as ? I received a tetter that pretended to come from a friend, and part of it wa3 his and part somebody else's, and the other part somebody else's, and it was a sort of literary mongrelism, I would throw the garbled sheet3 into the waste basket. No church of very great nfle-iee today bvif ws bu'lt -by "those who' be lieved in an entire Bible. Neither will a church last long built on a part of the Bible. You have noticed, I suppose, that as soon as a man begins to give up the Bible he is apt to preach in some hi, and he has an audience whiie he lives; and when be dies' the Church dies. If I thought that my church in Brooklyn was built on a quarter of a Bible, or a half Bible, P7 three-quarters of a Bible, or ninety-nine ne-hundredths of a Bible, I would expect it to die when I die ; but when I know it is built on tho entire "Word of God, I know it will last 200 years after you and I sleep the last sleep. Oh, tho plendc.is of an orthodoxy which' with l6.00Q 'hands and 10000 pul pits and 10,000 Christian churches, is trying to save the world ! In Music Hall, Boston, for many years stood Theodore Parker battling ortho doxy, giving it, as some supposed at that time, its death wound, lie was the most fascinating man I ever heard ' c)r ever expect to hear,' and' I came hut from hearing him thinking, in ray boyhood, way, "WelJ, that's. h$ death of the church." On that same street, and not far from being opposite, stood Park Con gregational church, called by its ene mies "Hellfire Corner." Theodore Parker died and his church died with him; or, if it is in existence, it is so small you cannot see t with he naked eye. Park Congregational church' still' stands' on "Hellfire Corner, " thundering away tho magnificent trutlis of this glorious ortho doxy just a3 though Theodore Parker had never lived. Ail that Boston,, or Brooklyn, or New York, or the world ever got that is worth having came through the wide aqueduct of orthodoxy from tbe throne of God. Behold the splenders of character built up by orthodoxy. Who had the greatest human intellect the world ever knew? Paul. In physical stature insignificant; in mind,' head and shoulders above all the giants of the age. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Who was the greatest poet the ages ever saw, acknowledged to be so both by infidels and Cbristianst John HZtoo. tseing more nKhout eyes ttm r 1 " ' r t-t rr t-!"i f C tliodoz from scalp to heeL Who was the greatest reformer the world lias ever seen, so acknowledged by infidels ai well as by Christians? Martin Luther. Or thodox from scalp to heel. Then look at the certitudes. O man, believing in an entire Bible, where did you como from? Answer: "I descended from a jerfoct parentage in Paradise, and Jehovah breathed into my nostrils the breath of life. I am a son of God." O man, believing in a half and half Bible, be lieving in a Bible in spots, whers did you come from? Answer: "It is all uncer tain; in my ancestral lino away back thero was an orang outang and a tadpole and a olywog, and it took millions of years to get mo evoluted." O man, be lieving in a Bible in sjxjts, where aro you going to when you quit this world? Answer: "Going into a great to be, so on into the great somewhere, and then I shall pass through on to the f jeat any where, and I shall probably arrive in the iwjwhero." Tliat is where I thought you would fetch up. O, man, believing in an entire Bible, and lielieving with all your heart, where aro you going to when you leave this world? Answer: "I am going to my Father's house; I am going into tho companionship of my loved ones who havo gone before; I am going to leave all my sinj, and I am going to bo with God and liko God forever and for ever." Oh, the glorious certitudes of orthodoxy! Behold the splendors of orthodoxy in its announcement of two destinies. Palace and penitentiary. Palaeo with gates on ail sides through which all may enter and livo on celestial luxuries world without end, and all for the knacky ing and the asking. A palaeo grander than if all the. Alhambiaa and tho Ver sailles, and the- Windsor castles and the Winter gardens and tho imperial abodes of all the earth were heaved up into ono architectural glory. At the other end of the universe u penitentiary, where men who want their sins can have thev. Would it be fair that you nr.t J thoiiid have our cho'rc Chiistand the palace, and oilier men bo denied their clioico of sin and eternal degradation? Palace and penitentiary. The first of v4 use unless vou have the itj. Brooklyn and New York would be better places to live, iii with Raymond 6trcct jail and tho Tombs and Sing Sing, and all the sniiiil lox hospitals emptied f them, than heaven wptd4 b& if there wero no hell. Palace and ienitentiary. If I see a man with a full bowl of sin, and he thirsts for it, and his whole nature craves it, and he takes holdjwitli both hands and prfc- that bowl to his lips, ami ,hea pves'es'it h.trd between his iee(;h' 'aAd the draught bt-guia" i ' pcuf ' its sweetness down his throat, shall we snatch away the bowl, and jerk tho man up to the galo of heaven, and pusli him in if ho. does not want to go pud li down and sing psalms lot everr No. God has made you and mo so completely free that we need go to heaven unless we prefer it. not Not more free to soar than free to s'v,!, nearly au ha hptc'rov'ox; kno: believe all are. '("oninig out at A 1 same destiin: without record to faith or character wo :rs all coming out at the shining gate. Thero they are, all in glory together. Thomas Paino and Gecrgo Whitefield, Jeaelicl and Mary Lyon, Nero and Charles Wes', Cnarles Guiteau ni ijaiiv k. Gariieldi John Wilkes jpiooih and Abraham Lincoln all in glory together! All tho innoeer- men, women and cliildrevu who, were massacred, side bf. side with' tlieir mur derers. If we are all coming out at the same destiiiy, without regard to charac ter, then it is true. I turn away from such a debauched heaven. Against that caldron of piety and blasphemy, philan thropy and assassination, self sacuuee and beastl'rcs, I iha two. destinies of tliA Bible" fiTfcr''ad' forever and for ever upurt. Behold also tho splendors of the Chris tian orthodox death beds. Those who deny the Bible, or deny any part of it, never die well. They either go out in darkneaa py they go put in silence poi tc-ntQui' You. niay gather up all the biographies that have come forth since tho art of printing was invented, and I challenge you to show me a triumphant death of a man who rejected the Scrip tures, or rejected any part of them. Ilere I make a great wide avenu. f in ihfe, one I put the defjtb, 'pevi of "iliose whb be ,ievud iV an 'oil tire' Bible. On the other side of that avenue I put the death beds of those who rejected part of the Bible, or rejected all of the Bible. Now, ako my arm and let us p? through this dividing 9.ypnnG. Look eff upon the light side.'' Here are the death beds on tho right side of this q venue. "Victory through or Lord Jesus Christ!" "Free grace" "Glory, glory!" f'J uu sweeping through the gates washed in tho blood of the Lamb!" "The chariots are coming!" "I mount, I fly !" "Wings, wings!" "They are coming for me!" "Peace, be still!" Alfied Cookman's deahbd Richard. Oecirp jteatUued, tpontniodor Foote's deathbed. Voar father's deathbed, your mother's deathbed, your sister's deathbed, your cliild's deathbed. Ten thousand radiant, songful deathbeds of those who believed an entire Bible. Now, take my arm, and lot us go through that afenueV'and look off upon the other' side. No smile of hope. No shout of triumph. No face etiperoafu rally illumined. Those who reject any myt oi the Bible never die well. No txxkoning for angels to come. No listen ing for the celestial escort. Without any exception they go out of the world because they aro pushed out; while pa the other hand the list of hos who be lieved in an entire. Bible and gone but of tho world in triumph is a list so long it seems interminable. Oh, is not tha$ a splendid influence, this orthodoxy which makes that which must otherwise be the most dreadful hour of life the last hour positively paradisaical? Young men, old men, midJlo aged men, take sides in this contest between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. "Ask for the old paths, walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." But you fol low this crusade against any part of the j Bibh? first at all you will give up Gene- i sis, whicn is as true as Uiattnew; tnen you will give up all the historical parts of the Bible; then after a while you will give up the miracles; then you will find it convenient to give up the Ten Com mandments: and then after a whie, you will wake up in a f orm tfrfo lees, rockless. t ex t.Ttzzir'z rrocco. IV- 5I. ' ; r : . r i r . 9 be laughed at for standing by the Bible just as God has given it to you and mi raculously preserved it. Do not jump overboard from the stanch old Great Eastern of oi l fxdiioned orthodoxy until there is something ready to take you up stronger than tho fan tastic yawl which has iainted on tlio side "Advanced Thought," and which leaks at tho prow and leaks at the stern ami has a steel pen for one oar and a glib tongue for tho other oar, and now tips over this way and then tips over tliat way, until you do not know whether tlio passengers will land in the breakers of despair or on the sinking sand of infi delity and atheism. I am in full sympathy with the ad vancements of our time, but this world will never advance a single inch beyond this old Bible. God was just as capable of dictating the truth to the prophets and apostles as he is capable of dictating the truth to these modern apostles and prophets. God has not learned any thing in a thousand years. Ho knew just as much when he gave tho first dic tation as ho does now giving the last dic tation, if ho is giving any dictation at all. So I will stick to the old paths. Naturally a skeptio and preferring new things to old, 1 never 60 much as today felt tho truth of the entire Bible, especially as I see into what sjiectacular imbecility men rush when they try to chop up the Scrip tures with tho meat ax of their own preferences, now calling upon philosophy, now calling on tho church, now call ing on God, now calling on tho dovil. I pvefer the thick. wr.rr. :h tho old religion old as God the robe which has kept so many warm amid the cold pilgrimage of this life and amid f.U chills of death. The eld rolo rathe than, tho thin, uncertain gauze offered, us by theso wiseacres who be Hive- the Bible in spots. On July Q7, at yeais of age, expired. ?stbella Graham. Sho was the iKt useful woman of her day amid the poor and sick, at the head of the orphan asylums and Magdalen, asylums, and an angel of mercy h hospital and reforma tory, 3px. Mason, ono of tho mightiest meii of his day, said at her funeral that sho was mentally and spiritually the most wonderfully endowed person ho hail ever inet. She was an imjiersonation of the most orthodox orthodoxy. Her last word was peace. As a sublime, peroration to my sermon, I will give an extract from her last will and testaniot. showing how ono who believes h an entire Bible may maki; ; iv-kms exit. An extract from a will: "My children and my grandchildren 1 leave to my covenant God, the God who hath fe.1 mo all my life with the bread thai purisheth and tho bread that never pcvishelh, who has been a Father to my fatherless children and a husljand to their widowed mother thus fur. And now re ceiving my Redeemer's testimony, I set to my seal that God is true; and bolievinsr tho V1 vf fc'lm tliat God hath given to vao eternal life and this Ufo is in his Son, who, through tho eternal Spirit, overcomes without spot unto God, and, being consecrated a priest forever, hath with his own blood entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal re demption for ma. I also lelieve hc Ud vIlij pevtect what concerns me, support and tarry me safely throng'.; death, and present me to his Fal;e complete in his own rigliteCiUiis3, without snot or wrinkle. Into tho hands of th3 redeem ing' God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I commit my redeemed spirit. IsaboU Graham." Let me die the death of Ls vighteou'" and let my last end to U&e hers. "Giory be to the F.hc- and to tho S'on and to tl;o Hoiy Ghost; as it was in the begin ning, is now and ever shall lx, world without end. Amen aud amen!" MULTUM IN PARYQ, Not a single congressman smokes cigar ettes, bu,t the. majority of them incline to cigars, Sunday schools are increasing rapidly in this country. Last year the American Sunday School union organized 1,502, with 0,320 teachers and 54,129 scholars. A British vessel is now surveying a route between Australia and Canada, pveliiainary to laying a telegraih cable. The cable will be 7,500 miles lcsig, and tho work of laying it wiU take three years. Counterfeit pliyev certificates of $5, as wel aa.fl, are floating alxnit. The coun terfeits aro three-sixteenths of an inch shorter than the genuine bills. Take along your tape measure. The Western Union Telegraph com pany reports $5,000,000 gross earnings for the last quarter; net earnings, $1, 350,000; fixed charges and dividends, $1,220,000; surplus, $180,0QG, The gross earnings for the quarter ore larger than ever befotc. Thirty-three persons wero killed and C17 injured by railway accidents in Eng land last year. There were thirty-two collisions between passenger tnts in which twenty -five persona were killed and forty-two ccdliskins, "between passen ger nd freight trains, by which one poison, was killed. In I-S80 twelve per sons were killed and COG injure.! or. English railways. - The Transvaal Africa bids fair republic in South to become a British possession before many years. The Eng lish are flocking to tho gold mines in large numbers, and the Boei-s are appre hensive of being swamped. Arms and ammunition are now being distributed among them, and it U supposed that they will forcibly resisS any attempt to get Englishmen represented" in the legis lative body. The expression "dark horse," now in such general political use, first occurred in Lord Beaconsfield's "Young Duke." Here is tho paragraph: "The first favor ite was never heard of, the second favor ite was -never 6een after the distance post, all the ten-to-.ones were in the rear, and a dark horse which had never been thought of rushed past the grand stand in sweeping triumph." The fact that at the recent national congress in India all the speeches and proceedings were in EagUsli.is a striking illustration of the vtide diffusion of that tongue. Ther were gathered at Madras 700 delegates from all parts of India, Afghanistan, Nepaul and Scinde. They spoke nine different languages, and the English was the only medium through wtich the preeeedir could be satis f "f- " - - The Plattsmouth Herald Is on joying aBoimin both, ita DAXXT AD WEEELT EDITIONS. Tike Year Will be one lnriii; which the subjects of national interest sunl importance will le strongly agitated and the election of a President will take place. Hie people of" Cass County who would like to learn of Political, Commercial and Social of this year and would keep apace Avith the times should -FOU Daily or Weekly Herald Now while we have the subject before the people we will venture to epeak of our "Which is first-class in all respects and from which our job printers are turning out much satisfactory work. PLATTSMOIITir, 1888 Transactions KITHEIi TI1K- VI M F if lUU U 0 NEBRASKA.