Mending the Bible

". . . "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city . . ." Rev. 22:19

You see it is a very risky business, this changing of

the Holy Scriptures.

A pulpit in New York has recently set forth the idea

that the Scriptures ought to be expurgated (strained,

distilled, purified), that portions of them are unfit

to be read, and the inspiration of much of the Bible

has been denied. Among other striking statements are

these: 1. The book of Genesis is a tradition of

creation, a successive layer of traditions thought out

centuries before. 2. Moses' mistakes about creation

were the mistakes of his age. 3. That there are many

systems of theology in the New Testament. 4. That Paul

had all the notions of the rabbinical schools of his

time. 5. That Job winds up his epilogue in genuine

fairy-tale style. 6. That Revelation is a long array of

misshapen progeny in the apocalyptic writings, tracing

themselves back to Daniel. 7. That Revelation comes To

a madman, or leaves him mad. 8. That what he calls the

abominable lewdness of some things in the Old Testament

is not fit to be read. 9. That it is an abominable

misuse of the Bible to suppose the prophecies really

foretell future events. 10. That the book of Daniel is

not in the right place. 11. That Solomon's Songs are

not in the right place, and he seems to applaud the

idea of someone who said that the book of Solomon's

Songs ought not to be in anyone's hands under thirty

years of age. 14. He intimates that he does not

believe that Samson slew a thousand men with the

jawbone of an ass. 15. That the whole Bible has been

improperly chopped up into chapters and verses.

He does not believe the beginning of the Bible, and he

does not believe the close of it, nor anything between

as fully inspired of God, and he thinks the Book ought

to be expurgated, and there are those who re-echo the

same sentiment.

THE HYPOCRISY OF MINISTERS ATTACKING THE BIBLE!

Now, I believe in the largest liberty

of discussion, and there are halls and opera houses and

academies of music where the Bible and Christianity may

be assaulted without interruption; but when a minister

of the Gospel surrenders the faith of any denomination,

his first plain, honest duty is to get out of it. What

would you think of the clerk in a dry-goods store or a

factory or a baking-house, who should go to criticizing

the books of the firm and denouncing the behavior of

the firm, still taking the salary of that firm and the

support of that firm, and doing all his denunciation of

the books of the firm under its cover? Certainly, a

minister of the Gospel ought to be as honest with his

denomination as a dry-goods clerk is honest with his

employers.

The heinousness of finding fault with the Bible at this

time by a Christian minister is most evident. In our

day the Bible is assailed by scurrility, by

misrepresentation, by infidel scientist, by all the

vice of earth and all the venom of perdition, and at

this particular time ministers of religion fall into

line of criticism of the Word of God. Why, it makes me

think of a ship in a September equinox, the waves

dashing to the top of the smokestack, and the hatches

fastened down and many prophesying the foundering of

the steamer, and at that time some of the crew with

axes and saws go down into the hold of the ship and try

to saw off some of the planks and pry out some of the

timbers because the timber did not come from the right

forest! It does not seem commendable business for the

crew to be helping the winds and storms outside with

their axes and saws inside.

Now this old Gospel ship, (what with the roaring of

earth and Hell around the stem and stern, and mutiny on

deck,) is having a very rough voyage, but I have

noticed that not one of the timbers has started, and

the Captain says He will see it through. And I have

noticed that keelson and counter-timber knee are built

out of Lebanon cedar, and she is going to weather the

gale, but no credit to those who make mutiny on deck.

When I see ministers of religion in this particular day

finding fault with the Scriptures, it makes me think of

a fortress terrifically bombarded, and the men on the

ramparts, instead of swabbing out and loading the guns

and helping fetch up the ammunition from the magazine,

are trying with crowbars to pry out from the wall

certain blocks of stone, because they did not come form

the right quarry. Oh, men of the ramparts, better fight

back and fight down the common enemy, instead of trying

to make breaches in the wall.

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE COULD DO ANYTHING: A GOD OF MIRACLES

While I oppose this expurgation

of the Scriptures, I shall give you my reasons for such

opposition. "What!" say some of the theological

evolutionists, whose brains have been addled by too

long brooding over them by Darwin and Spencer, "you

don't now really believe all the story of the Garden of

Eden, do you?" Yes, as much as I believe all the roses

that were in my garden last summer.

"But," say they, "you don't really believe that the sun

and moon stood still?" Yes, and if I had strength

enough tom create a sun and moon, I could make them

stand still, or cause the refraction of the sun's rays

so it would appear to stand still.

"But," they say, "you don't really believe that the

whale swallowed Jonah?" Yes, and if I were stong enough

to make a whale, I could have made very easy ingress

for the refractory tenant.

"But," say they, " you don't really believe that the

water was turned into wine?" Yes, just as easily as

water now is often turned into wine with a mixture of

strychnine and logwood!

"But," say they, "you don't really believe that Samson

slew a thousand with the jawbone of an ass?" Yes, as I

think that the man who in this day assults the Bible is

wielding the same weapon!

There is nothing in the Bible that staggers me. There

are many things I do not understand, I do not pretend

to understand, never shall in this world understand.

But that would be a very poor God who could be fully

understood y the human. That would be a very small

Infinite that can be measured by the finite. You must

not expect to weigh the thunderbolts of Omnipotence in

an apothecary's balances. Starting with the idea that

God can do anything., and that He was present at the

beginning, and that He is present now, there is nothing

in the Holy Scriptures to arouse skepticism in my

heart. Here I stand, a fossil of the ages, dug up from

the tertiary formation, fallen off the shelf of an

antiquarian, a man in the latter part of the glorious

nineteenth century, believing in a whole Bible from lid

to lid.

THE BIBLE MIRACULOUSLY PRESERVED

I am opposed to the expurgation of the Scriptures

in the first place because the Bible in its present

shape has been so miraculously preserved. Fifteen

hundred years after Herodotus wrote his history, there

was only one manuscript copy of it. Twelve hundred

years after Plato wrote his book, there was only one

manuscript copy of it. God was so carful to have us

have the Bible in just the right shape, that we have

fifty manuscript copies of the New Testament a thousand

years old, and many of them fifteen hundred years old.

This Book, handed down from the time of Chirist, or

just after the time of Christ, by the hand of such men

as Origen in the second century, and Tertullian in the

third century - men of different ages who died for

their principles. The three best copies of the New

Testament in manuscript in the possession of three

great churches - the Protestant Church of England, the

Greek Church of St. Pertesburg, and the Romish Church

of Italy.

It is a plain matter of history that Tischendorf went

to a convent in the peninsula of Sinai, and was by

ropes lifted over the wall into the convent, that being

the only mode of admission and that he saw there in the

wastebasket for kindling for the fires a manuscript of

the holy Scriptures. That night he copied many of the

passages of that Bible, but it was not until fifteen

years had passed of earnest entreaty and prayer and

coaxing and purchase on his part that that copy of the

Holy Scriptures was put into the hands of the Emperor

of Russia - that one copy so marvelously protected.

Do you not know that the catalog of the books of the

Old and New Testaments, as we have it, is the same

catalog that has been coming on down through the ages?

Thirty-nine books of the Old Teatament thousands of

years ago. Thirty-nine now. Twenty-seven books of the

New Testament, sixteen hundred years ago. Twenty-seven

now. Marcion, for wickedness, was turned out of the

Church in the second century, and in his assult on the

Bible and Christianity, he incidentally gives a catalog

of the Books of the Bible - that catalog corresponds

exactly with ours - testimony given by the enemy of the

Bible and the enemy of Christianity. The catalog now,

just like the catalog then. Assulted and spit on and

torn to pieces and burned, yet adhering. The Book

today, in three hundred languages, confronting

four-fifths of the human race in their own tongue,.

Three hundred million copiies of it in existence. Does

not that look as if this Book had been divinely

protected, as if God had guarded it all through t he

centuries?

Not only have all the attempts to detract from the Book

failed, but all the attempts to add to it. Many

attempts were made to add the apocryphal books to the

Old Testament. The Council of Trent, the Synod of

Jerusalem, the bishops of Hippo all decided that the

apocryphal books must be added to the Old Testament.

"They must stay in," said those learned men, but they

stayed out. There is not an intelligent Christian man

that today will put the book of Maccabees or the book

of Judith beside the book of Isaiah or Romans. Then a

great many said, "We must have books added to the New

Testament," and there were epistles and gospels and

apocalypses written and added to the New Testament, but

they have all fallen out. You cannot add anything. You

cannot subtract anything. Divinely protected book in

the present shape. Let no man dare to lay his hands on

it with the intention of detracting from the Book or

casting out any of these holy pages.

ALL THE BEST CHRISTIANS WANT THE BIBLE SACREDLY KEPT:

INFIDELS WANT IT CHANGED

I am also opposed to this proposed expurgation of

the Scriptures for the fact that in proportion as

people become self-sacrificing and good and holy and

consecrated, they like the Book as it is. I have yet to

find a man or a woman distinguished for self-sacrifice,

for consecration to God, for holiness of life, who

wants the Bible changed. Many of us have inherited

family Bibles. Those Bibles were in use twenty, forty,

fifty, perhaps a hundred years in the generations. This

afternoon when you go home, take down those family

Bibles and find out if there are any chapters which

have been erased by lead pencil or pen, and if in any

margin you can find the words, "This chapter not fit to

read." There has been plenty of opportunity during the

last half century privately to expurgate the Bible. Do

you know any case of such expurgation? Did not your

grandfather give it to your father, and did not your

father give it to you?

Expurgate the Bible! You might as well go to the old

picture galleries in Dresden and in Venice and in Rome

and expurgate the old paintings. Perhaps you could find

a foot of Michel Angelo's "Last Judgement" that might

be improved. Perhaps you could throw more expression

into Raphael's "Madonna." Perhaps you could put more

pathos into Rubens' "Descent from the Cross." Perhaps

you could change the crests of the waves in Turner's

"Slave Ship." Perhaps you might go into the old

galleries of sculptures and change the forms and

postures of the statues of Phidias and Praxiteles. Such

an iconclast would very soon find himself in the

penitentiary. But it is worse vandalism when a man

purposes to refashion these masterpieces of inspiration

and to remodel the moral giants of this gallery of God.

Now let us divide off. Let those people who do not believe the Bible and who are critical of this and that part of it, go clear over to the other side. Let them stand behind the Devil's guns. There can be no compromise between infidelity and Christianity. Give us the out-and-out opposition of infidelity rather that the work of these hybrid theologians, these mongrel ecclesiatics, these half-and-half evoluted pulpiteers who believe the Bible and don't believe it, who accept the miracles and do not accept them, who believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures and do not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures - trimming their belief on one side to suit the skepticism of the world, trimming their belief on the other side to suit the pride of their own heart and feeling that in order to demonstrate their courage they must make the Bible a target, and shoot at God.

There is one thing that encourages me very much

and that is that the Lord made out to manage the

universe before they were born, and will probably be

able to make out to manage the universe a little while

after they are dead. While I demand that the

antagonists of the Bible and the critics of the Bible

go clear over where they belong, on the Devil's side, I

ask all the friends of this good Book to come out

openly and aboveboard in behalf of it. That Book, which

was the best inheritance you ever received from your

ancestry, and which will be the best legacy you will

leave to your children when you bid them goodby as you

cross the ferry to the Golden City.