REY. BR. TALMAGR The Eminent New York Divine's Sun -day Sermon. Subject: "Expurgation of the Scriptures Text: "Let Gad be true, but every man a liar." Romans iii., -L The Bible need reconstruction according to some inside and outside the pulpit. It is no surprise that the world bombards the Scriptures, but it is amazins? to find Chris tian ministers picking -at this in the Bible anddenyinjr that until many pood people in the foS about what parts of tho v Bible, thev ought to believe and what parts . reject- The heinousness of finding fault with the Bible at this time is most evident, in our day the Bible is assailed by scurrility by misrepresentation, by infidel scientists, by, all the vice of earth and all the venom of perdition, and at this particular time even preachers ot the Gospel fall into line of cxiticism of the word of God. Whv, it makes me think of a ship in a September equinox, the waves dashintr to the top of the smoked v stack, and the hatches fastened down, and many prophesying the foundering of the steamer, and at that time some of the crew 2w i?xes tod MW3 ff0 down nt0 tne bold of . the ship, and they try to saw off some of the planks and pry out some of the timbers be cause; the timber did not come from the right It does not seem to be a commendable bus iness 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 stem and mutiny on dock, is hav ing a very rough voyage, but I have noticed that not one of the timbers b&s started, an t the -captain says he will see it through. And I have noticed that keelson and counter tim ber knee are built out of Lebanon cedar, and " i f5 to weather the gale, but no credit to those who make mutiny on deck. 3?ea, I Jee Pressor Christians in this particular day finding fault with the Scrip tures it makes me think of a fortress ter rifically bombarded, and the men on the ram parts, instea 1 of swabbing out and loading .the guns and helping fetch up tbe ammuni tion from the magazine, are trving with crowbars to pry out irom the wall certain ?jckf,of stone, because they did not come lT th riSbt quarry. Oh, men on the ram parts, better, fUht haclr, and fight down the common enpmv tnetoo.i : ... , breaches in tbe wall! qiti ?PC?,0 Ws ePurgation of the Scriptures, I shall give you my reasons for such opposition. "What!-say some .of the eoiogicAl evolutionists whose brains have been addled by too Ion? brooding over them ty Darwin and Spenser, "you don't now really believe all the story of the garden of fyere roses in ray garden last summer. w Say thfy 'iyon doa,t realJy believe f f 8:111 and moon st00d stiU?'" Yes. and II I had strength enough to create a sun and moon l could makA th the refraction of the sun's rays so it would appear.to stand still. "But," they say, "you don't really bebeve that the whale' swal lowed Jonah?" Yes. Ami it T L JL7 enough to make a whale I could have madi very easy ingress for the refractory prophet , leaving to evolution to eject him if he were an unworthy tenant! "But,"say they, "you E IS? b2levf that the water wW turned .Is often turned into wine with an admixture of strychnine and logwood! "But " sav de'li rlly, helie that SaS2 eiew looo with the jaw bone of an ass?" Ym and I think that the man who inthis d?v assaults the Bible is wieldin-3 the sami There is nothing in the Bible that staggers ' ?!TThre are mn? tUn I do not under- shSl iJ dhipr,e,tendi deretanJ, never shall in this world understand. But that" womq te a very poor God who could be fully understood by the human. That would he I Sff Infinite that can be measured by nnite.. iou must nnt a . , . , y thunderbolts of Omninot n 5 JBQQes-L Starting with the idea tiE iTt j . ' ana mat Hq as pres- nL Uhe Jng, 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 agedug up rom the tertiary formation, fallen off the shelf of a antiquarian, a man in the latter part of the Slonqus nineteenth century believing ina whole Bible from lid to lid "e"ng in a I am opposed to the expurgation of the Scriptures in the first place? because the Bible in its present shape has bWsoraS after Herodotus wrotft IiJq Mct,- rn " J' ro was a ' "iauutpi copy 01 it. "" ) ears aaer i'lato mere was wrote Twelve his book God was st) carefufto haTes 1SW WeB ble in just the right shape that we . have flftJ manuscript copies of the New Testament thousand yers old, and some of them 1500 the time of Christ, or just after the time of Christ, by the hand of cuch men l Origen in the second ctntury and Tertullian in th? third century, and by men of different) agS rir f 0 e.w 1 lament in manu script in the possession of the th,!. the Greek church nf s:t pk TT?irr.u' Bomv church of Italy. It a plain matter of history that Tischen dorf went to a convent in the peninsula of Sinai and was by ropes lifted over the wall Into the &on, and that he saw there in the waste- basket for kindling for the fire3 a manuscript of the Holy Scriptures. That night he cop ied many of the passages of that Bible, but it was not until fifteen years had passed of earnest entreaty and prayer and coaxing and Eurchase on his part that that copyof the oiy Scriptures was put into the hand of the .'Emperor of Russia that one copy so marvelously protected. v . Do ybu not know that the catalogue of the books of the Old and New Testaments as we have it i3 the same catalogue that has been coming down through the ages? Thirty nine books of the Old Testament thousands of years ago. Thirty-nine now. Twenty seven bocks of the New Testament 1600. yeara ftgov Twenty-seven books of the Nw Testa ment now. Marcion, for wickedness, was turned: out of the church in the second cen tury, and in his assault on the Bible and Christianity . he incidentally gives a cata logue of the books of the Bible that cata logue corresponding exactly with ours tes timony given by the enjmy of the Bible and the enemy; of Christianity. The catalogue now just like the catalogue then. Assaulted and spit on and torn to pieces and burned, yet adhering. Tbe book to-day, in 300 lan guages; confronting four-fifth3 of the human race inl their own tongue. Four hundred million copies of it in existence. Does not that look as if this book had been divinely protected. 1 as if God had guarded it all through the centuries? Is it not an argument plain enough to every honest man and every honest woman that a book divinely protected and in this 6hape is in the very shape that God wants it. It pleases God and ought to please us. The epidemics which have swept thousands " of other books into the sepulcher of f 5rget fulness have only brightened tbe fame of this.- There is not one.book out of 1000 that lives five years. Any publisher will tell you that. There will not be more than one book out of 20.000 that will live a oentury. Yet here is a book, much of it 1600 years old and much of it 4003 years old and with more re bound and resilience and strength in it than when the book was first put upon parchment or papyrus:. This book saw the cradle , of all other books, and it wffl see their graves. Would you not think that an old book like this, some of it forty centuries old, would come along hobbling with age and on crutches? Instead of that, more potent than any other book of the time. More copies of it printed in the last ten years than of any other book Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. Macau lay's "History of England," Disraeli's "En dymion," the works of Tennvson and Long fellow, and all the popular books of our time uaving no sucn sale in the last ten years as mi oiu worn oui dook. uo you JAiow what a struggle a book has in order to get through one oentury or two centuries? Some old books, auring a fire in a seraglio of Constanti nople, were thrown into the street. A man without any education picked up one of thos books, read it, and did not see the value of it. A. scholar looked over his shoulder and saw it was the first and second decades of Livy, and he offered the man a large reward if he would bring the books to his study, but in the excitement of the fire the two parted, and the first and second decades of Livy were for ever lost. Pliny wrote twenty books of his tory. All lost. The most of Menander's writings: lost. Of ,130 comedies ofwPlautus, all gone but, twenty. Euripides wrote 100 dramas, all I gone but nineteen. Afenhlvna "VfTOte 100 dramas, all gone but seven. Varro wrote the laborious biographies of 700 Ro mans, not a fragment left. Quintilian wrote his favorite book on the corruption of elo quence, all lost. Thirty books of Tactitus lost. Dion Cassius wrote eighty books, only twenty remain. Berosius's history all lost. Nearly all the old books are mummified and are lying in the tombs of old libraries, and perhaps once in twenty years some man comes along and picks up one of them and uTs tne dust off and Pens it and finds it the book; he does not want. But this old book, much of it forty centuries old, stands to-day more discussed than any other book, and it challenges the admiration of all the good and the spite and the venom, and the animosity, and the hypercriticism of earth ana nell I appeal to your common sense if a book so divinely guarded and protected in its present shape must not be in just the way that God wants it to come to us. and if it pleases God ought it not to please us? Aot only have all the attempts to detract rtn i tf book failed, but all the attempts to add to It.; Hany attempts were made to add the apochryphal books to the Old Testament. ' The council of Trent, the synod of Jerusalem, the bishops of Hippo, all decided that the apochryhai books must be added to the Old Testament. "They must stay in," said those learned men, but they staid ' out. There is not an intelligent ChrisHan mn -a will put the book of Maccabees or the book or Judith beside the book of Isaiah or Komans. Then a great many said. "We must have books added to the New Testa ment, and there were epistles and gos pels and ; apocalypses written and added &??e HW Sestai2ent- but tney have all fallen out. You cannot add anything. You cannot suostract anvthin??. ni-Hniir to be worth as much a? last year's almanac The expurgation of the Scriptures means their annihilation. I am also opposed to this proposed expur gation of the Scriptures for the fact that in proportion as the 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 holi ness of life, who wants the Bible changed. Many of us have inherited family Bibles. Those Biblss were in use twenty, forty, fifty, perhaps 100 years in the generations. To day take down thosa family Bibles, and find out if there are any chapters which have been erased by lead pencil or pen, and if in any margins you can find the words, "This chapter not fit to read." There has been plenty of opportunity during the last hslf 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? Besides that I am opposed to the , ex purgation of the Scriptures, because the so called indelicacies hn J cruelties of the Bible have demonstrated no evil result. A cruel 1 Doojt wiuproance cruelty. An unclean boos wiiTprouuce uncleanness. etcli me a" vic tim. Out of all Christendom and out of all the ages fetch me a victim whose heart has been hardened to cruelty or whose life has been made impure by this book. Show me one. One of the- best families I ever knew of, for thirty or forty years, morning and evening, had all the members gathered to gether, -and the servants of the household, and the strangers that happened to be within the gates twice a day, without leaving out a chapter or a verse, they read this holy book, morning by morning, night by night Not only the older children, but the little child who could just spell her way through the verse while her mother helped her, the father beginning and reading one verse and then all the members of the family in turn reading a verse. The father maintained his Integrity, the mother maintained her integ rity, the sons grew up and entered pro fessions and commercial life, adorning every sphere In the life in which they lived, and the daughters went .into families where Christ was honored, and all that was good and pure and righteous reigned perpetually. For thirty years that family endured the Scriptures. Not one of them ruined by them. Now, if you will tell me of a family where the BiWe has been read twice a day for thirty years, and the children have been brought up in that habf?, and the father went to rutn, and the mother went to ruin, and the sons and daughters were destroyed, by it if you will tell me of one such -incident t will throw away my Bible or I will doubt your veracity. I tell you if a man is shocked with what he calls the indelicacies of the word of God he is prurient in his taste an 1 imagination. If a man cannot read Solcr mon's Song without impure suggestion, he is either in his heart or in his life a libertine. The Old Testament description of wicked ness, uncleanness of all sorts, is purposely and righteously a uisgust- 1 jing account, instead of the . Bvronic and the Parisian vernacular, which make sin attractive instead of appalling. When those old prophet3 point vou to a lazaretto, yon understand it is a lazaretto. When a man having begun to do right falls back into wickedness and gives up his integrity, the Bible does not say he was overcome by the fascinations of the festive boflr.1 nr fw ha surrendered to convivialities, or that he be came a little fast in his habits. I will tell you what the Bible says, "The dog is turned to his own vomit again and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." No gilding of iniquity. No garldnds on a death's w V 0 Poinding away with a silver mal Smmer tyWhen " needs Iron sledge I can easily understand how people brood i?I?r tno description of uncleanness in the Bible may get morbid in mind until they o11 as tne the beak, S?f en,ftril,and the claw of a buzzard are full of the odors of a carcass, but what iWKn 23 not that Bible be disinfect ed, but that you, the critic, have your mind anTd neart washed with carbolic acid. I tell you at this point in my discourse that a man who does not like this book, and who is critical as to its-eontents. and who is shocked and outraged with its descriptions, Cross." Perhaps yon oould chan-o is Perhaps you might go into the old galleVTm of sculpture and change the form and tha posture of the statues of Phidias and Prarf tele3. Sueh an iconoclast would vervoon find hlms-lf in the; penitentiary. Rut V2 worse vandalism when a man proposes to n! fashion these masterpieces of inspiration an! to remodel the moral giani3 of this gaiW of God. - I T Now, let U3 divide ofL Let those peoDU who do not belief the Bible and who a critical of this and that part of it go cW over to th9 other side. Let them standby, hind the devil's guns. There can be no com prtnise between infidelity and Christianity v.w im viifc x7iju-uii or inn delity rather than the work of these hybrid theologians, these j mongrel ecclesiastic these half evoluted ! people, who believe thV Bible and do not believe it, who accept thl miracles and do notiascept them, who believ in the inspiration of the Scriptures and do not believe in the j inspiration of the Scrim tures trimming their belief on one side to suit the skepticism: of the World, trimming their belief on the other side tojmitthepridft of their own heart, and feeling-that in order to demonstrate their eoufcage they must make the'.Bible the target and shoot at God. There is one thing that enoourages m very much, and that is that the Lord made out to manage the universe before they were born, and will probably be able to mate out to manage the universe a little while after mey are aeao. wnue 1 aemand that the antagonists of the Bible and the critics of the Bible go clear Over where they belonj? on the devil's side, ! ask that all the friends of this good book come out openly and above board 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 whn you wa xne gooa-uy 753 TOO.-CTOHT me rerrv to the golden city. Young man, do not be ashamed of your Bible. There is not a virtue but it coin mends, there is not a sorrow but it comforts there is not a good law on the statute book of any: country but it is founded cn these Ten Commandments. There are no braver grander people in all the earth than the" heroes and the heroines which it biographizes Of all the works of Doje4. the great artist! there was nothing so impressive as his illus trated Bible. What scenepf Abrahamic faith or Edenic beautv. of dominion Solomonic, of miracle or parable, of nativity ai ui cruuiuxion or 01 last judgment but the thought leaped from, the great brain to the skillful pencil, anQ from -skillful pencil to canvas immortal. The Louvre, the Luxem bourg, the National Gallery of London 00m pressed within two volumes of Dore's illus trated Bible. But the Bible will come to bet ter illustration than that, my friends, when all the deserts have become gardens and all ' the arm nri hnra htvnma ano4n.tn -1 .11 uuiv uu.vuiVj avjuomiC3 tliiu till the lakes have become Gennesarets with Christ walking them, and all the cities have become Jerusalem? with hovering Shektnah; and the two hemispheres shall be clapping cymbals of divine praise, and the round earth a footlight to Emanuel's throne that, to all lands and all ages and all centuries and all cycles will be the best specimen of Bible illustrated. I i. TE3IPEEXKCE iEW3 .AND K0TS?. Canada's annual liquor biU is $131, 85,400. The consumption of intoxicating liquors In New Zealand is decreasing year by year. The National W. ;C. T. U. will conduct summer meetings atphautauqua and Moun tain Lake Park. - with Leer and during the past year somo 900 have oeen closed. fnTSr nr Snea,iley o Alaska, refuses to' thfehBeeei;i?.ary Pfcrmit5 r the establish ment of breweries in that Territory WarnSfvali?' J kilied her5eIf & ; v. J -Vaunt j , K jntucky.on seeingjher hus band unaer the influence of liauor The Duke of nr-Vt .1 1 . . taObstinence S ripe old age. His mother. uaexES!0 ?. vvvicu wu. iu ins present snae. Let no man dare to lay his hands on it with the in tention of detracting from the book or cast ing out any of these holv Besides that, 1 am opposed to" this expurga- J vi mo ocniurra oecausenthe attempt W6 vfi't would be the annihilation lvleV inadel geologists would say, "Out With tfre Book of Genesis;" infidel asl tronomrs would say, "Out with the Bxk of Joshua; people who do hot believe in the atoning sacrifice would say, "Out with the Book of Leviticus;" people who do not believe In the miracles would say, "Out with all those wonderful stories in the Old and New Testament; and some would say. "Out with ; the Book of Revelation;" and others would say, "Out with the entira Pen tateuch, and the work would goon until there would not be enough of the Bible left ,llc" "wvef oeen soundly converted. The lay r vuc "ttuiu 01 prasDvtery or epis copacy does not always change a man's neart, and men sometimes get into the pul pit, as well as into the pew, never having been changed radically by the sovereign EJ,?S t your heart right lid th Bible will be. right. The trouble is men's i68 re,Ii?t brought into harmonv wfth uru ui croa. An, my friends, expu ra tion of the heart is whafis wanted! k c J.01i cannot make me believe that the Scripture?, which this moment He on the table of tne purest and best men and women 01 the age, and which were the dyin solace of your kindred passed into the skies, have in them a taint which the strongest micro pcope of honest criticism could make visible ir menareTincontrollable in their indigna !i7hen he. integrity of wife or child if a- iuiu juages and jurors as far U1B excuse violence under such prov. Cation, tphnt Mikf r a. 1 ftn.i I... u overwneimiag " vuuiuf inunaers or conde iur nuy man woo will stand in a C IlAn rrn I rift otA nc.n .v .. ry, rr" re inan viran ter of God? '"'e beIovel dauh- Exphrgate the Bible! You might as well andip ,enico and in Rome and expurgate K WlUnF- 5 could flndl S Angelo's "Lat Judgment that might be improved. Perhaps you could .. t i jiLi uui more into Eubens's -Dajeat from thl seventy-six. , The W. C. T; U. of naa nve acres of groUn years rent iree; and Wia eiir Oi tueir work. Belgium's revenue nas grown in forty ?fi nan c J cranes, crime in cent, at-the same' tide an 1 cent. 1 Bondurant, Iowa, have ad iriven tnm fm- flra iarm it fortha ben- Finland has demonstrate 1 uwi uc.-essarv m c.-iM: from the drink habit years from i.000.000 to teasing liUO per insanity 12S per that spirits are wumnes. havinir be- tSttl''?la -"i under local v. A liPW In nr f J 1 Sundav in P M-,7 Letler obs-rvance of dram shJr? Pfoat)ly close ail the day An Sb,KiWUt tte Empire ou tnat fiy. a.n eirort if being made to tiv thi keep open one hour of 'the dly manors' ilome. at 1 ' A r aom ers 4nd vumcy, 111., round that iutj nome 13 mtemMran -uiuoriza the SuMHTTrfn.W resolution to to prosecute saloon-keepers :--s .iiiuiiciiau 10 thts 'orbidd&o. 1 great evil and reported a wno persist in inmates alter being Dathos Li Hung Chang's cousin says that dig nitary's yellow Jacket is a joke. If he ever runs against the business end of the native American yellow jacket he ll appreciate the point sooner than the joke. Thers Is a scheme on foot to extend the Sheridan drive 'and Chicago's part system to Milwaukee.