BX 9178 .T3 1890 Talmage, T. De Witt 1832- 1902. Trumpet peals c /^oo-^^ A^z^a. /Z>A^- I'l-oMi a l'lii>t(>i;rai)li liy Dm yea Trumpet Peals. H Collection of ITimcl^ an^ lEloqucut lEytracts FROM THE SERMONS OF THE REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D.D. Including Demosthenean Philippics Against Ingersollian Infidelity, Darwinian Evolution, Gambling, Stock-Gambling, Theatricals, Corrupt Literature and other Evils and Perils, with Special Appeals to Young Men and Gospel Peals FOR All. COLLATED AND CLASSIFIED BY THE REV. L. C. LOCKWOOD. (with the consent of dr. talm^cbu^ ^^W Of PRlWog;^ NEW YORK : BROMFIELD & COMPANY, 658 Broadway. 1S90. Copyright, 1890, HV BKOMIIliLU & COMI'ANY. DRUHMONI) & Nku, Electrotupers, 1 to 7 IIuKUf Street, New Vork. CONTENTS. Preface CHAPTER I. The Great First Cause i_io God in Creation, i ; Wiio made the Stars, 2 ; A God, a God, 2 ; Tlie Pleiades and Orion, 3 ; The Peasant Astronomer, 3 ; Two rosettes of stars, 4; What the stars teach, 5 ; The God of light, 6 ; The immutable, 6; Chain of events, 7; Trusting God 8. CHAPTER n. Evolution: Anti-God, Anti-Bible, Anti-Science, Anti-Com- mon-sense, 11-34 The Creed of Evolutionists, 11; Evolution is infidelity, 12; An inconsistent theory, 14; The origin of worlds, 14; Jumping over- board, 16; One of the tenets, 17; No natural progress, 18; Evolu- tion downward, 19; Bible evolution, 19; Modern evolutionists, 20; Sons of a gorilla or sons of God, 21 ; The missing link, 22 ; Evolu- tion of a bird's wing, 23 ; The rattlesnake, 23 ; Evolution a guess, 24; The inward testimony, 24; A strange genealogy, 25; The jury disagree, 26; Species to remain distinct, 27; Evolution brutalizing, 29; Destiny above origin, 30; Evolution no novelty, 31 ; Evolu- tion for a wreck, 33. CHAPTER HI. Ingersollian Infidelity Confuted 35-i35 Big business on small capital, 35 ; No absurdity in woman's crea- tion, 36; Making mouths, 37; Footprints of Deity, 37; Blasphem- ous programme, 38; Robert Ingersoll's testimony, 39; Mr. Inger- soll's charges, 41 ; Is this book true, 41 ; Creation of light, 42 ; The firmament, 43; The Bible unscientific, 45 ; The Deluge, 46; The size of the Ark, 47 ; Landing of the Ark, 49; The Jews in Egypt, 51 ; The anointing oil, 51 ; The sun and moon stood still, 52 ; Jonah and the whale, 54 , Incredulity rebutted, 55 ; Graven images, 56 ; iii iV CONTENTS. The Bible a cruel book, 58; A mass of contradictions, 58; Imposi- tion on credulity, 60; Full of indecencies, 63; Polygamy, 65; Women's shame and humiliation, 68 ; Counter charges against Ingersollism, 71 ; The modern Jehoiakim, 72; Infidelity and sui- cide, 73; The rogues' picture-gallery, 74; The meanness of infi- delity, 79; No substitute for Christian institutions, 83 ; Impeach- ment of Infidelity, 84; Downfall of Christianity, 86; A punishable crime, 88; Degradation of womanhood, 89; Demoralization of society, 90; Christianity not dead, 94; Victory for God, 97; Inger- soll defeated, 100 ; What has been accomplished, 103 ; The greatest work of the age, 104; A great change, 109; A balm for the weary, 112; Beyond the grave, 112; Rousseau's dream, 114; The Bible the book of books, 115; The stolen grindstones, 123 ; Appeal to Christians. 124; Logic of testimony, 126; Appeal to young men, 128; Cavilling rebuked, 131. CHAPTER IV. The Higher Criticism 136-156 No mending of th». bible, 136; Why expurgation is wrong, 138; Expurgation of the heart, 139; No compromise, 140; Better illus- tration than Dore's, 141 ; Theological fog, 143 ; A whole bible from lid to lid, 145 ; Lost literary treasures, 147 ; When we can do without the bible, 149; No additions made, 150; Good people satisfied, 151 ; Achievements of orthodoxy, 151 ; The sure founda- tion, 152; The certitudes, 153; Contrasted deathbeds, 154; Stand by the old paths, 155. CHAPTER V. Theory of a Posthumous Opportunity, , . . 157-169 Pain does not cure, 158; An unpropitious beginning. 158; Time no reformer, 159; Unpropitious surroundings, 159; A lazaretto world, 160; A demoralizing theory, 161 ; An infidel's premonition, 162; Sufficient chances in life, 162; The gospel ship, 163; Alex- ander's light, 164; A dream, 165; Eternal punishment, 165; How far it is to hell, 166; A very stout rope, 168. CHAPTER VI. The Plague of Profanity 170-177 Is it manly, 171 ; Blasphemy abroad, 173 ; What is the cure, 174; Instances of awful punishment, 176. CONTENTS. V CHAPTER VII. Lying, Dishonesty, and Fraud, 178-207 Agricultural falsehoods, 179; Commercial lies, 180; Both sides the counter, 181 ; Mechanical lies, 181 ; Social lies, 182; Shopping lies, 183; Fraud and dishonesty, 184; Monopolies, 186; Stolen goods returned, 187; Fascinations of fraud, 187; The Duke of Wellington, 188; Trust funds, 189; Debt, 190; Swindling, 193; Under the pressure, 195 ; Their name is legion, 196 ; Lotteries, 198 ; Gift stores, 201; Snares, 202; Betting, 202; Other swindling schemes, 203; The tulip mania, 204; Mississippi schemes, 204; South sea bubble, 205; Morus multicaulis, 206; Oil fever, 206; Warning to young men, 207. CHAPTER VIIL Gambling, 208-238 What is gambling, 209; Killing to industry, 211; Killing to character, 211; Shall gamblers triumph, 212; A Sennacheribean evil, 213; A merciless evil, 214; Deeds of darkness, 214; Fas- cinations of the game. 216; Covetousness, 218; Ecclesiastical gambling, 220; Parlor card-playing, 220; Terrible tale, 221 ; Peril- ous to business. 221 ; Trap and trickery, 221 ; Foul play, 222 ; An estate in a dice-box, 222; An infernal spell, 222; A gambler's deathbed, 223; An enemy to the home, 223; Another victim, 224; Choice of road, 225 ; Tenpins, 226; Rapid transit to perdition, 226; The career of the gambler, 227 ; Affectionate appeal, 228 ; Stock gambling, 229; Wall Street, 229; Doings in Wall Street, 232; in- flation and collapse, 233; Fascination of stock-gambling, 234; Fast in the stocks, 235; Religion in business, 236; Stock-gam- bling a laughing-stock, 237, CHAPTER IX. Amusements, 239-253 Dancing universally popular, 241 ; Dancing in ancient times, 241 ; A brilliant victim, 243; The theatre and stage costumes, 244; Be- ware of contamination, 245 ; The drama of life, 246 ; Tests of amuse- ments, 248; Amusement versus home, 251. CHAPTER X. Social Impurity, ^i^^-z^o A crusade needed, 255 ; Libertinism. 255; Freelovism, 257 ; Ex- plosions of social life, 257; Alley scene, 258; God bless the White Cross, 259. VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. Intemperance 261-305 The arch-fiend of the nations, 262 ; The carousal, 263 ; A warning voice from the aslics of Babylon, 266; The drunkard's will, 268; Drug stores, 26S; Take sides, 269; To the rescue. 272; A grand crusade, 273; The evil of drunkenness, 274; The dramshop, 275 ; A Coney Island tragedy, 276 ; Beats the Bard of Avon, 277 ; A tragedy in five acts, 277 ; A wreck, 278 ; No stopping, 279; An im- portant discovery, 280; A dreadful crop, 280; The history of a friend, 281 ; Other victims, 283; An emblem from Egypt, 284; Loss of good name, 286 ; Loss of self-respect, 287 ; Loss of usefulness, 290 ; Loss of physical health, 290; Loss of home, 291 ; Loss of the soul, 292 ; Are you astray, beware, 293 ; Wine-drinking convivial ilies, 294 ; Holiday temptations, 295 ; The pawnbroker's spoils, 295 ; Noble altruism, 296 ; The brand on the barrel. 296; Temptations of young writers for the press, 297 ; Loves a " shining mark," 297 ; Student victim, 298; The contrast, 299; Reckless infatuation, 300; The plunge, 300; Broken hearts, 301 ; Stop in time, 302; Young men of America, 302 ; A peroration, 302 ; Your only hope, 303 ; Another case to the point, 304. CHAPTER XII. Corrupt Literature, 306-330 Multiplication of books, 306; A worse than frog-plague, 307 ; Salacious literature, 309; How are the frogs to be slain, 312; Healthful literature, 314; Good and bad results, 317; What books and newspapers shall we read, 318 ; Fictitious literature, 318 ; Books that corrupt the imagination, 322 ; Books w-hich are apologetic for crime, 323; Insanity induced, 324; Apologies, 325; Infidel books, 325; Pernicious pictorials, 327; Examine your libraries, 328; Ephcsian magic books, 329 ; A day of reckoning, 329 ; A terrible fate, 330. CHAPTER XIII. Traps FOR Young Men 331-365 City snares, 332 ; Young men from tlie country, 334; Behavior makes the abode, 335; No half-way, 336 ; An indolent life. 337; How swift the river, 339; Diversity of temptations, 341 ; Commer- cial Pharisees, 342 ; Hissed oil the stage. 346 ; Every man has a part, 346; A consecrated home. 347 ; An exit. 348; Siiakcspcare's will, 350; Winter temptations. 350; The (Unil's liarvcst lime, 351 ; Fatal CONTENTS. Vll parties, 351 ; Slain by evil habits, 352 ; Trr, try again, 353; Moral gravitation, 354; Evil habits hard to give up, 354; Easy to go down stream, 355 ; Four plain questions, 357 ; Irreligion a slaughterer, 359: Mercy for all, 361 ; The worst may hope, 362; Glorious news, 363. CHAPTER XIV. Defences of Young Men, 366-376 A good home, 366 ; Industrious habits, 367 ; Drudgery necessary 369; Respect for the Sabbath, 370; A noble ideal, 371 ; Religious principle, 374, CHAPTER XV. The Termini of Two City Roads 377-386 The country home, 377; Landed in the city, 378 ; Money is all gone, 380; The contrast, 381 ; The tremendous secret, 385 ; A parting at a theatre, 386. CHAPTER XVI. Gospel Trumpet Peals, ....... 387-421 Warning and invitation, 3S7 ; Time and eternity, 388 ; Time our only opportunity, 389; Solemn thought, 389; Eternity for time, 390 ; Soon to leave all, 391 ; A fickle world, 392 ; Making a god of the world, 393 ; A great cheat, 393 ; World-hunting, 394; Fascination of killing, 394 ; A morning hunt, 395 ; Hunting the dollar — the money god, 396; Return from the chase, 397 ; Is it well with thy soul, 398; The two scales, 399; The property sold, 400; Business closed, 401 , A bad bargain, 402 ; Famous vendors, 403 ; A suit for replevin, 404 ; The accusing blood, 405 ; The cost of recovery, 405 ; Saving power, 406; All of grace, 407; Soul-hunting, 409; Gospel weapon, 411; Where to hunt, 411; Skill in hunting, 413; Soul-saving, 415; Rescue the perishing, 416; Gospel ship, 419; I came in on a plank, 420. CHAPTER XVII. Three Trumpet Peals 422-434 Peal first, 422 ; A despairing octogenarian, 425 ; Peal second, 426 ; Peal third, 427 ; A spectator at Gettysburg, 428 ; Crisis in disease, 428; Lost chance, 429 ; Postponement useless, 430 ; Now or never, 430 ; The accepted time, 433. VI 11 cox TENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. The Story of Naaman 435-442 CHAPTER XIX. The Well AT THE Gate 443-448 CHAPTER XX. Character Building, 449-454 Plumb-line religion, 449; Plumb-line rectitude, 450; Plumb-line traffic, 451 ; Leaning tower of Pisa, 452. CHAPTER XXI. Heaven, 455 The way to heaven, 455 ; The King's highway, 456 ; A clean road, 457; A plain nxid, 457; A safe road, 458; A pleasant road, 458; Visions of heaven, 458; LcMiging for home, 460; A dream, 461; Reunion: a shipwrecked father and son, 462; Glories of heaven, 463; Heavenly hosts, 465; Heavenly awards, 466; The healtl. of heaven, 468; Heaven rights all wrongs, 468; No sorrow there, 469; The bible the only true guide book, ^70; Historic wonders, 470; Higher mathematics, 471 ; Law studies 471 ; Astronomy, 471 ; The Sciences, 472 ; Explorations, 472 : Theology, 473 ; Society, 473 ; Oc- cupation, 474; New Jerusalem Church, 474; Music, 475; Sweet Sabbath Song, 476. CHAPTER XXII. Uk. Talmage in Palestine, 477 ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece, .... Portrait of Rev. Dr. Talmage. Facing Page i, . . . . The New Brooklyn Tabernacle. PREFACE. Dr. Talmage needs no introduction, and his Trumpet Peals speak for themselves. The Editor is not a Voice in the Wilderness, proclaiming a coming man, but he can point to one who has already come, and made the world brighter and better for his coming. The collation of some of his thought- gems has been a labor of love that has had its own reward. But the treasure-trove is too good to keep, and he feels like relieving himself of some of the embarrassment of riches by- making others as rich as himself. And let each recipient sound aloud the Trumpet Peals, till their echoes reverberate from the Gate of Commerce to the Golden Gate. If Dr. Talmage is a son of thunder, the thunderbolts are followed by a cloud-burst of refreshing showers of blessing. If he is trumpet-tongued, the trumpet has no uncertain sound, but calls men to battle for the right. If he wields a Damascus blade, sharper than a two-edged sword, it is to cut asunder the bands of wickedness. If he is a second Demosthenes, he utters no second-hand Philippics, but bids us march against modern vices and conquer or die. If he has already won great victories, these but nerve him to win greater. If two tabernacles burn down, he shouts, " None of these things move me," and spurs on a willing people to build one greater than before, after the pattern of the splen- did engraving with which this work is embellished. Nor is Dr. Talmage simply a Reformer, for he wins some of his most signal triumphs on the Gospel field. And with the old Constantinean battle-cry, " In Hoc Signo Vinces " — " By this Sign Conquer," and the motto, " Via Cracis, via X PREFACE. Lucis" — "The Way of the Cross is a Way of Light," he marshals his host at the foot of the Cross, and by the way of Gethscmane leads them up to the glory-height of Olivet, ami then up " heaven's infinite steepness " to the glory- height above, and within the pearly gate lays his trophies down at Jesus' feet. Then sound the Trumpet Peals and swell "the consecrated host of God's elect," multiplying the Talmagean trophies by the million, and bringing many sons and daughters unto glory, to shout the loud hallelujahs, and on the Sea of Glass to sing the Song of Moses and the Lamb ! L. C. LOCKWOOD. WOODHAVEN, L. I., January, 1890. i?S: I ;■,£!!«!!! , ■; i^inif' ■ v-"^6:>{SsO."Jv':a^^'' ♦., -V- TiiE Nr.w I'.KooKi.YN Taukknacm-.. l'li.>t..i;ia|.li<-.| li.iiii Aicliitccts" Drawing. l>y Oiirvca. TRUMPET PEALS. CHAPTER I. The Great First Cause. " In the beginning God." A beginning must have a Beginner, and that Beginner is God. An effect must have a cause, and the Great First Cause is God. — Editor. GOD IN CREATION. The poet of Uz calls us to the laying of the foundation of the great temple of a world. The corner-stone was a block of light, and the trowel was of celestial crystal. All about and on the embankments of cloud stood the angelic choristers unrolling their librettos of overture, and other worlds clapped shining cymbals while the ceremony went on, and God, the architect, by stroke of light after stroke of light, dedicated this great cathedral of a world, with moun- tains for pillars, and sky for frescoed ceiling, and flowering fields for floor, and sunrise and midnight aurora for uphol- stery. " Who laid the corner-stone thereof, when the morn- ing stars sang together?" The whole universe was a complete cadence, an unbroken dithyramb, a musical portfolio. The great sheet of immen- sity had been spread out, and written on it were the stars, the smaller of them minims, the larger of them sustained notes. The meteors marked the staccato passages, the whole heavens a gamut with all sounds, intonations and modulations, the space between the worlds a musical inter- 2 TRUMPET PEALS. val, trembling of stellar light a quaver, the thunder a base clef, the wind among the trees a treble clef. Such the first "music of the spheres." WHO MADE THE STARS? Napoleon was on a ship's deck bound for Egypt. It was a bright starry night, and as he paced the deck, thinking of the great afTairs of the State and of battle, he heard two men on the deck in conversation about God ; one saying there was a God, and the other saying there was no God. Napoleon stopped and looked up at the starry heavens and then turned to these men and said, " Gentlemen, I heard one of you say there is no God ; if there is no God, will you please to tell me who made all those stars ?" A GOD ! A GOD ! Galileo in prison for his advanced notions of things was asked why he persisted in believing in God, and he pointed down to a broken straw on the floor of his dungeon, and said : " Sirs, if I had no other reason to believe the wisdom and the goodness of God, I would argue them from that straw on the floor of this dungeon." Behold the wisdom of God in the construction of the seeds from which all the growths of spring-time come forth — seeds so wonderfully constructed that they keep their vitality for hundreds and thousands of years. Grains of corn found in the cerements of the Egyptian mummies buried thousands of years ago, planted now, come up as luxuriantly and easily as grains of corn that grew last year planted this spring-time. After the fire in London in 1666, the Sisimbrium Iris, seeds of which must have been planted hundreds and hun- dreds of years before that, grew all over the ruins of the fire. Could the universities of the earth explain the mysteries of one rutabaga seed ? Could they girdle the mysteries of one grain of corn? Oh, the shining firmament in one drop of dew ! Oh, the untravellcd continents of mystery in a crystal of snow ! Oh, the gorgeous upholstery in one tuft of moun- THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE. 3 tain moss ! Oh, the triumphal arch in one tree-branch ! All nature cries, "A God !" Where is the loom in which He wove the curtains of the morning ? Where is tJie vat of beauty out of which He dipped the crimson and the gold and the saffron and the blue and the green and the red? Where are the moulds in which- He ran out the Alps and the Pyrenees ? Where is the harp that gave the warble to the lark, and the sweet call to the robin, and the carol to the canary, and the chirp to the grass- hopper ? Oh, the God in an atom ! THE PLEIADES AND ORION. " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament show- eth His handiwork." They mirror their Maker. — Editor. " Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion." — Amos 5 : 8. A country farmer wrote these words : Amos of Tekoa. He ploughed the earth and threshed the grain with a new threshing-machine, as formerly the cattle trod out the grain. He gathered the fruit of the sycamore tree, and scarified it with an iron comb just before it was getting ripe, as it was necessary and customary in that way to take from it the bit- terness. He was the son of a poor shepherd ; but before the rustic the Philistines, and Syrians, and Phoenicians, and Moabites, and Ammonites, and Edomites, and Israelites trembled. THE PEASANT ASTRONOMER. Moses was a law-giver, Daniel was a prince, Isaiah a courtier, and David a king ; but Amos was a peasant ; and, as might be supposed, nearly all his parallelisms are pastoral, his prophecy full of the odor of new-mown hay, the rattle of locusts, the rumble of carts with sheaves, and the roar of wild beasts devouring the flock, while the shepherd came out in their defence. He watched the herds by day, and by night inhabited a booth made out of bushes, so that through these branches he could see the stars all night long, and was more familiar with them than we who have tight roofs to 4 TKUMPKT PEALS. our houses and hardly ever sec the stars except among the tall brick chimneys of the great towns. But at seasons of the year when the herds were in special danger he would stay out in the open field all through the darkness, his only shelter the curtain of the night, heaven, with the stellar em- broideries and silvered tassels of lunar light. What a life of solitude, all alone with his herds! Poor Amos! and at twelve o'clock at night, hark to the wolf's bark, and the lion's roar, and the bear's growl, and the owl's tc-whit-te-whos, and the serpent's hiss as he unwittingly steps too near while moving through the thickets ! So Amos, like other herdsmen, got the habit of studying the map of the heavens, because it was so much of the time spread out be- fore him. He noticed some stars advancing, and others receding. He associated their dawn and setting with certain seasons of the year. He had a poetic nature, and he read night by night, and month by month, and year by year tJie poem of the constellations, divinely rhythmic. TWO ROSETTES OF STARS especially attracted his attention while seated on the ground or lying on his back under the open scroll of the midnight heavens — the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, and Orion. The former group this rustic prophet associated with the spring, as it rises about the first of May. The latter he associated with the winter, as it comes to the meridian in January. The Pleiades, or Seven Stars, connected with all sweetness and joy ; Orion the herald of the tempest. No wonder that Amos, having heard these two anthems of the stars, put down the stout rough staff of the herdsman, and took into his brown hand and cut and knotted fingers the pen of a prophet, and advised the recreant people of his time to re- turn to God, saying : "Seek Him that makcth the Seven Stars and Orion." This commaiul, which Amos gave 785 years B.C., is just as appropriate for us. THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE. WHAT THE STARS TEACH. In the first place, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made the Pleiades and Orion must be the God of order. It was not so much a star here and a star there that impressed the inspired herdsman, but seven in one group, and seven in the other group. He saw that night after night, season after season, and decade after decade, they had kept step of light, each one in its own place, a sisterhood never clashing and never contesting precedence. From the time Hesiod called the Pleiades the " Seven Daughters of Atlas" and Virgil wrote in his ^Eneid of '' Stormy Orion" until now they have observed the order established for their coming and going ; order written not in manuscript that may be pigeon-holed, but with the hand of the Almighty on the dome of the sky, so that all nations may read it. Order. Persistent order. Sublime order. Omnipotent order. What a sedative to you and me, to whom communities and nations sometimes seem going pell-mell, and the world ruled by some fiend at hap-hazard, and in all directions mal- administration ! The God who keeps seven worlds in right circuit for six thousand years can certainly keep all the affairs of individuals, nations, and continents in adjustment. We better not fret, for the peasant's argument was right. If God can take care of the seven worlds of the Pleiades, and the four chief worlds of Orion, He can probably take care of the one world we inhabit. Think for your consolation that, as a part of His care, there are two hundred stars in the Pleiades, and that in what is called the sword of Orion there is a nebula computed to be two trillion two hundred thou- sand billions of times larger than the sun, the wheel of the constellations turning in the wheel of galaxies for thousands of years without the breaking of a cog, or the slipping of a band, or the snap of an axle ; and for your placidity and comfort I charge you, " Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion." TRUMPET PEALS. THE GOD OF LIGHT. Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these two groups of stars was the God of hght. Not satisfied with making one star or two or three stars, He makes seven ; and having finished that group of worlds, makes another group, group after group. To the Pleiades He adds Orion. It seems that God likes light so well that He keeps making it. Only one being in the universe knows the statistics of solar, lunar, stellar, and meteoric creations, and that is the Creator Himself. And they have all been lovingly christened, each one a name as distinct as the names of your children. " He telleth the number of the stars ; He calleth them all by their names." The seven Pleiades had names given to them, and they are Alcyone, Merope, CeLtno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete^and Maia. But think of the billions and trillions of daughters of starry light that God .'calls by name as they sweep by Him with beaming brow aiid lustrous robe. So fond is God of light, natural light, moral light, spiritual light. Again and again is light harnessed for symbolization — Christ, the bright and morning star ; evangelization, the daybreak ; the redemp- tion of nations, Sun of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings. Oh, with so .many sorrows and sins and perplex- ities, if you want light of comfort, light of pardon, light of goodness, in earnest prayer through Christ, " Seek Him that maketh the Seven Stars and Orion." V ) THE IMMUTABLE. Again, Amos saw, as we must see, that the God who made these two archipelagoes of stars must be an unchang- ing God. There had been no change in the stellar appear- ance in this herdsman's lifetime, and his father, a shepherd, reported to him that there had been no change in his life- time. And these two clusters hang over the celestial arbor now just as they were the first night that thc\' shone on Edenic bowers ; the same as when the l\gyptians built the THE GREA T FIRST CA USE. 7 Pyramids, from the top of which to watch them ; the same as when the Chaldeans calculated the eclipses ; the same as when Elihu, according to the book of Job, went out to study the aurora borealis; the same under Ptolemaic system and Copernican system ; the same from Calisthenes to Py- thagoras, and from Pythagoras to Herschel. Surely, a changeless God must have fashioned the Pleiades and Orion ! Oh what an anodyne amid theups and downs of life, and the flux and reflux of the tides of prosperity, to know that we have a changeless God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for- ever ! \ \ CHAIN 0F^ EVENTS. All events are linked together. You who are aged can look back and group together a thousand things in your life that once seemed isolated. Onfc; un|iivided chain of events reached from the Garden of Eden to the Cross of Calvary, and thus up to heaven. ; There is a relation between the sitiallest insect that hums in the summer air and the archangel on his throne. God can trace a direct ancestral line from the blue-jay, that last spring built its nest in a tree behind the house, to some one of that flock of birds which, when Noah hoisted the ark's window, with a whirl and dash of bright wings, went out to sing over Mount Ararat. The tulips that bloomed this sum- mer in the flower-bed were nursed by last winter's snow- flakes. The farthest star on one/side the universe could not look to the farthest star on the other side and say, ** You are no relation to me ; " for, from that bright orb, a voice of light would ring across the heavens, responding, " Yes, yes ; we are sisters." Sir Sidney Smith in prison was playing lawn tennis in the yard, and the ball flew over the wall. Another ball, contain- ing letters, was thrown back, and so communication was opened with the outside worl'd, and Sidney Smith escaped in time to defeat Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition. What a small accident, connected with what vast results ! Sir Rob- 8 TRUMPET PEALS. crt Pccl, from a pattern lie drew on the back of a pewter dinner-plate, got suggestions of that which led to the im- portant invention by which calico is printed. Nothing in God's universe swings at loose ends. Accidents are only God's way of turning a leaf in the book of His eternal de- crees. From our cradle to our grave there is a path all marked out. Each event in life is connected with every other event in life. Our loss may be the most direct road to our gain. Our defeats and victories are tivin brothers. The whole direction of life was changed by something which at the time seemed a trifle, while some occurrence, which seemed tremendous, afTected it but little. God's plans are magnificent beyond all comprehension. He moulds us, turns and directs us, and we know it not. Thousands of years are to Him but as the flight of a. shuttle. The most terrific occurrence does not make God tremble, and the most triumphant achievement docs not lift Him into rapture. That one great thought of God goes on through the centuries, and nations rise and fall, and eras pass, and the world itself changes, but God still keeps the undivided mastery, linking event to event and century to century. To God they are all one event, one history, one plan, one devel- opment, one system. " Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty!" Lord Hastings was beheaded one year after he had caused the death of the Queen's children, in the very month, the very day, the very hour, and the very moment. There is iconderful precision in the Divinejud<;;>nents. The universe is only one thought of God. Those things which seem frag- mentary and isolated are only different parts of that one great thought. TRUSTING GOD. I stood on the beach, looking off upon the sea ; and there was a strong wind blowing ; and noticing that some of the vessels were going one way, and other vessels were going another way, I said to myself, " How is it that the same THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE. g wind sends one vessel in one direction and another vessel in another direction?" and I found out, by looking, that it was the difference in the way they had the sails set. And so does trouble come on this world. Some men it drives into the harbor of heaven, and other men it drives on the rocks. It depends upon the way they have their sails set. All the Atlantic and Pacific oceans of surging sorrow cannot sink a soul that has asked for God's pilotage. The difficulty is that, when we have misfortunes of any kind, we put them in God's hand, and they stay there a little while ; and then we go and get them again and bring them back. A vessel comes in from a foreign port. As it comes near the harbor, it sees a pilot floating about. It hails the pilot. The pilot comes on board and says : " Now, captain, you have had a stormy passage. Go down and sleep, and I will take the vessel into New York harbor." After a while the captain begins to think : " Am I right in trusting this vessel to that pilot? I guess I'll go up and see." So he comes to the pilot and says : " Don't you see that rock ? Don't you see those headlands ? You will wreck the ship. Let me lay hold the helm for a while for myself, and then I'll trust to you." The pilot becomes angry and says, " I will either take care of this ship or not. If you want to, I will get into my yawl and go ashore or back to my boat." Now, we say to the Lord, " O God, take my life, take my all, in Thy keeping ! Be Thou my Guide ; be Thou my Pilot." We go along for a little while, and suddenly wake up and say, *' Things are going all wrong. O Lord, we are driving on these rocks, and Thou art going to let us be shipwrecked." God says : '' You go and rest ; I will take charge of this ves- sel, and take it into the harbor." It is God's business to comfort, and it is our business to be comforted. A little child went with her father, a sea captain, to sea, and when the first storm came the little child was very much frightened, and in the night rushed out of the cabin and said, " Where is father ? where is father?" Then they told her, " Father is on deck, guiding the vessel and watching the lO TRUMPET PEALS. storm." The little child immediately returned to her berth and said, " It's all right, for father's on deck." Oh. yc who arc tossed and driven in this world, up by the mountains and down by the valleys, and at your wit's end, I want you to know the Lord God is guiding the ship. Your Father is on deck. He will bring you through the darkness into the harbor. Trust in the Lord. CHAPTER II. Evolution : Anti-God, Anti-Bible, Anti-Science, Anti- Common-Sense. " O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding oppositions of science falsely so called." — i Tim. 6 : 20. Science and revelation are tJie bass and the soprano of the same tune. The whole world will yet acknowledge the com- plete harmony. But between what God describes as science falsely so called and revelation, there is an uncompromising war, and one or the other must go under. THE CREED OF EVOLUTIONISTS. The air is filled with social and platform and pulpit talk about evolution, and it is high time that the people \\\\o have not time to make investigation for themselves under- stand that evolution in the first place is up and down, out and out infidelity ; in the second place, it is contrary to the facts of science; and in the third place, that it is brutalizing in its tendencies. I want you to understand that Thomas Paine and Hume and Voltaire no more thoroughly disbelieved the Holy Scriptures than do all the leading scientists who believe in evolution. I put upon the witness stand the leading evolutionists — Ernst Heckel, John Stuart Mill, Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Spencer. On the witness stand, ye men of science, living and dead, answer these questions : Do you believe in a God ? No. And so say they all. Do you believe the Bible story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden ? No. Do you believe the miracles of the Old and New Testaments? No. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died to save the nations? II 12 TRUMPET PEALS. No. Do you believe in the regenerating power of the Holy- Ghost? No. Do you believe that human supplication directed heavenward ever makes any difference? No. Herbert Spencer, in the only address he made in this country, in his very first sentence ascribes his physical ail- ments to fate, and the authorized report of that address be- gins the word fate with a big " F." Professor Heckcl, in the very first page of his two great volumes, sneers at the Bible as a so-called revelation. Tyndall, in his famous prayer test, defied the whole of Christendom to show that human sup- plication made any difference in the result of things. John Stuart Mill wrote elaborately against Christianity, and, to show that his rejection of it was complete, ordered this epitaph for his tombstone: " Most unhappy." Huxley said that at the first reading of Darwin's book he was convinced of the fact that teleology, by which he means Christianity, had received its death-blow at the hand of Mr. Darwin. All tile leading scientists who believe in evolution, without one exception the world over, arc infidel, EVOLUTION IS INFIDELITY. I put Opposite to each other the Bible account of how the human race started and the evolutionist account as to how the human race startetl. Bible account: "God said, let us make man in our image. God created man in his own image; male and female created He them," He breathed into him the breath of life, the whole story setting forth the idea that it was not a perfect kangaroo, or a perfect orang outang. but a perfect man. That is the Bible account. The evolutionist account : Away back in the ages there were four or five primal germs, or seminal spores, from which all the living creatures have been evolved. Go away back, and there you fmd a vegetable stuff that might be called a mush- room. This mushroom by innate force develops a tadpole, the tadpole by innate force develops a polywog, the poly- wog develops a fish, the fish by natural force develops into a reptile, the reptile develops into a quadruped, the tpiad- EVOLUTION. 13 ruped develops into a baboon, the baboon develops into a man. Darwin says that the human hand is only a fish's fin developed. He says that the human lungs are only a swim- bladder showing that we once floated or were amphibious. He says the human ear could once have been moved by force of will, just as a horse lifts its ear at a frightful object. He says the human race were originally web-footed. From primal germ to tadpole, from tadpole to fish, from fish to reptile, from reptile to wolf, from wolf to chimpanzee, and from chimpanzee to man. Now, if anybody says that the Bible account of the starting of the human race and the evolutionist account of the starting of the human race are the same accounts, he makes an appalling misrepresentation. Prefer, if you will, Darwin's " Origin of the Species" to the Book of Genesis, but know you are an infidel. As for myself, as Herbert Spencer was not present at the creation, and the Lord Almighty was present, I prefer to take the divine account as to what really occurred on that occasion. To show that this evolution is only an attempt to eject God and to postpone Him and to put Him clear out of reach, I ask a question or tzvo. The baboon made the man, and the wolf made the baboon, and the reptile made the quadruped, and the fish made the reptile, and the tadpole made the fish, and the primal germ made the tadpole. Who made the primal germ ? Most of the evolutionists say, " We don't know." Others say it made itself. Others say it was spon- taneous generation. There is not one of them who will fairly and openly and frankly and emphatically say, " God made it." The nearest to a direct answer is that made by Herbert Spencer in which he says it was made by the great " unknow- able mystery." But here comes Huxley, with a pail of protoplasm, to explain the thing. The protoplasm, he says, is primal life, giving quality with which the race away back in the ages was started. With this protoplasm he proposes to explain everything. Dear Mr. Huxley, who made the protoplasm ? 14 TRUMPET PEALS. AN INCONSISTENT THEORY. To show you that evolution is infidel, I place the Bible account of how the brute creation was started opposite to the evolutionist's account of the way the brute creation was started. Bible account : You know the Bible tells how that the birds were made at one time, and the cattle made at another time, and the fish made at another time, and that each brought forth after its kind. Evolutionist's account : PVom four or five primal germs, or seminal spores, all the living creatures evolved. Hundreds of thousands of species of insects, of reptiles, of beasts, of fish, from four germs — a statement flatly contradicting not only the Bible, but the very A B C of science. A species never develops into any- thing but its own species. In all the ages and in all the world there has never been an exception to it. The shark never comes of a whale, nor the pigeon of a vulture, nor the butterfly of a wasp. Species never cross over. If there be an attempt at it, it is hybrid, and hybrid is always sterile and has no descendants. Agassiz says that he found in a reef of Florida the re- rcmains of insects thirty thousand years old — not three but thirty thousand years old — and that they were just like the insects now. There has been no change. All the facts of ornithology and zoology and ichthyology and conchology, but an echo of Genesis first and twenty-first — " every winged fowl after his kind." Every creature after its kind. When common observation and science corroborate the Bible, I will not stultify myself by surrendering to the elaborated guesses of evolutionists. llli: nuicix OK WORLDS. To show that evolution is infidel I place also the Bible account of how worlds were made opposite the evolutionist account of h.ow worlds were made. Bible account: God made two great lights— the one to rule the day, the other to rule the night: He made the stars also. Evolutionist ac- evolution: 15 count : Away back in the ages, there was a fire mist or star dust, and this fire mist cooled off into granite, and then tliis granite by earthquake and by storm and by hght was shaped into mountains and valleys and seas, and so what was origi- nally fire mist became what we call the earth. Who made tJic fire mist? Who set the fire mist to world- making? Who cooled off the fire mist into granite? You have pushed God some sixty or seventy million miles from the earth, but He is too near yet for the health of evolution. For a great while the evolutionists boasted that they had found the very stuff out of which this world and all worlds were made. They lifted the telescope and they saw it, the very material out of which worlds made themselves. Nebula of simple gas. They laughed in triumph because they had found tJie factory where the ivorlds were manufactured, and there was no God anywhere around the factory! But in an unlucky hour for infidel evolutionists the spectroscopes of Fraunhofer and Kirchoff were invented, by which they saw into that nebula and found it was not a simple gas, but was a compound, and hence had to be supplied from some other source, and that implied a God ; and away went their theory shattered into everlasting demolition. So these infidel evolutionists go wandering up and down guessing through the universe. Anything to push back Jehovah from His empire and make the one Book which is His great communication to the soul of the human race ap- pear obsolete and a derision. But I am glad to know that while some of these scientists have gone into evolution, there are more that do not believe it. Among them, the man who by most is considered the greatest scientist we ever had this side the water — Agassiz. A name that makes every intelligent man the earth over uncover. Agassiz says : " The manner in which the evolution theory in zoology is treated would lead those who are not special zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by which it can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change among organized beings actually tak- ing place. There is no such thing on record. It is shifting l6 TRUMPET TEALS. the ground of observation from one field of observation to another to make this statement ; and when the assertions go so far as to exchide from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion, then it is time to protest." JUMPINC; OVERBOARD. With equal vehemence against this doctrine of evolution Hugh Miller, Faraday, Brewster, Dana, Dawson, and hun- dreds of scientists in this country and other countries have made protest. I know that the few men who have adopted the theory make more noise than the thousands who have rejected it. The Bothnia of the Cunard Line took five hun- dred passengers safely from New York to Liverpool. Not one of the five hundred made any excitement. But after we had been four days out, one morning we found on deck a man's hat, coat, vest and boots, implying that some one had jumped overboard. Forthwith we all began to talk about that one man. There was more talk about that one man overboard than all the five hundred passengers that rode on in safety. "Why did he jump overboard?" "I wonder when he jumped overboard?" " I wonder if when he jumped overboard he would like to have jumped back again?" "I wonder if a fish caught him, or whether he went clear down to the bottom of the sea?" And for three or four days afterwards we talked about that poor man. Here is the glorious and magnificent theory that God by His omnipotent power made man, by His omnipotent power made the brute creation, and by His omnipotent power made all worlds, and five thousand scientists have taken pas- sage on board that magnificent theor}-, but ten or fifteen have jumped overboard. They make more talk than all the five thousand that did not jump. I am politely asked to jump with them. Thank you, gentlemen, I am very much obliged to you. I think I shall stick to the old Cunarder. If you want to jump overboard, jump, and test for j'our- selves whether yowx hand was really a fish's fin, and whether EVOLUTION. 17 you were web-footed originally, and whether your lungs were a swim-bladder. And as in every experiment there must be a division of labor, some who experiment and some who observe, you make the experiment and I will observe ! ONE OF THE TENETS. There is one tenet of evolution which it is demanded we adopt, that which Darwin calls " Natural Selection," and that which Wallace calls the " Survival of the Fittest'' By this they mean that the human race and the brute creation are all the time improving because the weak die and the strong live. Those who do not die survive because they are the fittest. They say' the breed of sheep and cattle and dogs and men is all the time naturally improving. No need of God or Bible or religion, but just natural progress. You see the race started with " spontaneous generation," and then it goes right on until Darwin can take us up with his " natural selection," and Wallace can take us up with his " survial of the fittest," and so we go right on up forever. Beautiful ! But do the fittest survive ? Garfield dead in September — Guiteau surviving until the following June. " Survival of the fittest ?" Ah ! no. The martyrs, religious and political, dying for their principles, their bloody perse- cutors living on to old age. " Survival of the fittest?" Five hundred thousand brave Northern men marching out to meet five hundred thousand brave Southern men, and die on the battle-field for a principle. Hundreds of thousands of them went down into the grave trenches. We stayed at home in comfortable quarters. Did they die because they were not as fit to live as we who survived ? Ah ! no ; not the " sur- vival of the fittest." Ellsworth and Nathaniel Lyon falling on the Northern side. Albert Sidney Johnston and Stone- wall Jackson falling on the Southern side. Did they fall be- cause they were not as fit to live as the soldiers and the gen- erals who came back in safety ? No. Bitten with the frosts of the second death be the tongue that dares utter it ! It is not the " survival of the fittest." 1 8 TRUMPET PEALS. How has it been in the families of the world ? How was it with the child physically the strongest, intellectually the brightest, in disposition the kindest? Did that child die be- cause it was not as fit to live as those of your family that survived? Not "the survival of the fittest." In all com- munities some of the noblest, grandest men dying in youth, or in mid life, while some of the meanest and most contemp- tible live on to old age. Not the " survival of the fittest." NO NATURAL PROGRESS. But to show you that this doctrine is antagonistic to the Bible and to common-sense I have only to prove to you that there has been no natural progress. Vast improvement from another source, but, mind you, no natural progress. Where, where is the fine horse in any of our parks whose picture of eye and mane and nostril and neck and haunches are worthy of being compared to JoUs picture of a horse as he, thousands of years ago, heard it paw and neigh and champ its bit for the battle ? Pigeons of to-day not so wise as the carrier pigeons of five hundred years ago — pigeons that carried the mails from army to army and from city to city ; one of them flung into the sky at Rome or Venice landing without ship or rail train in London. And as to the human race, so far as mere natural progress is concerned, it started with men ten feet high ; now the average is about five feet six inches. It started with men living two hundred, four hundrctl, eight hundred, nine hun- dred years, and now thirty years is more than the average of human life. Mighty progress we have made, haven't we? I went into the cathedral at York, England, and the best artists in England had just been painting a window in that cathedral, and right beside it was a window painted four hundred years ago, and there is not a man on earth but would say that the modern painting of the window by the best artists of England is not worthy of being compared with the painting of four hundred years ago right beside it. Vast improvement, as I shall show you in a minute or two, but no natural c-volution. EVOLUTION. 19 EVOLUTION DOWNWARD. I tell you, my friends, that natural evolution is not up- ward, but is always downward. Hear Christ's account of it. Fifteenth Matthew and nineteenth verse : " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." This is what Christ said of Evolution. Give natural evolution full swing in our world and it will evolve into two hemispheres of crime, two hemi-, spheres of penitentiary, two hemispheres of lazaretto, two hemispheres of brothel. New Yorks Tombs ; Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia ; Seven Dials, London ; and Cowgate, Edinburgh; only festering carbuncles on the face and neck of natural evolution. See what the Bible says about the heart, and then what evolution says about the heart. Evolution says, " better and better and better gets the heart by natural improvement." The Bible says : " The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" When you can evolve fragrance from malodor, and ora- torio from a buzz-saw, and fall pippins from a basket of de- cayed crab apples, then you can by natural evolution from the human heart develop goodness. Ah ! my friends, evolu- tion is always downward ; never upward. BIBLE EVOLUTION. I am not a pessimist, but an optimist. I do not believe everything is going to destruction ; I believe everything is going on to redemption. But it will not be through the in- fidel doctrine of evolution, but through our glorious Chris- tianity, which has effected all the good that has ever been wrought and which is yet to reconstruct all the nations. Away with your rotten, deceptive, infidel, and blasphe- mous evolution, and give us the Bible, salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. " Salvation ! let the echo fly The spacious earth around, Till all the armies of the sky Conspire to raise the sound." 20 TRUMPET PEALS. MODERN EVOLUTIONISTS. Oh, it makes mo sick to sec these Htcrary fops going along with a copy of Darwin under one arm and a case of transfixed grasshoppers and butterflies under the other arm, telling about the " survival of the fittest," and Huxley's pro- toplasm, and the nebular hypothesis. As near as I can tell, evolutionists seem to think that God at the start had not made up His mind as to exactly what He would make, and so He has been changing it all through the ages. Evolution is one great mystery ; it hatches out fifty mys- teries, and the fifty hatch out a thousand, and the thousand hatch out a million. Why, my brother, not admit the one great mystery of God, and have that settle all the other mys- teries? I can more easily appreciate the fact that God by one stroke of his omnipotence could make man than I could realize how out of five millions of ages He could have evolved one, putting on a little here and a little there. It would have been just as great a miracle for God to have turned an orang-outang into a man as to make a man out and out — the one job just as big as the other. It seems to me we had better let God have a little place in our world somewhere. It seems to me if we cannot have Him make all creatures, we had better have Him make two or three. There ought to be some place where He could stay without interfering with the evolutionists. " No," says Darwin. And so for years he is trying to make fan-tailed pigeons into some other kind of pigeon, or to have them go into something that is not a pigeon — turning them into quail, or barnj-ard fowl, or brownthrcsher. But pigeon it is. And others have tried with the ox and the div^ and the horse, but they stayed in their species. If they attempt to cross over, it is a hybrid, and a hx'brid is always sterile and goes into extinction. There has been only one successful at- tenif>t to pass over from speechless animal to the articulation of man, and that was the attempt which Balaam witnessed EVOLUTION. 21 in the beast that he rode ; but an angel of the Lord, with drawn sword, soon stopped that long-eared evolutionist. But, says some one, " if we cannot have God make a man, let us have Him make ahorse." "Oh no!" says Huxley, in his great lectures in New York several years ago. No, he does not want any God around the premises. God did not make the horse. The horse came of the pliohippus, and the phohippus came from the protohippus, and the protohippus from the mio-hippus, and the mio-hippus came from the meshohippus, and the meshohippus came from the orohip- pus, and so away back, all the living creatures, we trace it in a line until we get to the moneron ; and no evidence of divine intermeddling with the creation until you get to the moneron ; and that, Huxley says, is of so low a form of life that the probability is, it just made itself or was the result of spontaneous generation. What a narrow escape from the necessity of having a God ! I tell you plainly that if your father was a muskrat and your mother an oppossum, and your great aunt a kangaroo, and the toads and the snapping-turtles were your illustrious predecessors, my father was God. I know it. I feel it. It thrills through me with an emphasis and an ecstasy which all your arguments drawn from anthropology and biology and zoology and morology and paleontology and all other ologies can never shake. SONS OF A GORILLA OR SONS OF GOD? " Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an im- age made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four- footed beasts, and creeping things." — ROM. i: 22, 23. A full-length portrait of an evolutionist who substitutes the bestial origin for the divine origin. Sons of a gorilla, or sons of God ? is the great question of this day, and every in- telligent man and woman must be able to give an intelligent answer. In the first chapter of Genesis, we find that God, without 22 TRUMPET PEALS. any consultation, created the light, created the trees, created the fish, created the fowl, but when He was about to make man He called a convention of divinity, as though to imply that all the powers of Godhead were to be enlisted in the achievement. " Let us make man." Tut a whole ton of cm phasis on that word " us." " Let us make man." All to shozv the prc-ct)iincnce of man over the brute and the absurdity of evolution. THE MISSING LINK. Evolutionists are trying to impress people with the idea that there is an ancestral line leading from the primal germ on up through the serpent, and on up through the quad- ruped, and on up through the gorilla to man. They admit that there is " a missing link," as they call it: but there is not a missing link — it is a whole chain gone. Between the phy- sical construction of the highest animal and the physical construction of the lowest man, there is a chasm as wide as the Atlantic Ocean. Evolutionists tell us that somewhere in central Africa, or in Borneo, there is a creature half-way between the brute and the man, and that that creature is the highest step in the animal ascent and the lowest step in the human creation. But what are the facts? The brain of the largest gorilla that was ever found is thirty cubic inches, while the brain of the most ignorant man that was ever found is seventy. Vast difference between thirty and seventy. It needs a bridge of forty arches to span that gulf. Beside that, there is a difference between the gorilla and the man — a difference of blood globule, ■a, difference of nerve, a difference of muscle, a difference of bone, a difference of sinew. Beside that, if a pair of apes had a man for descendant, why would not all the apes have the same kind of descend- ants? Can it be that that one favored pair only was hon- ored with human progeny? Beside that, evolution says that as one species rises to another species, the old type dies off. EVOLUTION. 23 Then how is it that there are whole kingdoms of chimpan- zee and p^orilla and baboon ? EVOLUTION OF A BIRD S WING. The evolutionists have come together and have tried to explain a bird's wing. Their theory has always been that a faculty of an animal while being developed must always be useful and always beneficial, but the wing of a bird, in the thousands of years it was being developed, so far from being any help must have been a hindrance until it could be brought into practical use away on down in the ages. Must there not have been an intelligent will somewhere that formed that wonderful flying instrument, so that a bird five hundred times heavier than the air can mount it and put gravitation under claw and beak? That wonderful mechani- cal instrument, the wing, with between twenty and thirty different apparati curiously constructed, — does it not imply a divine intelligence? — does it not imply a direct act of some outside being? All the evolutionists in the world cannot explain a bird's wing, or an insect's wing. THE RATTLESNAKE. So they are confounded by the rattle of the rattlesnake. Ages before that reptile had any enemies, this warning weapon was created. Why was it created ? When the rep- tile far back in the ages had no enemies, why this warning weapon? There must have been a divine intelligence fore seeing and knowing that in the ages to come that reptile would have enemies and then this warning weapon would be brought into use. You see evolution at every step is a contradiction or a monstrosity. At every stage of animal life as well as at every stage of human life, there is evidence of direct action of divine will. Beside that, it is very evident from another fact that we are an entirely different creation, and that there is no kinship. The animal in a few hours or months comes to full strength 24 TRUMPET PEALS. and can take care of itself. The human race for the first one, two, three, five, ten years is in complete helplessness. The chick just come out of its shell begins to pick up its own food. The dog, the wolf, the lion, soon earn their own livelihood and act for their own defence. The human race does not come to development until twenty or thirty years of age, and by that time the animals that were born the same year the man was born — the vast majority of them have died of old age. This shows there is no kinship, there is no similarity. If wc had been born of the beast, we would have had the beast's strength at the start, or it would have had our weakness. Not only different but opposite. EVOLUTION A GUESS. Darwin admits that the dovecote pigeon has not changed in thousands of years. It is demonstrated over and over again that the lizard on the lowest formation of rocks was just as complete as the lizard now. It is shown that the ganoid, the first fish, was just as complete as the sturgeon, another name for the same fish now. Darwin's entire sys- tem is a guess, and Huxley, and John Stuart Mill, and Tyn- dall, and especially Professor Heckel, come to help him in the guess, and guess about the brute, and guess about man, and guess about worlds, but as to having one solid foot of ground to stand on, they never have had it and never will have it. THE INWARD TESTIMONY. I put in opposition to these evolutionist theories the inward consciousness that we have no consanguinity with the dog that fawns at our feet, or the spider that crawls on the wall, or the fish that flops in the frying-pan, or the crow that swoops on the field carcass, or the swine that wallows in the mire. Everybody sees the outrage it would be to put be- side the Bible record that Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judah, the record that the microscopic animalcule begat the tadpole, and the tadpole EVOLUTION. 25 begat the polliwog, and the polliwog begat the serpent, and the serpent begat the quadruped, and the quadruped begat the baboon, and the baboon begat man. A STRANGE GENEALOGY! The evolutionists tell us that the apes were originally- fond of climbing the trees, but after a while they lost their prehensile power, and therefore could not climb with any facility, and hence they surrendered monkeydom and set up in business as men. Failures as apes, successes as men. According to the evolutionists a man is a bankrupt monkey. I pity the person who in every nerve and muscle and bone and mental faculty and spiritual experience does not realize that he is higher in origin and has had a grander ancestry than the beasts which perish. However degraded men and women may be, and though they may have foundered on the rocks of crime and sin, and though we shudder as we pass them, nevertheless there is something within us that tells us they belong to the same great brotherhood and sisterhood of our race, and our sympathies are aroused in regard to them. But gazing upon the swiftest gazelle, or upon the tropical bird of most flamboyant wing, or upon the curve of grandest courser's neck, we feel there is no consan- guinity. The grandest, the highest, the noblest of them ten thousand fathoms below what we are conscious of being. It is not that we are stronger than they, for the lion with one stroke of his paw could put us into the dust. It is not that we have better eyesight, for the eagle can descry a mole a mile away. It is not that we are fleeter of foot, for a roebuck in a flash is out of sight, just seeming to touch the earth as he goes. Many of the animal creation surpassing us in fleetness of foot and in keenness of nostril and in strength of limb ; but notwithstanding all that, there is something within us that tells us we are of celestial pedigree. Not of the mollusk, not of the rhizopod, not of the primal germ, but of the living and omnipotent God. Lineage of the skies. Genealogy of Heaven. 26 TRUMPET PEALS. THE JURY DISAGREE. Evolutionists sa)' tliat science is overcoming religion in our day. They look through the spectacles of the infidel scien- tists and they say, "It is impossible that this book be true ; people are finding it out ; the Bible has got to go overboard." Science is going to throw it overboard. Do you believe that the Bible account of the origin of life will be over- thrown by infidel scientists who have fifty different the- ories about tiie origin of life? If they should come up in solid phalanx, all agreeing on one sentiment and one the- ory, perhaps Christianity might be damaged ; but there are not so many differences of opinion inside the church as out- side the church. The fact is that some naturalists, just as soon as they find out the difference between the feelers of a wasp and the horns of a beetle, begin to patronize the Almighty; while Agassiz, glorious Agassiz, who never made any pretension to being a Christian, puts both his feet on the doctrine of evolution, and says : " I see that many of the naturalists of our day arc adopting facts which do not bear observation, or have not passed under observation." These men warring with each other — Darwin warring against Lamarck, Wallace warring against Cope, even Herschel denouncing Ferguson. They do not agree about anything. They do not agree on embryology, do not agree on the gradation of the species. What do they agree on ? Herschel writes a whole chap- ter on the errors of astronomy. La Place declares that the moon was not put in the right place. He says if it had been put four times farther from the earth than it is now, there would be more harmony in the universe ; but Lionville comes up just in time to prove that tlie moon was put in the right place. How many colors woven into the light ? Seven, says Isaac Newton. Three, says David Brewster. How high is the Aurora horcalis ? Two ant! a half miles, says Lias. How far is the sun from the earth? Seventy-six million miles, says Lacalle. Eight}- two million miles, says EVOLUTION. 27 Humboldt. Ninety million miles, says Henderson. One hundred and four million miles, says Mayer. Only a little difference of twenty-eight million miles ! All split up among themselves — not agreeing on anything. Here these infidel scientists have empanelled themselves as a jury to decide this trial between evolution, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant; and after being out for cen- turies they come in to render their verdict. Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict ? No, no. Then go back for another five hundred years and deliberate and agree on something. There is not a poor miserable wretch in the Tombs Court to-morrow that could be condemned by a jury that did not agree on the verdict, and yet you expect us to give up our glorious Christianity to please these men, who cannot agree on anything. [The Editor adds : By the disagreement of the jury, the plaintiff, Evolu- tion, loses the case.] SPECIES TO REMAIN DISTINCT. I believe that God made the world as He wanted to have it, and that the happiness of all the species will depend upon their staying in the species where they were created. Once upon a time there was in a natural amphitheatre of the forest a convention of animals, and a gorilla from west- ern Africa came in with his club and pounded " Order !" Then he sat down in a chair of twisted forest roots. The delegation of birds came in and took their position in the galleries of the hills and the tree-tops. And a delegation of reptiles came in, and they took their position in the pit of the valley. And the tiers of rocks were occupied by the delegation of intermediate animals ; and there was a great aquarium and a canal leading into it through which came the monsters of the deep to join the great convention. And on one table of rock there were four or five primal germs under a glass case, and in a cup on another table of rock there was a quantity of protoplasm. Then this gorilla of the African forest, with his club, 28 TRUMPET PEALS. pounded again," Order ! order !" and tlien he cried out : " Oh, you great throng of beasts and birds and reptiles and insects, I have called you together to propose that wc move up into the human race, and be beasts no longer ; too long already have we been hunted and caged and harnessed ; we shall stand it no longer." At that speech the whole convention broke out in roars of enthusiasm like as though there were many menageries being fed by their keepers, and it did seem as if the whole convention would march right up and take possession of the earth and the human race. But aft oil lion arose, his mane white with many years, and he uttered his voice ; and when that old lion uttered his voice, all the other beasts of the forest were still, and he said : " Peace, brothers and sisters of the forest. I think we have been placed in the spheres for which we were intended ; I think our Creator knew the place that was good for us." He could proceed no further, for the whole convention broke out in an uproar like the House of Commons when the Irish question comes up, or the American Congress the night of adjournment, and the reptiles hissed with indignation at the lionine Gambetta, and the frogs croaked their contempt, and the bears growled their contempt, and the panthers snarled their disgust, and the insects buzzed and buzzed with excitement, and though the gorilla of the African forest, with his club, pounded, " Order, order !" there was no order ; and there was a thrusting out of adderine sting, and a swinging of elephantine tusk, and a stroke of beak, and a swing of claw, until it seemed as if the convention would be massacred. Just at that moment appeared Agassiz and Audubon and Silliman, and Moses. And Agassiz cried out, " Oh, }-ou beasts of the forests, I have studied your ancestral records and found you always have been beasts, and you always will be beasts ; be contented to be beasts." And Audubon aimed his gun at a bald-headed eagle, which dropped from the gallery, and as it dropped struck a serpent that was winding around one of the pillars to get up higher. Silliman threw a rock of the tertiary formation at the mammals, and Moses thundered, *' Every beast after its EVOLUTION. 29 kind, every bird after its kind, every fish after its kind." And, lo ! tJie parliament of ivild beasts was prorogued and went home to their constituents, and tlie bat flew out into the night, and the hzard slunk under the rocks, and the go- rilla went back to the jungle, and a hungry wolf passing out ate up the primal germs, and a clumsy buffalo upset the pro- toplasm, and the lion went to his lair, and the eagle went to his eyrie, and the whale went to his palace of crystal and coral, and there was peace — peace in the air, peace in the waters, peace in the fields. Man in his place, the beasts of the earth in their places. EVOLUTION BRUTALIZING. But, my friends, evolution is not only infidel and atheistic and absurd; it is brutalising in its tendencies. If there is anything in the world that will make a man bestial in his habits, it is the idea that he was descended from the beast. Why, according to the idea of these evolutionists, we are only a superior kind of cattle, a sort of Alderney among other herds. To be sure, we browse on better pasture, and we have better stall and better accommodations, but then -we are only Southdowns among the great flocks of sheep. Born of a beast, to die like a beast ; for the evolutionists have no idea of a future world. They say the mind is only a superior part of the body. The3^say our thoughts are only molecular formation. They say, Avhen the body dies, the whole nature dies. The slab of the sepulchre is not a mile- stone on a journey upward, but a wall shutting us into eter- nal nothingness. We all die alike — the cow, the horse, the sheep, the man, the reptile. Annihilation is the heaven of the evolutionist. From such a stenchful and damnable doc- trine, turn away. Compare that idea of your origin — an idea filled with the chatter of apes, and the hiss of serpents, and the croak of frogs — to an idea in one or two stanzas which I shall read to you from an old book of more than Demos- thenic, or Homeric, or Dantesque power: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou 30 TRUMPET PEALS. visitcst him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hand ; thou hast put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth !" DESTINY AHOVE ORIGIN. How do you like that origin ? The lion the monarch of the field, the eagle the monarch of the air, behemoth the monarch of the deep, but man monarch of all. Ah ! my friends, I have to say to you that I am not so anxious to know what was my origin, as to know uhat will be my des- tiny. I do not care so much where I came from as where I am going to. I am not so interested in who was my ancestry ten million years ago, as I am to know where I will be ten million years from now. I am not so much interested in the preface to my cradle, as I am interested in the appendix to my grave. I do not care so much about protoplasm as I do about eternasm. The " was" is overwhelmed with the "to be." But on this question, Evolution is as comfortless as Hindoo BraJunitiism. " Where shall I go ?" said a dying Hindoo to the Brahmin priest to whom he had given his money to have his soul saved. "Where shall I go after I die?" asked the dying Hindoo. " Well," said the Brahminic priest, "you will go into a holy quadruped." " But where shall I go after that ?" said the dying Hindoo. " Well," said the Brahminic priest, " then you will go into a bird." " But" said the dying Hin- doo, " where shall I go then ?" " Then you will go into a beautiful flower." Then the d\ing Hindoo threw up his arms and said, "But where shall 1 go last of all ?'' This glorious Bible answers 'the Hindoo's question, answers my question, answers your question — not where shall I go to- day? not where shall I go to-morrow? or where shall I go next year? but where shall I go last of all? EVOLUTION. 31 And here comes in the evolution I believe in : not natural evolution, but gracious and divine and heavenly evolution — evolution out of sin into holiness, out of grief into gladness, out of mortality into immortality, out of earth into heaven ! That is the evolution I believe in. Evolution from evolverc, to unroll ! Unrolling of attri- butes, unrolling of rewards, unrolling of experience, unrolling of angelic companionship, unrolling of divine glory, unrolling of providential obscurities, unrolling of doxologies, unrolling of rainbow to canopy the throne, unrolling of a new heaven and a new earth in which to dwell righteousness. Oh, the thought overwhelms me! I have not the physical endurance to consider it. Monarchs on earth of all lower orders of creation, and then lifted to be hierarchs in Heaven. Masterpiece of God's wisdom and goodness, our humanity ; masterpiece of divine grace, our enthronement. I put one foot on Darwin's ''Origin of the Species," and I puttheother foot on Spencer's " Biology," and then holding in one hand the books of Moses I see our genesis, and holding in the other hand the book Revelation, I see our celestial arrival. For all wars I pre- scribe the Bethlehem chant of the angels. For all sepulchres I prescribe the archangel's trumpet. For all the earthly griefs I prescribe the hand that wipes away all tears from all eyes. Not an evolution from beast to man, but an evolution from contestant to conqueror, and from the struggle with wild beasts in the arena of the amphitheatre, to a soft, high, blissful seat in the King's galleries. EVOLUTION NO NOVELTY. What is remarkable about this thing is, it is all the time developing its dishonesty. In our day it is ascribing this evolution to Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. It is a dishonesty. Evolution was known and advocated hundreds of years before these gentlemen began to be evolved. The Phoenicians thousands of years ago declared that the human race wobbled out of the mud. Dcniocritus, who lived 460 32 TA'UA/PET VEALS. years before Christ — remember that — knew this doctrine of evolution when he said : " Everything is composed of atoms, or infinitely small elements, each with a definite quality, form, and movement, whose inevitable union and separation shape all different things and forms, laws and effects, and dissolve them again for new combinations. The gods them- selves and the human mind originated from such atoms. There are no casualties. Everything is necessary and deter- mined by the nature of the atoms, which have certain mutual affinities, attractions, and repulsions." Anaximaiider cen- turies ago declared that the human race started at the place where the sea saturated the earth. />?/rrr//;/i' developed, long centuries ago, in his poems, the doctrine of evolution. It is an old heathen corpse set up in a morgue. Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are trying to galvanize it. They drag this old putrefaction of three thousand years around the earth, boasting that it is their originality; and so wonderful is the infatuation that at the Delmonico dinner given in honor of Herbert Spencer, there were those who ascribed to him this great originality of evolution. There the banqueters sat around the table in honor of Herbert Spencer, chewing beef, turkey, and roast pig, which, accord- ing to their doctrine of evolution, made them eating their own relations ! There is only one thing worse tJian English snobbery, and that is American snobbery. I like democracy and I like aristocracy; but there is one kind of ocracy in this country that excites my contempt, and that is what Charles Kings- ley, after he had witnessed it himself, called snobocracy. Now I say it is a gigantic dishonesty when they ascribe this old heathen doctrine of evolution to any modern gentleman. People are also becoming dissatisfied with philosophy and science as a matter of comfort. They say it does not amount to anything when you have a dead child in the house. They tell you when they were sick and the door of the future seemed opening, the only comfort they could finft was in the Gospel. People are having demonstrated all over the land that science and philosophy cannot solace the trouble EVOLUTION. 33 and woes of the world, and they want some other rehgion, and they are taking Christianity, the only sympathetic reli- gion that ever came into the world. You just take your scientific consolation into that room where a mother has lost her child. Try in that case your splendid doctrine of the '' sjirvival of the fittest." Tell her that child died because it was not worth as much as the other children. That is your " survival of the fittest." Just try your transcendentalism and your philosophy and your science on that widowed soul, and tell her it was a geological necessity that her companion should be taken away from her, just as in the course of the world's history the mega- therium had to pass out of existence; and then you go on in your scientific consolation until you get to the sublime fact that fifty million years from now we ourselves may be scientific specimens on a geological shelf, petrified specimens of an extinct human race. And after you have got all through with your consolation, if the poor afflicted soul is not crazed by it, I will send forth from this church the plain- est Christian we have, and with one half-hour of prayer and reading of Scripture promises, the tears will be wiped away, and the house from floor to cupola will be flooded with the calmness of an Indian summer sunset. There is where I see the triumph of Christianity. People are dissatisfied with everything else. They want God. They want Jesus Christ. EVOLUTION FOR A WRECK. What is that in the ofifing? A ship gone on the rocks at Cape Hatteras. The hulk is breaking up, crew and pas- sengers are drowning. The storm is in full blast and the barometer is still sinking. What does that ship want? Development. Develop her broken masts. Develop her broken rudder. Develop her drowning crew. Develop her freezing passengers. Develop the whole ship. That is all it wants. Development. O ! I make a mistake. What that ship wants is a lifeboat from the shore. Leap into it, you men of the life-station. Pull away to the wreck. Steady 34 TRUMPET PEALS. there ! Bring the women and children first to the shore. Now the stout men. Wrap them up in flannels, kindle a crackling and roaring fire until the frozen limbs are thawed out, and between their chattering teeth you can pour restora- tion. Well, my friends, our world is on the rocks. God launched it well enough, but through mis-pilotage and the storms of six thousand years it has gone into the breakers. What does this old ship of a world want ? Development! Enough old evolution in the hulk to evolve another mast and another rudder, to evolve all the passengers and evolve the ship out of the breakers. Development ! Ah ! no, my friends, what this old shipwreck of a world wants is a lifeboat from the shore. And it is coming. Cheer, my lads, cheer. It is coming from the shining shore of heaven, taking the crests of ten waves with one sweep of the shining paddles. Christ is in the lifeboat. Many wounds on hands and feet and side and brow, showing He has been long engaged in the work of rescue, but yet mighty to save — to save one, to save all, to save forever. My Lord and my God, get us into the life- boat I Give us God, Christ, and the Bible. CHAPTER III. Ingersollian Infidelity Confuted. " The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." — Psalm 53 : i. 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. Were there any prospect of success, and an army were organized to dethrone God, or drive Him off the edges of existence, the first division of the army would be made up of infidels, and Mr. Robert Ingersoll, the champion blas- phemer of America, would be the colonel of one of the regi- ments. 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. BIG BUSINESS ON SMALL CAPITAL. The war against the Bible and against God is no new thing. Mr. Ingersoll is only dealing in the second-hand fur- niture of Paine, and Volney, and Hobbes, and Voltaire, and Colenso, save when he quotes from himself, and the most of his lectures are about one thing. It does not make any dif- ference whether he calls it the Mistakes of Moses, or Skulls, or the Liberty of Man, woman, and child, or no name at all, it is the same lecture. There never was a man who carried on so large a business on such a small capital, and that bor- rowed capital. 35 36 TRUMPET TEALS. lie picks up one boiic from Adam's skeleton, and he runs with that bone through all his lectures, and it happens to be a rib, and the rib that was said to be the nucleus for the womanly creation ; and he sharpens that rib, and he flourishes it, and he gnaws on it, and gnaws on it, and he holds on to it, as my greyhound for six months used to spend all his spare time in gnawing on a bleached and juice- less 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 : " Sir, you don't know how much I am dependent for happiness upon this bone ; I am an infidel." People coming late to Mr. IngersoU's lecture inquire of the janitor whether he has got to Adam's rib yet. I must, at the risk of spoiling Mr. IngersoU's favorite joke and raising a snarl, snatch from him his favorite bone, while I tell you that there was NO ABSURDITY IX WOMAN'S CREATION. The word translated " rib" is a general word meaning side. Stupendous ignorance on the part of Mr. Ingersoll that he does not know that the word here translated " rib" 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 an}- man who has a good wife can find derision in the nearness and the solemnity of the relation there suggested, I cannot un- derstand. I will not quote Matthew Henry's over-quoted theory about woman's being taken from the left side, and^iear 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 defence, and strike down INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 3/ 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 any- thing against his wife, and you 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, " Don't cry, we'll get our darling back again in the resurrection." From his side, — his equal, his joy, his pride, his exultation, his care,'his angehc ministry. To him the best being in all the earth. From his side ! Oh, the tenderness, and the pathos, and the beauty, and the sub- limity of the Mosaic account ! MAKING MOUTHS. " They have set their mouth against the heavens." — Psalm 73 : 9, This is a full-length portrait of a blasphemer. As a wolf howls at the sky, or a dog bays at the moon, so the blas- phemer is represented as making mouths at the heavens ; and on the night when the wolf shall frighten away the sky, and the dog shall stop the moon, that night will the blas- phemer drive away the God of the Bible. [The laugh returned. See Psalm 2 : 4. — Ed.] FOOTPRINTS OF DEITY. An Arab guide was leading a French infidel across a des- ert, and ever and anon the Arab guide would get down in the sand and pray to the Lord. It disgusted the French in- fidel, and after a while as the Arab got up from one of his prayers the infidel said : " How do you know there is any God ?" and the Arab guide said : " How do I know that a man and a camel passed along by our tent last night ? I know 38 TRUMPET PF.AI.S. it by the footprint in the sand. And you want to know how I know whether there is any God. Look at that sunset. Is that the footstep of a man?" And by the same process you and I have come to understand that this is the footstep of a God. BLASniEMOUS TROGRAMME. It seems from what 7<:r have heard that Bible reh'gion is a huge blunder; that the Mosaic account of the creation is an absurdity large enough to throw all nations into rollick- ing guffaw ; that Adam and Eve never existed ; that the ancient flood and Noah's Ark were impossibilities ; that there never was a miracle ; that the Bible is the friend of cruelty, of murder, of polygamy, of obscenity, of adultery, of all forms of base crime ; that the Christian religion is woman's tyrant and man's stultification ; that the Bible from h'd to lid is a fable, an obscenity, a cruelty, a humbug, a sham, a lie; that the martyrs who died for its truth were miserable dupes; that the Church of Jesus Christ is properly gazetted as a fool ; that it is something to bring a blush to the cheek of every patriot that John Adams, the father of American in- dependence, declared " the Bible is the best book in all the world ;" and that iron, lion-hearted Andrew Jackson turned into a snivelling coward when he said, " That book, sir, is the rock on which our republic rests ;" and that Daniel Webster abdicated the throne of his intellectual power and resigned his logic, and, from being the great expounder of the Consti- tution and the great lawyer of his age, turned into an idiot when he said : " My heart assures and reassures me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. From the time that, at my mother's feet or on my father's knee, I first learned to lisp verses from the sacred writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation, and if there is anything in my style or thought to be commended, the credit is due to my kind parents, in instilling into my mind an early love of the Scriptures;" and that William H, Sc'ivar(1,\\\t^ diplomatist of the century, onl\' showed his puerilit\' when INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 39 he declared, " The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influences of the Bible ;" and that it is wisest for us to take that Book from the throne in the affec- tions of uncounted multitudes, and put it under our feet to be trampled upon by hatred and hissing contempt ; and that your old father was hoodwinked and cajoled and cheated and befooled when he leaned on this as a staff after his hair grew gray and his hands were tremulous and his steps short- ened as he came up to the verge of the grave ; and that your mother sat with a pack of lies on her lap while reading of the better country, and of the ending of all her aches and pains, and reunion, not only with those of you who stood around her, but with the children she had buried with infi- nite heartache, so that she could read no more until she took off her spectacles and wiped from them the heavy mist of many tears. Alas ! that for forty and fifty years they should have walked under this delusion, and had it under their pillow when they lay a-dying in the back room, and asked that some words from the vile page might be cut upon the tombstone under the shadow of the old country meeting-house where they sleep this morning waiting for a resurrection that will never come. This Book, having deceived them, and having deceived the mighty intellects of the past, must not be al- lowed to deceive our larger, mightier, vaster, more stupen- dous intellects. Well, we will give it a trial. I empannel you as a jury to render your verdict in this case. And I ask you to afifirm that you will well and truly try this issue of traverse joined between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the de- fendant, so help you God. ROBERT INGERSOLL'S TESTIMONY. The jury empannelled, call your first witness. Robert G. Ingersoll ! " Here !" Swear the witness. But how are you to swear the witness? I know of only two ways of tak- ing an oath in a court-room. The one is by kissing the Bible, 40 TRUMPET PEALS. and the other is by lifting the hand. I cannot ask him to swear by the Bible, because he considers that a pack of lies, and therefore it could give no solemnity to his oath. I can- not ask him to lift the hand, for that seems to imply the ex- istence of a God, and that is a fact in dispute. So I swear him by the rings of Saturn, and the spots on the sun, and the caverns in the moon, and the Milky Way, and the nebu- lar hypothesis, that he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in this case between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the defendant. Let mc say that I know nothing of the private character of that person, neither do I want to know. I have no taste for exploring private character. I shall deal with him as a public teacher. You say : Why answer the champion blasphemer of Amer- ica? Am I afraid that Christianity will be overborne by his scoffing harlequinade? Oh no. Do you know how near he has come to stopping Christianity? I will tell you how near he has come to impeding the progress of Christianity in the world. About as much as one snowflake on the track will impede the half-past three o'clock Chicago lightning ex- press train. Perhaps not so much as that. It is more like a Switzerland insect floating through the air impeding an Alpine avalanche. Within ten years Mr. Ingersoll has done his most con- spicuous stopping of Christianity, and he has stopped it at the following rate. In the first fifty years of this century there were three million people who professed the faith of Christ. In the last ten years there have been three million people connecting themselves by profession with the Church of Christ. In otiier words, the last ten years have accom- plished as much as the first fifty years of this century. My fear is not that he will arrest Christianity. I answer his charges for the benefit of individuals. There are young men who through his teachings have given up their religion and soon after gave up their morals. TngersoU's teachings triumphant would fill all the penitentiaries and the gam- blinc-hells and houses of shame on the continent — on the INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 4 1 planet. No divine system of morals, and in twenty years we would have a hell on earth eclijDsing in abomination the hell that Mr. Ingersoll has so much laughed at. My fear is not that Christianity in general shall be im- peded, but I want to persuade these young men to get aboard the train instead of throwing themselves across the track. So let the trial come on. The jury has been empanelled. The first witness has been called. MR. INGERSOLL'S CHARGES. Now, my friends, it is a principle settled in all court- rooms, and among all intelligent people, "■false in part, false in ally If a witness is found to be making a misrepresenta- tion on the stand, it does not make any difference what he testifies to afterward ; it all goes overboard. The judge, the jury, every common-sense man says " false in part, false in all." Now, if I can show you, and I will show you, the Lord helping me, that Mr. Ingersoll makes misrepresenta tions in one respect, or two respects, or three respects, I de- mand that, as intelligent men and as fair-minded women, you throw overboard his entire testimony. If he misrepre- sent in one thing, he will misrepresent all the way through. *' False in one, false in all." IS THIS BOOK TRUE? In the first place, he raises a roystering laugh against the Bible by saying : " Is this book true ? The gentleman who wrote it said that the world was made out of nothing. I cannot imagine nothing being made into soinetJiing!' In nearly all his lectures he begins with that gigantic misrepre- sentation. Refer to your memory that you may see it is an Ingersol- lian misstatement — a misstatement from stem to stern, and from cutwater to taffrail, and from the top of the mainmast down to the barnacles on the bottom. If he had taken 42 TRUMPET PEALS. some obscure passage, lie would not have been so soon found out; but he has taken the most conspicuous, the most memorable, the most magnificent passage, all geological and astronomical discovery only adding to its grandeur. " In the beginning." There you can roll in ten million years if you want to. There is no particular date given — no contest between sci- ence and revelation. Though the world may have been in process of creation for millions of years, suddenly and quickly, and in one week, it may have been fitted up for Dians residence. There is as much difference between Mr. Ingersoll's statement and the truth as between nothing and omnipotence. CREATION OF LIGHT. I take a step further in the impeachment of this witness. He swoops upon the third and fourth verses of the same chapter in caricature and says : ** Ha, ha ! the Bible repre- sents that light was created on Monday, and the sun was not created until Thursday. Just think of it ! a book de- claring that light was created three days before the sun shone !" Here Mr. IngersoU shows his geological and chemical and astronomical ignorance. If Mr. IngersoU had asked any schoolboy on his way home from one of our high schools : " My lad, can there be any light without the shin- ing of the sun ?" the lad would have said: " Yes, sir ; Jieat and electricity emit light independent of the sun. Beside that, when the earth was in process of condensation, it was surrounded by thick vapors and the discharge of many vol- canoes in the primary period, and all this obscuration may have hindered the light of the sun from falling on the earth until that Thursday morning." Mr. IngersoU has only to go to one of our high schools to learn there are ten thousand sources of light besides the light of the sun. But whether wilful or ignorant misrepre- sentation, either or both will impeach Robert G. IngersoU as incompetent to give testimony in this case between Infidel- ity and Christianity. INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 43 THE FIRMAMENT. Mr. Ingersoll goes on to say that when Moses spoke of God as creating the firmament, he showed his ignorance, for he thereby implied that the heaven, the sky, was a soHd af- fair, and he knew nothing about evaporation. Wise Inger- soll ! 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 — instead of representing a metallic roof, it means a scretching out and an extension. Mr. Ingersoll goes on laughing at the statement, and says that the stars are represented by Moses as being fast- ened to this solid roof, and that he shows 'he knew nothing about astronomy because all reference made to other worlds is in five words : " He made the stars also. ' And Mr. In- gersoll says therefore, it is evident that Moses was very igno- rant 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. " He made the stars also." My friends, Moses did not write Genesis because he wanted to teach us astronomy any more than he wanted to teach us bot- any, 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 con- tained 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 Mr. In- gersoll 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 knev/ it. He de- scribed the process when he said : " He maketh small the drops of water ; they pour out according to the vapor there- 44 TRUMPET PEALS. of." In other words, it took the world thousands of years to find out what Job knew thousands of years before. Yox 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 : " It is turned as clay to the seal." The world struggling thou- sands of years to find out what Job knew at the start. " It is turned as clay to the seal." Astronomers thought that they made a great jdiscovery when they found out that the world, instead of being station- ary, was in motion ; but Isaiah knew it, and thousands 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: "He hangeth the earth upon nothing." Long before Maury dis- covered the revolution of the wind-currents, and the law of the trade winds, the Bible describes it : " The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north ; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." So that while we called General Mycr "Old Probabilities," Job was the first ''Old Probabil- ities.'" 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 j-cars before, the prophet Nahum had described the lightning ex- press train at night, and the jamming of the car-coupling: "The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broad ways ; they shall seem like INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 45 torches, they shall run like the lightnings." Professor Morse thought that he was making a wonderful invention when he found out the magnetic telegraph ; but Job describes elec- trical communication thousands of years before, when he says : " Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee. Here we are?" By the Leyden jar, the voltaic pile, the magnetic battery, the microscope, the telescope, and all philosophic apparatus toiling on and on and on until at last, at last, Silliman and Agassiz and Joseph Henry and Dr. Draper have actually caught up to antiquated Job and old Moses ! Yet Mr. Inger- soll 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, " He made the stars also! " THE BIBLE UNSCIENTIFIC. Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors vehemently charge the Bible with being an unscientific book. But who are those that say there is a collision between science and revelation ? Well, Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, Darwin, Ingersoll. They say there is a discord between science and revelation ; but I will bring you names of men who have found a perfect accord between science and revelation— men as much higher in intellectual character above those w^hom I have mentioned as the Alps and Mount Washington and the Himalayas are higher than Ridgewood Water-works : Herschel, Kepler, Leibnitz, Ross, Isaac Newton. My friends, we are in respec- table company when we believe in the Word of God — very respectable company. 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 ques- tions. In the temple of Nature there are Hvo orchestras — the or- chestra of revelation, and the orchestra of science. The 4^ TRUMPET PEALS. orchestra of revelation lias all the musical instruments full strung, and it is ready for the burst of eternal accord. The orchestra of science is only just stringing the instruments. If you will only wait long enough, )'ou will find that it is as in the old German cathedrals where they have an organ at one end of the building, and an organ at the other end of the building, both responding to each other, and making mighty music. So it will be in the temple of the universe : the orchestra of revelation and the orchestra of science will respond to each other after a while, and it will be found that the roar of the ocean is only the magnificent bass of the temple voices, and that the earth is only the pedals of a great organ of which the heavens are the key-board. There is no contest between genuine science and revela- tion. The same God who by the hand of propliet wrote on parchment, by the hand of the storm wrote on the rock. The best telescopes and microscopes and electric batteries and philosophical apparatus belong to Christian universities. Who gave us magnetic telegraphy? Professor Morse, a Chris- tian. Who swung the lightnings under the sea, cabling the continents together ? Cyrus W. Field, the Christian. James V. Simpson, of Edinburgh, as eminent for piety as for science, on week-days in the University lectures on pro- foundest scientific subjects, and on Sabbaths preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ. THE DELUGE. I take a step further in impeaching this witness against the Bible. He sharpens all his witticisms to destroy our belief in the ancient Deluge and Noah's Ark. He says that from the account there, it must have rained eight hundred feet of water each day in order that it might be fifteen cubits above the hills. He says that the Ark could not have been large enough to contain "two of every sort," for there would have been hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of creatures! He says that these creatures wouUl have came from all lands and all zones ! He sa)s there was only INGEKSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 4/ one small window In the Ark and that would not have given fresh air to keep the animals inside the Ark from suffocation ! Then he winds up that part of the story by saying that the Ark finally landed on a mountain seventeen thousand feet high. He says he does not believe the story. Neither do I. There is no such story in the Bible. I will tell you what the Bible story is. Why did the Deluge come ? It came for the purpose of destroying the outrageous inhabitants of the then thinly populated earth, nearly all the population probably very near the Ark before it was launched. What would have been the use of submerging North and South America, or Europe, or Africa, when they were not inhabited ? God speaks after the manner of men when He says every- thing went under. And Mr. Ingersoll most grossly misrep- resents when he says that, in order to have that depth of water, it must have rained eight hundred feet every day. The Bible distinctly declares that the most of the flood rose instead of falling. Before the account where it says " the windows of heaven were opened," it says "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up." All geologists agree in saying that there are caverns in the earth filled with water, and they rushed forth, and all the lakes and rivers forsook their beds. What am I to think, and what are you to think, of a man who, ignoring this earthquake spoken of in the Bible as pre- ceding the falling of the rain, and for the purpose of making a laugh at the Bible, will say it must have rained over eight hundred feet every day? — taking the last half instead of the first half. The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and then the windows of heaven were opened. THE SIZE OF THE ARK. Instead of being a mud-scow, as some of these infidels would have us understand, it was a magnificent ship, nearly as large as our Great Eastern, three times the size of an ordi- nary man-of-war. 48 TKUMPET PEALS. Well, the animal creation going into this ark were the animals from that region, where alone inhabitants were to be found ; and they went in two and two of all flesh. Two or three years ago I was on a steamer on the river Tay, and I came to Perth, Scotland. I got off and saw tJic most zc'onderfiil agriatltural shozo that I had ever witnessed. There were horses and cattle such as Rosa Bonheur never sketched, and there were dogs such as the loving pencil of Edwin Landseer never portrayed, and there were sheep and fowl and creatures of all sorts. Suppose that " two and two" of all the creatures of that agricultural show were put upon the Tay steamer to be transported to Dundee, and the next day I should be writing home to America and giving an account of the occurrence, I would have used the same general phraseology that is used in regard to the embarka- tion of the brute creation in the ark — I would have said that they went in two and two of every sort. I would not have meant six hundred thousand. A common-sense man myself, I would suppose that the people who read the letter were common-sense people. "But how could you get them into the ark ?" says Mr. Ingersoll, with a great sneer. " How^ could they be induced to go into the ark? He would have to pick them out and drive them in, and coax them in." Could not the same God who gave instinct to the animal inspire that instinct to seek for shelter from the storm ? However, nothing more than ordinary animal instinct was necessary. Have you never been in the country when an August thunder-storm was coming up, and heard the cattle moan at the bars to get in, and seen the affrighted fowl go upon the perch at noonday, and heard the affrighted dog and cat calling at the door, supplicating entrance? And are you surprised that, in that age of the world, when there were fewer places of shelter for dumb beasts, at the muttering and rumbling and flashing and quaking and darkening of an approaching deluge, the animal creation came moaning and bleating to the sloping embankment reaching up to the ancient Great Eastern, and passed in ? I have owned horses and cattle and sheep and INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 49 dogs, but I never had a horse or a cow or a sheep or a dog that was so stupid it did not kiioiv enough to come in ivhen it rained ! Yet Mr. Ingersoll cannot understand how they could get in. It is amazing to him. And then, that one window in the ark which afforded such poor ventilation to the creatures there assembled — that small window in the ark which ex- cites so much mirthfulness on the part of the great infidel. If he had known as much Hebrew as you could put on your little-finger nail, he would have known that that word trans- lated " window" there means tuiiidoiu-course, a whole range of lights. This ignorant infidel does not know a window-pane from twenty windows. So, if there is any criticism of the ark, there seems to be too much window for such a long storm. This infidel says that during the long storm the window must have been kept shut and hence no air. There are people who, all the way from Liverpool to Barnegat Lighthouse, and for two weeks, were kept under deck, the hatches battened down be- cause of the storm. Some of you, in the old-time sailing- vessels, were kept nearly a month with the hatches down because of some long storm. LANDING OF THE ARK. Mr. Ingersoll says that the ark landed on a mountain seventeen thousand feet high, and that of course, as soon as the animals came forth, they would all be frozen in the ice ! Here comes in Mr. Ingersoll's geographical ignor- ance. He does not seem to know that Ararat is not merely the name for a mountain, but for a hilly district, and that it may have been a hill twenty feet high, or a hundred feet, or two hundred feet high on which the ark alighted. But in order to raise a laugh against the Holy Scriptures, Mr. In- gersoll lifts the ark seventeen thousand feet high, showing an ignorance of just that altitude ! The flood that Ingersoll describes is not Noah's flood ; it \s Ingersoll s flood o{ hatred against God. It is not Noah's 50 TRUMPET PEALS. ark that Ingcrsoll describes ; it is Ingersoll's ark, witli a whole flock of hootinj^ owls of the midnight of Infidelity, whole nests of vipcrinc and addcrine venom against God, whole lairs of panthers which with spotted claw, if they could, would maul the eternal God to pieces. And there is only one small window in that ark and it opens into the blackness of darkness described by the words, " having the under- standing darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them." We are not entirely dependent on the Bible for the story of the flood. All ages and all literatures have traditions — broken traditions, indistinct traditions, but still traditions. The traditions of the Chaldeans say that in the time when Xysuthrus was king, there was a great flood, and he put his family and his friends in a large vessel and all outside of them were destroyed, and after a while the birds w^ent forth and they came back and their wings were tinged with mud. Lucian and Ovid, celebrated writers who had never seen the Bible, described a flood in the time of Deucalion. He took his friends into a boat, and the animals came running to him in pairs. And so all lands, all ages, and all litera- tures seem to have a broken and indistinct tradition of a calamity which Moses, here incorporating Noah's account, so grandly, so beautifully, so accurately, so solemn!}' records. Gentlemen of the jury, I have impeached Robert G. In- gersoll for having misrepresented once, twice, thrice, and I demand that you put into execution the principle of every court-room, and throw overboard his entire testimon}'. " False in part, false in all." And my prayer is that the God who created the world, not out of nothing, but out of his own omnipotence, may create us anew in Christ Jesus ; and that the God who made light three days before the sun shone may kindle in our souls a light that will burn on long after the sun has expired ; and that the God ,who ordered the ark built and kept open more than one hundred years, that the antediluvians might enter it for shelter, may graciously incline us to accept the invitation which rolls in music from INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 5 I the throne, saying, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark." THE JEWS IN EGYPT. Mr. Ingersoll also says 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 Mr. Ingersoll's statement, the Bible plainly declares they were there four hundred and tJiirty years, and the population of three millions was just the or- dinary increase in all lands and in all ages. For the pur- pose of making his audience laugh, Mr. Ingersoll cuts off two hundred and fifteen years, in order that he may make that story about the enormous and improbable and impos- sible increase. In order that he may appear smart, he cuts off from the Jewish nation twice as much history as transpired 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 ANOINTING-OIL. The blasphemer also laughs at the anointing-oil used in setting apart Aaron to his of^ce. and he jeers at the judg- ments of God for the misuse of the anointing-oil in olden time. Now, my friends, it is very easy to scoff at anything which is used as a symbol. I do not belong to the Order of Masons, nor have I ever seen the ceremony, but when the Order of Masons puts anointing-oil on the corner-stone of a new building, no good man would laugh at it. Any man would know that it is a symbol of dedication and consecra- 53 TRLMl'ET I'EA/.S. tion ; anybody would know that is a prayer; just as in one case it might be a prayer of the lips, in the other case it is a prayer of the right hand — as much as to say : " Let this be a prosperous builtiing; let this be a consecrated building.'" A man might just as well laugh at the water used in holy rite in the church ; whether sprinkled from the font, or stand- ing in the baptistery, it is simply a farce unless it be a sym- bol ; and if a symbol, then every earnest man, whether Chris- tian or unbeliever, sees it to be beautifully significant. A man's immortal nature must be awfully atwist who can find anything to laugh at either in the water of baptism, or in the anointing-oil on the corner-stone of a new building, or in the oil of the ancient sanctuary used in consecration. A man can laugh at anything if he wants to. He might laugh at the serezus on his child's coffin. THE SUN AND MOON STOOD STILL. Mr. Ingersoll finds great cause for caricature in the Bible statement that in Joshua's time the sun and moon stood still to allow him to complete his victory. He declares that an impossibility. If a man have brain and strength enough to make a clock, can he not start it and stop it ? and start it again and stop it again? If a machinist have strength and brain enough to make a corn-thresher, can he not start it and stop it? and start it again and stop it again? If God have strength and wisdom to make the clock of the universe, the great machinery of the worlds, has He not strength enough and wisdom enough to start it and stop it ? and start it again and stop it again ? or stop one wheel, or stop twenty wheels, or stop all the wheels? Is the clock stronger than the clockmaker ? Does the corn-thresher know more than the machinist? Is the universe mightier than its God? Mr. Ingersoll finds great cause of glee in the fact that the Bible states that the moon stopped as well as the sun. If you have never seen the moon in the daytime, it is because you have not been a very diligent observer of the heavens. Beside that, it was not necessary for the world literally to INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. $3 stop. By unusual refraction of the sun's rays the day might have been prolonged. So that, while the earth continued on its path in the heavens, it figuratively stopped. You must remember that these Bible authors used the vernacu lar of their own day, just as you and I say the sun went down. The sun never goes down. We simply describe what appears to the human eye. Now, I say, if God can start a world, and swing a world, He could stop one or two of them without a great deal of exertion, or He could by unusual refraction of the sun's rays, continue the illumination. Mr. Ingersoll goes into great scoff and jeer at that battle which Joshua fought, as though it were an insignificant bat- tle, and was not worthy to have the day prolonged. Why, sirs, what Yorktown was for Revolutionary times, and what Gettysburg was in our civil contest, and what Sedan was in the Franco-German war, and what Waterloo was in Napole onic destiny — that was this battle of Joshua against the five allied armies of Gibeon. It was a battle that changed the entire course of history. It was a battle to Joshua as im- portant as though a battle now should occur in which Eng- land and the United States and France and Germany and Italy and Turkey and Russia should fight for victory or annihilation. However much any other world, solar, lunar, or stellar, might be hastened in its errand of light, it would be excusable if it lingered in the heavens for a little while and put down its sheaf of beams, and gazed on such an Armageddon. A celebrated eye-doctor in Boston recently declared that right after an eclipse of the sun he had an unusual number of cases of diseases of the eye to treat ; and he accounted for it by the fact that so many people were, through smoked glass, looking at the sun in eclipse. So it seems that the sun that stood above Gibeon damaged the eyes of Mr. In- gersoll, because he looks at it through a glass smoked with the fires of his own hatred against Christianity and against God. Under this explanation, instead of being sceptical about this sublime passage of the Bible, you will when you 54 TRUMPET PEALS. read it feci more like going dt)\vn on }-our knees before God as you read, "Sun, stand thou still above Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon." JONAH AM) TIIK WHALE, Mr. Ingeisoll finds great cause of caricature in the Bible statement that a whale swallowed Jonah and ejected him upon the dry ground in three days. If Mr. IngersoU would go to the museum at Nantucket, Massachusetts, he would find the skeleton of a whale large enough to swallow a man. I said to the janitor while I was standing in the museum, " Why, it does not seem from the looks of this skeleton that that story in the Book of Jonah is so very im- probable, does it ?" " O, no," he replied, " it does not." There is a cavity in the mouth of the common whale large enough for a man to live in. There have been sharks found again and again with an entire human bod}- in them. Beside that, if Mr. Ingcrsoll and the other scoffers at the Bible would only read this Book of Jonah a little more care- full\% they would fiiul that it says nothing about a whale. It says, " the Lord prepared a great fish;" and there are sci- entists who tell us that there were sea monsters in other days that make the modern whale seem very insignificant. I know in one place in the New Testament it speaks of the whale as appearing in the occurrence I had just mentioned ; but the word may just as well be translated " sea monster " — any kind of a sea monster. Procopius says that in the year 582 a sea monster was slain which had for fifty years destro}'ed ships. I suppose this sea monster that took care of Jonah may have been one of the great sea monsters that could have easil)' taken down a projihet, and he could have lived there three days if lie had kept in motion so as to keep the gastric juices from taking hold of him and destrojing him — a sea monster large enough to take down Mr. IngersoU and all his blaspheni)-. and at the enti of three da}'s it wouLl be as siek as the historic whale wliich regurgitated Jonah ! INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 55 Beside that, my friends, there is one word which explains the whole thing. It says, " the Lord prepared ^l great fish." If a ship carpenter prepare a vessel to carry Texan beeve- to Glasgow, I suppose it can carry Texan beeves; if a ship carpenter prepare a vessel to carry coal to one of the north- ern ports, I suppose it can carry coal ; if a ship carpenter pre- pare a vessel to carry passengers to Liverpool, I suppose it can carry passengers to Liverpool ; and if the Lord prepared a fish to carry one passenger, I suppose it could carry a pas- senger and the ventilation have been all right. Did not a meteor run on evangelistic errand on the first Christmas night, and designate the rough cradle of our Lord? Did not the stars in their courses fight against Sis- era ? Was it merely coincidental that before the destruc- tion of Jerusalem the moon was eclipsed for twelve consecu- tive nights? Did it merely happen so that a new star ap- peared in constellation Cassiopeia, and then disappeared just before King Charles IX. of France, who was responsible for St. Bartholomew massacre, died ? Was it without sig- nificance that in the days of the Roman Emperor Justinian war and famine were preceded by the dimness of the sun, which for nearly a year gave no more light than the moon, although there were no clouds to obscure it? INCREDULITY REBUTTED. In the days of George Stephenson, the perfcctor of the locomotive engine, the scientists proved conclusively that a railway train could never be driven by steam-power success- fully without peril ; but the rushing express trains from Liv- erpool to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh to London, have made all the nation witnesses of the splendid achievement. Machinists and navigators proved conclusively that a steamer could never cross the Atlantic Ocean ; but no sooner had they successfully proved the impossibility of such an under- taking than the work was done, and the passengers on the Cunard and the Inman and the National and the White Star lines are witnesses. There went up a guffaw of wise laughter 56 TRUMPET PEALS. at Professor Morse's proposition to make the lightning of heaven his errand boy, and it was proved conclusively that the thing could never be done; but now all the news of the wide world, by Associated Press, put in your hands every morning and night, has made all nations witnesses. So in the time of Christ it was proved conclusively that it was impossible for Him to rise from the dead. It was shown logically that when a man was dead, he was dead, and the heart and the liver and the lungs having ceased to per- form their ofifices, the limbs would be rigid beyond all power of friction or arousal. They showed it to be an absolute absurdity that the dead Christ should ever get up alive ; but no sooner had they proved this than the dead Christ arose, and the disciples beheld Him, heard His voice, and talked with Him, and they took the witness stand, to prove that to be true which the wiseacres of the day had proved to be impossible ; the record of the experiment and of the testimony is in the text : " Him hath God raised from the dead, whereof we arc witnesses." " There is no God," sa\-s the skeptic, " for I have never seen him with my physical eyesight. Your Bible is a pack of contradictions. There never was a miracle. Lazarus was not raised from the dead, and the water was never turned into wine. Your religion is an imposition on the credulity of the ages." You are in one respect like Lord Nelson, when a signal was lifted that he wished to disregard and he put his sea-glass to his blind eye and said : " I really do not see the signal." Oh, my hearer, put this field-glass of the Gospel no longer to your blind eye, and say I cannot see, but put it to your other eye, the eye of faith, and you will see Christ and He is all y on need to sec. [The Editor here quotes the old adage: "None are so blind as those who will not see."J GRAVEN IMAGES. Mr. Ingersoll also runshishead against the tables of stone and tries to break off one of the ten commandments. He INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. S7 says when the Bible declares we must not make any graven image, it prohibits art and it killed all art in Palestine. He says that a commandment which is opposed to art cannot be a good commandment ; it must be a bad commandment. Now, every man of common-sense knows that when the com- mandment prohibits the making of graven images, it is the making of them for purposes of worship, and that it does not forbid painting and sculpture, which are the regalement of elevated taste. Let us see : Is the Bible opposed to art ? Just look over and find that God sent two sculptors, Bezaleel and Aholiab, to ornament the ancient temple. If God were opposed to art, if the Bible were hostile to sculpture, would Bezaleel and Aholiab have been ordained of high Heaven to orna- ment that ancient building ? Is the Bible antagonistic to painting ? Go through all the picture-galleries of the world, and find that the great subjects of the painters are Bible subjects. Blot out all the Bible subjects from the art galleries of the world, and you blot out the best part of the galleries at Naples, and at Florence, and at Rome, and at Paris, and at Edinburgh, and of all the private picture-galleries of the world ; and you tear down St. Paul's, and Westminster Ab- bey, and the cathedrals of Cologne and Milan, and you de- stroy the Vatican. Is the Bible opposed to the art of painting, as Mr. IngersoU over and over again declares ? What were the subjects of Raphael's great paintings? The Transfiguration, The Mi- raculous Draught of Fishes, The Charge to Peter, The Holy Family, The Massacre of the Innocents, Moses at the Burn- ing Bush, The Nativity ; Michael, The Archangel, and four or five exquisite Madonnas. What were Paul Veronese's great pictures ? Queen of Sheba, The Marriage in Cana, Magdalen Washing the Feet of Christ, The Holy Family. Who has not heard of Da Vinci's Last Supper? Who has not heard of Turner's Pools of Solomon ? Who has not heard of Rubens' Scourging of Jesus? Who has not heard of Dore on everything from the creation to the last conflagration ? The mightiest paint- 58 TRUMPET PEALS. ings ever made are on Bible subjects and yet Mr. Ingersoll dares to stand in the presence of an American audience and tell them that the Bible is antagonistic to art — never a ghastlier or more outrageous misrepresentation since the world stood. The very best paintings, the very grandest art, born at the altars of our God. THE BIBLE A CRUEL BOOK. Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors with great vehemence declare that the Bible is a cruel book. They read the story of the extermination of the Canaanitcs, and of all the ancient wars, and of the history of David and Joshua, and they come to the conslusion that the Bible is in favor of laceration and manslaughter and massacre. Now, a bad book will produce a bad result, a cruel book will produce a cruel result. Where docs the cruelty crop out ? At what time did you notice that the teachings of this Holy Bible created cruelty in the heart and the life of George Peabody, of Miss Dix, of Flor- ence Nightingale, of John Howard, of John Frederick Ober- Hn, of Abbott Lawrence? Have you not, on the contrary, noticed that all the institutions of mercy were established or, being established, were chiefly supported by the friends of this liook ? When you can make the rose-leaf stab like a bayo- net, and wiien )'ou can manufacture icicles out of the south wind, and when you can poison your tongue with honey got- ten from blossoming buckwheat, then you can get cruelty out of the Bible. That charge of Mr. Ingersoll and his coadju- tors falls flat in the presence of every honest man. A MASS OF CONTRADICTIONS. Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors also say the Bible is a mass of contradictions, and they put prophet against pro- phet, evangelist against evangelist, apostle against apostle, and they say if this be true, how then can that be true ? Mr. Mill, who was a friend of the liible, said he had discov- INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 59 ered thirty thousand different readings of the Scriptures, and yet not one ii)iporta)it difference — not one important differ- ence out of thirty thousand— only the difference that you might expect from the fact that the book came down from generation to generation and was copied by a great many hands. And yet I put before you this fact to-day, that all the Bible-writers agree in the four great doctrines of the Bible. What are those four great doctrines ? God — good, kind, patient, just, loving. Omnipotent. Man — a lost sinner. Two destinies — one for believers, the other for unbelievers ; all who accept Christ reaching that home, and only those de stroyed who destroy themselves ; only those who turn their back upon Christ and come to the precipice and jump off, for God never pushes a man off, he jumps off. Now, in these four great doctrines all the Bible-writers agree. Mo- zart, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn never wrote more harmo- nious music than you will find in this perfect harmony in the Word of God, the harmony in providence and in grace. You must remember also that the authors of the Bible came from different lands, from different ages, and from dif- ferent centuries. They had no communication with each other, they did not have an idea as to what was the chief design of the Bible, and yet their writings, gotten up from all these different lands, and from all these different ages, and all these different centuries, coming together make a perfect harmony in the opinion of the very best scholars of this country and of England. Is not that a most remarkable fact? It is as though some great cathedral were to be built and a hundred workmen w'ere 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 frag- ments of work brought together, it is a perfect architec- tural 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 6o TRUMPET PEALS. arch : yet a complete accord, a complete architecture, and a complete triumph. IMPOSITION ON CREDULITY. Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors go onto say that the Bible is made up of a lot of manuscripts, one picked up here and another there, and another from some other place, and that the whole thing is an imposition on the credulity of the human race. I must reply to that charge. The Bible is made up of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Let us take the New Testament first. Why do I believe it? Why do I take it to my heart? It is because it can be traced back to the divine heart. Jerome and Eusebiusin the fourth century, and Origcn in the second century, and other writers in the third and fourth centuries gave a list of the New-Testament writers just ex- actly corresponding with our list, showing that the same New Testament which we have they had in the fourth cen- tury, and the third century, and the second century, and the first century. But where did they get the New Testament ? They got it from Irenseus. Where did Irena^usget it? He got it from Polycarp. Where did Polycarp get it ? He got it from St. John, who was the personal associate of the Lord Jesus Christ. My grandfather gave a book to my father, my father gave it to me, I give it to my child. Is there any difficulty in tracing this line? On Communion Day I will start the chalice at that end of the aisle, and the chalice will pass along to the other end of this aisle. Will it be difficult to trace the line of that holy chalice? No difficulty at all. This one will say, " I gave it to that one," and this one will say, " I gave it to that one." But it will not be so long a line as this to trace the New Tes- tament. It is easier to get at the fact. But you say : "Al- though this was handed right down in that way, who knows but they were lying impostors? How can you take their testimony ?" They died for the truth of that book. Men never die for a lie cheerfully and triumphantly. They were INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 6 1 not lying impostors. They died in triumph for the truth of that New Testament. " But how about the Old Testament ? Why do you be- lieve that ?" I believe the Old Testament because the prophecies foretold events hundreds and thousands of years ahead, events which afterward took place. Hew far can you see ahead? Two thousand years? Can you see ahead a hundred years? Can you see ahead five minutes? No, no. Human prophecy amounts to nothing. Here these old prophets stood thousands of years back, and they foretold events which came accurately true far on in the future cen- turies. Suppose I should stand here this morning and say to you, twenty-five hundred and sixty years from now, three miles and a half from the city of Moscow there will be an advent, and it will be in a certain family, and it will be amid certain surroundings. It would make no impression upon you, because you know I cannot foresee a thousand years, or one year, or one minute, and I cannot tell what is going to transpire in a land that I have never looked at. But that is what these old prophets did. You must remember that Tyre and Babylon and Nineveh were in full pomp and splendor when these prophecies, these old prophecies, said they would be destroyed. Those cities had architecture that make the houses on Madison Square and Fifth Avenue perfectly insignificant. Yet these old prophets walked right through those magnificent streets and said : " This has all got to come down ; that is all going to be levelled." Suppose a man should stand up in these cities to-day and say : " The East River will overflow and Brooklyn will be destroyed, and the Hudson River will overflow and New York will be destroyed ; and then there will be a great earth- quake and the two rivers will forsake their beds, and there will be harvests of wheat and corn where these cities now stand, and Fulton Street and Broadway will be pasture for cattle." Such a man would be sent to Bloomingdale Insane- Asylum. Yet the old prophets did that very thing. Where is Babylon to-day? You go and walk over the ruins of Bab- 62 TRi'MPET PEALS. ylon and you will not find a leaf or a grass-blade of those splendid hanging-gardens, and in the summer-time the ground actually blisters the feet of the traveller. Babylon destroyed according to the prophecy. Where is Tyre ? In the day of its pomp, the prophet said : " The fishermen will dry their nets where this city stands." If you should go to that place to-day, you would find that literally, the fishermen are drying their nets on the rocks where the city of Tyre once stood. Tartar, and Turk, and Saracen, drying their nets on the rocks. Go up Chatham Street and find the fulfilment of a proph- ecy made thousands of years ago. Why is it the Jew is al- ways distinguishable, whether you see him in New York, or Brooklyn, or Madras, or Pekin, or Vienna, or Stockholm, or London, or Paris? The Englishman comes to America, and after a while he loses his nationality. The American goes to England, and after a while he loses his nationality. The Norwegian his, the Russian his, the Italian his, the Spaniard his, the Jew never. Why ? Because this Book provided thousands of years ago that the Jews should be scattered in all lands, and that they should be kept separate, separate, until the Lord took them back to Jerusalem. And ye who perse- cute the Jews had better look out. They are God's people yet, and ivorse ealamities tJian the assassination of a Ccarzvill come upon Russia if she does not take her foot off the Jews. They are God's people, and according to the proph- ecy made thousands of years ago they are distinguishable, they are kept separate, until the Lord takes them to their native land. How could those old prophets foretell that? How could they know that thousands of years ago? Was it mere human skill ? Could you have seen so far ahead ? Could you have predicted anything like it ? Those old prophets stood look- ing down in the great future, and said a Messiah would be born, in a certain nation, in a certain tribe, in a certain fam- ily, in a certain place, at a certain time, thousands of years ahead. Ages rolled on, ages on ages, and after a while Christ, the only One who has been called Messiah by any great INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 63 number of people— Christ was born, in that very nation pre- dicted, in that very tribe, in that very family, in that very place, at that very time. Could human skill have predicted it ? Does not that prove beyond all controversion and beyond all doubt that those prophets were inspired of the Lord Al- mighty, looking down in the future and seeing thousands of years ahead occurrences to take place ? INDECENCIES. Mr. Ingersoll picks up the Bible from his lecture-stand, reads a little, and says, " I cannot read it all — it would not be proper for me to read it all," — and then he affects to blush. He is overcome with modesty and delicacy! He dares the clergy to read certain passages in the pulpit, and dares parents to read certain passages in the family circle. Now my reply is this : There are parts of the Bible that were not intended either to be read in the pulpit or family circle, just as I can go into any physician's ofifice in Brooklyn or elsewhere and find medical journals on the table or books in his library which he never has read to his family, yet good books, pure books, scientific books, without which he would not be worthy the name of physician. They are to be read in private. You must know that there is such a thing as the pathol- ogy of disease. You must know that there are parts of the Bible which are tJie anatomy of iniquity, which are descrip- tions of the lazar-house of the soul when it is unrestrained ; and from the reading of those portions in private we arise with a healthy disgust and horror for sin. The pathology must come before the pharmacy and the therapeutics. Every physician knows that. Any man who has the least smattering of medicine knows that. The pathology, or dis- cussion of disease, before the pharmacy, or the cure of it. From certain portions of the Word of God we go forth as from a dissecting-room, more intelligent than when we went in, but in no wise enamored of putrefaction. There is fJ4 TRUMPET PEALS. a Byronic description of sin which allures and destroys, but there is a Bible description of sin which warns and saves. And yet Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors most vehe- mently charge that this Bible is an impure book. But you all know that an impure book produces impure results. No amount of money could hire you to allow your child to read an unclean book. Now, if this Bible be an impure book, where are the victims ? Your father read it — did it make him a bad man ? Your mother read it — did it make her a bad woman ? Your sister fifteen years in Heaven died in the faith of this Gospel — did it despoil her nature ? Some say there are two million copies of the Bible in existence, some say there are three million copies of the Bible. It is impossible to get the accurate statistics ; but suppose there are two million copies of the Bible abroad, — this one book read more than any twenty books that the world ever printed, this book abroad for ages, for centuries, — where are the victims? Show me a thousand. Show me five hundred victims of an impure book. Show me a hundred despoiled of the Bible. Show me fifty. Show me ten. Show me two. Show me one ! Two hundred million copies of an impure book, and not one victim of the impurity ! On the contrary, you know very well that it is where the Bible has the most power that the family institution is most respected. The Bible is the friend of all that is pure, and infidelity is the friend of all that is impure. This much-abused Book is the only fit foundation for the household. One of the best families I ever knew of, for thirty or forty years, morning and evening, had all the members gath- ered together, 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 onl\' 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- INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 65 rity, the sons grew up and entered professions and commer- cial 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 it. Now, if you will tell me of a family where the Bible has been read twice a day for thirty years, and the children have been brought up in that habit, and the father went to ruin, and the mother went to ruin, and the sons and daughters were destroyed by it — if you will tell me of one such inci- dent, I will throw away my Bible or I will doubt your ve- racity. 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 and imagination. If a man cannot read the book Solomon's Song without impure suggestion, he is either in his heart, or in his life, a libertine. The Old-Testament description of wickedness, uncleanli- ness of all sorts, is purposely and righteously a disgusting account, instead of the Parisian vernacular which makes sin attractive instead of appalling. When those old prophets point you to a lazaretto, you understand it is a lazaretto. No gilding of iniquity. No garlands on a death's head. No pounding away with a silver mallet at iniquity when it needs an iron sledge-hammer. I can easily understand how people, brooding over the description of uncleanness in the Bible, may get morbid in mind until they are as full of it as the wings and the beak and the nostril and the claw of a buzzard is full of the odors of a carcass ; but what is wanted is not that the Bible be disinfected, but that you, the critic, have your heart and mind washed with carbolic acid ! POLYGAMY. Mr, Ingersoll says to his audience : " Is there any man here who believes in polygamy ? No. Then you are better than your God : for four thousand years ago He believed in 66 TRUMPET PEALS. it, and taught it, and upheld it." Docs the God of the Bible uphold polygamy? or did He? How many wives did God make for Adam ? He made one ivife. Does not your com- mon-sense tell you when God started the marriage institu- tion He started it as He wanted it to continue ? If God had favored polygamy He could have created for Adam five wives, or ten wives, or twenty wives just as easily as He made one. At the very first of the Bible, God shows Him- self in favor of monogamy, and antagonistic to polygamy. Genesis 2 : 24 : " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." Not his tvives, but his xvifc. How many wives did God spare for Noah in the ark? Two and t\\o 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 Sliem one wife, for Japhet one wife. Does that look as though God favored pol}-gamy? In Le- viticus 18: 18, God thunders His prohibition of more than one wife. God permitted polygamy. Yes ; just as He permits to- day 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 to say He sanctioned them ? Because Presidents Hayes and Garfield permitted, and President Harrison permits, poh'gamy in Utah, you are not, therefore, to conclude that they patronized it, that they approved it, when on the contrary they denounced it. All the Jews knew that the God of the Bible was against pohg- aniy, for in the four hundred and thirty years of their stay in Egypt there is only one case of polygam\' recorded — only one. All the mighty men of the Bible stood aloof from polygamy except those who, falling into the crime, were chas- tised within an inch of their li\'cs. Adam, Aaron, Noah, Joseph, Joshua, Samuel, monogamists. INGERSOLLIAX INFIDELITY COXFUTEU. 6/ But you say, " Didn't David and Solomon favor polyg- amy ?" Yes ; and did they not get well punished for it ? Read the lives of these two men, and you will come to the conclusion that all the attributes of God's 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 after his liaison with Bathsheba. Hoiv did Solomon get along zvitli polygamy ? Read his warnings in Proverbs, read his self-disgust in Ecclesiastes. He throws up his hands in loathing, and cries out, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." His seven hundred wives nearly pestered the life out of him. Solomon got well paid for his crimes — well 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 Mr. Ingersoll, in the face of an audience, declares 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 heathen- dom 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 Presi- dent 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, Mr. Ingersoll says the Bible approves of polygamy. I take the ulcerous and accursed slander and hurl it back into his blas- phemous teeth. God is against polygamy. The Bible is against polygamy. All Christendom is against polygamy. Hozv nmcJi Mr. IngersolFs opinion of the marriage institution 68 TKiMPl-.T PEALS. is worth 1 leave you to judge when I tell you that in one of his lectures he compares an English authoress of blackened reputation 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, he prefers an authoress whose life was an offence 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 adul- teress than I have for her who at nineteen years of age, in- formed that the crown of England washers, 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, " Rock of ages, cleft for me." 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's appetite, or going down to Chiselhurst holds by the hand the banished empress stand- ing by the casket of her dead boy, " the only son of his mother, and she a widow ;" or cables to the capital of our na- tion her anxiety about our wounded chief, and then sits down and writes with her own hand such comfort as only a wid- owed soul can give a widowed soul — always and everywhere the same good, kind, sympathetic Christian woman, for wliom we Americans and Englishmen and Scotchmen, whether in earnest prayer or exhilarant huzza, are ready at all times to exclaim, " God save the Queen !" woman's shame and iiumili.vtion. Mr. Ingcrsoll caricatures and denounces the Bible be- cause, he says, there is not a word in the Old Testament but is woman's shame and humiliation, and then he picks up the Bible and reads a few verses in the New Testament to show that the Bible all the way through is the degradation of INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 69 woman. Come now, let us see. Come into the picture gal- lery, the Louvre, the Luxemburg of the Bible, and see which pictures are the more honored. Here is Eve, a per- fect woman, as perfect a woman as could be made by a per- fect God. Here is Deborah, with her womanly arm hurling a host into the battle. Here is Miriam, leading the Israel- itish orchestra on the banks of the Red Sea. Here is Ruth, putting to shame all tJie vwdcrn slang about motJicrs-in-lazv as she turns her back on her home and her country, and faces wild beasts and exile and death that she may be with Naomi, her husband's mother ; Ruth, the queen of the harvest-fields ; Ruth, the grandmother of David ; Ruth, the ancestress of Jesus Christ. The story of her vir- tues and her life-sacrifice, the most beautiful pastoral ever written. Here is Vashti, defying the bacchanal of a thousand drunken lords ; and Esther, willing to throw her life away that she may deliver her people. And here is Dorcas, the sunlight of eternal flame gilding her philanthropic needle ; and the woman with perfume in a box made from the hills of alabastron, pouring the holy chrism on the head of Christ, the aroma lingering all down the corridor of the centuries. Here is Lydia, the merchantess of Tyrian purple, immortal- ized for her Christian behavior. Oh how the Bible hates women ! Who has more worship- pers to-day than any being that ever lived on earth, except Jesus Christ? Mary. For what purpose did Christ perform His first miracle upon earth ? To relieve the embarrassment of a womanly housekeeper at the falling short of a beverage. Why did Christ break up the silence of the tomb, and tear off the shroud and rip up the rocks? It was to stop the be- reavement of the two Bethany sisters. For whose comfort was Christ most anxious in the hour of dying excruciation? For a woman, an old woman, a wrinkled-faced woman, a woman who in other days had held Him in her arms, His first friend, His last friend, as it is very apt to be. His mother. All the pathos of the ages compressed into one 10 TKUMPET PEALS. utterance, " Behold thy mother." Oh how the Bible hates women I If the Bible is so antagonistic to woman, how do you account for the difference in woman's condition in China and Central Africa, and her condition in England and America? There is no difference except that which the Bible makes. In lands where there is no Bible, she is hitched like a beast of burden to the ploughs, she carries the hod, she submits to indescribable indignities. She must be kept in a private apartment, and if she come forth she must be carefully hooded and religiously veiled, as though it were a shame to be a \Yoman. Do you know that the very first thing the Bible does when it comes into a new country is to strike off the shackles of woman's serfdom ? O woman, where are your chains to- day? Hold up both your arms and let us see your hand- cuffs. Oh, we see the handcuffs : they are bracelets of gold, bestowed by husbandly or fatherly or brotherly or sisterly or loverly affection. Loosen the warm robe from your neck, O woman, and let us see the yoke of your bondage. Oh! I find the yoke is a carcanet of silver, or a string of corneli- ans, or a cluster of pearls that must gall you very much. How bad you must all have it ? Since you put the Bible on your stand in the sitting- room, has the Bible been to you, O woman, a curse or a blessing? Why is it that a woman when she is troubled will go to her worst enemy, the Bible? Why do you not go for comfort to some of the great infidel books, Spinoza's Ethics, or Hume's Natural History of Religion, or Paine's Age of Reason, or Dedro's dramas, or any one of the two hundred and sixty volumes of Voltaire? No, the silly, deluded woman persists in hanging about the Bible verses, " Let not your heart be troubled," "All things work together for good," " Weeping may endure for a night," " I am the resurrec- tion," " Peace, be still." Why do more women read the Bible than men ? Because while the Bible is a good book for a man, it is a better book for a woman, and it has done her more good and more kindness, and brought her more INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELirY CONFUTED. Jl grace. The Bible is a friend of man ; it is a better frienO to woman. Just read some of the cruel injunctions this Bible gives in regard to woman. See how the Scriptures maltreat her case. " Honor thy mother ;" " Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it ;" " Let them" — that is, the male converts — " let them learn first to show piety at home ;" " She hath done what she could." Ah ! you know there is not a person in all the house to- day but knows that the Bible is woman's emancipation, woman's eulogy, woman's joy, woman's heaven ; — and yet Mr. IngersoU stands in the presence of an audience and declares that the Bible is woman's shame, woman's degradation, wo- man's enemy, and one thousand idiots clap their hands in commendation ! COUNTER-CHARGES AGAINST INGERSOLLISM. The 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 rather turn the tables upon him and bring him to the bar. And I here and now charge him with Jehoiakim's folly. " When Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife." — Jekemiah 36:23. There sits Jehoiakim in the winter-house, his feet to the fire, which is blazing and crackling on the hearth. His private secretary, Jehudi, is reading to him from a scroll containing God's word to Jeremiah. Jehoiakim is displeased at the message, gets very red in the face, jumps up and snatches the scroll from the hand of his private secretary, takes out his penknife, and cuts and slashes it all to pieces. Jehoiakim was under the impression that if he destroyed the scroll he would destroy the prophecy. Ah I no. Jere- miah immediately takes another scroll and the prophecy is redictated. The fact is that all the penknifes ever made at 72 , TRUMPET TEALS. Sheffield and in all the cutleries of the world cannot success- fully destroy the Scriptures. THE MODERN JEIIOIAKIM. We have a JcJioiakitn in our day, Mr. Ingersoll, the repre- sentative of the infidelity of the hour, who proposes with his penknife to hack the Word of God to pieces. With that penknife he tries to stab Moses, and to stab Joshua, and to stab all the prophets and apostles, and evangelists, and to stab Christ, and to stab the God of the Bible ; but while he is cutting to pieces his own copy of the Bible — for I suppose he has only one copy of this dangerous book in his house, and that carefully guarded and locked up so none of his friends may be poisoned by it— there are innumerable cop- ies of the Bible being distributed. No book, secular or religious, ever multiplied with such speed and into such vastness as the Word of God, — Disraeli's " Endymion," Macaulay's " History of England," Shake- speare's tragedies, having very small and limited reading, and very small and limited sale and distribution as compared with this Book ; which, after for centuries being bombarded by thousands of Ingersolls, to-day has abroad over three hundred millions of copies. Where one Bible dies ten thou- sand Bibles are born. Cut away, then, with your infidel pen- knives. Mr. Ingersoll, with his knife-blade, proposes to cut the Bible to pieces in ridicule. Now, I like fun ; no man was ever built with a keener appreciation of it. There is health in laughter instead of harm — physical health, mental health, moral health, spiritual health — provided you laugJi at the rigJit thing. But there is a laughter which is deathful, there is a laugh- ter which has the rebound of despair. It is not healthful to giggle about God, or chuckle about eternity, or smirk about the things of the immortal soul. What caused the accident some time ago on the Hudson River Railroad? It was an intoxicated man who for a joke pulled the string of the air- INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. Jl brake and stopped the train at the most dangerous point of the journey. But the hghtning train, not knowing there was any impediment in the way, came down, crushing out of the mangled victims the immortal souls that went speeding in stantly to God and judgment. It zvas only a joke. And so Mr, IngersoU is chiefly anxious to stop the long train of the Bible, and the long train of the churches, and the long train of Christian influences, while coming down upon us are death, judgment, and eternity, coming a thou- sand miles a minute, coming with more force than all the avalanches that ever slipped from the Alps, coming with more strength than all the lightning express trains than ever whistled, or shrieked, or thundered across the continent. Stop! says Mr. IngersoU, it is only a joke. It is a spectacle which almost splits him with laughter. It is a subject which, though agonizing the nations, throws him into uproars of laughter; and the theme of his funniest lecture is the most stupendous question that was ever asked — " What must I do to be saved?" INFIDELITY AND SUICIDE. There is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles the story of a would-be suicide arrested in his deadly attempt. He was a sheriff, and according to the Roman law a bailiff him- self must suffer the punishment due an escaped prisoner; and if the prisoner breaking jail was sentenced to be endun- geoned for three or four years, then the sheriff must be en- dungeoned for three or four years ; and if the prisoner break- ing jail was to have suffered capital punishment, then the sheriff must suffer capital punishment. The sheriff had re- ceived especial charge to keep a sharp lookout for Paul and Silas. The government had not had confidence in bolts and bars to keep safe these two clergymen, about whom there seemed to be something strange and supernatural. Sure enough, by miraculous power, they are free, and the sheriff, waking out of a sound sleep, and supposing these ministers have run away, and knowing that they were to die 74 TRUMPET PEALS. for preaching Christ, and realizing that he must therefore die, rather than go under the executioner's axe on the mor- row and suffer public disgrace, resolves to precipitate his own decease. But before the sharp, keen, glittering dagger of the sheriff could strike his heart one of the loosened prison- ers arrests the blade by the command, " Do thyself no harm." In olden time, and where Christianity had not interfered Avith it, suicide was considered honorable and a sign of cour- age. Demosthenes poisoned himself when told that Alex- ander's ambassador had demanded the surrender of the Athenian orators. Isocrates killed himself rather than sur- render to Philip of Macedon. Cato, rather than submit to Julius Caesar, took his own life, and after three times his wounds had been dressed tore them open and perished. Mithridates killed himself rather than submit to Pompey, the conqueror. Hannibal destroyed his life by poison from his ring, considering life unbearable. Lycurgus a suicide, Brutus a suicide. After the disaster of Moscow, Napoleon always carried with him a preparation of opium, and one ni^lit his servant heard the ex-emperor arise, put something in a glass and drink it, and soon after the groans aroused all the attendants, and it was only through utmost medical skill he was resuscitated from the stupor of the opiate. Times have changed, and yet the American conscience needs to be toned up on the subject of suicide. God gave you a special trust in your life. He made you the custodian of your life as He made you the custodian of no other life. He gave you as weapons with which to defend it two arms to strike back assailants, two eyes to watch for invasion, and a natural love of life. To show how God in the Bible looked upon this crime, I point you to THE rogues' nCTURE-GALI.ERY in some parts of the Bible, the pictures of the people who have committed this unnatural crime. Here is the headless trunk of Saul on the walls of Bethshan. Here is the man INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 75 who chased little David — ten feet in stature chasing four. Here is the man who consulted a clairvoyant, Witch of Endor. Here is a man who, whipped in battle, instead of surrender- ing his sword with dignity, as many a man has done, asks his servant to slay him ; and when the servant declines, then the king plants the hilt of the sword in the earth, the sharp point sticking upward, and he throws his body on it and ex- pires, the coward, the suicide. Here is Ahithophel, the Machiavelli of olden times, betraying his best friend David in order that he may become prime minister of Absalom, and joining that fellow in his attempt at parricide. Not getting what he wanted by change of politics, he takes a short cut out of a disgraced life into the suicide's eternity. There he is, the ingrate ! Here is Abimelech, practically a suicide. He is with an army, bombarding a tower, when a woman in the tower takes a grindstone from its place and drops it upon his head, and with what life he has left in his cracked skull he commands his armor-bearer, " Draw thy sword and slay me, lest men say a woman slew me." There is his post-mortem photo- graph in the Book of Samuel. But the hero of this group is Judas Iscariot. Dr. Donne says he was a martyr, and we have in our day apologists for him. And what wonder, in this day when we have a book revealing Aaron Burr as a pattern of virtue, and in this day when we uncover a statue to George Sand as the benefactress of literature, and in this day when there are betrayals of Christ on the part of some of His pretended apostles — a betrayal so black it makes the infamy of Judas Iscariot white ! Yet this man by his own hand hung up for the execration of all the ages, Judas Iscariot. All the good men and women of the Bible left to God the decision of their earthly terminus, and they could have said with Job, who had a right to commit suicide if any man ever had — what with his destroyed property, and his body all aflame with insufferable carbuncles, and everything gone from his home except the chief curse of it, a pestiferous wife, and four garrulous people pelting liim with comfortless talk "i^i TRUMPET TEALS while he sits on a heap of ashes scratching his scabs with a piece of broken pottery, yet crying out in triumph, " All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come." And I therefore table this charge against infidelity as tend- ing to increase suicide and other crimes. If there be no hereafter, or if that hereafter be blissful without reference to how we live and how we die, why not move back the folding-doors between this world and the next ? And when our existence here becomes troublesome, why not pass right over into Elysium? Put this down among your most solemn reflections, and consider it after you go to your homes ; there has never been a case of sui- cide where the operator was not either demented, and there- fore irresponsible, or an infidel, I challenge all the ages, and I challenge the whole universe. There never has been a case of self-destruction while in full appreciation of his immortality, and of the fact that that immortality would be glorious or wretched according as he accepted Jesus Christ or rejected Him. You say it is business trouble, or you say it is electrical currents, or it is this, or it is that, or it is the other thing. Why not go clear back, my friend, and acknowledge that in every case it is the abdication of reason or the teaching of infidelity which practically says : '' If you don't like this life got out of it, and you will land cither in annihilation, where there are no notes to pay, no persecutions to suffer, no gout to torment, or you will land where there will be everything glorious, and nothing to pay for it." Infidelity always has been apologetic for self-immolation. After Tom Paine's " Age of Reason" was published and widely read, there was a marked increase of self-slaughter. A man in London heard Mr. Owen deliver his infidel lec- ture on Socialism, and went home, sat down, and wrote these words, " Jesus Christ is one of the weakest characters in history, and the Bible is the greatest possible deception," and then shot himself. David Hume wrote these words : *' It would be no crime for me to divert the Nile or Danube from its natural bed. Where, then, can be the crime in ni)' di- INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 7/ verting a few drops of blood from their ordinary channel?" And having written the essay he loaned it to a friend, the friend read it, wrote a letter of thanks and admiration, and shot himself. Appendix to the same book. Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Montaigne, under certain circumstances, were apologetic for self-immolation. Infidel- ity puts up no bar to people's rushing out from this world into the next. They teach us it does not make any differ- ence how you live here or go out of this world, you will land either in an oblivious nowhere or a glorious somewhere. And Infidelity holds the upper end of the rope for the sui- cide, and aims the pistol with which a man blows his brains out, and mixes the strychnine for the last swallow. If Infi- delity could carry the day and persuade the majority of people in this country that it docs not make any difference how you go out of the world you will land safely, the Hud- son and the East rivers would be so full of corpses the ferry- boats would be impeded in their progress, and the crack of a suicide's pistol would be no more alarming than the rum- ble of a street car. I have sometimes heard it discussed whether the great dramatist was a Christian or not. I do not know ; but I know that he considered appreciation of a future existence the mightiest hindrance to self-destruction : " For who could bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear. To grunt and sweat under a weary life. But that the dread of something after death — The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns — puzzles the will ?" Would God that the coroners would be brave in ren- dering the right verdict, and Avhen, in a case of irresponsi- bility they say "While this man was demented he took his 78 TKl'MTET PEALS. life," in the Other case say " Having read infidel books and attended infidel lectures, which obliterated from this man's mind all appreciation of anything like future retribution, he committed self-slaughter !" Ah! Infidelity, stand up and take thy sentence! In the presence of God and angels and men, stand up, thou mon- ster, thy lip blasted with blasphemy, thy cheek scarred with lust, thy breath foul with the corruption of the ages ! Stand up, Satyr, filthy goat, buzzard of the nations, leper of the centuries! Stand up, thou monster Infidelity! Part man, part panther, part reptile, part dragon, stand up and take thy sentence ! Thy hands red with the blood in which thou hast washed, thy feet crimson with the human gore through which thou hast waded, stand up and take thy sentence ! Down with thee to the pit and sup on the sobs and groans of families thou hast blasted, and roll on the bed of knives which thou has sharpened for others, and let thy music be the everlasting miserere of those whom thou hast damned I I brand the forehead of Infidelity with all the crimes of self- immolation for the last century on the p.art of those who had their reason. Ah ! you and I may give our fifty cents or our dollar to hear Mr. IngersoU's 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 : " It is so dark ! it is so dark ! it is so dark." On the day when the coflfin 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. INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 79 THE MEANNESS OF INFIDELITY. Mr. Ingersoll demonstrates the meanness of infidelity by satirizing his early home, and leaving the people of this country under the impression that his father at least was a bigot, and a tyrant, and a fool. Now, can you imagine any- thing meaner than the assailing of a parent's reputation after he is dead and gone ? I had a Christian ancestry of elevated type; but suppose my father or mother had been hypocritical and tyrannical, and bigoted, and bad — would it not have been debasing in me to have hooked up the horses to the ploughshare of contempt, and turned up the mounds of their graves ? Far better the conduct of Shem and Japhet, who at their father's inebriation took a mantle and walked back- ward, and with averted eyes threw it over him to hide the shame. But while Mr. Ingersoll leads his audiences to believe that his father was a tyrant and a bigot, why does he not say something about his mother? All the accounts agree in saying she was a grandly good Christian woman. Why does he not tell us the source of her goodness? Where is the Bible she used to read ? Is it still in the family ? Why does he not extol her Christian graces? How did religion seem to agree with her? Did the Christian religion make her cross, and sour, and queer, and crabbed ? or did it make her kind, and genial, and loving, and patient? Did it give her comfort in the days of trouble ? Was she deluded with it to the last ? In her dying-hour was it a pest or an en- couragement? Amid all the flowers of rhetoric can he not twist one garland for her memory? Oh, it is insufferably mean, it is accursedly mean, that a man should throw a cloud of obloquy on his early home when there was at least one parent who loved God, kept His commandments, and lived a grandly beautiful and useful life. I stand at the door of the sepulchre of that Christian mother and I cry out for justice from the infidel lecturer. Oh, ungrateful man, you are nothing to the bosom that 8o TKUMPET PEALS. nursed you, and the arm that encircled you, and the lips that prayed for you, and the hands that were blistered for you, and the shoulders that stooped to carry your burdens. You do not believe in the Bible, you do not believe in the God of the Bible : do you believe in your mother? I do not implead you by John Calvin's God, for you say he is a fiend ; I do not implead you by John Wesley's God, for you say he is a fanatic ; I do not implead you by the God of the Westminster Catechism ; I do not implead you by your father's God ; — but I implead you by your mother's God. By the birth-pang that launched you, by the Chris- tian cradle that rocked you, by the solemn hour in which you were held up in the old country meeting-house while the minister of religion said, " Robert, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," — by that God I implead you to reconsider, and turn and live, Mr. Ingersoll also shows the meanness of infidelity by trying to substitute for the chief consolation of the world absolutely nothing. You have only to hear him at the edge of the grave, or at the edge of the cofifin, discoursing, to find out that there is no comfort in infidelity. There is more good cheer in the hooting of an owl at midnight than in his discourses at the verge of the grave. You might as well ask the spirit of eternal darkness to discourse on the brightness of everlasting day. You know there are millions of people who get their chief consolation from this Holy Book. Now, Mr. Ingersoll proposes to take away that consolation. What do you think of it? What would you think of a crusade of this sort ? Suppose a man should resolve that he would organize a conspiracy to destroy all the medicines from all the apothecaries and from all the hospitals of the earth. The work is done. The medicines are taken and they are thrown into the river, or the lake, or the sea. A patient wakes up at midnight in a paroxysm of distress and wants an anodyne. " Oh," says the nurse, "the anodynes are all destroyed — we have no drops to give you ; but instead of that I'll read you a lecture on the absurdities of morphine, INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 8 1 and on the absurdities of all remedies." But the man con- tinues to writhe in pain, and the nurse says: "I'll continue to read you some discourses on anodynes — the cruelties of anodynes, the indecencies of anodynes, the absurdities of anodynes. For your groan I'll give you a laugh." Here in the hospital is a patient having a gangrened limb amputated. He says, *' Oh for ether ! Oh for chloroform !" The doctors say, " Why, they are all destroyed ; we don't have any more chloroform or ether ; but I have got some- thing a great deal better. I'll read you a lecture on the mistakes of James Y. Simpson, the discoverer of cloroform as an anaesthetic, and upon the mistakes of Doctors Agnew, and Hamilton, and Hosack, and Mott, and Harvey, and Abernethy." " But," says the man, " I must have some anaesthetics." " No," say the doctors, " they are all de- stroyed ; but we have got something a great deal better." " What is that ?" "Fun." Fun about medicines. Lie down, all ye patients in Bellevue Hospital, and stop your groaning — all ye broken-hearted of all the cities, and quit your crying ; we have the cathohcon at last ! Here is a dose of wit, here is a strengthening-plaster of sarcasm, here is a bottle of ribaldry that you are to keep well shaken up and take a spoonful of after each meal ; and if that does not cure you, here is a solution of blasphemy in which you may bathe, and here is a tincture of derision. Tickle the skeleton of death with a repartee ! Make the King of Terrors cackle ! For all the agonies of all the ages, a joke I Millions of people willing with uplifted hand toward heaven to affirm that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is full of consolation for them, and yet Mr. Ingersoll proposes to take it away, giving nothing, absolutely nothing, except fun. Is there any greater height, or depth, or length, or breadth, or immensity of meanness in all God's universe ! Mr. Ingersoll still further demonstrates the meanness of infidelity by trying to substitute for the Bible-explanation of the future world a religion of " don't know." Is there a God? Don't know ! Is the soul immortal? Don't know ! If we should meet each other in the future world will we 82 TKVMl'ET PEALS. recognize each other? Don't know! This man proposes to substitute the religion of " don't know" for the religion of " / knozi>r " I know in whom I have bchevcd," " I know that my Redeemer Hveth." Infidelity proposes to substi- tute a religion of awful negatives for our religion of glorious positives showing right before us a world of reunion and ecstasy, and high companionship, and glorious worship, and stupendous victory; the mightiest joy of earth not high enough to reach to the base of the Himalaya of uplifted splendor awaiting all those who on wing of Christian faith will soar toward it. Have you heard of the co7ispiracy to put out all tJic light- houses on the coast? Do you know that on a certain night of next month Eddystone Lighthouse, Bell Rock Light- house, Skerryvore Lighthouse, Montauk Lighthouse, Hat- teras Lighthouse, New London Lighthouse, Barnegat Light- house, and the 640 lighthouses on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts are to be extinguished? "Oh," you say, "what will become of the ships on that night? What will be the fate of the one million sailors following the sea? What will be the doom of the millions of passengers? Who will arise to put down such a conspiracy?" Every man, woman, and child in America and the world. But that is onl)' a fable. That is what infidelity is trying to do — put out all the lighthouses on the coast of eternity, letting the soul go up the " Narrows" of death with no light, no comfort, no peace — all that coast covered with the black, ness of darkness. Instead of the great lighthouse, a glow, worm of wit, a fire-fly of jocosity. Which do )ou like the better, oh voyager for eternity — the fire-fly or the light- house? What a mission Infidelity has started on ! The ex- tinguishment of lighthouses, the breaking up of lifeboats, the dismissal of all the pilots, the turning of the inscription on your child's grave into a farce and a lie. Walter Scott's " Old Mortality," chisel in hand, went through the land to cut out into plainer letters the half-ob- literated inscriptions on the tombstones, and it was a beau- tiful mission. But I\Ir. IngersoU is spending his life, and INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 83 the men who arc like him are spending their hves, with hammer and chisel, trying to cut out from the tombstones of your dead all the story of resurrection and Heaven. He is the iconoclast of every village graveyard, and of every city cemetery, and of Westminster Abbey. Instead of Christian consolation for the dying, a freezing sneer ; instead of prayer, a grimace ; instead of Paul's triumphant defiance of death, a going out you know not where, to stop you know not when, to do you know not what. That is infidelity — the boast of the CHAMPION ICONOCLAST of America. NO SUBSTITUTE FUR CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. To show that infidelity can provide no substitute for what it proposes to destroy, I ask you to mention the names of the merciful and the educational institutions which infi- delity founded, and is supporting, and has supported all the way through ; institutions pronounced against God and the Christian religion and yet pronounced in behalf of suffering humanity. What are the names of them ? Certainly not the United States Christian Commission, or the Sanitary Commission ; for Christian George H. Stuart was the presi- dent of the one, and Christian Henry W. Bellows was the president of the other. Where are the asylums and merciful institutions founded by Infidelity and supported by Infidel- ity, pronounced against God and the Bible, and yet doing work for the alleviation of suffering ? Infidelity is so very loud in its braggadocio it must have some to mention. Certainly if you come to speak of educational institutions it is not Yale, it is not Harvard, it is not Princeton, it is not Middletown ; it is not Cambridge or Oxford; it is not any institution from which a diploma would not be a disgrace. Do you point to the German universities as exceptions? I have to tell you that all the German universities to-day are under positive Christian influences, except the University of Heidelberg, where the ruffianly students cut and maul and mangle and murder each other as a matter of pride instead 84 TA'L'.U/'KT PEAI.S. of infamy. The duello is the chief characteristic of that in- stitution. There stands Christianity. There stands Infidelity. Com- pare what they have done. Compare their resources. There is Christianit)', a prayer on her lip ; a benediction on her brow; both hands full of help for all who want help; the mother of thousands of colleges ; the mother of thousands of asylums for the oppressed, the blind, the sick, the lame, the imbecile ; the mother of missions for the bringing back of the outcast ; the mother of thousands of reformatory in- stitutions for the saving of the lost ; the mother of innumer- able Sabbath-schools bringing millions of children under a drill to prepare them for respectability and usefulness, to say nothing of the great future. That is Christianity. IMPEACHMENT OF INFIDELITY. Here is Infidelity ; no prayer on her lips, no benediction on her brow, both hands clenched — what for ? To fight Christianity. That is the entire business, the complete mission, of Infidelity — to fight Christianity. Where are her schools, her colleges, her asylums of mercy ? Let me throw you down a whole ream of foolscap paper that you may fill all of it with the names of her beneficent institutions, the colleges and the asylums, the institutions of mercy and of learning, founded by Infidelity and supported alone by Infi- delity, pronounced against God and the Christian religion and yet in favor of making the world better. " Oh." you say, " a ream of paper is too much for the names of those in- stitutions." Well, then, I throw you a quire of paper. Fill it all up now. I will wait until you get all the names down. " Oh," you say, "that is too much." Well, then, I will just hand you a sJieet of letter-paper. "Oh," you say, "that is too much." Perhaps I better tear out one leaf from my hymn-book and ask you to fill up both sides of it with the names of such institutions. " Oh," you say, " that would be too much." Well, then, suppose )Ou count them on )our ten fingers. INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 85 " Oh," you say, " not quite so much as that." Well, then, count them on the fingers of one hand. " Oh," you say, " we don't want quite so much room as that." Suppose, men, you halt and count on one finger the name of any institution founded by Infidelity, supported entirely by Infidelity, pro nounced against God and the Christian religion, yet toiling to make the world better. Not one ! Not one ! Is infidelity so poor, so starveling, so mean, so useless? Get out, you miserable pauper of the universe ! Crawl into some rat-hole of everlasting nothingness. Infidelity stand- ing to-day amid the suffering, groaning, dying nations and yet doing absolutely nothing save trying to impede those who are toiling until they fall exhausted into their graves in trying to make the world better. Gather up all the work, all the merciful work, that Infidelity has ever done, add it all together, and there is not so much nobility in it as in the smallest bead of that Sister of Charity who last night went up the dark alley of the town, put a jar of jelly for an invalid appetite on a broken stand, and then knelt on the bare floor, praying the mercy of Christ upon the dying soul. Infidelity scrapes no hnt for the wounded, bakes no bread for the hungry, shakes up no pillow for the sick, rouses no comfort for the bereft, gilds no grave for the dead. While Christ, our Christ, our wounded Christ, our risen Christ, the Christ of this old-fashioned Bible — blessed be His glorious name forever ! — our Christ stands this morning pointing to the hospital, or to the asylum, saying : " I was sick and ye gave me a couch, I was lame and ye gave me a crutch, I was blind and ye physic ianed my eyes, I was orphaned and ye mothered my soul, I was lost on the mountains and ye brought me home ; inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it to me." Oh what a magnificent array of men and women have been made by the religion of the Bible ! I cannot call the roll. I call the roll only of a part of one company of a regi- ment of a battalion of an army of magnificent men and women innumerable : John Howard, John Milton, David Brainard, George Whitcfield, Martin Luther, Adoniram 86 TRUMPET PEALS. Judson, Alexander Duff, Henry Martyn, William Wilbcr- force, Richard Cobden, Bishop Mcllvainc, James A. Gar- field, George Washington, Victoria the Queen; Hannah More, Charlotte Elizabeth, Harriet Newell, Mrs. Sigourney, Florence Nightingale, Lucretia Mott, and ten thousand other men and women, living and dead, standing in the present and in the past, aflame with the transpicuous glories of the Christian religion ! In this trial that has been going on between Infidelity and Christianity, we have only called one witness, and that was Robert G. Ingersoll. He testified in behalf of Infidel- ity. We have shown that his testimony was not worthy of being received. We showed it was founded on ignorance geological, ignorance chemical, ignorance astronomical, igno- rance geographical, and ignorance Biblical. Whose testi- mony will you take — these men, the Ingersolls of earth, who say they have not heard the voice of Christ, have not seen the coronation ? or will you take the thousands and tens of thousands of Christians who testify of what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears ? Here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an anodyne for all trouble, the mightiest medicine that ever came down to earth. Here is a man who says: "I don't believe in it; there is no power in it." Here are other people who say: " We have found out its power and know its soothing influ- ence; it has cured us." Whose testimony will you take in regard to this healing medicine ? " I speak as unto wise men : judge ye what I say." DOWNFALL OF CIIRISTL\NITY. Christianity is the rising sun of our time, and men have tried with the uprolling vapors of scepticism and the smoke of their blasphemy to turn the sun into darkness. Suppose the archangels of malice and horror should be let loose a little while and be allowed to extinguish and destroy the sun in the natural heavens. They would take the oceans from other worlds and pour them on this limiinar}- of the INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 8/ planetary system, and the waters go hissing down amid the ravines and the caverns, and there is explosion after explosion, until there are only a few peaks of fire left in the sun, and these are cooling down and going out, until the vast conti- nents of flame are reduced to a small acreage of fire, and that whitens and cools off until there are only a few coals left, and these are whitening and going out until there is not a spark left in all the mountains of ashes, and the valleys of ashes, and the chasms of ashes. An extinguished sun. A dead sun. A buried sun. Let all worlds wail at the stupendous obsequies. Of course, this withdrawal of the solar light and heat throws our earth into a universal chill, and the tropics become the temperate, and the temperate becomes the Arc- tic, and there are frozen rivers and frozen lakes and frozen oceans. From the Arctic and Antarctic regions the inhabi- tants gather in toward the centre and find the equator as the poles. The slain forests are piled up into a great bonfire, and around them gather the shivering villages and cities. The wealth of the coal-mines is hastily poured into the fur- naces and stirred into rage of combustion, but soon the bon- fires begin to lower, and the furnaces begin to go out, and the nations begin to die. Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, yEtna, Stromboli, Californian geysers cease to smoke, and the ice of hail-storms remains unmelted in their craters. All the flowers have breathed their last breath. Ships with sailors frozen at the mast and helmsmen frozen at the wheel, and passengers frozen in the cabin. All nations dying, first at the north and then at the south. Child frosted and dead in the cradle. Octogenarian frosted and dead at the hearth. Workmen with frozen hand on the hammer and frozen foot on the shuttle. Winter from sea to sea. All-congealing winter. Perpetual winter. Globe of frigidity. Hemisphere shackled to hemisphere by chains of ice. Universal Nova Zembla. The earth an ice-floe grinding against other ice-floes. The archangels of malice and horror have done their work, and now they may take their thrones of glacier and look down upon the ruin they have wrought. What the destruction of the sun in the natural heavens 88 TRUMPET PEALS. would be to our physical earth, the destruction of Christian- ity would be to the moral world. The sun turned into dark ness. Infidelity in our time is considered a great joke. There are people who will gather to hear Christianity caricatured and to hear Christ assailed with quibble and quirk and mis- representation and badinage and harlequinade. A lecturer in Brooklyn Theatre is reported to have said: "When we compare our God with men, He is not much of a God. When Christ was here He was forgiving and half-human ; but now he is God ; and instead of saying, ' Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,' He sends them to eternal fire. It is wonderful the difference office makes with some people." "[Laughter]," the reporter says. The Lord Jesus Christ, who came to carry our sorrows, maligned in the presence of the city of Brooklyn ! A PUNISHABLE CRIME. I hold in my hand a book entitled " Religion and the State," by Rev. Dr. Samuel T. Spear, the ablest ecclesias- tical lawyer of our time, and, had he entered the legal pro- fession instead of theology, would long before this have been upon the bench of the Supreme Court at Washington. In this book he gives a compilation of authorities upon the subject of blasphemy. Now, I say, let the law against blasphemy be erased from the statute-book, or let it be executed. "Oh," says some one, " don't you believe in free speech ?" Yes, I believe in all styles of righteous freedom : free driving of horses, but no right to run over other people; free use of knives, but no right for assassination ; free use of gun- powder, but no right to destroy the lives or the property of others ; free speech, but no freedom for obscenity or false speaking or blasphemy. There will after a while arise in the United States a municipal authority somewhere tall enough to look over all political considerations and strong armed enough to execute the law against blasphemy, and INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 89 then we shall have no more of the outrageous utterances of last Sabbath night in Brooklyn Theatre, and the carrion stench of leprous infidelity will be fumigated from the atmosphere. I propose this morning to take Infidelity and Atheism out of the realm of jocularity into one of tragedy, and show you what these men propose, and what, if they are success- ful, they will accomplish. There are those in all our com- munities who would hke to see the Christian religion over- thrown, and who say the world would be better without it. I want to show you what is the end of this road, and what is the terminus of this crusade, and what this world will be when Atheism and Infidelity have triumphed over it, if they can. I say, if they can. I reiterate it, if they can. DEGRADATION OF WOMANHOOD. Infidelity would be the complete and unutterable degra- dation of womanhood. I will prove it by facts and argu- ments which no honest man will dispute. In all communi- ties and cities and states and nations where the Christian religion has been dominant, woman's condition has been ameliorated and improved, and she is deferred to and hon- ored in a thousand things, and every gentleman takes off his hat before her. You know that while woman may suffer injustices in England and the United States, she has more of her rights in Christendom than she has anywhere else. Now compare this with woman's condition in lands where Christianity has made little or no advance — in China, in Barbary, in Borneo, in Tartary, in Egypt, in Hindostan. The Burmese sell tJicir wives and daughters as so many sheep. The Hindoo bible makes it disgraceful and an outrage for a woman to listen to music, or look out of the window in the absence of her husband, and gives as a lawful ground for divorce a woman's beginning to eat before her husband has finished his meal ! What mean those white bundles on the ponds and rivers in China in the morning? Infanticide following infanticide ; female children destroyed 90 TRUMPET TEALS. simply because thcj- arc female. Women harnessed to a plough as an ox. Woman veiled and barricaded, and in all styles of cruel seclusion. Her birth a misfortune. Her life a torture. Her death a horror. The missionary of the cross to-day in heathen lands preaches generally to two groups — a group of men who do as they please and sit where they please; the other group women hidden and carefully se- cluded in a side apartment, where they may hear the voice of the preacher, but may not be seen. No refinement. No liberty. No hope for this life. No hope for the life to come. Ringed nose. Cramped foot. Disfigured face. Em- bruted soul. Now, compare those two conditions. How far toward this latter condition that I speak of would woman go if Christian influences were withdrawn and Christianity were destroyed ? It is only a question of dynamics. If an object be lifted to a certain point and not fastened there, and the lifting power be withdrawn, how long before that object will fall down to the point from which it started? It will fall down, and it will go still farther than the point from which it started. Christianity has lifted woman up from the very depths of degradation almost to the skies. If that lifting power be withdrawn, she falls clear back to the depth from which she was resurrected, not going any lower because there is no lower depth. And every one must admit that the only salvation of woman from degradation and woe is the Christian religion, and that the only influence that has ever lifted her in the social scale is Christianity, DEMORALIZATION OF SOCIETY, If Infidelity triumph and Christianity be overthrown, it means also the general demoralization of society. The one idea in the Bible that atheists and infidels most hate is the idea of retribution. Take away the idea of retribution and punishment from society, and it will begin very soon to dis- integrate; and take away from the minds of men the fear of hell, and there are a great many of them who would \'ery soon INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 91 turn this world into a hell. The majority of those who are indignant against the Bible because of the idea of punish- ment are men whose lives are bad or whose hearts are im- pure, and who hate the Bible because of the idea of future punishment, for the same reason that criminals hate the pen- itentiary. Oh, I have heard this brave talk about people fearing nothing of the consequences of sin in the next world, and I have made up my mind it is merely a coward's whis- tling to keep his courage up. I have seen men flaunt their immoralities in the face of the community, and I have heard them defy the Judgment Day and scofT at the idea of any future consequence of their sin ; but when they came to die they shrieked until you could hear them for nearly two blocks, and in the summer night the neighbors got up to put the windows down because they could not endure the horror. I would not want to see a rail-train with five hundred Christian people on board go down through a drawbridge into a watery grave. I would not want to see five hundred Christian people go into such disaster, but I tell you plainly that I could more easily see that than I could for any pro- tracted time stand and see an infidel die, though his pillow were of eider-down and under a canopy of vermilion. I have never been able to brace up my nerves for such a spectacle. There is something at such a time so indescribable in the countenance ! I just looked in upon it for a minute or two, but the clutch of his fist was so diabolic, and the strength of voice was so unnatural, I could not endure it. " There is no hell, there is no hell, there is no hell !" the man had said for sixty years ; but that night when I looked into the dying-room of my infidel neighbor, there was something on his countenance which seemed to say, " There is, there is, there is, there is!" The mightiest restraints to-day against theft, against im- morality, against libertinism, against crime of all sorts — the mightiest restraints are the retributions of eternity. Men know, that they can escape the law, but down in the offender's soul there is the realization of the fact that they 92 TRUMPET PEALS. cannot escape God. He stands at tlie end of the road of profligacy, and lie will not clear the guilty. Take all idea of retribution and punishment out of the hearts and minds of men, and it would not be long before Brooklyn and New York and Boston and Charleston and Chicago became Sodoms. The only restraints against the evil passions of the world to-day are Bible restraints. Suppose now these generals of Atheism and Infidelity got the victory, and suppose they marshalled a great army made up of the majority of the world. They are in com- panies, in regiments, in brigades — the whole army. For- ward, march ! ye host of infidels and atheists, banners flying before, banners flying behind, banners inscribed with the words : " No God ! No Christ ! No punishment ! No re- straints ! Down with the Bible ! Do as you please !" The sun turned into darkness. Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and first of all attack the churches. Turn them into club-houses. Away with those churches! Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and next scatter the Sabbath-schools — the Sabbath-schools filled with bright-eyed, bright-cheeked little ones who are singing songs on Sunday afternoon and getting instruction when they ought to be on the street-corners playing mar- bles, or swearing on the commons. Away with them ! For- ward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists ; next attack Christian asylums — the institutions of mercy sup- ported by Christian philanthropies. Never mind the blind eyes and the deaf ears and the crippled limbs and the weak- ened intellects. Let paralyzed old age pickup its own food, and orphans fight their own way, and the half-reformed go back to their evil habits. Forward, march ! ye great army of infidels and atheists, and with your battle-axes hew down the cross, and split up the manger of Bethlehem. On, ye great army of infidels and atheists ; now come to the graveyards and the cemeteries of the earth. Pull down the sculpture above Greenwood's gate, for it means the res- urrection. Tear away at the entrance of Laurel Hill the figure of OKI Mortalit}- and the chisel. On, }'e great army INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 93 of infidels and atheists, into the graveyards and the ceme- teries: and where you see " Asleep in Jesus," cut it away; and where you find a marble story of heaven, blast it ; and where you find over a little child's grave, " Suffer little chil- dren to come unto Me," substitute the words " delusion" and " sham ;" and where you find an angel in marble, strike off the wing ; and when you come to a family vault, chisel on the door, " Dead once, dead forever." But on, ye great army of infidels and atheists, on ! There are heights to be taken. Pile hill on hill, Pelian upon Ossa, and then hoist the ladders against the walls of heaven. On and on until ye blow up the foundations of jasper and tlie gates of pearl. Now charge up the steep. Now aim for the throne of God. A world without a Head, a universe without a King ! Or- phan constellations ! Fatherless gallaxies ! Anarchy su- preme ! A dethroned Jehovah ! An assassinated God ! Patricide, Regicide, Deicide ! That is what they mean. That is what they will have, if they can, if they can, if they can ! Civilization hurled back into semi-barbarism, and semi- barbarism driven back into Hottentot savagery ! The wheel of progress turned the other way and turned toward the dark ages ! The clock of the centuries put back two thou- sand years ! Go back, you Sandwich Islands, from your schools, and from your colleges, and from your reformed con- dition, to what you were in 1820, when the missionaries first came ! Call home the five hund 'ed missionaries from India, and overthrow their two thousan 1 schools, where they are try- ing to educate the heathen, and scatter the one hundred and forty thousand little children 'hat they have gathered out of barbarism into civilization ! Obliterate all the work of Dr. Duff in India, of David Abeel in China, of Dr. King in Greece, of Judson in Burmah, of David Brainerd amid the American aborigines, and send home the three thousand missionaries of the cross who are toiling in foreign lands, toiling for Christ's sake, toiling themselves into the grave ! Tell these three thousand men of God that they are of no 94 TRUMPET PEALS. use ! Send home the mcdiciil missionaries who arc doctor- ing the bodies as well as the souls of the dying nations ! Go home, London Missionary Society! Go home, American Board of Foreign Missions! Go home, ye Moravians, and relinquish back into darkness, and squalor, and filth, and death the nations whom ye have begun to lift ! Oh, my friends, there has never been such a nefarious plot on earth as that which Infidelity and Atheism have planned. We were shocked at the attempt to blow up the Parliament-houses in London ; but if Infidelity and Athe- ism succeed in their attempt, they would dynamite a world. Let them have their full way, and this world would be a habitation with just three rooms : the one a mad-house, an- other a lazaretto, the other a pandemonium. I put before you their whole programme from beginning to close. In the theatre the tragedy comes first and the farce afterward ; but in this infidel drama of death, the farce comes first and the tragedy afterward. And in the former, atheists and infidels laugh and mock ; but in the latter, God Himself will laugh and mock. He says so — " I will laugh at their calamity, and mock when their fear cometh." From such a chasm of individual, national, world-wide ruin, stand back. O }-oung men, stand back from that chasm ! You see the practical drift of Infidelity. I want you to know where that road leads. Stand back from that chasm of ruin. The time is coming when the infidels and the atheists who now openly, and out and out, and above board preach and practice Infidelity and Atheism will be considered as criminals against society, as they are now criminals against God. And when they die, the only text in all the Bible appropriate for the funeral sermon will be Jere- miah 22 : 19 — " He shall be buried with the burial of an ass." CHRISTIANITY NOT DEAD. Let us see whether the church of God is in a Bull Run retreat, muskets, canteens, and haversacks strewing all the INGERSOLLIAN^ INFIDELITY CONFUTED. p5 way. The great English historian, Sharon Turner, a man of vast learning and of great accuracy, not a clergyman but an attorney as well as a historian, gives this overwhelming statistic in regard to Christianity and in regard to the number of Christians in the different centuries. In the first century, 500,000 Christians ; in the second century, 2,000,000 Christians ; in the third century, 5,000,000 Chris- tians ; in the fourth century, 10,000,000 Christians; in the fifth century, 15,000,000 Christians; in the sixth cen- tury, 20,000,000 Christians ; in the seventh century, 24,000,- 000 Christians ; in the eighth century, 30,000,000 Chris- tians ; in the ninth century, 40,000,000 Christians ; in the tenth century, 50,000,000 Christians ; in the eleventh cen- tury, 70,000,000 Christians ; in the twelfth century, 80,000,- 000 Christians ; in the thirteenth century, 75,000,000 Chris- tians ; in the fourteenth century, 80,000,000 Christians ; in the fifteenth century, 100,000,000 Christians ; in the six- teenth century, 125,000,000 Christians; in the seventeenth century, 155,000,000 Christians ; in the eighteenth century, 200,000,000 Christians — a decadence, as you observe, in only one century, and more than made up in the following cen- turies, while it is the usual computation that there will be, when the record of the nineteenth century is made up, at least 300,000,000 Christians. Poor Christianity! what a pity it has no friends. How lonesome it must be. Who will take it out of the poor- house? Poor Christianity! Three hundred millions in one century. In a few weeks of last year 2,500,000 copies of the New Testament distributed. Why the earth is like an old castle with twenty gates and a park of artillery ready to thunder down every gate. Lay aside all Christendom and see how heathendom is being surrounded and honeycombed and attacked by this all-conquering Gospel. At the begin- ning of this century there were only 150 missionaries ; now there are 25,000 missionaries and native helpers and evangel- ists. At the beginning of this century there were only 50,- 000 heathen converts ; now there are 1,650,000 converts from heathendom. There is not a seacoast on the planet but the 96 TRUMPET TEALS. battery of the Gospel is planted and ready to march on, north, south, east, west. You all know that the chief work of an army is to plant the batteries. It may take many days to plant the batteries, and they may do all the work in^ ten minutes. These bat- teries are being planted all along the seacoasts and in all nations. It may take a good while to plant them, and they may do all their work in one day. They will. Nations are to be born in a day. But just come back to Christendom and recognize the fact that during the last ten years as many people have connected themselves with evangelical churches as connected themselves with the churches in the first fifty years of this century. So Christianity is falling back, and the Bible, they say, is becoming an obsolete book ! I go into a court, and wherever I find a judge's bench or a clerk's desk, I find a Bible. Upon what book could there be uttered the solemnity of an oath? What book is apt to be put in the trunk of the young man as he leaves for city life ? The Bible. What shall I find in nine out of every ten homes in Brooklyn ? The Bible. In nine out of every ten homes in Christendom ? The Bible. Voltaire wrote the prophecy that the Bible in the nineteenth century would be- come extinct. The century is almost gone and what do we see ? There have been more Bibles published in the latter part of the century than in the former part of the ccntur}', and do you think the Bible will become extinct in the next ten years ? I have to tell you that the room in which Voltaire wrote that prophecy, not long ago was crowded from floor to ceiling with Bibles for Switzerland. Suppose the Congress of the United States should pass a law that there should be no more Bibles printed in Amer- ica, and no more Bibles read. If there are thirty million grown people in the United States there would be thirty million people in an arm}' to put down such a lawand defend their right to read the Bible. But suppose the Congress of the United States should make a law against the reading or the publication of an}- other book, how many peoj^le woukl go out in such a crusade? Could }'ou get thirty million people INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 97 to go out and risk their lives in the defence of Shakespeare's tragedies, or Gladstone's tracts, or Macaulay's History of England? You know that there are a thousand men who Avould die in the defence of this book where there is not more than one man who would die in defence of any other book. Which institution stands nearest the hearts of the people of America to-day ? I do not care in what village or in what city, or what neighborhood you go. Which institution is it? Is it the post-ofifice ? Is it the hotel ? Is it the lecturing hall ? Ah ! you know it is not. You know that the institu- tion which stands nearest to the hearts of the American people is the Christian church. When the diphtheria sweeps your children off, whom do you send for? The postmaster? the attorney-general? the hotel-keeper? alderman? No, you send for a minister of this Bible religion. And if you have not a room in your house for the obsequies, what build- ing do you solicit? Do you say : " Give me the finest room in the hotel "? Do you say : " Give me that theatre "? Do you say : " Give me a place in that public building where I can lay my dead for a little while until we say a prayer over it " ? No ; you say : *' Give us the house of God." And if there is a song to be sung at the obsequies, what do you want ? What does anybody want ? The Marseillaise Hymn ? God Save the Queen? our own grand national air? No. They want the hymn with which they sang their old Chris- tian mother into her last sleep, or they want sung the Sab- bath-school hymn which their little girl sang the last Sabbath afternoon she was out before she got that awful sickness which broke your heart. I appeal to your common-sense. You know the most endearing institution on earth is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A man is a fool that does not recognize it. VICTORY FOR GOD. I know that Mr. Ingersoll and his coadjutors say in their lectures and in their interviews, and in phraseology charged 98 TRUMPET PEALS. with all venom and abuse and caricature, that Christianity- has collapsed, that the Bible is an obsolete book, that the Christian Church is on the retreat. I answer that wholesale charge ; No, not so, but the cotilrary. Vast multitudes, I believe, by my arguments have been persuaded that the Bible is a common-sensical book, that it is a reasonable book, that it is an authentic book. Men have told me that while they had been accustomed to receive the New Testament they had disbelieved the Old Testament, until by the blessing of God upon this exposition they have come to believe that the Old Testament is just as true as the New Testament. A man said to mc in Cleveland, Ohio, as he tapped mc on the shoulder: " I want to tell you that my son who was at college and who was a confirmed iJifidcl, wrote mc in a letter which I got this morning, saying that through the ar- guments you have presented in behalf of the truth of the Bible, he has given up his scepticism and surrendered his heart to God. I thought you would like to hear it." I said, " God bless you, that is the best thing I have heard to-night."' And so I believe the people are all going to be persuaded that this is God's word. I was in Boston, and at the place where the most famous infidel church was ever gathered. Music Hall stands just where it did, but the infidel church has perished. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but God's word shall never pass away." ' What is that scrolled, clasped, Dore-illustrated vol- ume on the drawing-room centre-table ? What is that de- faced, lead-pencilled volume on the clerk's desk in the court- room ? What is that volume put by loving hands into the trunk of the young man as he leaves country life for cit}- life ? What is that book on which all the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States and all our Presidents take their oaths of ofifice? What is that book of which the world thinks so much that the printing press has multiplied two hundred and fifty million copies ? It is the l^ook upon which modern infidelity has its hand, and says, " Surrender !" But on it is written " No surrender." INGEKSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 99 Do I hear you ask, " Have you any nervous anxiety about the overthrow of Christianity?" Oh! no. There never vi^ere so many churches of Jesus Christ as there are now, never so many men who beheve in the Gospel of the Son of God, never so many institutions of mercy born of Christian- ity. Have you any fear that people will be laughed out of their religion, and that the modern mode of caricaturing Christianity will destroy it from the hearts of men ? Oh ! no. A man's religion is a very sacred thing, and it is down in the depths of his soul ; and while you may persuade him out of it, or coax him out of it, or argue him out of it, you cannot laugh him out of it. A thousand voices come up to me, saying, " Do you really think Infidelity will succeed ? Has Christianity received its death-blow? and will the Bible become ob- solete?" Yes, when the smoke of the city chimney arrests and destroys the noonday sun. Josephus says about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem the sun was turned in- to darkness ; but only the clouds rolled between the sun and the earth. The sun went right on. It is the same sun, the same luminary as when at the beginning it shot out like an electric spark from God's finger, and to-day it is warming the nations, and to-day it is gilding the sea, and to-day it is filling the earth with [light. The same old sun, not at all worn out, though its light steps one hundred and ninety million miles a second, though its pulsations are four hun- dred and fifty trillion undulations in a second. Same sun with beautiful white light made up of the violet and the in- digo and the blue and the green and the red and the yellow and the orange — the seven beautiful colors now just as when the solar spectrum first divided them. At the beginning God said, " Let there be light," and light was, and light is, and light shall be. So Christianity is roll- ing on, and it is going to warm all nations, and all nations are to bask in its light. Men may shut the window-blinds so they cannot see it, or they may smoke the pipe of specula- tion until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the Lord God is a sun ! This white light of the Gospel icx) TRLwrrET rf:.ii.s. made up of all the beautiful colors of earth and heaven — violet plucked from amid the spring grass, and the indigo of the southern jungles, and the blue of the skies, and the green of the foliage, and the yellow of the autumnal woods, and the orange of the southern groves, and the red of the sunsets. All the beauties of earth and heaven brought out by this spiritual spectrum. Great Britain is going to take all Europe for God. The United States arc going to take all America for God. Both of them together will take all Asia for God. All three of them will take Africa for God. " Who art thou, oh great mountain ) before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain." The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Hallelujah, amen ! Now let us see whether the Bible is a last year's almanac. You try to insult my common-sense by telling me the Bible is fading out from the world. It is the most popular book of the century. How do I know it ? I know it just as I know in regard to other books. How many volumes of that book are pub- lished ? Well, you say, five thousand. How many copies of that book are published ? A hundred thousand. Which is the more popular? Why of course the one that has a hun- dred thousand circulation. And if this book has more copies abroad in the world, if there are five times as many Bibles abroad as any other book, does not that show you that the most popular book on the planet to-day is the Word of God? INGERSOLL DEFEATED. Mr. Ingersoll, years ago, riding in a railcar in Illinois, said: "What has Christianity ever done?" An old Chris- tian woman said : " // lias done one tJii)if^, anyhow ; it has kept Mr. Ingersoll from being governor of Illinois!" As I stood in the side room of the opera house at Peoria, Illinois, a prominent gentleman of that city said : " I can tell you the secret of that tremendous bitterness ac^ainst Cjiristianity." Said I: "What was it ■'" "Why." said he, "in this very house there was a ij^rcat convention to nominate a go\-crnor, INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. lOI and when tJiat champion of infidelity zvas nominated, a plain farmer got up and said: 'Mr. Cliairman, that nomination must not be made ; the Sunday-schools of Illinois will defeat him.' " That ended all prospect of his nomination. The Christian religion mightier to-day than it ever was. 0 my friends, the Church of Jesus Christ instead of fall- • ing back is on the advance. I am certain it is on the ad- vance. I see the glittering of swords, I hear the tramping of the troops, I hear the thunderings of parks of artillery. O ! my God and Saviour, I thank Thee that I have been permitted to see this day — this day of Thy triumph, this day of the confusion of Thine enemies. O ! Lord God, take Thy sword from Thy thigh and ride forth to the victory. 1 am mightily encouraged because I find among other things that while this Christianity has been bombarded for centuries, infidelity has not destroyed one church, or crippled one minister, or uprooted one verse of one chapter of all the Bible. If that has been their magnificent record for the cen- turies that are past, what may we expect for the future ? The Church all the time getting the victory, and their shot and shell all gone. And then I find another most encouraging thought in the fact that the secular printing-press and the pulpit seem harnessed in the same team for the proclamation of the Gos- pel. Every Wall Street banker to-morrow in New York, every State Street banker to-morrow in Boston, every Third Street banker to-morrow in Philadelphia, every banker in the United States, and every merchant will have in his pocket a treatise on Christianity, a call to repentance, ten, twenty, or thirty passages of Scripture in the reports of sermons preached throughout these cities and throughout the land to-day. It will be so in Chicago, so in New Orleans, so in Charleston, so in Boston, so in Philadelphia, so everywhere. I know the tract societies are doing a grand and glorious work, but I tell you there is no power on earth to-day equal to the fact that the American printing-press is taking up the sermons which are preached to a few hundred or a few thou- sand people, on Monday morning and Monday evening, in 102 Tin MP I: J- PEALS. tlic morning and c\cning papers, scattering that truth to the milHons. What a thought it is! What an encouragement for every Cliristian man. Tliat dehision has to-day two Inindrcd million dupes I It proposes to encircle the earth with its girdle. That which has been called a delusion has already overshadowed the Appalachian range on this side the sea, and it has over- shadowed the Balkan and Caucasian ranges on the other side the sea. It has conquered England and the United States. This champion delusion, this hoax, this swindle of the ages, as it has been called, has gone forth to conquer the islands of the Pacific, and Melanesia and the Micronesia and Malayan Polynesia have already surrendered to the delu- sion. Yea, it has conquered the Indian archipelago and Borneo, and Sumatra and Celebes and Java have fallen un- der its wiles. In the P'iji Islands, where there are 120,000 people, 102,000 have already become the dupes of this Chris- tian religion, and if things go on as they are now going on, and if the influence of this great hallucination of the ages cannot be stopped, it will swallow the globe. The cannibals in South Sea, the Bushmen of Terra del Fuego, the wild men of Australia, putting down the knives of their cruelt}-, and clothing themselves in decent apparel — all under the power of this delusion. Judson and Doty and Abeel and Camp- bell and Williams, and the three thousand missionaries of the Cross turning their backs on home and civilization and comfort, and going out amid the squalor of heathenism to relieve it, to save it, to help it, toiling until the)' dropped into their graves, dying with no earthly comfort about them, and going into graves with no appropriate epitaph, when they might have lived in this country, and lived for them- selves, and lived luxuriously, and been at last put into brill iant sepulchre. What a delusion ! IXGERSOLLIAN IXFIDELITY COXFUTED. lO^ WHAT HAS BEEX ACCOMPLISHED? The delusion has made wonderful transforinations of huvian cJiaracter. Lo I the Prototj-pe Captive of this great Christian delusion I There goes Saul of Tarsus, on horseback, at full gallop. Where is he going? To destroy Christians. He wants no better play-spell than to stand and watch the hats and coats of the murderers who are massacring God's children. There goes the same man. This time he is afoot. Where is he going now ? Going on the road to Ostia to die for Christ. They tried to whip it out of him, they tried to scare it out of him, they thought they would give him enough of it by putting him into a windowless dungeon, and keeping him on small diet, and denying him a cloak, and condemning him as a criminal, and howling at him through the street ; but they could not freeze it out of him, and they could not sweat it out of him, and they could not pound it out of him, so they tried the surgerj^ of the sword, and one summer day in '65 he was decapitated. Perhaps the mightiest intellect of the six thousand years of the world's existence hoodwinked, cheated, cajoled, duped by the Christian religion I I will go down the aisle of any church in Christendom, and I will find on either side that aisle those who were once profligate, pro- fane, unclean of speech, and unclean of action, drunken and lost. But by the power of this delusion of the Christian re- ligion they have been completely transformed, and now they are kind and amiable and genial and loving and useful. Everybody sees the change. Under the power of this great hallucination they have quit their former associates, and whereas they once found their chief delight among those who gambled and swore and raced horses, now they find their chief joy among those who go to prayer-meetings and churches ; so complete is the delusion. Yea. their own fami- lies have noticed it — the wife has noticed it, the children have noticed it. The money that went for rum now goes for books and for clothes and for education. He is a new man. All 104 TRUMPET PEALS. who know him sa}' there has been a wonderful change. What is the cause of this change? Tliis great hallucination of the Christian religion. There is as much difference between what he is now and what he once was, as between a rose and a nettle, as between a dove and a vulture, as between day and night. Tremendous delusion ! Admiral Farragut, one of the most admired men of the American navy, early became a victim of this Christian delu- sion, and seated not long before his death, at Long Branch, he was giving some friends an account of his early life. He said : " My father went down in behalf of the United States Government to put an end to Aaron Burr's rebellion. I was a cabin-boy and went along with him. I could swear like an old salt. I could gamble in every style of gambling. I knew all the wickedness there was at that time abroad. One day my father cleared everybody out of the cabin except myself, and locked the door. He said : * David, what are you going to do? What are you going to be?' 'Well,' I said, ' father, I am going to follow the sea.' * Follow the sea! and be a poor miserable, drunken sailor, kicked and cuffed about the world and die of a fever in a foreign hospital.' " ' O ! no,' I said, ' father, I will not be that, I will tread the quarter-deck, and command as you do.' ' No, David,' my father said, ' no, David, a person that has your principles and your bad habits will never tread the quarter-deck or command.' My father went out and shut the door after him, and I said then, ' I will change, I will never swear again, I will never drink again, I will never gamble again, and, gen- tlemen, by the help of God I have kept those three vows to this time. I soon after that became a Christian, and that decided my fate for time and for eternity.'" Blessed delu- sion, that could work such a ivonderful transforinatio)i of character ! THE GREATEST WORK OF THE AGE. The great works of the great lawyers, the Blackstones, the Clarendons, the Hales, the Mansfields, the Currans, the INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. IO5 Burkes, the Emmets, the Rufus Choates, the Daniel Web- sters — all 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: Indorsed by illustrious dupes! Ah ! that is the remarkable thing about this delusion : it overpowers the strongest intellects. For example : William Wilberforce, the statesman ; Robert Boyle, the philosopher ; Locke, the metaphysician. Deluded Lawyers. — Lord Cairns, the highest legal author- ity in England, the ex-adviser of the throne, spending his vacation in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the poor people of Scotland. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, the Secre- tary of the United States, an old-fashioned evangelical Christian, an elder in the Reformed Church. John Bright, a deluded Quaker. Henry Wilson, the Vice-President of the United States, dying a deluded Methodist or Congrega- tionalist. Earl of Kintore dying a deluded Presbyterian. Deluded Doctors. — Two hundred and twenty physicians meeting week by week in London, in the Union Medical Prayer Circle, to worship God. Deluded Sceptics. — Thomas Chalmers was once a sceptic, Robert Hall a sceptic, Robert Newton a sceptic, Christmas Evans a sceptic. But when once with strong hand they took hold of the chariot of the Gospel, they rolled it on, and with what momentum ! Deluded Critics. — Gather the critics, secular and religious, of this century together, and put a vote to them as to which is the greatest poem ever written, and by large majority they will say, " Paradise Lost." Who wrote " Paradise Lost? " One of the fools who believed in this Bible, John Milton. Benjamin Franklin surrendered to this delusion, if you may judge from the letter that he wrote to Thomas Paine begging him to destroy the "Age of Reason" in manuscript, and never let it go into type, and writing afterward, in his old days: "Of this Jesus of Nazareth I have to say that the I06 TRUMPET PEALS. system of morals lie left, and the religion He has given us, are the best things the world has ever seen or is likely to see." Patrick Hciiry, the electric champion of liberty, enslaved by this delusion, so that he says : " The book worth all other books put together is the Bible." Benjamin Rush, the leading physiologist and anatomist of his day, the great medical scientist, — what did he say? "The only true and perfect religion is Christianity." Isaac Nczvton, the leading philoso- pher of his time, — what did he say? That man, surrenderin to this delusion of the Christian religion, crying out : " The sublimest philosophy on earth is the philosophy of the Gos- pel." David Br czvstcr, at the pronunciation of whose name every scientist the world over uncovers his head, David Brewster saying : " Oh, this religion has been a great light to me, a very great light all my days." President Thiers, the great French statesman, acknowledging that he prayed when he said : " I invoke the Lord God, in whom I am glad to believe." David Livingstone, able to conquer the lion, able to conquer the panther, able to conquer the savage, yet con- quered by this delusion, this hallucination, this great swindle of the ages, so when they find him dead they find him on his knees. William E. Gladstone, the strongest intellect in England to-day, unable to resist this chimera, this fallacy, this delusion of the Christian religion, goes to the house of God every Sabbath, and often, at the invitation of the rector, re-ads the prayers to the people. Oh, if those mighty intellects are overborne by this delu- sion, what chance is there for )'ou and for me ? Besides that, I have noticed that first-rate infidels cannot be depended on for steadfastness in the proclamation of their sentiments. Goethe, a leading sceptic, \\'as so wrought upon by this Christianity that in a weak moment he cried out: "My belief in the Bible has saved me in my literary and moral life." Rousseau, one of the most eloquent cham- pions of infidelity, spending his whole life warring against Christianit}', cries out : "The majesty of the Scriptures amazes me." Altemont, the notorious infidel, one would think he would have been safe asrainst this delusion of the Christian INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 10/ religion. Oh no ! After talking against Christianity all his days, in, his last hours he cried out : " O thou blasphemed but most indulgent Lord God, hell itself is a refuge if it hide me from thy frown." Voltaire, the most talented infidel the world ever saw, writing two hundred and fifty publications, and the most of them spiteful against Christianity, himself the most notorious libertine of the century — one would have thought he could have been depended upon for steadfastness in the advocacy of infidelity and in the war against this terrible chimera, this delusion of the Gospel. But no ; in his last hour he asks for Christian burial, and asks that they give him the sacra- ment of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why, you cannot depend upon these first-rate infidels ; you cannot depend upon their power to resist this great delusion of Christianity. Thomas Paine, the god of modern sceptics, his birthday celebrated in New York and Boston with great enthusiasm — Thomas Paine, the paragon of Bible-haters — Thomas Paine, about whom his brother-infidel William Carver wrote in a letter, which I have at my house, saying that he drank a quart of rum a day and was too mean and too dishonest to pay for it — Thomas Paine, the adored of modern infidelity — Thomas Paine, who stole another man's wife in England and brought her to this land — Thomas Paine, who was so squalid and so loathsome and so drunken and so profligate and so beastly in his habits, sometimes picked out of the ditch, sometimes too filthy to be picked out, — Thomas Paine, one would have thought that he could have been depended on for steadfastness against this great delusion. But no. In his dying hour he begs the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy. Powerful delusion ! All-conquering delusion ! Earth- quaking delusion of the Christian religion ! Yea, it goes on ; it is so impertinent and it is so overbearing, this chimera of the Gospel, that having conquered the great picture-galleries of the world, the old masters and the young masters, it is not satisfied until it has conquered the vmsic of the world. Look over the programme of a magnificent musical festival in New York, and see what are the great performances, I08 TRUMPET PEALS. and learn that the greatest of all the subjects are religious subjects. Three thousand voices accompanied with a vast number of instruments! " Israel in Egypt." Yes, Beethoven deluded until he wrote the High Mass in D Major. Hadyn deluded with this religion until he wrote the " Creation." Handel deluded until he wrote the oratorios of "Jephtha," and " Esther," and " Saul," and " Israel in Egypt," and the " Messiah." Last Friday night, three thousand deluded people singing of a delusion to eight thousand deluded hearers ! Yea, this chimera of the Bible is not satisfied until it goes on and builds itself into the most permanent architec- ture— so it seems as if the world is never to get rid of it. What are .some of the finest buildings in the world ? St. Paul's, St. Peter's, the churches and cathedrals of all Chris- tendom. I was impressed in journeying on the other side the sea with the difference the Bible makes in countries. The two nations of Europe that are the most moral to-day, and that have the least crime, are Scotland and Wales. They have by statistics, as you might find, fewer thefts, fewer arsons, fewer murders. What is the reason ? A bad book can liardl}' live in Wales. The Bible crowds it out. I was told bj- one of the first literary men in Wales : " There is not a bad book in the Welsh language." He said : " Bad books come down from London, but they cannot live here." It is the Bible that is dominant in Wales. And then in Scotland just open your Bible to give out your text, and there is a rustling all over the house almost startling to an American. What is it ? The people opening their Bibles find the text, looking at the context, picking out the referenced passages, seeing whether you make right quotation. Scotland and Wales, Bible-read- ing people. That accounts for it. A man, a city, a nation that reads God's Word must be virtuous. That Book is the foe of all wrong-doing. What makes Edinburgh better than Constantinople ? The Bible. I was also impressed in m\' transatlantic journeys with the wonderful power that Christ holds among the nations. The INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. IO9 great name in Europe to-day is not Victoria, not Marquis of Salisbury, not William the Emperor, not Bismark ; the great name in Europe to-day is Christ, You find the crucifix on gate-post, you find it in the hay-field, you find it at the en- trance of the manor, yau find it by the side of the road. The greatest pictures in all the galleries of Italy, Germany, France, England, and Scotland are Bible pictures. The mightiest picture on this planet is Rubens' ** Scourging of Christ," Painter's pencil loves to sketch the face of Christ. Sculptor's chisel loves to present the form of Christ, Organs love to roll forth the sorrows of Christ, The first time you go to London go into the Dore pict- ure-gallery. As I went and sat down before '* Christ De- scending the Steps of the Praetorium " at the first I was disappointed. I said : " There isn't enough majesty in that countenance, not enough tenderness in that eye ;" but as I sat and looked at the picture it grew upon me until I was overwhelmed with its power, and I staggered with emotion as I went out into the fresh air, and said : " Oh, for that Christ I must live, and for that Christ I must be M'illing to die !" Make that Christ your personal friend, my sister, my brother. You may never go to Milan to see Da Vinci's " Last Supper ;" but, better than that, you can have Christ come and sup with you. You may never get to Antwerp to see Rubens' " Descent of Christ from the Cross," but you can have Christ come down from the moun- tain of His suffering into your heart and abide there forever. Oh, you must have him ! A GREAT CHANGE. You began with thinking that the Christian religion was a stupid farce ; you have come to the conclusion that it is a reality. There is something the matter with yoii. All your friends have found out there is a great change. And if some of you would give your experience you would give it in scholarly style, and others giving your experience would give it in no TKU.UPET PEALS. broken style, but the one experience would be just as good as the other. Some of you have read everything. You arc scientific and you arc scholarly, and yet if I should ask you, " What is the most sensible thing you ever did ?" you would say, " The most sensible thing I ever did was to give my heart to God." But there may be others who have not had early advan- tages, and if they were asked to give their experience, they might give such testimony as the man gave in a prayer meet- ing when he said : " On my way here to-night, I met a man who asked me where I was going. I said, ' I am going to prayer meeting.' He said, ' There are a good many religions and I think the most of them are delusions ; as to the Chris- tian religion, that is only a notion, that is a mere notion, the Christian religion.' I said to him : ' Stranger, you sec that tavern over there?' ' Yes,' he said, ' I see it.' ' Do you see me ?' ' Yes, of course I see you.' * Now, the time was, every- body in this town knows, when if I had a quarter of a dollar in my pocket I could not pass that tavern without going in and getting a drink; all the people of Jefferson could not keep me out of that place ; but God has changed m}- heart, and the Lord Jesus Christ has destroyed my thirst for strong drink, and there is my whole week's wages, and I have no temptation to go in there;' and, stranger, if this is a notion I want to tell you it is a mighty powerful notion : a notion that has put clothes on my children's backhand it is a notion that has put good food on our table, and it is a notion that has filled my mouth with thanksgiving to God. And, stranger, you better go along with me, you might get relig- ion too; lots of people are getting religion now.'" Yes, the Bible is right in its effects, I do not care where you put the Bible, it just suits the place. You put it in the hand of a man seriously concerned about his soul. I see peojile often giving to the seritnis soul this and that book. It may be very well, but there is no book like the liiblc. He reads the commandments and pleads to the indictment, "Guilty." lie takes up the Psalms of David and saj's: "They just describe my feelings." He flics to good works; INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. Ill Paul starts him out of that by the announcement: "A man is not justified by works." He falls back in his discourage- ment ; the Bible starts him up with the sentences : " Re- member Lot's wife," " Grieve not the Spirit," " Flee the wrath to come." Then the man in despair begins to cry out: " What shall I do ? where shall I go?" and a voice reaches him saying : " Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Yea, this delusion of the Christian religion shows itself in the fact that it goes to tJiose who are in trouble. Now, it is bad enough to cheat a man when he is well and when he is prosperous ; but this religion comes to a man when he is sick, and says : " You will be well again after a while ; you are going into a land where there are no coughs and no pleurisies and no consumptions and no languishing; take courage and bear up." Yea, this awful chimera of the Bible comes to the poor and it says to them : " You are on your way to vast estates and to dividends always declarable." Suppose that there was a great pestilence going over the earth, and hundreds of thousands of men were dying of that pestilence, and some one should find a medicine that cured ten thousand people, would not everybody acknowledge that that must be a good medicine? Why, some one would say : *' Do you deny it ? There have been ten thousand people cured by it." I simply state the fact that there have been hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women who say they have felt the truthfulness of that Book and its power in their souls. It has cured them of the worst leprosy that ever came down on our earth, namely, the leprosy of sin ; and if I can point you to multitudes who say they have felt the povv-er of that cure, are you, not reasonable enough to acknowledge the fact that there must be some power in the medicine ? Will you take the evidence of millions of patients who have been cured, or will you take the evidence of the sceptic who stands aloof and confesses that he never took the medicine ? 112 TRLMI'ET PEALS. A BALM FOR THE WEARY. Take this Bible and place it in the hands of men in trouble ? Is there anybody here in trouble ? Ah, I mifjht better ask are there any here who have never been in trouble. Put this Bible in the hands of the troubled. You find that as some of the best berries grow on the sharpest thorns, so some of the sweetest consolations of the Gospel grow on the most sting- ing affliction. You thought that Death had grasped your child. Oh, no! It was only the heavenly Shepherd taking a Iamb out of the cold. Christ bent over you as you held the child in your lap, and putting His arms gently around the little one, said : " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." BEYOND THE GRAVE. This delusion of Christianity comes to the bereft and talks of reunion before the throne, and of the cessation of all sorrow. And then to show that this delusion will stop at absolutely nothing, it goes to the dying bed and fills the man with anticipations. How much better it would be to have him die without any more hope than swine and rats and snakes. Shovel him under ! That is all. Nothing more left of him. He will never know anything again. Shovel him under? The soul is only a superior part of the body, and when the body disintegrates the soul disintegrates. Annihilation, vacancy, everlasting blank, obliteration. Why not present all that beautiful doctrine to the d}-ing, instead of coming with this hoax, this swindle of the Christian reli- gion, and filling the dying man with anticipations of another life, until some in the last hour have clapped their hands, and some have shouted and some have sung, and some have been so overwrought with joy they could only look ecstatic. Palace gates opening, they thought — diamonded coronets flashing — hands beckoning, orchestras sounding. Little children dying actually believing they saw their departed parents, so that although the little children had been so INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. II3 weak and feeble and sick for weeks they could not turn on their dying pillow, at the last, in a paroxysm of rapture un- controllable they sprang to their feet and shouted : " Mother, catch me, I am coming!" And to show the immensity of this delusion, this awful swindle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I open a hospital and I bring into that hospital the death-beds of a great many Christian people, and I take you by the hand this morning and I walk up and down the wards of that hospital, and I ask a few questions. I ask, " Dying Stephen, what have you to say?" " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." " Dying John Wesley, what have you to say ?" " The best of all is God is with us." '' Dying Edward Payson, what have you to say?" " I float in a sea of glory." " Dying John Bradford, what have you to say ?" ** If there be any way of going to heaven on horseback, or in a fiery chariot, it is this." " Dying Neander, what have you to say ?" " I am going to sleep now — good-night." " Dying Mrs. Florence Foster, what have you to say ?" " A pilgrim in the valley, but the mountain tops arc all agleam from peak to peak." " Dying Alexander Mather, what have you to say?" " The Lord who has taken care of me fifty years, will not cast me off now ; glory be to God and to the Lamb! Amen, amen, amen, amen !" " Dying John Powson, after preaching the Gospel so many years, what have you to say ?" " My death-bed is a bed of roses." " Dying Doctor Thomas Scott, what have you to say?" "This is Heaven begun." "Dying soldier in the last war, what have you to say ?" " Boys, I am going to the front." " Dying telegraph operator on the battlefield of Virginia, what have you to say?" " The wires are all laid, and the poles are up from Stony Point to headquarters." " Dying Paul, what have you to say ?" " I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand ; I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. O ! death, where is thy sting ? O ! grave, where is thy victory ? Thanks be unto God who giveth us the vic- tory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 r 4 TK i 'MP/-: T PI: A I. S. O ! my Lord, my God, what a delusion ! What a glorious delusion ! Submerge me with it, fill my eyes and ears with it, put it under my dying head for a pil- low— this delusion — spread it over me for a canopy, put it underneath me for an outspread wing — roll it over me in ocean surges ten thousand fathoms deep. O ! if infidelit\', and if atheism, and if annihilation are a reality, and the Christian religion is a delusion, give me the delusion. The strong conclusion of every man and woman must be, that Christianity producing such grand results cannot be a delusion. A lie, a cheat, a swindle, an hallucination cannot launch such a glory of the centuries. Your logic and your common sense convince you that a bad cause cannot pro- duce an illustrious result ; out of the womb of such a mon- ster no such angel can be born. Well, we will soon understand it all. Your life and mine will soon be over. We will soon come to the last bar of the music, to the last act of the tragedy, to the last page of the book — yea, to the last line and to the last word, and to you and to me it will cither be midnoon or midnight ! ROUSSEAU'S DREAM. Rousseau, the infidel, fell asleep amid his sceptical manu- script lying all around the room, and in his dream he en- tered heaven and heard the song of the worshippers, and it was so sweet he asked an angel what it meant. The angel said : " This is the Paradise of God, and the song you hear is the anthem of the redeemed." Under another roll of the celestial music Rousseau wakened and got up in the mid- night and as well as he could wrote down the strains of the music that he had heard in the wonderful tune called the Songs of the Redeemed. God grant that it may not be to you and to me an infidel dream but a glorit>us realit}\ When we come to the night of death and we lie tlown to our last sleep, may our ears really be wakenetl b)'thc canticles of the heavenly temple, and the songs and the anthems and the INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. II5 carols and the doxologies that shall climb the musical lad- der of that heavenly gamut. Colonel Ethan Allen was a famous infidel in his day. His wife was a very consecrated woman. The mother instructed the daughter in the truths of Christianity. The daughter sickened and was about to die, and she said to her father: " Father, shall I take your instruction ? or shall I take mother's instruction ? I am going to die now ; I must have this matter decided." That man, who had been loud in his infidelity, said to his dying daughter : " My dear, you had better take your mother's religion." My advice is the same to you, O ! young man ; you had better take your mother's religion. You know how it comforted her. You know what she said to you when she was dying. You had better take your mother's religion. THE BIBLE — THE BOOK OF BOOKS. The Bible is a great poem. We have in it faultless rhythm, bold imagery, starthng antithesis, rapturous lyric, sweet pas- toral, instructive narrative and devotional psalm ; thoughts expressed in style more solemn than that of Montgomery, more bold than that of Milton, more terrible than that of Dante, more natural than that of Wordsworth, more impas- sioned than that of Pollok, more tender than that of Cowper, more weird than that of Spenser. This great poem brings all the gems of the earth into its coronet, weaves the fiames of judgment into its garlands, and pours eternal harmonies in its rhythm. Everything this book touches it makes beautiful, from the plain stones of the summer threshing floor to the daughter of Nahor filling the trough for the camels ; from the fish pools of Heshbon up to the Psalmist praising God with diapason of storm and whirlwind, and Job's imagery of Orion, Arcturus, and the Pleiades. Old books go out of date. When they were written they discussed questions which were being discussed : they struck at wrongs which had long ago ceased, or advocated in- I 1 6 TR UMPE r PEA L S. stitutions which excite not our interest. Were tliey books of history, the facts have been gathered from the imperfect mass, better classified and more lucidly presented. Were they books of poetry, they were interlocked with wild my- thologies which have gone up from the face of the earth like mists at sunrise. Were they books of morals, civilization will not sit at the feet of barbarism ; neither do we want Sappho, Pythagoras and Tully to teach us morals. What do the masses of the people care now for the pathos of Simonides, or the sarcasm of Menander, or the gracefulness of Philemon, or "the wit of Aristophanes? Even the old books we have left, with a few exceptions, have but very little effect upon our times. Books are human ; they have a time to be born, they are fondled, they grow in strength, they have a middle life of usefulness ; then comes old age ; — they totter and they die. Many of the national libraries are merely the cemeteries of dead books. Some of them lived flagitious lives and died deaths of ignominy. Some were virtuous and accomplished a glorious mission. Some went into the ashes through inquisitorial fires. Some found their funeral pile in sacked and plundered cities. Some were neglected and died as foundlings at the door of science. Some expired in the author's study, others in the publisher's hands. Ever and anon there comes into your possession an old book, its author forgotten and its usefulness done, and with leathern hps it seems to say : " I wish I were dead." Monuments have been raised over poets and philanthropists. Would that some tall shaft might be erected in honor of the world's buried books ! The world's authors would make pilgrimage thereto, and poetr)-, and literature, and science, and religion would consecrate it with their tears. Not so with one old book. It started in the world's infancy. It grew under theocracy and monarch)'. It with- stood storms of fire. It grew under prophet's mantle and under the fisherman's coat of the apostles ; in Rome and Ephesus and Jerusalem and Patnios. T}-ranny issued edicts against it, and infidelity put out the tongue, and Mohamme- danism from its mosques hurled its anathemas, but the old IXGERSOLLIAN IXFIDELITY CONFUTED. H/ Bible still lived. It crossed the British Channel and was greeted by Wickcliffe and James I. It crossed the Atlantic and struck Plymouth Rock, until, like that of Horeb, it gushed with blessedness. Churches and asylums have gath- ered all along its way, ringing their bells and stretching out their hands of blessing ; and every Sabbath there are ten thousand heralds of the cross with their hands on this open, grand, free, old English Bible. It will not have accomplished its mission until it has climbed the icy mountains of Greenland ; until it has gone over the granite cliffs of China ; until it has thrown its glow amid the Australian mines ; until it has scattered its gems among the diamond districts of Brazil ; and all thrones shall be gathered into one throne, and all crowns by the fires of revolution shall be melted into one crown, and this Book shall at the very gate of heaven have waved in the ransomed empires. Not until then will this glorious Bible have ac- complished its mission. Nine tenths of all the good Hterature of this age is merely the Bible diluted. Goethe, the admired of all sceptics, had the wall of his house at Weimar covered with religious maps and pictures. Milton's " Paradise Lost" is part of the Bible in blank verse. Tasso's " Jerusalem Delivered " is borrowed from the Bible. Spenser's writings are imitations of the parables. John Bunyan saw in a dream only what St. John had seen before in Apocalyptic vision. Macaulay crowns his most thrilling sentences with Scripture quotations. Thomas Carlyle is only a splendid distortion of Ezekiel ; and w^andering through the lanes and parks of this imperial do- main of Bible truth, I find all the great American, English, German, Spanish, Italian poets, painters, orators and rheto- ricians. Again, the Bible is right in style, I am fascinated with the conciseness yet greatfulness of this Book. Every word is packed full of truth. Every sentence is double barrelled. Every paragraph is like an old banyan-tree with a hundred roots and a hundred branches. It is a great arch ; pull out one stone and it all comes down. There has never been a I 1 8 TR UMPE T PEA L S. pearl-diver who could gather up one half of the treasures in any verse. John Halsebach, of Vienna, for t\vent}'-one years every Sabbath expounded to his congregations the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and yet did not get through with it. Where is there in the Avorld of poetic description any- thing like Job's champing, neighing, pawing, lightning- footed, thunder-necked war horse? Dryden's, Milton's, Cowper's tempests are very tame compared with David's storm that wrecks the mountains of Lebanon and shivers the wilderness of Kadish. Why, it seems as if to the feet of these Bible writers mountains brought all their gems, and the seas all their pearls, and the gardens all their frank- incense, and the spring all its blossoms, and the harvests all their wealth, and heaven all its grandeur, and eternity all its stupendous realities ; and that since then poets, and orators, and rhetoricians have been drinking from exhausted fountains, and searching for diamonds in a realm utterly rifled and ransacked. This Book is the hive of all sweetness. It is the armory of all well-tempered weapons. It is the tower containing the crown jewels of the universe. It is the lamp that kin- dles all other lights. It is the home of all majesties and splendors. It is the marriage ring that unites the celestial and the terrestrial, while all the clustering white-robed deni- zens of the sky hovering around rejoice at the nuptials. This Book — it is the wreath into which are twisted all gar- lands ; it is the song into which are struck all harmonies ; it is the river into which are poured all the great tides of hal- lelujah ; it is the firmament in which suns and moons ami stars and constellations and universes and eternities wheel and blaze and triumph. Where is the young man's soul with any music in it that is not stirred with Jacob's lament, or Nahum's dirge, or Habakkuk's dithyrambic, or Paul's march of the resurrection? I am also amazed at the variety of this Book. Mind you, not contradiction or collision, but variety. Just as in the song you have the basso and alto and soprano and tenor — INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. IIQ they are not in collision with each "other but come in to make up the harmony. So it is in this Book; there are different parts of this great song of redemption. The prophet comes and takes one part, and the patriarch another part, and the evangelist another part, and the apostles an- other part, and yet they all come into the grand harmony — " the song of Moses and the Lamb." God prepared the Book for all classes of people. For instance, little children would read the Bible, and God knew that ; so He allows Matthew and Luke to write sweet stories about Christ with the doc- tors of the law, and Christ at the well, and Christ at the cross, so that any httle child can understand them. Then God knew that the aged people would want to read the Book, so He allows Solomon to compact a world of wisdom in that Book of Proverbs. God knew that the historian would want to read it, and so He allows Moses to give the plain' statement of the Pentateuch. God knew that the poet would want to read it, and so He allows Job to picture the heavens as a curtain, and Isaiah the mountains as weighed in a balance, and the waters as held in the hollow of the Omnipotent hand ; and God touched David until in the lat- ter part of the Psalms, he gathers a great choir standing in galleries above each other — beasts and men in the first gallery ; above them, hills and mountains ; above theni, fire and hail and tempest ; above them, sun and moon and stars of light ; and on the highest gallery arrays the hosts of angels ; and then standing before this great choir, reaching from the depths of earth to the heights of heaven, like the leader of a great orchestra, he lifts his hands crying: "Praise the Lord. Let everything that hath breath, praise the Lord ; " and all earthly creatures in their song, and mountains with their waving cedars, and tempests in their thunder, and rat- tling hail, and stars on all their trembling harps of light, and angels on their thrones, respond in magnificent acclaim : " Praise ye the Lord. Let everything that hath breath, praise the Lord." There are many who would have you believe that the Bible is an outlandish book, and obsolete. It is fresher and I20 TRUMPET PEALS. more intense than any book that yesterday came out of the great publishing houses. " O," you say, " it was made hun- dreds of years ago, and the learned men of King James translated it hundreds of years ago." I confute that idea by telling you it is not five minutes old, when God, by His blessed Spirit retranslates it into the heart. If, in seeking the way of life through Scripture study, you implore God's light to fall upon the page, you will find that these promises are not one second old, and that they drop straight from the throne of God into your heart. There are many people to whom the Bible does not amount to much. If they merely look at the outside beauty, it will no more lead them to Christ than Washington's fare- well address, the Koran of Mahomet or the Shaster of the Hindoos. It is the inward light of God's Word you must get or die. I went up to the church of the Madeleine, in Paris, and looked at the doors which were the most wonder- fully constructed I ever saw, and I could have staid there for a whole week ; but I had only a little time, and so, having glanced at the wonderful carving on the doors, I passed in and looked at the radiant altars, and the sculptured dome. Alas! that so many stop at the outside door of God's Holy Word, looking at the rhetorical beauties, instead of going in and looking at the altars of sacrifice and the dome of God's mercy and salvation that hovers over every penitent and be- lieving soul ! 0 my friends, if you merely want to study the laws of language, do not go to the Bible. It was not made for that. Take " Howe's Elements of Criticism" — it will be better than the Bible for that. If you want to study metaphysics, better than the Bible will be the writings of William Hamilton. But if you want to know how to have sin pardoned, and at last to gain the blessedness of Heaven, " Search the Scrip- tures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life." 1 know there are many people who regard the Bible as merely a collection of genealogical tables and dry facts. That is because they do not know how to read the book. You take up the most interesting novel that was ever written, INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 121 and if you commence at the four-hundredth page to-day, and to-morrow at the three-hundredth, and the next day at the first page, how much sense or interest would you get from it ? Yet that is the very process to which the Bible is subjected every day. An angel from heaven, reading the Bible in that way, could not understand it. The Bible, like all other palaces, has a door by which to enter and a door by which to go out. Genesis is the door to go in and Reve- lation the door to go out. The epistles of Paul the Apostle are merely letters written, folded up and sent by couriers to the different churches. Do you read other letters the way you read Paul's letters ? Suppose you get a business letter, and you know that in it there are important financial propositions, do you read the last page first and then one line of the third page, and another of the second, and another of the first ? No. You begin with " Dear sir" and end with "Yours truly." Now, here is a letter from the throne of God written to our lost world ; it is full of magnificent hopes and propositions, and we dip in here and there, and we know nothing about it. Besides that, people read the Bible when they cannot do anything else. It is a dark day, and they do not feel well, and they do not go to business, and after lounging about a bit they pick up the Bible — their mind refuses to enjoy the truth. Or they come home weary from the store or shop, and they feel, if they do not say, it is a dull book. While the Bible is to be read on stormy days and while your head aches, it is also to be read in the sunshine and when your nerves hke harp-strings thrum the song of health. While your vision is clear, walk in this paradise of truth, and while your mental appetite is good, pluck these clusters of grace. O, I am afraid in America we are allowing the good Book to be covered up with other good books ! We have our ever-welcome morning and evening newspapers, and we have our good books on all subjects — geological subjects, botanical subjects, physiological subjects, theological sub- jects— good books, beautiful books, and so many good books that we have not time to read the Bible. O my 122 TRUMPET TEALS. fricMuls, it is not a matter of very great importance that you liave a family Bible on the centre-table in your parlor! Bet- ter have one pocket New Testament, the passages marked, the leaves turned down, the binding worn smooth with much usage, than fifty pictorial family Bibles too handsome to read ! O, let us take a whisk-broom and brush the dust off our Bibles ! Do you want poetry? Go and hear Job de- scribe the war-horse, or David tell how the mountains skipped like lambs. Do you want logic ? Go and hear Paul reason until your brain aches under the spell of his mighty intellect. Do you want history ? Go and see Moses put into a few pages stupendous information which Herodotus, Thucydides, and Prescott never reached after. And, after all, if you want to find how a nation struck down by sin can rise to happiness and to heaven, read of that blood which can wash away the pollution of a world. There is one passage in the Bible of vast tonnage : " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- lasting life." O, may God fill this country with Bibles and helj) the people to read them ! Palsied be the hand that would take the Bible from the college and the school. Educate only a man's head and you make him an infidel. Educate only a man's heart and you make him a fanatic. Educate them both together, and you have the noblest work of God. An educated mind with- out moral principle is a ship without a helm, a rushing rail train without brakes or reversing rod to control the speed. Put the Bible in the family. There it lies on the table, an unlimited power. Polygamy and unscriptural divorce are prohibited. Parents are kind and faithful, children polite and obedient. Domestic sorrows lessened by being divided, joys increased by being multiplied. Oh, father, Oh, mother, take down that long-neglected Bible, and read it yourselves and let your children read it ! It maybe 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 lur hand, better than INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 1 23 the orange blossoms in her hair, better than the wedding march to which they keep step as they start on the journey of Hfe, will be a well-bound copy of the Holy Scriptures, her name on the fly-leaf with the inscription : " From father and mother on the marriage day." 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. Put the Bible on the rail train and on ship-board, till all parts of this land and all other lands, shall have its illumina- tion. This hour there rises the yell of heathen worship, and in the face of this day's sun smokes the blood of human sacrifice. Give them the Bible. Unbind that wife from the funeral pyre, for no other sacrifice is needed since the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. THE STOLEN GRINDSTONES. " Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel : for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears. But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. Yet thev had a file for the mattock, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads." — I. Samuel, 13 : 19-21. What a galling subjugation for the Israelites ! The Phil- istines had carried off all the blacksmiths, and torn down all the blacksmiths' shops, and abolished the blacksmiths' trade in the land of Israel. The Philistines would not even allow these parties to work their valuable mines of brass and iron, nor might they make any swords or spears. There were only two swords left in all the land. Yea, these Philistines went on until they had taken all the grindstones from the land of Israel, so that if an Israelitish farmer wanted to sharpen his plough or his axe, he had to go over to the garrison of the Philistines to get it done. There was only one sharpening instrument left in the land, and that was a file ; the farmers and the mechanics having nothing to whet up the coulter, and the goad, and the pick-axe, save a simple file. Industry was hindered and work practically disgraced. 124 TRUMPET TEALS. The great idea of these Phihstineswas to keep the Israeh'tes disarmed. They might get iron out of the hills to make swords of, but they would not have any blacksmiths to weld this iron. If they got the iron welded, they would have no grindstones on which to bring the instruments of agriculture or the military weapons up to an edge. Oh, you poor, weapon- less Israelites, reduced to a file, how I pity you ! But these Philistines were not for ever to keep their heel on the neck of God's children. Jonathan, on his hands and knees, climbs up a great rock, beyond which were the Philistines ; and his armor-bearer, on his hands and knees, climbs up the same rock, and these two men, with their two swords, hew to pieces the Philistines, the Lord throwing a great terror upon them. So it w^as then ; so it is now. Tw^o men of God on their knees, mightier than a Philistine host on their feet ! I learn from this subject,that it is dangerous for the Church of God to allow its weapons to stay in the hands of its enemies. These Israelites might again and again have obtained a supply of swords and weapons, as for instance, when they took the spoils of the Ammonites ; but these Israelites seemed content to have no swords, no spears, no blacksmiths, no grindstones, no active iron mines, until it was too late for them to make any resistance. I see the farmers tugging along with their pickaxes and plough, and I say, " Where are you going with those things?" They say, "Oh, we are going over to the garrison of the Philistines, to get these things sharpened." I say, " You foolish men, why don't you sharpen them at home?" "Oh." they say, "the blacksmiths' shops are all torn down, and wc have nothing left us but a file." APPEAL TO CHRISTIANS. So it is in the church of Jesus Christ to-day. We are too willing to give up our weapons to the enemy. Let us thus take advantage of the world's grindstones. These Israelites were reduced to a file, and so they went over to the garrison of the Philistines to get their axes, and their goads, and their jiloughs sharpened. The Bible dis- INGERSOLIJAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 125 tinctly states it — the text which I read at the beginning of the service — that they had no other instruments now with which to do this work, and the Israehtes did right when they went over to the Phihstines to use their grindstones. My friends, is it not right for us to employ the world's grind- stones,? If there be art, if there be logic, if there be business faculty on the other side, let us go over and employ it, for Christ's sake. The fact is, we fight with too dull weapons, and we work with too dull implements. We hack and we maul, when we ought to make a clean stroke. Let us go over among sharp business men and among sharp literary men, and, find out what their tact is, and then transfer it to the cause of Christ. If they have science and art, it will do us good to rub against it. In other words, let us employ the world's grindstones. We will listen to their music, and we will watch their acumen, and we will use their grindstones, and will borrow their philo- sophical apparatus to make our experiments, and we will bor- row their printing-presses to publish our Bibles, and we will borrow their rail-trains to carry our Christian literature, and we will borrow their ships to transport our missionaries. That was what made Paul such a master in his day. He not only got all the learning he could get of Doctor Gamaliel, but afterward, standing on Mars Hill, and in crowded thorough- fare, quoted their poetry, and grasped their logic, and wielded their eloquence, and employed their mythology, until Dio- nysius the Areopagite, learned in the schools of Athens and Heliopolis, went down under his tremendous powers. That was what gave Thomas Chalmers his power in his day. He conquered the world's astronomy and compelled it to ring out the wisdom and greatness of the Lord, until, for the second time, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. That was what gave \.o Jojia- than Edwards his influence in his day. He conquered the world's metaphysics and forced it into the service of God, until not only the old meeting-house at Northampton, Mas- sachusetts, but all Christendom, felt thrilled by his Christian power. Well, now, my friends, we all have tools of Christian 126 TRUMPET PEALS. power. Do not let them lose their edges. We want no rusty blades in this fight. We want no coulter that cannot rip up the glebe. We want no axe that cannot fell the trees. We want no goad that cannot start the lazy team. Let us get the very best grindstones we can find, though they be in pos- session of the Philistines, compelling them to turn the crank while we bear down with all our might on the swift revolv- ing wheel, until all our energies and faculties shall be brought up to a bright, keen, sharp, glittering edge. LOGIC OF TESTIMONY. Our weapon in this conflict is faith, not logic ; faith, not metaphysics ; faith, not profundity ; faith, not scholastic ex- ploration. But then, in order to have faith, we must have testimony ; and if five hundred men, or one thousand men, or five hundred thousand men, or five million men get up and tell me that they have felt the religion of Jesus Christ a joy, a comfort, a help, an inspiration, I am bound as a fair- minded man to accept their testimony. The world boasts that it has gobbled up the schools, and the colleges, and the arts, and the sciences, and the litera- ture, and the printing-press. Infidelity is making a mighty attempt to get all our weapons in its hand, and then to keep them. You know it is making this boast all the time, and after a while, when the great battle between Sin and Right- eousness has opened, if we do not look out wc will be as badly ofT as these Israelites, without any swords to fight with and without any sharpening instruments. I call upon the superintendents of literary institutions to see to it that the men who go into the class-rooms to stand beside the Le}dcn jars and the electric batteries, and the microscopes and tele- scopes, be children of God, not Philistines. The Carlylean, Emersonian and Tyndallean thinkers of this day are trying to get all the intellectual weapons in their own grasp. We want scientific Christians to capture the science, and scholastic Christians to capture the scholar- ship, and philosophic Christians to capture the philosophy. INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 3 2^ and lecturing Christians to take back the lecturing plat- form. We want to send out against Schenkel and Strauss and Renan, a Theodore Christlieb, of Bonn, and against the infidel scientists of the day, a God-worshipping Silliman and Hitchcock and Agassiz. We want to capture all the philo- sophical apparatus, and swing around the telescopes on the swivel, until through them we can see the morning-star of the Redeemer, and with mineralogical hammer discover the Rock of Ages, and amid the flora of all realms find the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. We want a clergy learned enough to discourse of the human eye, showing it to be a microscope and telescope in one instrument, with eight wonderful contrivances, and lids closing thirty thousand or forty thousand times a day ; all its muscles and nerves and bones showing the infinite skill of an infinite God, and then winding up with the peroration, " He that formed the eye, shall He not see ?" And then we want to discourse about the human ear, its wonderful integu- ments, membranes and vibration, and closing with the ques- tion, " He that planted the ear, shall He not hear ?" And we want some one able to expound the first chapter of Genesis, bring to it the geology and the astronomy of the world, until, as Job suggested, " The stones of the field shall be in league" with the truth, and the stars in their course shall fight against Sisera. Oh, Church of God, go out and re- capture these weapons ! Let men of God go out and take possession of the plat- form. Let any printing-presses that have been captured by the enemy be recaptured for God ; and the reporters, and the type-setters, and the editors, and the publishers swear allegiance to the Lord God of truth! Ah! my friend, that day must come, and if the great body of Christian men have not the faith, or the courage, or the consecration to do it, then let some Jonathan on his busy hands and on his praying knees, climb upon the Rock of Hindrance, and in the name of the Lord God of Israel slash to pieces those literary Philis- tines. If these men will not be converted to God, then they must be overthrown. 128 TRUMPET PEALS. APPEAL TO Y^OUNG MEN. Young man, do not be ashamed to be a friend of the Bible. Do not put your thumb in your vest, as young men sometimes do, and swagger about, talking of the glorious light of the nineteenth century, and of there being no need of a Bible. They have the light of nature in India and China and in all the dark places of the earth. Did you ever hear that the light of nature gave them comfort for their trouble? They have lancets to cut and juggernauts to crush, but no comfort. Ah ! my friends, you better stop your scepticism. It is an absorbing question, a practical question, an over- whelming question to you and to me, the authorship of this Holy Bible — whether the Lord God of Heaven and earth, or a pack of dupes, scoundrels, and impostors. We cannot afford to adjourn that question a week or a day or an hour any more than a sea captain can afford to say, " Well, this is a very dark night. I have really lost my bearings ; there's a light out there, I don't know whether it's a lighthouse, or a false light on the shore, I don't know what it is ; but I'll just go to sleep and in the morning I'll find out." In the morning the vessel might be on the rocks, and the beach strewn \\\\.\\ the white faces of the dead crew. The time for that sea captain to find out about the lighthouse is before he goes to sleep. It is demonstrated to all honest men that it is not so certain that William Cullen Bryant wrote " Thanatopsis," or Longfellow wrote " Hiawatha," as that God, by the hand of prophet and apostle, wrote the Bible. Science, law, medicine, literature and merchandise, are gradually coming to believe in Christianity, and soon there will be no people who disbelieve in it, except those conspicuous for lack of brain, or men with two families, who do not like the Bible, because it rebukes their swinish pro- pensities. The time is hastening when there will be no infidels left except libertines, harlots, and murderers. INGERSOLLIAN INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 1 29 From the ruins of Babylon and Assyria and Nineveh, and the valleys of the Nile, confirmations have been exhumed proving to all fair-minded men that the Bible is the truest book ever written. The mythologies of Egypt were found to have embodied in them the knowledge of man's expulsion from Paradise, and the sacrifice of a great emancipator. Moses' account of the creation, corroborated by the hammer of Christian geologists; the oldest profane writers like Hiro- mus, Helanicus, and Berosus, confirming the Bible account of ancient longevity ; Tacitus and Pliny confirming the Bible accounts of destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ; Tacitus and Porphyry telling the same story of Christ as Matthew and Luke told ; Macrobius telling of the massacre of chil- dren in Bethlehem, and Phlegon sketching at the crucifixion. The Bible intimates that there was a city called Petra, built out of solid rock. Infidelity scoffed at it. " Where is your city of Petra?" Burckhardt and Laborde went forth in their explorations and they came upon that very city. The mountains stand around like giants guarding the tomb where the city is buried. They find a street in that city six miles long, where once flashed imperial pomp and which echoed with the laughter of light-hearted mirth on its way to the theatre. On temples fashioned out of colored stones — some of which have blushed into the crimson of the rose, and some of which have paled into the whiteness of the lily — aye, on column and pediment and entablature and statuary, God writes the truth of that Bible. The Bible says that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone. "Absurd," infidels year after year said " it is positively absurd that they could have been de- stroyed by brimstone. There is nothing in the elements to cause such a shower of death as that." Lieutenant Lynch went out in exploration and came to the Dead Sea, which, by a convulsion of nature, has overflowed the place where the cities once stood. He sank his fathoming line and brought up from the bottom of the Dead Sea great masses of sulphur, remnants of that very tempest that swept Sodom and Gomorrah to ruin. Who was right ? The Bible that 130 TRUMPET PEALS. announced the destruction of those cities or the sceptics who for ages scoffed at it ? The Bible says there was a city called Nineveh, and that it was three days' journey around it, and that it should be destroyed by fire and water. "Absurd," cried out hundreds of voices for many years ; " no such city was ever built that it would take three days' journey to go around. Besides, it could not be destroyed by fire and water ; they are antago- nistic elements." But Layard, Botta, and Keith go out, and by their explorations they find that city of Nineveh, and they tell us that by their own experiment it is three days' journey around, according to the old estimate of a day's journe}', and that it was literally destro)'ed by fire and water — two antagonistic elements — a part of the city having been inundated by the River Tigris, the brick material in those times being dried clay instead of burned, while in other parts they find the remains of the fire in heaps of charcoal that have been excavated, and in the calcined slabs of gypsum. Who was right the Bible or infidelity ? Moses intimated that they had vineyards in Egypt. "Absurd," cried hundreds of voices; "you can't raise grapes in Egypt ; or, if you can, it is a very great exception that you can raise them." But the traveller goes down, and in the underground vaults of Eilithya he finds painted on the wall all the process of tending the vines and treading out the grapes. It is all there, familiarly sketched by people who evidently knew all about it, and saw it all about them every day ; and in those underground vaults there are vases still encrusted with the settlings of the wine. You sec the vine did grow in Egypt, whether it grows there now or not. Can you doubt the authenticity of the Scriptures ? There is not so much evidence that Walter Scott wrote "The Lady of the Lake ;" not so much evidence that Shakespeare wrote " Hamlet ;" not so much evidence that John Milton wrote " Paradise Lost," as there is evidence that the Lord God Almighty, by the hands of the prophets, evangelists and apostles, wrote this Book. Suppose a book now to be written which came in conflict TNGEKSOl.LIAX LYFIDELITY CONFUTED I31 with a great many things, and was written by bad men or impostors, how long would such a book stand ? It would be scouted by everybody. And I say if that Bible had been an imposition ; or if it had not been written by the men who said they wrote it ; if it had been a mere collection of false- hoods, do you not suppose that it would have been imme- diately rejected by the people? If Job and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Paul and Peter and John were impostors, they would have been scouted by generations and nations. If that Book has come down through fires of centuries without a scar, it is because there is nothing in it destructible. How near have they come to destroying the Bible? When they began their opposition there were two or three thousand copies of it. Now there are two hundred millions, as far as I can calculate. These Bible truths, notwithstanding all the opposition, have gone into all languages — into the philo- sophic Greek, the flowing Italian, the rugged German, the passionate French, the picturesque Indian, and the exhaust- less Anglo-Saxon. Now, do you not suppose, if that Book had been an imposition and a falsehood, it would have gone down- under these ceaseless fires of opposition? While God wrote the Bible, at the same time He wrote this commentary, that "the statutes of the Lord are right," on leaves of rock and shell, bound in clasps of metal, and lying on mountain tables and in the jewelled vase of the sea. In authenticity and in genuineness the statutes of the Lord are right. CAVILLING REBUKED. How foolish in the caviller to allow the technicalities of re- ligion to stop his salvation ! I know wise men and great men, competent for all other stations, who are acting a silly and foolish part in regard to the technicalities of religion. They ask us some questions which we cannot answer categorically, and so they burst into a broad guffaw, as though it is of any more interest to us than it ought to be to them. About the Atonement, about God's decrees, about man's destiny, they 133 TRUMPET PEALS. ask a great many questions which we cannot answer, and so they deride us, as though we could not ask thcin a thousand questions that they cannot answer, about their eyes, about their ears, about their finger-nails, about everything. A fool can ask a question that a wise man cannot answer. O you cavilling men! O you profound men! O you learned men, do please admit something. You have a soul ? Yes. Will it live forever ?, Yes. Where? You say that Jesus Christ is not a divine Saviour. Who is He.-* Where will you go after you leave your law-books and your medical prescrip- tions and your club-room and your newspaper-office — where will you go to? Your body will be six feet under ground. Where will your soul be? The black coat will be ofT, the shroud on. Those spectacles will be removed from your vision, for the sod will press your eyelids. Have you any idea that an earthly almanac describes the years of your life- time ? Of what stuff shall I gather the material for the let- ters of that word which describes your eternal home? Shall it be iron chain or amaranthine garland? The air that stirs the besweatcd locks of your dying pillow, will it come off a garden or a desert? Oh, quit the puzzling questions and try these momentous questions. Quit the small questions and try these great questions. Instead of discussing whether the serpent in Eden was figurative or literal, whether the Medi- terranean fish did or did not swallow the recreant prophet, whether this and that, and the other thing is right or wrong, come and discuss one question : " How shall I get rid of my sins and win heaven ?" That is the question for you. Yea, there have been men who have actually lost their souls because they thought there was a discrepancy between Moses and. Pro- fessor Silliman — because they could not understand how there could be light before the sun rose — the light appear- ing in verse 3 of Genesis, and the sun appearing not until verse 16 — and because the}' do not know liow the sun could stand still without upsetting the uni\'ersc, and because they had decided upon the theor}' of natuial selection. A Ger^ luaii pitilosophcr in dying had for his chief sorrow that he had not devoteti his whole life to the stuch' of the dati\-e case. INGERSOLLTAM INFIDELITY CONFUTED. 133 O, when your immortality is in peril, why quibble ? Quit these non-essentials, my dear brother. In the name of God, I ask you in regard to these matters of the immortal soul, that you do not play the fool. What is that man doing over in Bowling Green, New York? Well, he is going in for a ticket for a transatlantic voyage. He is quarrelling with the clerk about the spots — the red spots on the ticket — and he is quarrelling about the peculiar signature of the president of the steamship company, and he is quarrelling about the manner of the clerk who hands him the ticket. How long has he been standing there ? Three weeks. Meanwhile, perhaps, twenty steamers have gone out of port, and I hear the shriek of the steam-tug that could take him to the last vessel that could bear him to his engagement in London. Still he stands in Bowling Green discussing the ticket. What do you say in regard to that man ? You say he is a fool. Well, in that very way are many men acting in regard to the matters of the soul. They are cavilling about the Atonement, the red spots on the ticket — about the character of the minister who hands them the ticket — about whether it has a divine or human signa- ture, and meanwhile, all their opportunities for heaven are sailing out of the harbor, and I hear the last tap of the bell announcing their last chance for heaven. Go aboard ! Do not waste any more time in higgling and carping and criti- cising and wondering, and, in the presence of an astounded heaven, playing the fool. The religion of Ralph Waldo Emerson is the philosophy of icicles ; the religion of Theodore Parker is a sirocco of the desert, covering up the soul with dry sand ; the religion of Renan is the romance of believing nothing ; the religion of Thomas Carlyle is only a condensed London fog; the reli- gion of the Huxleys and the Spencers is merely a pedestal on which human philosophy sits shivering in the night of the soul, looking up to the stars, offering no help to the nations that crouch and groan at the base. Tell me where there is one man who has rejected that Gospel for another, who is thoroughly satisfied and helped and contented in his skep- 134 TRUMPET PEALS. ticism, aiul I will take the car to-morrow and ride five hun- dred miles to see him. For many things I have admired Percy Shelley, the great English poet, but I deplore the fact that it was a great sweet- ness to him to dishonor God. The poem " Queen Mab" has in it the maligning of the Deity. The infidel poet was impious enough to ask for Rowland Hill's Surrey Chapel that he might denounce the Christian religion. He was in great glee against God and the truth, l^ut he visited Italy, and one day on the Mediterranean with two friends in a boat, he Avas coming toward shore when a squall struck the water. A gentleman standing on shore, through a glass saw many boats tossed in this squall, but all outrode the terror except one, that in which Shelley, the infidel poet, and his two friends were sailing. That never came ashore, but the bodies of two of the occupants were washed upon the beach, one of them the poet. A funeral pyre was built on the sea- shore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were con- sumed. Poor Shelley! He would have no God while he lived, and he probably had no God when he died. " The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish." You may get all your difficulties settled as Garibaldi, the magnetic Italian, got his gardens made. When the war be- tween Austria and Sardinia broke out he was living at Caprera, a very rough and uncultured island home. But he went forth with his sword to achieve the liberation of Naples and Sicil}', and gave nine million people free government under Victor Emanuel. Garibaldi, after being absent two years from Ca- prera, returned, and, when he approached it, he found that his home had been Edenized by Victor Emanuel as a surprise. Trimmed shrubbery had taken the place of thorny thickets, gardens the place of barrenness, and the old rookery in which he once livetl had given way to a pictured mansion where he lived in comfort the rest of his days. And I tell you if you will come and enlist under the banner of our Victor Emanuel, and follow Him through thick and thin, and fight His battles, and eridurc His sacrifices, }-ou will find after a while that I fe has INGERSOLLTAN INFTDELTTY CONFUTED. 135 changed your heart from a jungle of thorny scepticisms into a garden all abloom with luxuriant joy that you have never dreamed of. From a tangled Caprera of sadness into a Para- dise of God! Make it your guide in life and your pillow in death. After the battle of Richmond a dead soldier was found with his hand l)'ing on the open Bible. Tiie summer in- sects had eaten the flesh from the hand, but the skeleton finger lay on these words: " Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I Will fear no evil, for Thou art with me ; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." Yes, this Book will become in your last days, when you turn away from all other books, a solace for your soul. Perhaps it was your mother's Bible ; perhaps the one given you on your wedding-day, its cover now worn out and its leaf faded with age ; but its bright promises will flash upon the opening gates of heaven. " How precious is the Book divine, By inspiration given ; Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine, To guide our souls to heaven. " This lamp, through all the tedious night Of life, shall guide our way, Till we behold the clearer light Of an eternal day." 138 TRUMPET TEALS. planks and pry out some of the timbers because the timber did not come from the right forest ! It does not seem tome a 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 zvill see it through. And I have noticed that keelson and counter-timber knee are built out of Lebanon cedar, and she is going to Aveather the gale, but no credit to those who make mutiny on deck. When I see ministers of religion finding fault with the Scriptures, it makes me think of a fortress terrifically bom- barded, and the men on the ramparts, instead of swabbing out and loading the guns and helping to fetch up the ammu- nition from the magazine, are trying with crowbars to pry out from the wall certain blocks of stone, because they cjid not come from the right quarry. O, men on the ramparts, better fight back and fight down the common enemy, instead of trying to make breaches in the wall. WHY EXPURGATION IS WRONG. 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 Spen- cer, " you don't now really believe all the story of ^the Gar- den 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 to create a sun and moon I could make them stand still, or cause the refraction of the sun's rays so it would ajjpear to stand still. " But," they say, "you don't really believe that the whale swallowed Jonah ?" Yes, and if I were strong enough to make a whale I could have made very easy ingress for the refractor)- prophet, leav- ing to Evolution to eject him, if he were an unworthy tenant ! THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 39 " 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 an admixture of strychnine and log- wood ! " But," say they, " you don't really believe that Samson slew a thousand with tJie jazv-bone of an ass f Yes, as I think that the man who in this day assaults the Bible is wielding the same weapon ! EXPURGATION OF THE HEART. I tell you that a man who does not like this Book, and who is critical as to its contents, and who is shocked and outraged with its descriptions, has never been soundly con- verted. The laying on of the hands of Presbytery, or Epis- copacy, does not always change a man's heart, and men sometimes get into the pulpit as well as into the pew, never having been changed radically by the sovereign grace of God. Get your heart right and the Bible will be right. The trouble is men's natures are not brought into harmony with the Word of God. Ah! xny in^nds, cxpn7-gation of the heart is ivhat is ivanted. You cannot make me believe that the Scriptures, which this moment lie on the table of the purest and the best men and women of the age, and which were the dying solace of your kindred passed into the skies, have in them a taint which the strongest microscope of honest criticism could make visible. If men are uncontrollable in their indignation when the integrity of wife or child is assailed, and judges and jurors as far as possible excuse violence under such provocation, what ought to be the overwhelming and long resounding thunders of condemnation for any man who will stand in a Christian pulpit and assail the more than virgin purity of inspiration, the well-beloved daughter of God ? Expurgate the Bible ! You might as well go to the old' picture galleries in Dresden and in Veni,ce and in Rome and expurgate the old paintings. Perhaps you could find a foot of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" that might be improved. Perhaps you could throw more expression I40 TRUMPET PEALS. into Raphael's " Madonna." Perhaps you could put more pathos into Rubens* " Descent from the Cross." Per- haps you could change the crests of the waves in Tur- ner's " Slave Ship." Perhaps you might go into the old gal- leries of sculpture and change the forms and the posture of the statues of Phidias and Praxiteles. Such an iconoclast would very soon find himself in the penitentiary. But it is worse vandalism when a man proposes to re-fashion these masterpieces of inspiration and to remodel the moral giants of this gallery of God. NO COMPROMISE. Now, let us divide off. Let those people who do not be- lieve 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 'oe no compromise between in- fidelity and Christianity. Give us the out-and-out opposi- tion of infidelity rather than the work of these hybrid theo- logians, these mongrel ecclesiastics, these half-and-half evo- luted pulpiteers who believe the Bible and do not believe it, who accept the miracles and do not accept them, who be- lieve 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 scepticism 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 cour- age they must make the Bible a target and shoot at God. 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 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 Icgac}^ you will leave to your children when you bid them good-by as you cross the ferry to the golden city. There is nothing that so outrages our feelings as to hear a man talk airainst this Book. It has been to us so much in THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I41 the past, and it shall be to u§ so much in the future, that you feel like doing oftimes as I saw a man do on the rail-train some time ago when I was on the way to New Orleans. He was all wrapped up with the Bible that he took out of his pocket. After reading awhile, not knowing he was especi- ally noticed, he closed it and kissed it, and put it in his pocket. I was not surprised at it ; for there are thousands to-day who by the memory of all this Book has been to them in the past, and by the hope and expectation of all it is to be to them in the future, could press it to their soul with a kiss of undying affection. Young man, do not be ashamed of your Bible. There is not a virtue but it commends, 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 on these Ten Commandments. There are no braver, grander people in all the earth than the heroes and the heroines which it biographizes. BETTER ILLUSTRATION THAN DORE'S. I was startled as I saw on the bulletin the announcement of Gnstave Dorc's departure. It said : " Is it possible that that hand has forgotten its cunning?" Of all the works of that great artist, there is nothing so impressive as Dore's il- lustrated Bible. What scene of Abrahamic faith, or Edenic beauty, of dominion Davidic or Solomonic, of miracle or parable, of nativity, or of crucifixion, or of last judgment, but the thought leaped from the great brain to the skilful pencil, and from the skilful pencil to the canvas immortal. The Louvre, the Luxembourg, the National Gallery of Lon- don, compressed within two volumes of Dore's illustrated, Bible. But the Bible will come to better illustration than that, my friends, when all the deserts have become gardens, and all the armories have become academies, and all the lakes have become Genesarets with Christ walking them, and all the cities have become Jerusalems with hovering Shekinah; and the two hemispheres shall be clapping cymbals of divine praise, and the round earth a footlight to 142 TRCMrET PEALS. Emanuel's throne — that to all lands, all ages, all centuries, and all cycles will be the best specimen of Bible illustrated. Ikit though thus susceptible of fresh illustration, it is the same old Bible, divinely protected in its present shape. You could as easily, without detection, take from the writings of Shakespeare Hajnlct, and insert in place thereof Alexan- der Smith's drama, as at anytime during the last fifteen hun- dred years a man could have made any important change in the Bible without immediate detection. If there had been an element of weakness or of deception, or of disintegration the Book would long ago have fallen to pieces. If there had been one loose brick or cracked casement in this castellated truth, surely the bombardment of eight centuries would have discovered and broken through that imperfection. The fact that the Bible stands intact, notwithstanding all the furious assaults on all sides upon it, is proof to me that it is a mira- cle, and every miracle is of God. " But," says some one, " while we admit the Bible is of God, it has not been understood until our time." My an- swer is, that if the Bible be a letter from God, our Father, to man, His child, is it not strange that that letter should have been written in such a way that it should allow seventy generations to pass away and be buried before the letter could be understood ? That would be a very bright father who should write a letter for the guidance and intelligence of his children, not understandable until a thousand years after they were buried and forgotten ! While as the years roll on other beauties and excellencies will unfold from the Scrip- tures, that the Bible is such a dead failure that all the Chris- tian scholars for eighteen hundred years were deceived in regard to vast reaches of its meaning, is a demand upon my credulit)' so great that it I found myself at all disposed to yield to it I should to-morrow morning appl}' at Blooming- dale Insane As)-lum as unfit to go alone. THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 43 THEOLOGICAL FOG. Thus a great fog has come down upon some of the min- isters and some of the churches in the shape of what is called " advanced thought" in Biblical interpretation. These "ad- vanced " ministers and churches deny the full inspiration of the Bible. Genesis is an allegory, and there are many myths in the Bible, and they philosophize and guess and reason and evolute until they land in a great cofitinoit of mud, from which, I fear, for all eternity they will not be able to extri- cate themselves. Who make up this precious group of advanced thinkers to whom God has made especial revelation in our time of that which He tried to make known thousands of years ago and failed to make intelligible ? Are they so distinguished for unworldliness, piety, and scholarship that it is to be ex- pected that they would have been chosen to fix up the de- fective work of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and Christ ? Is it all possible? I wonder on what mountain these modern exegetes were transfigured ? I wonder what star pointed down to their birthplace! Was it the north-star, or the evening star, or the Dipper? As they came through and descended to our world did Mars blush or Saturn lose one of its rings ? When I find these modern wiseacres at- tempting to improve upon the work of the Almighty and to interlard it with their wisdom and to suggest prophetic and apostolic errata, I am filled with a disgust insufferable. Ad- vanced thought, which proposes to tell the Lord what He ought to have said thousands of years ago, and would have said if He had been as wise as His nineteenth century critics ! I have two wonders in regard to these men. The first one is how the Lord got along without them before they were born. The second wonder is how the Lord will get along without them after they are dead. "But," say some, " do you really think the Scriptures are inspired thought ?" Yes, either as history or as guidance. Gibbon and Josephus and Prescott record in their histories 144 TRUMPET PEALS. a great many things they did not approve of. When George Bancroft puts upon his briUiant historical page the account of an Indian massacre, does he approve of that massacre? There are scores of things in the Bible wiiich neither God nor inspired m?n sanctioned. " But," says some one, "don't you think that the copyists might have made mistakes in transferring the divine words from one manuscript to another?" Yes, no doubt there were such mistakes; but they no more afTect the meaning of the Scriptures than the misspelHng of a word or the ungram- matical structure of a sentence in a last will and testament affect the validity or the meaning of that will. All the mis- takes made by the copyists in the Scriptures do not amount to any more importance than the difference between your spelling in a document the word forty, forty or fourty. This book is the last will and testament of God to our lost world, and it bequeaths everything in the right way, although hu- man hands may have damaged the grammar or made unjus- tifiable interpolation. These men who pride themselves in our day on being ad- vanced thinkers in Biblical interpretation will all of them end in atheism, if they live long enough, and I declare here that they are doing more in the different denominations of Chris- tians, and throughout the world, for damaging Christianity and hindering the cause of the world's betterment than five thousand Robert Ingersolls could do. That man who stands inside a castle is far more dangerous if he be an enemy than five thousand enemies outside the castle. Robert G. Inger- soll assails the castle from the outside. These men who pre- tend to be advanced thinkers in all the denominations are fighting the truth from the inside, and trying to shove back the bolts and swing open the gates. 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 full)- understood by the human. That would be a very small Infinite that can be measured by the finite. You must not expect to weigh the THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 145 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 scepti- cism in my heart. A WHOLE BIBLE FROM LID TO LID. I am opposed to the expurgation of the Scriptures becauce the Bible in its present shape has been so miraculously pre- served. Fifteen hundred years after Herodotus wrote his history, there was only one manuscript cop}.' of it. Twelve hundred years after Plato wrote his book, there was only one manuscript copy of it. God was so careful to have us have the Bible in just the right shape that we have fifty manu- script copies of the New Testament a thousand years old, and many of them fifteen hundred years old — a Book handed down from the time of Christ, 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 manuscript are in the possession of three great churches — the Protestant Church of England, the Greek Church of St. Petersburg, and the Roman Church of Italy. It is a plain matter of history that Tischcndorf -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 admis- sion, and that he saw there in the waste basket 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 marvellously protected. Do you not know that the catalogue of the books oi the Old and New Testaments, as we have it, is the same catalogue that has been coming on down through the ages.'' Thirty nine books of the Old Testament thousands of years ago. 146 TRUMPET PEALS. Thirty-nine now. Twenty-seven books of the New Testa- ment sixteen hundred years ago. Twenty-seven books of the New Testament now. Marcion, for wickedness, was turned out of the Church in the second century, and, in his assault on the Bible and Christianity, he incidentally gives a catalogue of the books of the Bible — that catalogue corre- sponding exactly with ours — testimony given by the enemy of the Bible and the enemy of Christianity. The catalogue now just hke the catalogue then. Assaulted and spit on and torn to pieces and burned, yet adhering. The book to-day, in three hundred languages, confronting four fifths of the human race in their own tongue. Three hundred million copies of it in existence. Does not that look as if this Book had been divinely protected, as if God had guarded it all through the centuries? The epidemics which have swept thousands of other books into the sepulchre of forgetfulness, have only brightened the fame of this. There is not one book out of a thousand that lives five years. Any publisher will tell you that. There will not be more than one book out of fifty thousand that will live a century. Yet here is a Book, much of it sixteen hundred years old, and much of it four thousand years old, and with more rebound and resili- ence and strength in it than when the Book was first put upon parchment or papyrus. This Book was the cradle of all other books, and it will 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, it is 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 " Endymion," and all the popular books of the day having no such sale in the last ten years as this old well-worn Book. Do you know what a struggle a book has in order to get through one century or two centuries? THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I47. LOST LITERARY TREASURES. Some old books, during a fire in a seraglio of Constanti- nople, were thrown into the street. A man without any education picked up one of those 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 book to his study ; but in the excitement of the fire, the two parted, and the first and second decades of Livy were forever lost. Pliny wrote twenty books of history ; all lost. The most of Meander's writings lost. Of one hundred and thirty come- dies of Plautus, all gone but twenty. Euripides wrote a hundred dramas, all gone but nineteen, ^schylus wrote a hundred dramas, all gone but seven. Varro wrote the labori- ous biographies of seven hundred Romans, not a fragment left. Quintilian wrote his favorite book on the corruption of eloquence, all lost. Thirty books of Tacitus lost. Dion Cassius wrote eighty books, only twenty remain. Berosus'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 blows the dust off, and opens it and finds it the book he docs 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, venom, animosity, and hypercriticism of earth and hell. " Well," says one, " now I am ready to take the New Testament as from the heart of Christ, and I am ready to believe the prophecies. The evidence is beyond all dispute. But you must remember," says my friend, " that the prophe- cies are only a small part of the old book ; you don't expect us to believe all the old book." If you found one of your good, honest letters in an envelope with ten or twenty ob- scene, cruel, lying, filthy letters, how long would you allow that honest letter to stay here. In a half minute you would 148 TRUMPET TEALS. cither snatch it out of the envelope, or you destroy the whole envelope. Now, do you suppose the Lord God would allow these pure prophecies, these prophecies which you admit must have come from the hand of God, from divine inspiration, to be bound up and put in the same envelope with the Book of Job, and the Book of Psalms, and the Book of Deuteronomy and the other books, if those books were not good books? Beside all this, you must remember that the most of the writers of this book were uneducated men. How can you account for the fact that when Thomas Babington Macau- lay, standing in the House of Parliament in London, wants to finish off a magnificent sentence, he quotes from the fish- ermen of Galilee? or, sitting in his house, wanting to finish one of his great paragraphs of history, he quotes the words of the fisherman of Galilee? Why is it that those uneducated men have more influence on modern times than all the scholars of antiquity? Because they were divinely inspired, because God stood back of them. Beside that, you must remember that this book has been under fire for centuries, and after all the bombardment of tl^ Ingersolls of all the centuries, they have not knocked olxt of this Bible a piece as large as the small end of a sharp needle. O ! how the old book sticks together. Unsanctified geologists try to pull away the Book of Genesis. They say they do not believe it ; it caimot be there was light before the sun shone; it cannot be all this story about Adam and Eve ; and they pull at the Book of Genesis, and they have been pulling a great while, yet where is the Book of Genesis? Standing just where it stood all the time. There is not a man on earth who has ever erased it from his Bible. And so infidels have been trying to pull away the mira- cles, pulling away at the blasted fig tree, at the turning of the water into wine, at the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Can you show me a Bible from which one of these miracles has been erased ? All the striking at these chapters only drives them deeper until they are clinched on the other side with the hammers THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 49 of eternity. And the book is going to keep right on until the fires of the last day. WHEN WE CAN DO WITHOUT THE BIBLE. What will be the use of the Book of Genesis, descriptive of how the world was made, when the world is destroyed ? What will be the use of the prophecies when they are all fulfilled ? What will be the use of the evangelistic or Paul- ine description of Jesus Christ when we see Him face to face ? What will be the use of His photograph when we have met Him in glory ? What will be the use of the Book of Reve- lation, standing, as you will, with your foot on the glassy sea, and your hand on the ringing harp, and your forehead chapleted with eternal coronation amid the amethystine and twelve-gated glories of heaven ? The emerald dashing its green against the beryl, and the beryl dashing its blue against the sapphire, and the sapphire throwing its light on the jacinth, and the jacinth dashing its fire against the chryso- prase, and you and I standing in the chorus of ten thousand sunsets. But I do not think we will give up the Bible even at that time. I think zuc ivill want the Bible in Jieaven. I really think the fires of the last day will not consume the last copy, for when you and I get our dead children out of the dust, we want to show them just the passages, just the promises, which comforted us here in the dark day of interment, and we will want to talk over with Christians who have had trials and struggles, and we will want to show them the promises that especially refreshed us. I think we shall have the Bible in heaven. O ! I want to hear David with his own voice read : " The Lord is my shepherd." I want to hear Paul with his own voice read : " Thanks be unto God that giveth us the vic- tory." I want to hear the archangel play Paul's march of the resurrection with the same trumpet with which he awoke the dead. O ! blessed book, good enough for earth, good enough for heaven. Dear old book — book bespattered with 150 TRUMPET PEALS. the blood of martyrs wlio died for its defence — book sprink- led all over with the tears of those who by it were comforted. Put it in the hand of your children on their birthday. Put it on the table in the sitting-room when you begin to keep house. Put it under your head when you die. Dear old book ! I press it to my heart, I press it to my lips. I ap- peal to your common sense, if a book so divinely guarded and protected in its present shape, must not be in just the form that God wants it ; and if it pleases God ought it not to please us? NO ADDITIONS MADE. Not only have all attempts to detract from the Book failed, but all attempts to add to it. Many 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 apochryphal books must be added to the Old Testament. " They must stay in," said those learned men ; but they stayed out. There is not an in- telligent Christian man that to-day will put the Book of Maccabeus 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 pro- tected I?ook 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. Expurgation means annihilation. Beside that, I am opposed to this expur- gation of the Scriptures because if the attempt were success- ful, it would be the annihilation of the Bible. Infidel geologists would say, " out with the Book of Genesis ;" infidel astrono- mers would say, " out with the Book of Joshua ;" people who do not 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 THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I5I Old and New Testament ;" and some would say, ''out with the Book of Revelation ;" and others would say, " out with the entire Pentateuch," and the work would go on until there would not be enough of the Bible left to be worth as much as last year's almanac. The expurgation of the Scriptures means their annihilation. GOOD PEOPLE SATISFIED. I am opposed to this proposed expurgation of the Scrip- tures for the fact that in proportion as people become self- sacrificing and good and holy and consecrated, tJiey like the Book as it is. I have yet to find a man or a woman distin- guished 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 Bibles were in use twenty, forty, fifty, perhaps a hundred years in the generations. 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 margins 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 ? ACHIEVEMENTS OF ORTHODOXY. Now, I want to show you, as a matter of advocacy for what I believe to be the right, the splendors of orthodoxy. Many have supposed that its disciples are people of flat skulls, and no reading, and behind the age, and the victims of gullibility. I shall show you that the word orthodoxy stands for the greatest splendors outside of heaven. Behold the splendors of its achievements. All the missionaries of the Gospel the world round are men who believe in an entire Bible. Call the roll of all the missionaries who are to-day enduring sacrifices in the ends of the earth for the cause of 152 IKUMPET PEALS. religion and the world's betterment, and they all believe in an entire Bible. Just as soon as a missionary begins to doubt whether there ever was a Garden of Eden, or whether there is any such thing as future punishment, he comes right home from Beyrout or Madras, and goes into the insurance busi- ness ! All the missionary societies of this day are ofificered by orthodox men, and are supported by orthodox churches. Orthodoxy, beginning with the Sandwich islands, has captured vast regions of barbarism for civilization, while heterodoxy has to capture the first square inch. Blatant for many years in Great Britain and the United States, and strutting about with a peacockian braggadocia it has yet to capture the first continent, the first State, the first township, the 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 believed in an entire Bible. The pulpit now may preach some other Gospel, but it is a heterodox gun on an orthodox carriage. The foundations of all the churches that are of very great use in this world to-day 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 ; just as if I re- ceived a letter that pretended to come from a friend, and part of it was his and part somebody else's, a sort of literary mongrelism, I would throw the garbled sheets into the waste basket. THE SURE FOUNDATION. No church of very great influence to-day but was built by those who believed 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 hall, and he has an audience while he lives, and when he dies the church dies. If I thought that my church was built on a quarter of a Bible, or a half of a Bible, or throe cjuartors of a Bil)lc. or ninet\"-nint' (nic hundredths of a Bible, I would i-xpcct it to THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 53 die when I die ; but wlien I know it is built on tlie entire Word of God, I know it will last two hundred years after you and I sleep the last sleep. O the splendors of an or- thodoxy which, with ten thousand hands and ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand Christian churches, is trying to save the world ! In Music Hall, Boston, for many years stood Theodore Parker battling orthodoxy, giving it, as some supposed at that time, its death wound. He was the most fascinating man I ever heard or ever expect to hear, and I came out from hearing him thinking, in my boyhood way, " Well, that's the death of the Church." On that same street, and not far from being opposite, stood Park Congregational Church, called by its enemies " Hell-fire Corner." Theodore Parker died, and his church died with him ; or, if it is in existence, it is so small you cannot see it with the naked eye. Park Congregational Church still stands on " Hell-fire Corner," thundering away the magnificent truths of this glorious orthodoxy just as though Theodore Parker had never lived. All that Boston, or Brooklyn, or New York, or the world ever got that is worth having came through the wide aqueduct of orthodoxy from the throne of God. Behold the splendors of character built 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 Christians? John Milton, seeing more without eyes than anybody else ever saw with eyes. Orthodox from scalp to heel. Who was the greatest reformer the world has ever seen ? so ac- knowledged by infidels as well as by Christians. Martin Luther. Orthodox from scalp to heel. THE CERTITUDES. O man, believing in an entire Bible, where did you come from ? Answer : " I descended from a perfect parentage in 154 TRUMPET PEALS. Paradise, and Jclio\-ah breathed into ni}' nostrils tlic breath of life. I am a son of God." O man, bclievin<^ in a half- and-iialf Bible — believing in a Bible in spots, where did you come from ? Answer : " It is all uncertain ; in my ancestral line away back there was an orang-outang and a tadpole and a polywog, and it took millions of years to get meevoluted." 0 man, believing in a Bible in spots, where are 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 great anywhere, and I shall probably ar- rive in the nowhere." That is zvJicrc I thought you would fetch up. O man, believing in an entire Bible, and believ- ing with all your heart, where are you going to when you leave this world? Answer: "I am going to my Father's house ; I am going into the companionship of my loved ones who have gone before ; I am going to leave all my sins, and 1 am going to be with God and like God forever and for- ever." Oh, the glorious certitudes, certainties of ortho- doxy! " Where shall I goT' said a dying Hindoo to the Brah- mitic priest to whom he had given money to pray for his sal- vation. " Where shall I go after I die ?" The Brahmitic priest said : " You will first of all go into a holy quadruped." " But," said the dying Hindoo, " where shall I go then ?" " Then you shall go into a singing bird." " But," said the dying Hindoo, " where then shall I go?" " Then," .said the lirahmitic priest, " you will go into a beautiful flower." The dying Hindoo threw up his arms in an agony of solicitation as he said : " But where shall I go last of all ?" Thank God this Bible tells the Hindoo, tells you, tells mc, not where shall I go to-day, not where shall I go to-morrow, not where shall I go next year, but where shall I go last of all ! CONTRASTED DEATH-BEDS. Those who den\' the Bible, or deny any part of it, never die well. They either go out in darkness or the}- go out in silence portentous. You may gather up all the biographies THE HIGHER CRITICISM. I55 that have come forth since the art of prhiting was invented, and I challenge you to show me a triumphant death of a man who rejected the Scriptures, or rejected any part of them. Here I make a great zvide avcmic. On the one side I put the death-beds of those who beheve in an entire Bible. On the other side of that avenue I put the death-beds of those who reject part of the Bible, or all of the Bible. Now, take my arm and let us pass through this dividing avenue. Look off upon the right side. Here are the death-beds on the right side of this avenue, " Victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" "Free grace!" "Glory, glory!" "I am sweeping through the gates washed in the blood of the Lamb !" " The chariots are coming !" " I mount, I fly !" " Wings, wings !" " They are coming for me !" " Peace, be still !" Alfred Cookman's death-bed, Richard Cecil's death- bed. Commodore Foote's death-bed. Your father's death- bed, your mother's death-bed, your sister's death-bed, your child's death-bed. Ten thousand radiant, songful death-beds of those who believed an entire Bible. Now, take my arm and let us go through that avenue, and look off upon the other side. No smile of hope. No shout of triumph. No face supernaturally illumined. Those who reject any part of the Bible never die well. No beckoning for angels to come. No listening for the celestial escort. Without any exception they go out of the world because they are pushed out ; while on the other hand the list of those who believed in an entire Bible and went out of the world in triumph is a list so long it seems interminable. O ! is not that a splendid influence, this orthodoxy, which makes that which must otherwise be the most dreadful hour of life — the last hour — positively paradisaical ? STAND BY THE OLD PATHS. " Ask for the old paths, walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls." But follow this crusade against any part of the Bible, and first of all you will give up Genesis, which is as true as Matthew ; then }'ou will give up all the 156 TRUMPET PEALS. 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 Commandments ; and then after a while you will wake up in a fountainiess, rockless, treeless desert swept by ever- lasting sirocco. If you are laughed at, you can afford to be laughed at, for standing by the Bible just as God has given it to you and miraculousl}' preserved it. Do not jump overboard from the stanch old Great East- ern of old-fashioned orthodoxy until there is something ready to take you up stronger than the fantastic yawl which has painted on the side " Advanced Thought," and which leaks at the prow and leaks at the stern, and has a steel pen for one oar and a glib tongue for the other oar, and now tips over this way and then tips over that way, until you do not know whether the passengers will land in the breakers of despair or on the sinking sand of infidelity and atheism. I am in full sympathy with the advancements 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 dictat- ing the truth to these modern apostles and prophets. God has not learned anything in a thousand years. He knew just as much when He gave the first dictation as the last dicta- tion. So I will stick to the old paths. Naturally a sceptic, and preferring new things to old, I never so much as now felt the truth of the entire Bible, especially as I see into what spectacular imbecility men rush when they try to chop up the Scriptures with the meat-axe of their own preferences, now calling upon philosophy, now calling on the Church, now calling on God, now calling on the devil. I prefer the thick, warm robe of the old religion — old as God — the robe which has kept so many warm amid the cold pilgrimage of this life and amid the chills of death. The old robe rather than the thin, uncertain gauze offered us b}- these wiseacres who believe the Bible in spots. CHAPTER V. Theory of a Posthumous Opportunity. [Next in enormity to Higher Criticism is the fallacious expecta- tion of "A SECOND CHANCE," or a Posthumous Opportunity of Salvation ; perhaps the more mischievous device of Satan. — [Edi- tor]. " If the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." — Eccles. 11:3. Here we have figuratively announced the orthodox doc- trine of two destinies. Palace and penitentiary. Palace with gates on all sides through which all may enter and live on celestial luxuries world without end, and all for the knocking and the asking. A palace grander than if all the Alhambras and the Versailles and the Windsor castles and the Winter Gardens and the imperial abodes of all the earth were heaved up into one architectural glory. At the other end of the universe a penitentiary where men who want their sins can have them. The first of no use unless you have the last. Brooklyn and New York would be better places to live in with Raymond Street jail and the Tombs and Sing Sing, and all the small-pox hospitals emptied on us than heaven would be if there were no hell. Thomas Paine and George Whitefield, Jezebel and Mary Lyon, Nero and Charles Wesley, Charles Guiteau and James A. Garfield, John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln — all in glory together! All the innocent men, women, and chil- dren who were massacred, side by side with their murderers. If we are all coming out at the same destiny, without regard to character, then it is true. I turn away from such a de- bauched heaven. Against that cauldron of piety and blas- phemy, philanthropy and assassination, self-sacrifice and 157 158 TRLMPET PEAI.S. beastliness, I place the two destinies of the Bible forever and forever and forever apart. PAIN DOES NOT CURE. Common-sense, as well as revelation, declares that such an expectation is chimerical. You say that tlic impenitent man having got into the next world and seeing the disaster will, as a result of that disaster, turn, the pain the cause of his reformation. ]kit )-ou can find ten thousand instances in this world of men who have done wrong and distress over- took them suddenly. Did the distress cure them ? No ; they went right on. Pain does not correct. Suffering does not reform. Take up the printed reports of the prisons of the United States, and you will find that the vast majority of the incarcerated have been there before, some of them four, five, six times. What is true in one sense is true in all senses, and will for- ever be so, and yet men are expecting in the next world pur- gatorial rejuvenation. With a million illustrations all work- ing the other way in this world, people are expecting that distress in the next state will be salvatory, though they know that some men suffer here \\ithout any salutary conse- quence. AN UNPROPITIOUS BEGINNING. Furthermore, the prospect of a reformation in the next world is more improbable than a reformation here. In this world the life started with innocence of infancy. In the case supposed the other life will open with all the accumulated bad habits of many years upon him. Surely, it is easier to build a strong ship out of new timber than out of an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If with innocence to start with in this life a man docs not become godly, what prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there would be a seraph evoluted ? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. I 59 white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to write a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled and blotted and torn from top to bottom. Yet men seem to think that, though the life that began here comparatively perfect turned out badly, the next life will succeed, though it starts with a dead failure. TIME NO REFORMER. " But," says some one, " I think we ought to have a chance in the next life, because this life is so short it allows only small opportunity." We hardly have time to turn around between cradle and tomb, the wood of the one almost touch- ing the marble of the other. But do you know what made the ancient deluge a necessity ? It was the longevity of the antediluvians. They were worse in the second century of their lifetime than in the first hundred years, and still worse in the third century, and still worse all the way on to seven, eight, and nine hundred years, and the earth had to be washed, and scrubbed, and soaked, and anchored clear out of sight for more than a month before it could be made fit for decent people to live in. Longevity never cures impeni- tency. All the pictures of Time represent him with a scythe to cut, but I never saw any picture of Time with a case of medicines to heal. Seneca says that Nero for the first five years of his public life was set up for an example of clemen- cy and kindness, but his path all the way descended until at sixty-eight he became a suicide. If eight hundred years did not make antediluvians any better, but only made them worse, the ages of eternity could have no effect except pro- longation of depravity. UNPROPITIOUS SURROUNDINGS. " But," says one, " in the future state evil surroundings will be withdrawn and elevated influences substituted, and hence expurgation, and sublimation, and glorification." But l6o TRUMPET PEALS. the righteous, all their sins forgiven, have passed on into a beatific state, and consequently the unsaved will be left alone. It cannot be expected that Dr. Duff, who exhausted himself in teaching Hindoos the way to heaven, and Dr. Abeel, who gave his life in the evangelization of China, and Adoniram Judson, who toiled for the redemption of Burmah, should be sent down by some celestial missionary society to educate those who wasted all their earthly existence. Evan- gelistic and missionary efforts are ended. The entire king- dom of the morally bankrupt by themselves, where are the salvatory influences to come from ? Can one speckled and bad apple in a barrel of diseased apples turn the other apples good ? Can those who are themselves down help others up? Can those who have themselves failed in the business of the soul pay the debts of spiritual insolvents ? Can a million wrongs make one right ? A LAZARETTO WORLD. Poneropolis was a city where King Philip of Tliracia put all the bad people of his kingdom. If any man had opened a primary school at Poneropolis, I do not think the parents from other cities would have sent their children there. In- stead of amendment in the other world, all the associations, now that the good are evolved, will be degenerating and down- ward. You would not want to send a man to a cholera or yellow-fever hospital for his health ; and the great lazaretto of the next world, containing the diseased and plague-struck, will be a poor place for moral recover}'. If the surroundings in this world were crowded with temptation, the surroundings in the next world, after the righteous have passed up and on, will be a thousand per cent more crowded with temptation. The Count of Chateaubriand made his little son sleep at night on the top of a castle turret, where the winds howled and where spectres were said to haunt the place ; and while the mother and sisters almost died with fright, the son tells us that the process f^ave him ner\es that could not tremble and a courage that never faltered. But 1 don't think that THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. l6l towers of darkness and the spectral world swept by Sirocco and Euroclydon will ever fit one for the land of eternal sun- shine. I wonder what is the curriculum of that college of Inferno, where, after proper preparation by the sins of this life, the candidate enters, passing on from Freshman class of depravity to Sophomore of abandonment, and from Sopho- more to Junior, and from Junior to Senior, and day of gradu- ation comes, and with diploma signed by Satan, the presi- dent, and other professorial demoniacs, attesting that the candidate has been long enough under their drill, he passes up to enter heaven ! Pandemonium a preparative course for heavenly admission ! Ah, my friends, Satan and his cohorts have fitted uncounted multitudes for ruin, but never fitted one soul for happiness. A DEMORALIZING THEORY. Furthermore, it would not be safe for this world if men had another chance in the next. If it had been announced that however wickedly a man might act in this world he could fix it up all right in the next, society would be terribly demoralized, and the human race demolished in a few years. The fear that if we are bad and unforgiven here it will not be well for us in the next existence is the chief influence that keeps civilization from rushing back to semi-barbarism, and semi-barbarism from rushing into midnight savagery, and midnight savagery from extinction, for it is the astringent impression of all nations. Christian and heathen, that there is no future chance for those who have wasted this. Multitudes of men who are kept within bounds would say, "Go to now! Let me get all out of this life there is in it. Come, gluttony, and inebriation, and uncleanness, and revenge, and all sensualities, and wait upon me ! My life may be somewhat shortened in this world by dissoluteness, but that will only make heavenly indulgence on a larger scale the sooner possible. I will overtake the saints at last, and will enter the Heavenly Temple only a little later than those who behaved themselves here. I will on my way 1 62 TRUMPET PEALS. to heaven take a little wider excursion than those who were on earth pious, and I shall go to heaven vid Gehenna and vid Sheol." Another chance in the next world means free license and wild abandonment in this. Suppose you were a party in an important case at law, and you knew from consultation with judges and attorneys that it^ would be tried twice, and the first trial would be of little importance, but that the second would decide every- thing, for which trial Avould you make the most preparation, for which retain the ablest attorneys, for which be most anxious about the attendance of witnesses? You would put all the stress upon the second trial, all the anxiety, all the expenditure, saying, " The first is nothing, the last is every- thing." Give the race assurance of a second and more im- portant trial in the subsequent life, and all the preparation for eternity would be post-mortem, post- funeral, post-sepul- chral, and the world with one jerk be pitched off into im- piety and godlessness. AN infidel's premonition. Voltaire, while rejecting the whole Bible, did not seem to be so very well persuaded of the non-existence of perdi- tion, for when his friend wrote to him, " I have found out for sure that there is no hell, Voltaire replied, " I congratu- late you ; I am not so fortunate as you are." SUFFICIENT CHANCES IN LIFE. Furthermore, let me ask wh)- a chance should be given in the next world if we have refused innumerable chances in this ? Suppose you give a banquet, and you invite a vast number of friends, but one man declines to come, or treats your invitation with indifference. You in the course of twenty years give twenty banquets, and the same man is in- vited to thcfe all, and treats them all in the same obnoxious way. After a while you remove to another house, larger and better, and )'ou again invite your friends, but send no THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS 02\P0RTUNITY. 1 65 invitation to the man who dccHned or neglcother chance in invitations. Are you to blame ? Has he a rigi. to be invited after all the indignities he has done yo. in this world has invited us all to the banquet of His ^ He invited us by His Providence and His Spirit three i. dred and sixty-five days of every year since we knew ou"^ right hand from our left. If we declined it every time, or treated the invitation with indifference, and gave twenty or forty or fifty years of indignity on our part toward the Ban- queter, and at last He spreads the banquet in a more luxu- riant and kingly place, amid the heavenly gardens, have we a right to expect Him to invite us again, and have we a right to blame Him if He does not invite us? THE GOSPEL SHIP. If twelve gates of salvation stood open twenty years or fifty years for our admission, and at the end of that time they are closed, can we complain of it and say, " These gates ought to be open again. Give us another chance "? If the steamer is to sail for Hamburg, and we want to get to Ger- many by that line, and we read in every evening and every morning newspaper that it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks we have that advertisement before our eyes, and then we go down to the docks fifteen minutes after it has shoved off into the stream and say: " Come back. Give me another chance. It is not fair to treat me in this way. Swing up to the dock again, and throw out the planks, and let me come on board." Such behavior would invite arrest as a madman. And if, after the Gospel ship has lain at anchor before our eyes for years and years and years, and all the benign voices of earth and heaven have urged us to get on board, as she might sail away any moment, and after a while she sails without us, is it common-sense to expect her to come back? You might as well go out on the Highlands at Nev- ersink and call to the Aurania after she has been three days out, and expect her to return, as to call back an opportunity 1 62 TRUMPET PEALS. to heaven take a little wider excursion than those who were on earth pious, and I shall go to heaven vid Gehenna and vid Sheol." Another chance in the next world means free license and wild abandonment in this. Suppose you were a party in an important case at law, and you knew from consultation with judges and attorneys that it would be tried twice, and the first trial would be of Httle importance, but that the second would decide every- thing, for which trial would you make the most preparation, for which retain the ablest attorneys, for which be most anxious about the attendance of witnesses? You would put all the stress upon the second trial, all the anxiety, all the expenditure, saying, " The first is nothing, the last is every- thing." Give the race assurance of a second and more im- portant trial in the subsequent life, and all the preparation for eternity would be post-mortem, post- funeral, post-sepul- chral, and the world with one jerk be pitched off into im- piety and godlessness. AN infidel's premonition. Voltaire, while rejecting the whole Bible, did not seem to be so very well persuaded of the non-existence of perdi- tion, for when his friend wrote to him, " I have found out for sure that there is no hell, Voltaire replied, " I congratu- late you ; I am 7iot so fortunate as you are." SUFFICIENT CHANCES IN LIFE. Furthermore, let me ask why a chance should be given in the next world if we have refused innumerable chances in this ? Suppose you give a banquet, and you invite a vast number of friends, but one man declines to come, or treats your invitation with indifference. You in the course of twenty years give twenty banquets, and the same man is in- vited to thetn all, and treats them all in the same obnoxious way. After a while you remove to another house, larger and better, and )'ou again invite your friends, but send no THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. 1 63 invitation to the man who dechned or neglected the other invitations. Are you to blame? Has he a right to expect to be invited after all the indignities he has done you ? God in this world has invited us all to the banquet of His grace. He invited us by His Providence and His Spirit three hun- dred and sixty-five days of every year since we knew our right hand from our left. If we declined it every time, or treated the invitation with indifference, and gave twenty or forty or fifty years of indignity on our part toward the Ban- queter, and at last He spreads the banquet in a more luxu- riant and kingly place, amid the heavenly gardens, have we a right to expect Him to invite us again, and have we a right to blame Him if He does not invite us? THE GOSPEL SHIP. If twelve gates of salvation stood open twenty years or fifty years for our admission, and at the end of that time they are closed, can we complain of it and say, " These gates ought to be open again. Give us another chance "? If the steamer is to sail for Hamburg, and we want to get to Ger- many by that line, and we read in every evening and every morning newspaper that it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks we have that advertisement before our eyes, and then we go down to the docks fifteen minutes after it has shoved off into the stream and say : " Come back. Give me another chance. It is not fair to treat me in this way. Swing up to the dock again, and throw out the planks, and let me come on board." Such behavior would invite arrest as a madman. And if, after the Gospel ship has lain at anchor before our eyes for years and years and years, and all the benign voices of earth and heaven have urged us to get on board, as she might sail away any moment, and after a while she sails without us, is it common-sense to expect her to come back ? You might as well go out on the Highlands at Nev- ersink and call to the Aurania after she has been three days out, and expect her to return, as to call back an opportunity 164 TRLMl'ET PEALS. for heaven when it onee has sped away. All heaven offered us as a gratuity, and for a lifetime we refuse to take it, and then rush on the bosses of Jehovah's buckler demanding an- other chance. There ought to be, there can be, there will be, no such thing as posthumous opportunity. Thus our common-sense agrees with my text — " If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place'where the tree fall- eth, there it shall be." You see that this idea lifts this world up from an unim- portant way station to a platform of stupendous issues, and makes all eternity whirl around this hour. But one trial for which all the preparation must be made in this world, or never made at all. That piles up all the emphases and all the climaxes and all the destinies into life here. No other chance ! O how that augments the value and importance of this chance. ALEXANDER S LIGHT. Alexander with his army used to surround a city, and then would lift a great light in token to the people that, if they surrendered before that light went out, all would be well ; but if once the light went out, then the battering-rams would swing against the wall, and demolition and disaster would follow. Well, all we need to do for our present and everlasting safety is to make surrender to Christ, the King and Conquerer, surrender of our hearts, surrender of our lives, surrender of everything. And He keeps a great light burning, light of Gospel invitation, light kindled with the wood of the cross and flaming up against the dark night of our sin and sorrow. Surrender while that great light con- tinues to burn, for after it goes out, there will be no other opportunity of making peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Talk of another chance ! Why, this is a su- pernal chance ! Tell it to all points of the compass. Tell it to night and day. Tell it to all earth and heaven. TclT it to all centu- ries, all ages, all millenniums, that we have such a magnifi- THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. 165 cent chance in this world that we need no other chance in the next. A DREAM. I am in the burnished Judgment Hall of the Last Day, A great white throne is lifted, but the Judge has not yet taken it. While we are waiting for His arrival I hear im mortal spirits in conversation. "What are you waiting here for?" says a soul that went up from Madagascar to a soul that ascended from America. The latter says : " I came from America, where forty years 1 heard the Gospel preached and Bible read, and from the prayer I learned in infancy at my mother's knee until my last hour I had Gospel advantage, but for some reason I did not make the Christian choice, and I am here waiting for the Judge to give me a new trial and another chance." " Strange," says the other ; " I had but one Gospel call in Madagascar, and I accepted it, and I do not need another chance." " Why are you here ?" says one who on earth had fee- blest intellect to one who had great brain, and silvery tongue, and marvelous influence. The latter responds : *' Oh, I knew more than my fellows. I mastered libraries, and had learned titles from colleges, and my name was a synonym for eloquence and power. And yet I neglected my soul, and I am here waiting for a new trial." " Strange," says the one of the feeble earthly capacity : " I knew but little of worldly knowledge, but I knew Christ, and made Him my partner, and I have no need of another chance." ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. While I am talking to a young man about his soul he tells me : "I do not become a Christian because I do not believe there is any hell at all." Ah ! don't you ? Do all the people, of all beliefs and no belief at all, of good morals and bad morals, go straight to a happy heaven ? Do the holy and the deC)auched have 1 66 TRUMPET PEALS. the same destination? At midnight, in a hallway, the owner of a house and a burglar meet each other, and they both fire, and both are wounded, but the burglar died in five minutes and the owner of the house lives a week after. Will the burglar be at the gate of heaven waiting when the house- owner comes in ? Will the debauchee and the libertine go right in among the families of heaven? / wonder if Herod is playing on the banks of the River of Life with the children he massacred. I wonder if Charles Guiteau and John Wilkes Booth are up there shooting at a mark. I do not now con- trovert it, although I must say that for such a miserable heaven I have no admiration. But the Bible does not say, " Believe in perdition and be saved." Because all are saved, according to your theory, that ought not to keep you from loving and serving Christ. Do not refuse to come ashore because all the others, according to your theory, are going to get ashore. You may have a different theory about chemistry, about astronomy, about the atmosphere, from that which others adopt, but you are not therefore hindered from action. Because your theory of light is different from others, you do not refuse to open your eyes. Because your theory of air is different you do not refuse to breathe. Because your theory about the stellar system is different, you do not refuse to acknowledge the North Star. Why should the fact that your theological theories are different, hinder you from acting upon what you know ? HOW FAR IT IS TO HELL. "Can you tell me how far it is to hell?" said a young man as, one Sunday on horseback, he dashed past a good Christian deacon. At the next turn in the road the horse threw the scoffing rider, and he was dead. lie wanted to know how far it was to hell, and found out without the dea- con's telling him. So thou art mounted on a swift steed, whose hoofs strike THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. 167 fire from the pavement as he dashes past, and you cry out : *' How far is it to ruin ?" I answer : " Near — very near!" " Perhaps this very day Thy last accepted time may be ; Oh, should'st thou grieve Him now away, Then hope may never beam on thee !" Oh, that my Lord God would bring you now to see your sin and to fly from it ; and your duty, and help you to do it, so that when the last great terror of earth shall spread its two black wings, and clutch with its bloody talons for thy soul, it cannot hurt thee, for that thou art safe in the warm dove-cot of a Saviour's mercy! " Come in ! come in ! Eternal glory shalt thou win." I am talking with one thoughtful about his soul, who has lately travelled through New England and passed the night at Andover. He says to me : " I cannot believe that in this life the destiny is irrevocably fixed ; I think there will be another opportunity of repentance after death." I say to him : My brother, what has that to do with you ? Don't you realize that the man who waits for another chance after death when he has a good chance before death is a stark fool ? Had not you better take the plank that is thrown to you now and head for shore, rather than wait for a plank that may by invisible hands be thrown to you after you are dead? Do as you please, but as for myself, with pardon for all my sins offered me now and all the joys of time and eter- nity offered me now, I instantly take them rather than run the risk of such other chance as wise men think they can peel off or twist out of a Scripture passage that has for all the Christian centuries been interpreted another way. You admit you are all broken up, one decade of your life gone by, two decades, three decades, four decades, a half century, perhaps three quarters of a century gone. The hour- hand and the minute-hand of your clock of life are almost 1 68 TRUMPET PEALS. parallel, and soon it will be twelve and your day ended. Clear discouraged arc you ? I admit it is a sad thing to give all of our lives that arc worth anything to sin and the devil, and then at last make iJod a present of a first-rate corpse. From many a deathbed I have seen the hands thrown up in deploration something like this : " Aly life has been wasted. I had good mental faculties, and fine social position, and great opportunity, but through worldliness and neglect all has gone to waste save these few remaining hours. I now accept of Christ, and shall enter heaven through His mercy but alas ! alas ! that when I might have entered the haven of eternal rest with a full cargo, and been greeted by the waving hands of a multitude in whose salvation I had borne a blessed part, I must confess I now enter the harbor of heaven on broken pieces of the ship !'* A VERY STOUT ROPE. O man astray, God help you ! You know that sometimes a rope-maker will take very small threads and wind them together, until after a while they become ship cable. And I am going to take some very small delicate threads and wind them together until they make a very stout rope. I will take all the memories of the marriage day — a thread of laughter, a thread of light, a thread of music, a thread of banqueting, a thread of congratulation, and I twist them together and I have one strand. Then I take a thread of the hour of the first advent in your house, a thread of the darkness that preceded, and a thread of the light that fol- lowed; and a thread of the beautiful scarf that little child used to wear when she bounded out at eventide to greet you ; and then a thread of the beautiful dress in which you laid her away for the resurrection ; and then I twist all these threads together, and I have another strand. Then I take a thread of the scarlet robe of a suffering Christ, and a thread of the white raiment of your loved ones before the throne, and a string of the harp cherubic, and a string of the harp seraphic, and I twist them all together, and I have a third THEORY OF A POSTHUMOUS OPPORTUNITY. 169 strand. " Oh," you say, " either strand is enough to hold fast a world !" No : I will take these strands and I will twist them together, and one end of that rope I will fasten, not to the communion table, for it shall be removed ; not to a pillar of the organ, for that will crumble in the ages ; but I wind it round and round the cross of a sympathizing Christ, and having fastened one end of the rope to the cross, I throw the other end to you. Lay hold of it ! Pull for your life ! Pull for heaven ! CHAPTER VI. The Plague of Profanity. Next to denying t/iat f/iere is a God is profaning his Name ; and the zvorst kind of profxfiity is blasphemy or cursing Cod. This was *' the head and front of the offending" of Job's wife. — Editor. " Curse God and die !" Job knew right well that swear- ing would not cure one of the tumors of his agonized body, would not bring back one of his destroyed camels, would not restore one of his dead children. He knew that pro- fanity would only make the pain more unbearable, and the poverty more distressing, and the bereavement more excru- ciating. But judging from the profanity abroad in our day, you might come to the conclusion that there was some great advantage to be reaped from profanity. Blasphemy is one of the ten plagues A\hich have smitten our great cities. You hear it in every direction. The dray- man swearing at his cart, the sewing girl imprecating the tangled skein, the accountant cursing the long line of troublesome figures. Swearing at the store, swearing on the loft, swearing in the cellar, swearing on the street, swear- ing in the factory. Children swear. Men swear. Ladies swear ! Swearing from the rough calling on the Almighty in the low restaurant, clear up to the reckless " O Lord !" of a glittering drawing-room ; and the one is as much blasphemy as the other. It was no profanity when James A. Garfield, in the Wash- ington depot, cried out, " My God, what does this mean?" But I am speaking now of the triviality and of the reckless- ness with which the name of God is sometimes abused. The whole land is cursed with it. A gentleman coming from the Far West sat in the car day after day behind two persons who were indulging in 170 THE PLAGUE OF PROFANITY. I7I profanity, and he made up his mind that he would make a record of their prof anitieSy and at the end of two days sev- eral sheets of paper were covered with these imprecations, and at the close of the journey he handed the manuscript to one of the persons in front of him. " Is it possible," said the man, " that we have uttered so many profanities the last few days?" " It is," replied the gentleman. "Then," said the man who had taken the manuscript, " I will never swear again." But it is a comparatively unimportant thing if a man makes record of our improprieties of speech. The more memorable consideration is that every oath uttered has a record in the book of Gocfs renicnibrance ! IS IT MANLY? That this habit grows in the community is seen in the fact that young people think it manly to swear. Little chil- dren, hardly able to walk straight on the street, yet have enough distinctness of utterance to let you know that they are damning their own souls, or damning the souls of others. Between sixteen and twenty years of age there is apt to come a time when a young man is as much ashamed of not being able to swear gracefully as he is of the dizziness of his first cigar. There are young men who walk in an atmos- phere of imprecation — oaths on their lips, under their tongues, nesting in their shock of hair. They abstain from it in the elegant drawing-room, but the street and the club- house ring with their profanities. They have no regard for God, although they have great respect for the ladies ! My young brother, there is no manliness in that. The most un- gentlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. Fathers foster this great crime. There are parents who are very cautious not to swear in the presence of their chil- dren ; in a moment of sudden anger, they look around to see if the children are present, then they indulge in this habit. Do you not know, O father, that your child is aware of the fact that you swear? He overheard you in the next 172 TRUMPET PEALS. room, or some one has informed him of your habit. He is practising now. The crime is also fostered by master-mechanics, boss-car- penters, tliose who are at the head of men in hat-factories, and in dock-yards, and at the head of great business estab- Hshments. When you go down to look at the work of the scaffolding, and you find it is not done right, what do you say ? Employers swear, and that makes so many employes swear. The habit also comes from infirmity of temper. There are a good many people who, when they are at peace, have righteousness of speech, but Avhen angered they blaze with imprecation. I knew of a man who excused himself for the habit, saying : " I only swear once in a great while. I must do that just to clear myself out." The habit comes also from the profuse use of bywords. The transition from a byword to imprecation and profanity is not a very large transition. It is " my stars !" and " mercy on me !" and " good gracious !" and " by George !" and by Jove !" and you go on with that a little while, and then you swear. The habit is creeping np into the highest styles of society. Women have no patience with flat and unvarnished profanity. They will order a man out of the parlor for in- dulging in blasphemy, and yet you will sometimes find them with fairy fan to the lip, and under chandeliers which bring no blush to their cheek, taking on their lips the holiest of names in utter triviality. Why my friends, the English language is comprehensive and capable of expressing all shades of feeling and every degree of energy, without any profanity — the God-honored Anglo-Saxon in which Milton sang, and John Bunyan dreamed. This country is pre-eminent for blasphemy. A man travelling in Russia was supposed to be a clergyman. " Why do you take me to be a clergyman ?" said the man. " Oh," said the Russian, " all other Americans swear. Does it not seem to you that the abominations of this earth have gone THE PLAGUE OF PROFANITY. 1/3 far enough ? Were there ever before so many fists lifted toward God, teUing Him to come on if He dare? BLASPHEMY ABROAD! What towering profanity ! Would it be possible for anyone to calculate the numbers of times that the name of the Almighty God and of Jesus Christ are every day taken irreverently on the lips ? So common has blasphemy be- come, that the public mind and public ear have got used to it, and a blasphemer goes up and down this country in his lectures defying the plain law against blasphemy, and there is not a mayor in America that has backbone enough to in- terfere with him save one, and that, the mayor of Toronto. Profane swearing is as much forbidden by the law as theft or arson or murder, yet who executes it ? Profanity is worse than theft or arson or murder, for these crimes are attacks on humanity — that is, an attack on God. When the Mohammedan finds a piece of paper he cannot read, he puts it aside very cautiously for fear the name of God may be on it. That is one extreme. We go to the other. The crime rolls on, up through parlors, up through chan- deliers with lights all ablaze, and through the pictured cor- ridors of club-rooms, etc., out through busy exchanges where oath meets oath, and down through all the haunts of sin, mingling with the rattling dice and cracking billiard- balls, and the laughter of her who hath forgotten the cove- nant of her God ; and round the city, and round the conti- nent, and round the earth a seething, boiling surge flings its hot spray into the face of a long-suffering God. And the ship-captain damns his crew, and the merchant damns his clerks, and the master-builder damns his men, and the hack- driver damns his horse ; and the traveller damns the stone that bruises his foot, or the mud that soils his shoes, or the defective time-piece that gets him too late to the rail train. I arraign profane swearing and blasphemy, two names for the same thing, as being one of the gigantic crimes of this 174 TRUMPET PEALS. l.'incl. Do you not know also that the trivial use of God's name results in perjury? Make the name of God a foot-ball in the community, and it has no power when in court-room and in legislative assem- bly it is employed in solemn adjuration. See the way some- times they administer the oath : " S'hclp you God — kiss the book!" Why is it that so often jurors render unaccounta- ble verdicts, and judges give unaccountable charges, and useless railroad schemes pass in our State capitals, and there are most unjust changes made in tariffs — tariiT lifted from one thing and put upon another? May not this be the why? May not this also be the reason why smuggling, which is always a violation of the oath, becomes in some circles a grand joke ? You say to a man : " How is it possible for you to sell these goods so very cheap? I can't understand it." " Ah !" he replies, with a twinkle of the eye, " the Custom House tariff of these goods isn't as much as it might be." WHAT IS THE CURE? It is a mighty habit. Men have struggled for years to get over it. An aged man was in the delirium of a fever. He had for many years lived a most upright life, and was honored in all the community ; but when he came into the delirium of this fever he was full of imprecation and pro- fanit}', and they could not understand it. After he came to his right reason he explained it. He said, " When I was a young man I was very profane. I conquered the habit, but I had to struggle all through life. You haven't for forty years heard me say an improper word, but it has been an awful struggle. Tlie tiger is chained, but he is alive yet." If you would get rid of this habit, I want you, my friends, to dwell upon the uselessness of it. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load? Did they ever extirpate meanness from a customer? Did they ever collect a bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop the twinge of the rheumatism ? Did they ever help THE PLAGUE OF PROFANITY. 1/5 you forward one step in the right direction ? Come now, tell nae, ye who have had the most experience in this habit, how much have you made out of it? Five thousand dollars in all your life? No. One thousand? No. One hundred ? No. One dollar? No. One cent? No. If the habit be so utterly useless, away with it. Think too how the habit grows. You start with a small oath, you will come to the large oath. I saw a man die with an oath between his teeth. Voltaire only gradually came to his tremendous imprecation ; but the habit grew on him until in the last moment, supposing Christ stood at the bed, he exclaimed, " Crush the wretch ! Crush the wretch !" Remember also, for the cure of this habit, that it arouses God's indignation. Dionysius used to have a cave in which his culprits were incarcerated, and he listened at the top of that cave and he could hear every groan, he could hear every sigh, and he could hear every whisper of those who were imprisoned. He was a tyrant. God is not a tyrant ; but He bends over this world and He hears everything — every voice of praise — every voice of imprecation. He hears it all. The oaths seem to die on the air, but they have eternal echo. They come back from the ages to come. Listen ! listen ! God very often shows what He thinks, but for the most part the fatality is hushed up. Families keep them still to avoid the horrible conspicuity. Physicians suppress them through professional confidence. It is a very, very, very long roll that contains the names of those who died with blasphemies on their lips. A few summers ago, among the Adirondacks, I met the funeral procession of a man who, two days before, had fal- len under a flash of lightning, while boasting, after a Sunday of work in the fields, that he had cheated God out of one day anyhow, and the man who worked with him on the same Sabbath is still living, but a helpless invalid, under the same flash. 1/6 TRUMPET PEALS. INSTANCES OF AWFUL PUNISHMENT. There is not a sin in all the catalogue that is so often peremptorily and suddenly punished in this world as the sin of j)rofanity. At New Brunswick, N. J., just before I went there as a student, this occurrence took place in front of the college. On the rail-track a man had uttered a horrid oath. He saw not that the rail-train was coming. The locomotive struck him and instantly dashed his life out. No mystery about it. He cursed God and died. In a cemetery in Sul- livan County, in this State, are eight headstones in a line, and all alike, and these arc the facts: In 1861 diphtheria raged in the village, and a physician was remarkably suc- cessful in curing his patients. So confident did he become that he boasted that no case of diphtheria could stand before him, and finally defied Almighty God to produce a case of diphtheria that he could not cure. His youngest child soon after took the disease and died, and one child after another, until all the eight had died of diphtheria. The blasphemer challenged Almighty God, and God accepted the challenge. But I come later down and give you a fact that is proved by scores of witnesses. In August of 1886 a man got pro- voked at the continued drought and the ruin of his crops, and in the presence of his neighbors lie cursed God, saying that he would cut His heart out if He would come, calling: Him a liar and a coward, and flashing a knife. And while he was speaking his lower jaw dropped, smoke issued from mouth and nostrils, and the heal of his body was so intense it drove back those who would come near. Scores of peo- ple visited the scene and saw the blasphemer in awful pro- cess of expiring. At Catskill, N. Y., a group of men stood in a blacksmith's shop during a violent thunder-storm. There came a crash of thunder and some of the men trembled. One man said : " Why, I don't see what you are afraid of. I am not afraid to go out in front of the shop and defy the Almighty. I am not afraid of the lijjhtnincr." And he laid a wacrer on THE PLAGUE OF PROFANITY. I J 7 the subject, and he went out, and he shook his fist at the heavens, crying, " Strike, if you dare T' and instantly he fell under a bolt. What destroyed him ? Any mystery about it? Oh, no. He cursed God and died. Years ago, in a Pittsburgh prison, two men were talking about the Bible and Christianity, and one of them, Thomp- son by name, applied to Jesus Christ a very low and vil- lainous epithet, and as he was uttering it, he fell. A physi- cian was called, but no help could be given. After a day lying with distended pupils and palsied tongue, he passed out of this world. On the road from Margate to Ramsgate, England, you may find a rough monument with the inscription, " A boy was struck dead here, while in the act of swearing." In Scotland a club assembled every week for purposes of wickedness, and there was a competition as to which could use the most horrid oath, and the man who succeeded was to be president of the club. The competition went on. A man uttered an oath which confounded all his comrades, and he was made president of the club. His tongue began to swell, and it protruded from the mouth, and he could not draw it in, and he died, and the physicians said : " This is the strangest thing we ever saw : we never saw any account in the books like unto it : we can't understand it." I un- derstand it. He cursed God and died. Oh, my brother, God will not allow this sin to go unpun- ished. There are styles of writing with manifold sheets, so that a man writing on one leaf writes clear through ten, fif- teen, or twenty sheets, and so every profanity we utter goes right down through the leaves of the book of God's remem- brance. CHAPTER VII. Lying, Dishonesty, and Fraud. "A certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession; .... and the young men came in, and found her dead, and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband." — Acts 5 : i-ic, A WELL-MATCHED pair, alike in ambition and in falsehood, Ananias and Sapphira. They wanted a reputation for great beneficence, and they sold all their property, pretending to put the entire proceeds in the chanty fund while they put much of it in their own pocket. There was no necessity that they give all their property away, but they wanted the reputation of so doing. Ananias first lied about it and dropped down dead. Then Sapphira lied about it and she dropped down dead. The two fatalities a warning to all ages of the danger of sacrificing the truth. There are thousands of ways of telling a lie. A man's whole life may be a falsehood, and yet never with his lips may he falsify once. There is a way of uttering falsehood by look, by manner as well as by lip. There are persons who are guilty of dishonesty of speech and then afterward say " may be ;" call it a white lie, when no lie is that color. The whitest lie ever told was as black as perdition. There are those so given to dishonesty of speech that the}- do not know when they are lying. With some it is an acquired sin, and with others it is a natural infirmity. There are those whom you will recognize as born liars. Their whole life, from cradle to grave, is filled up with vice of speech. Misrepresentation and prevarication are as natural to them as the infantile diseases, and are a 's,ox\. oi moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. Then there are those who in after life have opportunities of developing this 178 LYING, DISIIOXESTY, AA'D FRAUD. I'JC) evil, and they go from deception to deception, and from class to class, until they are regularly graduated liars. At times the air in our cities is filled with falsehood, and lies cluster around the mechanic's hammer, blossom on the merchant's yardstick, and sometimes sit in the door of churches. They are called by some, fabrication, and they are called by some, fiction. You might call them subterfuge or deceit, or romance, or fable, or misrepresentation, or delu- sion ; but as I know nothing to be gained by covering up a God-defying sin with a lexicographer's blanket, I shall call them in plainest vernacular, lies. They may be divided into agricultural, commercial, mechanical, and social. AGRICULTURAL FALSEHOODS. There is something in the presence of natural objects that has a tendency to make one pure. The trees never issue false stock. The wheat fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out in the night, not paying for the place they occupy. Corn shocks never make false assign- ment. Mountain brooks are always current. The gold of the wheat fields is never counterfeit. But while the ten- dency of agricultural life is to make one honest, honesty is not the characteristic of all who come to the city markets from the country districts. You hear the creaking of the dis- honest farm-wagon in almost every street of our great cities, a farm-wagon in which there is not one honest spoke or one truthful rivet from tongue to tail-board. Again and again has domestic economy in our great cities foundered on the farmer's firkin. When New York and Brooklyn and Cincin- nati and Boston sit down and weep over their sins, West- chester and Long Island counties and all the country dis- tricts ought to sit down and weep over theirs. The tendency in all rural districts is to suppose that sins and transgressions cluster in our great cities ; but citizens and merchants long ago learned that it is not safe to calcu- late from the character of the apples on the top of the farmer's barrel what is the character of the apples all the i8o TRUMrr/r i'kai.s. way down toward the bottom. Many of our citizens and merchants have learned that it is always safe to sec the farmer measure the barrel of beets. Milk cans arc not always honest. COMMERCIAL LIES. There arc those who apologize for deviations from the right and for practical deception by saying it is commercial custom. In other words, a lie by multiplication becomes a virtue. There are large fortunes gathered in which there is not one drop of the sweat of unrequited toil, and not one spark of bad temper flashes from the bronze bracket, and there is not one (ir()[) of needlewoman's heart's blood on the crimson plush ; while there arc other fortunes about which it may be said that on every door-knob and on every figure of the car- pet, and on every wall there is the mark of dishonor. What if the hand wrung by toil and blistered until the skin comes off should be pl.iced on the exquisite wall-paper, leaving its mark of blood — four fingers and a thumb ; or, if in the night the man should be aroused from his slumber again and again by his own conscience, getting himself up on elbow and cry- ing out into the darkness, "Who is there?" You and I know that there are in commercial life those who are guilty of great dishonesties of speech. A merchant says: "I am selling these goods at less than cost." Is he getting for those goods a price inferior to that which he paid for them ? Then he has spoken the truth. Is he getting more? Then he lies. A merchant says: "I paid $25 for this article." Is that the price he paid for it ? All right. But suppose he paid for it $23 instead of $25 ? Then he lies. A man unrolls ui)on the counter a bale of handkerchiefs. The customer says: "Are these all silk?" "Yes." "No cotton in them ?" " No cotton in them." Arc those hand- kerchiefs all silk? Then the miTchant told the truth. Is there an}' cotton in them? Then he lied. Moreoxer, he de- LYING, DISIIOXESTY, AND FRAUD. l8l frauds himself, for this customer coming in from Hempstead, or Yonkers, or Newark, will after a while find out that he has been defrauded, and the next time he comes to town and goes shopping, he will look up at that sign and say: " No, I wont go there ; that's the place where I got those handkerchiefs." First, the merchant insulted God, and sec- ondly, he picked his own pocket. Who would take the responsibility of saying how many falsehoods were yesterday told by hardware men, and cloth- iers, and lumbermen, and tobacconists, and jewellers, and importers, and shippers, and dealers in furniture, and dealers in coal, and dealers in groceries? Lies about buckles, about saddles, about harness, about shoes, about hats, about coats, about shovels, about tongs, about forks, about chairs, about sofas, about horses, about lands, about everything. BOTH SIDES THE COUNTER. But there are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A customer comes in and asks : " How much is this article?" "It is five dollars." "I can get that for four somewhere else." Can he get it for four somewhere else, or did he say that just for the purpose of getting it cheap by depreciating the value of the goods ? If so, he lied. There are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. MECHANICAL LIES. Some mechanics say they will have the job done in ten days ; they do not get it done before thirty. And then when a man becomes irritated and will not stand it any longer, then they go and work for him a day or two and keep the job along ; and then some one else gets irritated and outraged and they go and work for that man and get him pacified, and then they go somewhere else. I believe they call that " nursing the job I" Ah, my friends, how much dishonor such men would 1 82 TRUMPET TEALS. save their souls if they would promise to do only that which they know they can do. " O I" they say, " it's of no impor- tance ; everybody expects to be deceived and disappointed." There is a voice of thunder sounding among the saws and the hammers and the shears saying : " All liars shall have their place in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." SOCIAL LIES. How much of society is insincere. You hardly know what to believe. They send their regards ; you do not ex- actly know whether it is an expression of the heart, or an external civility. They ask you to come to their house ; you hardly know whether they really want you to come. We are all accustomed to take a discount off what we hear. " Not at home " very often means too lazy to dress. I read of a lady who said she had told Jicr last fashionable lie. There was a knock at her door and she sent word down, " Not at home." That night her husband said to her : Mrs. So-and-so is dead." "Is it possible?" she said. "Yes, and she died in great anguish of mind ; she wanted to see you so very much ; she had something very important to dis- close to you in her last hour, and she sent three times to-day, but found you absent every time." Then this woman be- thought herself that she had had a bargain with her neighbor that when the long-protracted sickness was about to come to an end, she would appear at her bedside and take the secret that was to be disclosed. And she had said she was " Not at home !" Social life is struck through with insincerity. Some apolo- gize for the fact that the furnace is out; they have not had any fire in it all winter. They apologize for the fare on their table : they never live any better. They decry their most luxuriant entertainment to win a shower of api)roval from you. They point at a picture on the wall as a work of one of the old masters. They say it is an heirloom in the family. It hung on the wall of a castle. A duke gave it to their grandfather. People that will lie about nothing else will lie LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. I83 about a picture. On small income we want the world to be- lieve we are affluent, and society to-day is struck through with cheat and counterfeit and sham. Society is so utterly askew in this matter that you seldom find a seller asking the price that he expects to get ; he puts on a higher value than he proposes to receive, knowing that he will have to drop. And if he wants fifty, he asks seventy- five. And if he wants two thousand, he asks twenty-five hundred. To meet this the buyer says, " The fabric is de- fective ; the style of goods is poor ; I can get elsewhere a better article at a smaller price. It is out of fashion ; it is damaged ; it will fade ; it will not wear well." After awhile the merchant, from over-persuasion or from desire to dispose of that particular stock of goods, says: "Well, take it at your own price," and the purchaser goes home with a light step, and calls into his private office his confidential friends, and chuckles while he tells how that for half price he got the goods. In other words, he lies, and is proud of it. SHOPPING LIES. Thousands of years ago Solomon discovered the ten- dency of buyers to depreciate goods. " It is naught, saith the buyer : but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth." (Proverbs 20 : 14.) It may seem to the world a sharp bar- gain, but the recording angel wrote down in the ponderous tomes of eternity : " Mr. So-and-so, doing business on Fulton Street, or Atlantic Street, or Broadway, or Chestnut Street, or State Street, or Mrs. So-and-so, keeping house on the Heights, or on the Hill, or on Beacon Street, or on Ritten- house Square, told one lie!' And when people tell me at what a ruinously low price they purchased an article, it gives me more dismay than satisfaction. I know it means the bankruptcy and defalcation of men in many departments. The men who toil with the brain need full as much sym- pathy as those who toil with the hand. All business life is struck through with suspicion, and panics are the result of want of confidence. 1 84 TRUMPET PEALS. May God extirpate from society all social lies and make every man to speak the truth of his neighbor. My friends, let us make our life correspond to what we are. Let us banish all deception from our behavior. Let us remember that the time comes when God will demonstrate before an assembled universe just what we are. The secret will come out. We may hide it while we live, but we cannot hide it when we die. " O ! " says some one, " the deception that I practice is so small it don't amount to anything." Ah ! my friends, it does amount to a great deal. You say, " When I deceive it is only about a case of needles, or a box of buttons, or a row of pins." But the article may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket, yet the sin is as big as the pyramids, and the echo of your dishonor will reverberate through the mountains of eternity. There is no such thing as a small sin. They are all vast and stupendous, because they will all have to come under inspection in the Day of Judgment. FRAUD AND DISHONESTY. No man knows what he will do until he is tempted. There are thousands of men who have kept their integrity merely because they never have been tested. A man was elected treasurer of the State of Maine some years ago. He was distinguished for his honesty, usefulness and uprightness, but before one year had passed he had taken of the public funds for his own private use, and was hurled out of office in disgrace. Distinguished for virtue before. Distinguished for crime after. You can call over the names of men just like that, in whose honesty you had complete confidence, but placed in certain crises of temptation they went overboard. Never so man}- temptations to scoundrelism as now. Not a law on the statute-book but has some back door through which a miscreant can escape. Ah I how many deceptions in the fabric of goods ; so much plundering in commercial life, that if a man talk about living a life of complete com- mercial accurac}' there are those who ascribe it to greenness LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. 185 and lack of tact More need of honesty now than ever before, tried honesty, complete honesty, more than in those times when business was a plain affair, and woollens were woollens and silks were silks and men were men. How many men do you suppose there are in commer- cial life who could say truthfully, "In all the sales I have ever made I have never overstated the value of goods ; in all the sales I have ever made I have never covered up an im- perfection in the fabric ; of all the thousands of dollars I have ever made I have not taken one dishonest farthing"? I wish that the words of George Peabody, uttered in the hearing of the people of his native town — Danvers, Massa- chusetts— I wish that those words could be uttered in the hearing of all the young men throughout the land. He said : "■ Though Providence has granted me unvaried and uni- versal success in the pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy who left yonder unpretendino- dwelling. There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble boy among you." George Peabody's success in business was not more re- markable than his integrity and his great-hearted benevo- lence. I pray upon you God's protecting and prosperous blessing. I hope you may all make fortunes for time and fortunes for eternity. Some day when you come out of your place of business, and you go to the Clearing-house, or the place of custom, or the bank, or your own home, as you come out of your place of business, just look up at the clock of old Trinity and see by the movement of the hands how your life is rapidly going away, and be reminded of the fact that before God's throne of inexorable judgment you must yet give account for what you have done since the day you sold the first yard of cloth or the first pomid of sugar. 1 86 TKUMPET PEALS. MONOrOLIES. The pressure to do wrong is stronger from the fact that in our day the large business houses are swallowing up the smaller, the whales dining on blue-fish and minnows. The large houses undersell the small ones because they can afford it. They can afford to make nothing, or actually lose, on some styles of goods, assured they can make it up on others. So, a great dry-goods house goes outside of its regular line and sells books at cost or less than cost, and that swamps the booksellers; or the dry-goods house sells bric-k-brac at low- est figure, that swamps the small dealer in bric-a-brac. And the same thing goes on in other styles of merchandise, and the consequence is that all along the business streets of all our cities there are merchants of small capital who are in terrific struggle to keep their heads above water. The Cunarders run down the Newfoundland fishing-smacks. This is nothing against the man who has the big store, for every man has as large a store and as great a business as he can manage. The morals of the Gospel are to be set beside the faith of the Gospel. Mr. Froude, the celebrated English his- torian, has written of his own country these remarkable words : " From the great house in the City of London, to the village grocer, the commercial life of England has been satu- rated with fraud. So deep has it gone that a strictly honest tradesman can hardly hold his ground against competition. You can no longer trust that any article you bu)- is the thing which it pretends to be. We have false weights, false meas- ures, cheating, and shoddy everywhere. And yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute indifference. Many hundreds of sermons have I heard in England, many a dis- sertation on the m>-steries of the faith, on the divine mission of the clergy, on bishops and justification, and the theory of good works, and verbal inspiration, and the efficacy of the sacraments ; but, during all these thirty wonderful years, never one that I can recollect on common honesty." LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. 1 87 Now, that may be an exaggerated statement of things in England, but I am very certain that in all parts of the earth we need to preach the moralities of the Gospel right along beside the faith of the Gospel. STOLEN GOODS RETURNED. A missionary in one of the islands of the Pacific preached on dishonesty, and the next morning he looked out of his window, and he saw his yard full of goods of all kinds. He wondered and asked the cause of all this. "Well," said the natives, " our gods that we have been worshipping permit us to steal, but according to what you said yesterday, the God of Heaven and earth will not allow this, so we bring back all these goods, and we ask you to help us in taking them to the places where they belong." If next Sabbath all the ministers in America should preach sermons on the abuse of trust funds, and on the evils of purloining, and the sermons were all blest of God, and regulation were made that all these things should be taken to the city halls, it would not be long before every city hall in America would be crowded from cellar to cupola. FASCINATIONS OF FRAUD. Now look abroad and see the fascinations that are thrown around fraud and all the different styles of crime. The question that every man and woman has asked dur- ing the last two months has been, Should crime be excused because it is on a large scale ? Is iniquity guilty and to be pursued of the law in proportion as it is on a small scale? Shall we have New York Tombs for the man who steals an overcoat from a hat-rack, and all Canada for a man to range in if he have robbed the public of three millions ? O that God would scatter these fascinations, and let us all understand that if I steal from you one dollar I am a thief, and if I steal from you $500,000 I am five hundred thousand times more of a thief ! Cultivate old-fashioned 1 88 TRUMPET PEALS. honesty. God's Book is full of it. Old-fashioned honesty in Business and everything else. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. I do not suppose there ever was a better specimen of honesty than was found in the Duke of Wellington. He marched with his army over the French frontier, and the army was suffering, and he hardly knew how to get along. Plenty of plunder all about, but he commanded none of the plunder to be taken. He writes home these remarkable words : " We are overwhelmed with debts, and I can scarcely stir out of my house on account of public creditors, waiting to demand what is due to them." Yet at that very time the French peasantry were bringing their valuables to him to keep. A celebrated writer says of the transaction : " Nothing can be grander or more nobly original than this admission. This old soldier, after thirty years' service, this iron man and victorious general, established in an enemy's country at the head of an immense army, is afraid of his creditors ! This is a kind of fear that has seldom troubled conquerors and invaders, and I doubt if the annals of war present anything comparable to its sublime simplicity." Dr. Livingstone, the famous explorer, was descended from the Highlanders, and he said that one of his ancestors, one of the Highlanders, one day called his family around him. The Highlander was dying; and with his children around his death-bed, he said : " Now, my lads, I have looked all through our history as far back as I can find it, and I have never found a dishonest man in all the line, and I want you to understand you inherit good blood. You have no excuse for doing wrong. My lads, be honest." Ah ! my friends, be honest before God, be honest before your fellow-men, bo honest before your soul. LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. 1 89 TRUST FUNDS. One of the crying sins of this day is the abuse of trust funds. Every man during the course of his hfe, on a larger or smaller scale, has the property of others committed to his keeping. He is so far a safety deposit, he is an administra- tor, and holds in his hand the interest of the family of a deceased friend. Or, he is an attorney, and through his cus- tody goes the payment from debtor to creditor, or he is the collector for a business house which compensates him for the responsibility; or he is a treasurer for a charitable institution and he holds alms contributed for the suffering ; or he is an official of the city, or the State, or the nation, and taxes, and subsidies, and salaries, and supplies are in his keeping. It is as solemn a trust as God can make it. It is concen- tred and multiplied confidences. On that man depends the support of a bereft household, or the morals of dependants, or the right movement of a thousand wheels of social mech- anism. A man may do what he will with his own, but he who abuses trust funds, in that one act commits theft, false- hood, perjury, and becomes in all the intensity of the word a miscreant. How many widows and orphans there are with nothing between them and starvation, but a sewing-machine, or held up out of the vortex of destruction simply by the thread of a needle, and with their own hearts' blood, who a little while ago had, by father and husband, left them a com- petency. What is the matter? The administrators or the executors have sacrificed it — running risks with it that they would not have dared to encounter in their own private af- fairs. How often it is that a man will earn a livelihood by the sweat of his brow, and then die, and within a few months all the estate goes into the stock-gambling rapids of Wall Street. How often it is that you have known the man to whom trust funds were committed taking them out of the savings- bank and from trust companies, and administrators, turning IQO TRUMPET PEALS. old homesteads into hard cash, and then putting the entire estate in the vortex of speculation. Embezzlement is an easy word to pronounce, but it has ten thousand ramifications of horror. Let me say to those in charge of trust funds : It is a compliment to you that you have been so intrusted ; but I charge you, in the presence of God and the world, be care- ful, be as careful of the property of others as you are careful of your own. Above all, keep your own private account at the bank separate from your account as trustee of an estate, or trustee of an institution. That is the point at which thousands of people make shipwreck. They get the prop- erty of others mixed up with their own property, they put it into investment, and away it all goes, and they cannot re- turn that which they borrowed. Then comes the explosion, and the money market is shaken, and the press denounces and the church thunders expulsion. What a sad thing it would be, if after you are dead your administrator should find out from the account-books, or from the lack of vouchers, that you not only were bank- rupt in estate, but that you lost your soul. O ! there is such a fearful fascination in this day about the use of trust-funds. It has got to be popular to take the funds of others and speculate with them. But O do not come under the fascination which induces men to employ trust-funds for purposes of their own speculation. DEBT. A debt is a kind of tnist-fund, and when incurred with no hope of payment, is a fraudulent breach of trust. — Editor. Society slaughters a great many young men by the be- hest, " You must keep up appearances ; w^hatever be your salary, you must dress as well as others ; you must wine and brandy as many friends, you must smoke as costly cigars, )()u must give as expensive entertainments, and you must live in as fashionable a boarding-house. If you haven't the money, borrow. If you cant borrow, make a false entry, or LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. I9I subtract here and there a bill from a bundle of bank-bills ; you will only have to make the deception a little while ; in a few months, or in a year or two, you can make all right. Nobody will be hurt by it ; nobody will be the wiser. You yourself will not be damaged." By that awful process a hundred thousand men have been slaughtered for time and slaughtered for eternity. Suppose you borrow. There is nothing wrong about bor- rowing money. There is hardly a man in the house but has sometimes borrowed money. Vast estates have been built on a borrowed dollar. But there are two kinds of borrowed money. Money borrowed for the purpose of starting or keeping up legitimate enterprise and expense, and money borrowed to get that which you can do without. The first is right, the other is wrong. If you have money enough of your own to buy a coat, however plain, and then you borrow money for a dandy's outfit, you have taken the first revolution of the wheel down grade. Borrow for the necessities ; that maybe well. Borrow for the luxuries ; that tips your prospects over in the wrong direction. The Bible distinctly says the borrower is servant of the lender. It is a bad state of things when you have to go down some other street to escape meeting some one whom you owe. If young men knew what is the despotism of be- ing in debt more of them would keep out of it. The trouble is, my friends, the people do not understand the ethics of going in debt, and that if you purchase goods with no expectation of paying for them, or go into debt which you cannot meet, you steal just so much money. If I go into a grocer's store, and I buy sugars and coffees and meats, with no capacity to pay for them, and no intention of paying for them, I am more dishonest than if I go into the store, and when the grocer's face is turned the other way I fill my pockets with the articles of merchandise and carry off a ham. In the one case I take the merchant's time, and I take the time of his messenger to transfer the goods to my house, while in the other case I take none of the time of the mer- chant, and I wait upon myself, and I transfer the goods 192 TRUMPET PEALS without any trouble to him. In other words, a sneak thief is not so bad as a man who contracts for debts he never ex- pects to pay. Now our young men are coming up in this depraved state of commercial ethics, and I am solicitous about them. I want to warn them against being slaughtered on the sharp edges of debt. You want many things you have not, my young friends. You shall have them if you have patience and honesty and industry. Certain lines of conduct always lead out to certain results. There is a law which controls even those things that seem hap-hazard. The most insig- nificant event you ever heard of is the link between two eternities — the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. Head the right way, and you will come out at the right goal. Bring me a young man and tell me what his physical health is, and what his mental caliber, and what his habits, and I will tell you what will be his destiny for this world, and his destiny for the world to come, and I will not make five inaccurate prophecies out of five hundred. All this makes me solicitous in regard to young men, and I want to make them nervous in regard to the contraction of unpaya- ble debts. When a young man wilfully and of choice, having the comforts of life, goes into the contraction of unpayable debts, he knows not into what he goes. The creditors get after the debtor, the pack of hounds in full cry, and alas ! for the reindeer. They jingle his door-bell before he gets up in the morning ; they jingle his door-bell after he has gone to bed at night; they meet him as he comes off his front steps. They send him a postal-card, or a letter, in the curtest st}-lc, telling him to pay up. They attach his goods. They want cash, or a note at thirty days, or a note on demand. They call him a knave. They say he lies. They want him disci- plined at the church. They want him turned out of the bank. They come at him from this side, and from that side, and from before, and from behind, and from above, and from beneath, and he is insulted and gibbeted and sued and LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. I93 dunned and sworn at, until he gets the nervous dyspepsia, gets neuralgia, gets Hver complaint^ gets heart disease, gets convulsive disorder, gets consumption. Now he is dead, and you say : " Of course they will let him alone !" Oh, no ! Now they are watchful to see whether there are any unnecessary expenses at the obsequies, to see whether there is any useless handle on the casket, to see whether there is any surplus plait on the shroud, to see whether the hearse is costly or cheap, to see whether the flowers sent to the casket have been bought by the family or donated, to see in whose name the deed to the grave is made out. Then they ransack the bereft household, the books, the pictures, the carpets, the chairs, the sofa, the piano, the mattresses, the pillow on which he dies. Cursed be debt I For the sake of your own happiness, fos the sake of your good morals, for the sake of your immortal soul, for God's sake, young man, as far as possible, keep out of it ! SWINDLING. There is not a city or a town that has not suffered from swindling. Where is the court-house, or the city-hall, or the jail, or the post-office, or the hospital, that in the build- ing of it has not had a political job? I want to say here, there ought to be a better style of business introduced into many public places, and there ought to be closer inspection, and there ought to be less opportunity for embezzlement. Lest a man shall take a five-cent piece that does not belong to him, the conductor on the city horse-car must sound his bell at every payment, and we are very cautious about small offences, but give plenty of opportunity for sinners on a large scale to escape. For a boy who steals a loaf of bread from a corner grocer, to keep his mother from starving to death, a prison ; but for defrauders who abscond with half a million of dollars, a castle on the Rhine, or, waiting until the offence is forgotten, then a castle on the Hudson. Another remark needs to be made, and that is, that people 194 TRUMPET PEALS. ought not to go into places, into business, or into positions, where the temptation is mightier than their character. There arc men who go into positions full of temptation, considering only the one fact that they are lucrative posi- tions. O! I say to young people, disJioncsty zuill not pay in this world or the world to come. You have no right to run an imseawortliy craft into a euroclydon. The devil is not dead. Notwithstanding all the lessons we have learned, people will live beyond their income, and to get means for indulgences they will put their hands in other people's pockets. The forger's pen is not worn out, the burglar's key is not rusty, the perjurer's Bible is not lost. A speculator comes down from somewhere, takes hold of the money-market of New York, flaunts his abomina- tions in the sight of all the people, defies public morals every day of his life. Young men look up and say, *' He was a peddler in one decade, and in the next decade he is one of the monarchs of the stock market. That's the way to do it." There has been an irresistible impression going abroad among young men that the poorest way to get money is to earn it. The young man of flaunting cravat says to the young man of humble apparel, " What ! you only get $i,8oo a year? Why, that wouldn't keep me in pin-money. I spend $5000 a year." " Where do you get it ?" asks the plain young man. " O I stocks, enterprises, all that sort of thing, you know." The plain young man has hardly enough money to pay his board, has to wear clothes after they are out of fashion, and deny himself all luxuries. After a while he gets tired of his plodding, and he goes to the man w'ho has achieved suddenly large estate, and he says, "Just sJioiv vie how it is done.'' And he is shown. He soon learns how, and although he is almost all the time idle now, and has re- signed his position in the bank, or the factory, or the store, he has more money than he ever had, trades off his old silver watch for a gold one with a flashing chain, sets his hat a little further over on the side of his head than he ever did, LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. Ig5 smokes better cigars and more of them. He has his hand in ! Now, if he can escape the penitentiary for three or four years he will get into political circles, and he will get political jobs, and will have something to do with harbors, and pave- ments, and docks. Now he has got so far along he is safe for perdition. It is quite a long road sometimes for a man to travel before he gets into the romance of crime. Those are caught who are only in the prosaic stage of it. If the sheriffs and constables would only leave them alone a little while, they would steal as well as anybody. They might not be able to steal a whole railroad, but they could master a load of pig-iron. Now I always thank God when I find an estate like that go to smash. It is plague-struck, and it blasts the nation. I thank God when it goes into such a wreck it can never be gathered up again. UNDER THE PRESSURE. There are hundreds of young men under the pressure, under the fascinations thrown around about commercial in- iquity. Thousands of young men have gone down under the pressure ; other thousands have maintained their integ- rity. God help you ! Let me say to you, my young friend, that you can be a great deal happier in poverty than you ever can be happy in a prosperity which comes from illy gotten gains. " Oh," you say, " I might lose my place. It is easy for you to stand there and talk, but it is no easy thing to get a place when you have lost it. Besides that, I have a widowed mother depending upon my exertions, and you must not be too reckless in giving advice to me." Ah, my young friend, it is always safe to be right, but it is never safe to be wrong. You go home and tell your mother the pres- sure under which you are in that store, and I know what she will say to you if she is worthy of you. She will say, " My son, come out from there ; Christ has taken care of us all 196 TRUMPET PE.ir.S. these years, and lie will take care of us now; come out of that." THEIR NAME IS LEGION. How many dishonesties in the making out of invoices, and in the plastering of false labels, and in the filching of customers of rival houses, and in the making and breaking of contracts. Young men are indoctrinated in the idea that the sooner they get money the better, and the getting of it on a larger scale only proves to them their greater ingenuity. There is a glitter thrown around about all these things. Young men have got to find out that God looks upon sin in a very different light. An abbot wanted to buy a piece of ground and the owner would not sell it, but the owner finally consented to let it to him until he could raise one crop, and the abbot sowed acorns, a crop of tzvo hundred years f And I tell you, young man, that the dishonesties which you plant in your heart and life will seem to be very insignificant, but they will grow up until they will overshadow }'Ou with horrible darkness, over- shadow all time and all eternity. It will not be a crop for two hundred years, but a crop for everlasting ages. I want to show the young men of to-day that fraud will out, that old-fashioned honesty in the long-run pays the most, that the best luay to get a dollar is to earn it, that there is no hiding-place for those who wrong their fellows. There is not an honest man, however poor, but is happier than the purse-proud possessor of ill-gotten gains. Such riches, if they do not, according to the Bible figure, take wings and fly toward heaven, will coil like serpents around the heart, to chill and sting it with remorse unutterable. It is not so much what you have, as how }-ou got it. If you want to make the silver and gold of earth bright, you had better wash them with sweat from )'our own temples. Re- member that financial f.iilurr on earth is nothing compared with eternal defalcation. I want all dishonesty, yea, the very appearance of dishonest)' to become so loathsome and LYING, DISHONESTY, AND FRAUD. 1 9/ yield such an insufferable stench that honest young men will take warning. Let me say in the most emphatic way, O young man, dishonesty will never pay. A blustering young man arrived at a hotel in the West, and he saw a man on the sidewalk, and in a rough way, as no man has a right to address a laborer, said to him : " Carry this trunk upstairs." The man carried the trunk upstairs and came down, and then the young man gave him a quar- ter of a dollar which was marked, and instead of being tvventy-iive cents it was worth only twenty cents. Then the young man gave his card to the laborer, and said : " You take this up to Governor Grimes, I want to see him." " Ah !" said the laborer, "/