ticism, and I will take the car to-morrow and ride five hundred 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 sweetness 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. But he visited Italy, and one day on the Mediterranean with two friends in a boat, he was 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 seashore by some classic friends, and the two bodies were consumed. 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 between 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 Sicily, and gave nine million people free government under Victor Emanuel. Garibaldi, after being absent two years from Caprera, 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 lived 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 endure His sacrifices, you will find after a while that He has

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 Paradise 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 lying on the open Bible. The summer insects 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.

CHAPTER IV.

The Higher Criticism.

Next in enormity to Ingersollian Infidelity is "The Higher Criticism," falsely so called, for it is really a lower criticism, calling for the expurgation of the Sacred Scriptures; while true criticism calls for "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," as a divinely authorized and infallible Rule of faith and practice.-EDITOR.

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

1

NO MENDING OF THE BIBLE.

INSPIRATION foresaw that the time would come when there would be burglarious attempts to purloin portions of the Bible, and one man would break in here, and another man would break in there, and God comes out with astounding emphasis and declares that the gates of heaven will clang shut against the entrance of all those who so maltreat the Bible. "God shall take away His part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city." You see it is a very risky business, this changing of the Holy Scriptures.

A pulpit in New York has set forth the idea that the Scriptures ought to be expurgated. Among other striking statements are these: That the Book of Genesis is a tradition of creation, a successive layer of traditions thought out centuries before, and Moses' mistakes about creation were the mistakes of his age. That there are many systems of theology in the New Testament. That Paul had all the notions of the rabbinical schools of his time. That Job winds up his epilogue in genuine fairy-tale style. That Revelation is a long array of misshapen progeny in the

apocalyptic writings, tracing themselves back to Daniel. That Revelation comes to a madman, or leaves him mad. And that it is an abominable misuse of the Bible to suppose the prophecies really foretell future events.

The critic does not believe the beginning of the Bible, and he does not believe the close of it, nor anything between as fully inspired of God, and he thinks the Book ought to be expurgated, and there are those who re-echo the same sentiment. In other words, it is Thomas Paine and Robert In-✓ gersoll in gown and bands. But they have more excuse, because they openly and above board declare their infidelity, while that man stands in a Christian pulpit assaulting the Bible-the pulpit of an honored denomination in which Bishop McIlvaine and Archbishop Leighton and the venerable Dr. Stephen H. Tyng were chief apostles.

Now, I believe in the largest liberty of discussion, and there are halls and opera-houses and academies of music where the Bible and Christianity may be assaulted without any interruption; but when a minister of the Gospel surrenders the faith of his denomination, his first plain, honest duty is to get out of it. What would you think of the clerk in a dry-goods store, or a factory, or a banking house, who should go to criticising the books of the firm and denouncing the behavior of the firm, still taking the salary of that firm and the support of that firm, and doing all his denunciation of the books of the firm under its cover? Certainly, a minister of the Gospel ought to be as honest with his denomination as a dry-goods clerk is honest with his employers.

The heinousness of finding fault with the Bible by a Christian minister is most evident. The Bible is assailed by scurrility, by misrepresentation, by infidel scientists, by all the vice of earth and all the venom of perdition, and ministers of religion fall into line of criticism of the Word of God! Why, it makes me think of a ship in a September equinox, the waves dashing to the top of the smoke-stack, and the hatches fastened down, and many prophesying the foundering of the steamer, and some of the crew with axes and saws go down into the hold of the ship and try to saw off some of the

planks and pry out some of the timbers because the timber did not come from the right forest! It does not seem to me 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 will see it through. And I have noticed that keelson and counter-timber knee are built out of Lebanon cedar, and she is going to weather the gale, but no credit to those who make mutiny on deck.

When I see ministers of religion finding fault with the Scriptures, it makes me think of a fortress terrifically bombarded, and the men on the ramparts, instead of swabbing out and loading the guns and helping to fetch up the ammunition from the magazine, are trying with crowbars to pry out from the wall certain blocks of stone, because they did not come 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 Spencer, "you don't now really believe all the story of the Garden of Eden, do you?" Yes, as much as I believe all the roses that were in my garden last summer. "But," say they, "you don't really believe that the sun and moon stood still ?” Yes, and if I had strength enough to create a sun and moon I could make them stand still, or cause the refraction of the sun's rays so it would appear to stand still. "But," they say, "you don't really believe that the whale swallowed Jonah ?" Yes, and if I were strong enough to make a whale I could have made very easy ingress for the refractory prophet, leaving to Evolution to eject him, if he were an unworthy tenant!