THE KING’S BUSINESS
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Indeed, many of the arguments urged by the destructive critics today are cen turies old, as old as the time of Celsus. With all the researches and all the labored effort to find something against the Bible, not one. single new argument has been forged in the last twenty years. There have been times in the past when the Bible has seemed to be in more peril than today, but when the storm of battle was over and the smoke of conflict had cleared away from the battle field, this old, impregnable citadel of God’s eternal truth has been seen standing there absolutely unhurt and unscarred, and the battle has only served to illustrate how impregnable was the citadel. Those who fancy that they are going to destroy the Bible with their puny weapons, and those also who fear it is going to be destroyed, would do well to reflect upon its history. The book that has so triumphantly withstood the terrific assaults of eighteen centuries is not likely to succumb in a day. Voltaire, a far more gifted, versatile and skillful enemy of Christianity than any enemy living today, once boasted, “It took twelve men to estab lish Christianity. I will show the world it takes but one to destroy it.” But somehow or other it did not destroy as easily as he imagined it would. Voltaire has passed into history, and largely into oblivion, and he will soon pass into utter oblivion, but the Bible has gained in power, and the very room in which Voltaire wrote the words has been packed from floor to ceiling with Bibles for distribution, owned by the Brit ish and Foreign Bible Society. The advance of research from excavations in Bible lands, the advance of historical investigation, and the advance of science, have all served to confirm the truthfulness of the Bible. For example, the unearthing and deciphering of the cuneiform inscrip tions, and the Moabite stone have shown the truth of Bible statements that were once questioned by scholars. As another illustration, not so many years ago ridi cule was heaped upon the Bible implica tion of the existence of a great Hittite
I. B ecause th e Bible h a s a lre ad y s u r vived th e a tta c k s of m o re th a n 1 8 0 0 y ears. The attacks now being made upon the Bible are not something new. The Bible has always been hated and assaulted. The Bible’s stern denunciation of sin, the Bible’s uncompromising demand of a holy, unself ish, consecrated life, the Bible’s merciless laying of human pride in the dust, have aroused for the Bible a more bitter hatred from men than any other book has ever met. No sooner was the Bible given to the world than it met the hatred of men, and they tried to stamp it out by every method and instrument of destruction they could bring to bear against it. The arguments that are brought against the Bible today are not new arguments, all of them were met and answered long ago. I am not aware of one single new argument that has been brought forward against the Bible in the last ten years. The antagonists of the Bible have tricked out the old argu ments in new and more attractive gar ments, but they are. the same old argu ments. The arguments brought forward by the most learned and most able enemies of the book today are the very arguments that have been employed for more than a century. If any one will take the trouble to read Tom Paine’s “Age of Reason,” he will be amazed to discover how many of the positions which men persist in calling “the new views” of the Bible were exploited by Tom Paine in his “Age of Reason” more than a century ago. Dr. Howard Osgood, a great scholar, in a discussion with the destructive critics some years ago, read a statement of the positions of the destructive critics as he understood them, and then turned to President Harper and inquired if the statements that he had read were Hot a fair statement of the positions they held. President Harper replied they were, and then Prof. Osgood startled his auditors, and especially his opponents, by saying, “In this statement that I have just read of your positions, I have been reading verb atim from Tom Paine’s ‘Age of Reason.’ ”
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