THE KING’S BUSINESS
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crashing-ruins, buried at last in the awful mass of drift and dying ones at the bridge? On the family tombstone named above I read these words, “Be ye also ready, for at such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44). I read not one single inscription from Tom Paine, Voltaire, Col. Ingersol, or from any infidel writer or speaker, ancient or modern. Why not? Because there is no comfort in them. A few years before his death Col. Ingersol wrote recommending suicide as the best refuge he could suggest in great sorrow and failure. The Bible has something im measurably better to offer. 4. Man’s next need is hope in the face of death. We must all sooner or later stand face to face with death, then the soul of man, unlessJt has been burned out by sin, cries, Does this end all, is there no light in the grave? The Bible again meets and satisfies this cry. Col. Ingersol once asked in a lecture delivered in Chicago (October 13, 1894), “Why did not He (Christ) say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did He not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into glad knowledge of another life?” Then he answered his own question in this way: “I will tell you why. He was a m&n and did not know.” The audacity of such an answer to an intelligent audience with an open Bible, is amazing. To imply that Christ did not tell something “posi tive, definite, and satisfactory about another world.” To imply that He did not- “turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into glad knowledge of another life,” and then try to account for His not doing so! Col. Ingersol must have thought that his hear ers either had no Bible or else would not read it. Jesus said in John 14:1-3, “Let not your, heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not "so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will receive you ilnto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” Is not that
something positive, something definite, something satisfactory about another world? Again Jesus says in John 11:25, 26, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth, and belieyeth in me shall never die,” Is not that something positive, something definite, something satisfactory about another world? Again He says in John 5 :28, 29, “The hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” That certainly is plain enough, definite enough, positive enough, though it is not very satisfactory to those who are living lives of sin. But has the critical Colonel himself ever said anything “positive, definite and satisfac tory” about another world? He had a most excellent chance to do So if he had anything to say, when he stood beside the •grave of his own brother, but his pathetic but hollow eloquence on that Qccasion served only to illustrate the utter hollow ness and emptiness of skepticism. The Bible has given men courage to die bravely and triumphantly in all the ages of its history. Infidels sometimes die stolidly and clinch their teeth and face it out, but they never die joyously and gloriously. We might go on and show other needs of man that the Bible meets, but enough has been said to show that the Bible meets the deepest needs oTman. As long as man needs pardon and peace, as long gs man needs deliverance from the power of sin, as long as man needs comfort in sorrow, as’ long as man needs hope in the face of death, the Bible is not in danger. Man will not give up to satisfy any number' of keen satirists or carping critics or plausible rea soned, the book that meets his deepest needs, that brings pardon and peace instead of guilt and remorse, that brings liberty, manhood and nobility instead of bondage to sin, that brings comfort in the darkest hours of sorrow, transforming the thunder
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