THE KING’S BUSINESS
302
wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherfsheth it, even as the Lord the church.” And then he might have read two verses still further down, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” All the respect and honor and love and care bestowed upon woman today, woman owes to the Bible. But not only can we find every truth in the Bible that we find elsewhere, but there is more truth in the Bible than all other literature put together, and it is in portable compass. In the lecture already referred to Col. Ingersol proposed to give to the world another and better Bible in place of this one, but where is it? Listen tp what he says: “For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day and it will never be finished' while man has life. “All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life—all that avoids or cures dis eases, or conquers pain—all just and per fect laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love, the music that transfigures, enrap tures, and enthralls, the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and use ful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought and done through all the years. “These treasures of the heart and brain— these are the sacred scriptures of the human race.” That sounds pretty, don’t it? I challenge any man to say that that is not a master piece of diction. But after all it is only rhetoric. Where is this Bible of which Ingersol spoke? People want a Bible that they can lay their hands on, that they can make use of, that they can carry with them.
cloud into the rainbow, that inspires man with unquenchable hope in the face o f 1 death and its terrors. III. T h e Bible is n o t in d a n g e r because th e re is n o th in g else to ta k e th e p lace of th e Bible. The Bible contains all the truth ,on moral and spiritual subjects that all other books together contain. It contains more than all other books put together, and it contains all this in portable compass. Not a truth on moral or spiritual topics that cannot be found for substance within the covers of this little book. Even infidels’ best thoughts are stolen from this book. For example, Ingersol once said, “The doctrine that woman is the slave, or serf of man—| whether it comes from hell or heaven, from God or demon, from the golden streets of the New Jerusalem or the very Sodom of perdition—is savagery pure and simple.” This statement 'is true, but where did Col. Ingersol learn this doctrine of woman’s equality with man? He either learned ifi from the Bible or from some one else wno had learned it from the Bible. What is the first thing that the Bible says about woman? You will find it in Gen. 2:18, “And the LORD God says, it is not good that man should be alone ; I will make him a help meet for him.” Here in its opening chapters- the Bible proclaims the equality of woman with man. It declares that woman is not “the slave, or serf of man,” but his compaion and equal. Ingersol was all right “in his doctrine about the equality of woman, but he was unfortunately three thousand five hundred years behind the book that he sought to hold up to scorn. Turning to the New Testament he might have read in Gal. 3 :28 the statement that in Christ Jesus “there is neither male nor female.”’ He might have read again in Eph. S:25, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ- also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it.” Certainly there is no suggestion there that woman is the slave, or serf of man. And he might have read a few verses further down in verses 28 and 29. “So ought men to love their
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker