Mending the Bible

THE BIBLE MIRACULOUSLY PRESERVED

I am opposed to the expurgation of the Scriptures in the first place because the Bible in its present shape has been so miraculously preserved. Fifteen hundred years after Herodotus wrote his history, there was only one manuscript copy 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 manuscript copies of the New Testament a thousand years old, and many of them fifteen hundred years old.

This 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 in manuscript in the possession of three great churches - the Protestant Church of England, the Greek Church of St. Petersburg, and the Romish Church of Italy.

It is a plain matter of history that Tischendorf 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 admission and that he saw there in the wastebasket 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 marvelously protected.

Do you not know that the catalog of the books of the Old and New Testaments, as we have it, is the same catalog that has been coming on down through the ages? Thirty-nine books of the Old Testament thousands of years ago. Thirty-nine now. Twenty-seven books of the New Testament, sixteen hundred years ago. Twenty-seven 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 catalog of the Books of the Bible - that catalog corresponds exactly with ours - testimony given by the enemy of the Bible and the enemy of Christianity. The catalog now, just like the catalog then. Assaulted and spit on and torn to pieces and burned, yet adhering.

The Book today, 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 t he centuries?

Not only have all the attempts to detract from the Book failed, but all the attempts to add to it. Many attempts were made to add the apocryphal books to the Old Testament. The Council of Trent, the Synod of Jerusalem, the bishops of Hippo all decided that the apocryphal books must be added to the Old Testament. "They must stay in," said those learned men, but they stayed out. There is not an intelligent Christian man that today will put the book of Maccabees 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 protected book 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.

ALL THE BEST CHRISTIANS WANT THE BIBLE SACREDLY KEPT:
INFIDELS WANT IT CHANGED

I am also opposed to this proposed expurgation of the Scriptures for the fact that in proportion as people become self-sacrificing and good and holy and consecrated, they like the Book as it is. I have yet to find a man or a woman distinguished for self-sacrifice, for consecration to God, for holiness 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.

This afternoon when you go home, 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 margin 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?

Expurgate the Bible! You might as well go to the old picture galleries in Dresden and in Venice and in Rome and expurgate the old paintings. Perhaps you could find a foot of Michel Angelo's "Last Judgement" that might be improved. Perhaps you could throw more expression into Raphael's "Madonna." Perhaps you could put more pathos into Rubens' "Descent from the Cross."

Perhaps you could change the crests of the waves in Turner's "Slave Ship." Perhaps you might go into the old galleries of sculptures and change the forms and postures 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 purposes to refashion these masterpieces of inspiration and to remodel the moral giants of this gallery of God.

Now let us divide off. Let those people who do not believe 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 be no compromise between infidelity and Christianity. Give us the out-and-out opposition of infidelity rather that the work of these hybrid theologians, these mongrel ecclesiastics, these half-and-half evoluted pulpiteers who believe the Bible and don't believe it, who accept the miracles and do not accept them, who believe 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 skepticism 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 courage they must make the Bible a target, and shoot at God.

There is one thing that encourages me very much and that is that the Lord made out to manage the universe before they were born, and will probably be able to make out to manage the universe a little while after they are dead.

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 all the friends of this good Book to come out openly and aboveboard in behalf of it. That Book, which was the best inheritance you ever received from your ancestry, and which will be the best legacy you will leave to your children when you bid them goodby as you cross the ferry to the Golden City.