The Bible contains the true religion, or there is none. There is light
in the Bible to save the world, or the world is lost. Our only choice
is between the Bible and nothing. Judaism is abolished. Mohammedanism
has no claims in internal merit or external evidence. The fruits of all
Paganism show that it is evil, and only evil, continually. Infidelity
has nothing for the world. While it would take Christianity from us, it
has nothing to propose. It is no system—no doctrine—teaches nothing
and defends nothing. Its only province is to stand and deny. It finds
fault with everything, starts doubts, destroys confidence, fills the
world with fears, and spreads an eternal gloom over the prospects and
hopes of all nations. Reason and the light of nature have been tried
longer and more effectually than any system in the world. At least four
thousand years have the pagan nations been trying what they could do
for our race without a revelation from God. In all the experiments yet
made, with no guide but reason and the light of nature, the tendency
has been downward. Deterioration has been the universal result, without
the light of the Bible. We then, cling to the Bible, and the religion
it reveals, as the only hope of the world. If it fails, all must fail,
and all must be lost. But it is folly of the most stupid order to speak
of the Bible failing. Its Author is emphatically _the friend of man_.
Its holy lessons are all for our good. All who have been led by it, are
thankful they ever knew it. It has never deceived one or misled one. No
one has ever lamented being led by it. The more solemn and affecting
the circumstances around us, and the greater the trials in which we are
placed, the more comforting and precious are its holy consolations to
the soul. It encourages all that is good; discourages and condemns all
that is evil. It is our guide and comfort through the journey of life;
nor does it fail when we are sinking in death. No one who believed
it before, in a dying hour denies and repudiates the Bible. But many
determined infidels have recanted and repudiated their infidelity when
sinking into the eternal state. That which they talked in health, that
which dwelt upon their tongues in their mad career through life, they
themselves condemned, in the most awful and solemn moments of life,
and with their dying lips repudiated. How shameful and preposterous,
that a man should live such a life of folly and inconsistency as to
be compelled in his dying moments to condemn all his past life, with
all the sentiments he had cherished and inculcated, and warn all men
against them!