INDEX TO SIXTEENTH VOLUME. A Chapter on Tears, 101. A familiar Dialogue on Final Perseverance, 167. A Local Preacher's Adventure, 17. An Appeal from the Book, 19. An important Question, 25. Good Temper, 282. An Incident in the Life of a Local Preacher, Gospel or no Gospel, 161. 55. Annual Meeting at Sheffield, 207. A Plea for the Imagination, 202. A Word to the Afflicted, 198, 232. Bate's Speaking to the Life, Notice of, 272. Blewitt, Edward, Memoir of, 300. British Association for the Advancement of Brown, J. R., Memoir of, 332. CASH RECEIVED, 31, 63, 92, 127, 158, 189, Christian Union, 289. Class and the Desk, Notice of, 246, 273. COMMITTEE, GENERAL MEETINGS OF, 30, Downham Branch, 284. Eltringham, R., Sermon on his Death, 71. Keighley, Successful Effort at, 89. Leighton Buzzard Branch, 61, 186. LITERARY NOTICES, 17, 19, 51, 84, 87, 88, LOCAL PREACHER'S WIFE, The, Chap. XV.,. Marriott, John, Memoir of, 45. 51. Moral and Religious State of Working Classes, MUTUAL-AID ASSOCIATION REPORTER, 27, 29, 30, 61, 89, 124, 156, 186, 207, Natural Compass, 60. Old Jonathan's Almanack, Notice of, 19. ORIGINAL ESSAYS, 1, 33, 65, 71, 97, 101, Our Magazine, 21. OUR OLD MEN: WHAT THEY SAY, No. 1, OBITUARY: George Taylor, George Bettany, Thomas Parker, Mrs. Barnett, Amelia Peasant Preacher, Notice of, 84. 150, 185, 220, 247, 283, 317, 346, 370. Pressense's Land of the Gospel, Notice of, PRESIDENT'S Two THOUSAND POUND FUND, 29, 32, 64, 95, 124, 128, 160, President, Letter from, 283. Reading of Working Men, 154. Reed's Our Sunday Schools, Notice of, 341. Rouse's Principles of Biblical Interpretation, Self-Denial, 26. Serious Thought on Christian Character, 265. SHORT SENTENCES, 27, 123, 124, 247, 254, Smith's Sermons, Notice of, 337. Song of the Wild Birds, 150. Stories for Sunday Scholars, Notice of, 19. SUNDAY SCHOOLS, 65, 97, 129. Taylor, G., Memoir of, 241. The Lessons of Failure, 27. The Theology of the Coran, 23. Topcliffe, near Thirsk, 371. Translations of the Coran into Turkish, 26. Vessey, John, Memoir of, 364. Warning to Parents, 155, THE LOCAL PREACHERS' MAGAZINE AND CHRISTIAN FAMILY RECORD. Original Essays. SUBJECTS, THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH IS OBTAINED ONLY FROM THE BIBLE. WHETHER the reader, whose eyes are now upon this page be a local preacher or a private Christian, or no Christian at all, there is something here for his profit if he please to attend to what is before him. Either he believes the Bible, or professes to believe it, or neither believes nor professes to believe it. In either case it may do him good to give some consideration to its teaching. There are branches of knowledge of which the Bible only is the source; matters that are beyond the reach of human discovery. Either they must be discarded as untrue, or be taken for what they are worth as so much legendary lore—the fabulous productions of the imagination or be accepted as true, and held with tenacity by the united fidelity of conscience, intellect, and heart. Knowledge has to be acquired by men; they do not bring it into the world with them. They have it not at birth. They are born with genius and a capacity for knowledge; but the acquisition of knowledge has to be made, or native ignorance will remain. Whence must it be acquired? Partly from nature, partly from living persons who have previously acquired and are competent to impart it, and partly and chiefly from books. Men who lived before us, and knew something worthy of being made known, wrote books for the purpose of making known to their contemporaries and successors what they themselves knew and felt to be of importance and interest sufficient to be made known. By what they wrote, they still speak and instruct the living. Each generation transmits its written treasures to the next, and will continue to do so till the last generation shall have come and gone, and time no longer be. The Bible is a collection of many writings by many men, who lived in many different generations, nearly all of whom professed to write as taught and commanded of God. Their collective writings contain what men who have most thoroughly and seriously studied them do not hesitate to accept JANUARY, 1866. VOL. XVI. B as a complete and harmonious system of truth, all the parts of which are mutually dependent and essentially related each to the rest, so that none can be removed without disturbing all, and to which nothing can be added without vitiating all; and also so much of authentic and consecutive history of every kind as was necessary for the setting and illustration of that system of truth. We are not intending to prosecute this great argument, but will be content to point out some of the great and important matters of which the Bible is the source of our knowledge, and of which, therefore, we could have known nothing had not the Bible given us information. The origin of the universe is made known to us by the Bible only. Men who have not had the Bible, and men who, having the Bible, have disregarded its statements, reasoning upon the existence of the universe, have concluded that it must have existed eternally. Others, with less reason, have attributed its existence to chance, which is but tantamount to a confession that they know nothing at all about it. The Bible informs us that God gave it being; a statement that unbiassed reason approves; for if that be denied, then pantheism must be admitted. Either there is an infinite intelligence that created the universe, or else the universe is itself God in multiform manifestation. Plain and simple, clear and rational, is the record with which the Bible opens. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But objections are raised on scientific grounds, and urged against this statement. On the authority of astronomy the question is put, "Do you think the universe has existed only about six thousand years?" And then is urged the allegation, Why there are stars whose distance is so prodigious in the depths of space, that their light, though travelling at the rate of 95 millions of miles in 8 minutes and 13 seconds, could not have reached the earth in less than thousands of years, some of them even tens of thousands of years; nay, more,—that from the most remote of the telescopic nebulæ light could not have travelled to the earth in less than two millions of years! Then comes the geologist, declaring the structure, order, and arrangement of the earth's crust, to the depth of many thousand feet, with the great diversity and vast amount of its fossils, organic and inorganic, with the order in which they have been deposited, from the primitive rocks upwards, throughout all the intermediate beds to the surface soil which we tread and cultivate. Appealing to known laws of nature, and reasoning upon them, he shows that not only tens of thousands of years but hundreds of thousands, and even millions, are required for the production of such results. Astronomers and geologists, therefore, unitedly negative the Mosaic record, or the meaning heretofore assigned to it. What are we to say to all this? We must admit that parts of the record may have been misunderstood; and that while the record is meant to give the history of man, and what is immediately related to him, the record itself |