GIVE US SOMETHING BETTER.
I REMEMBER, when a boy, going one day to Hoboken with our Professor to collect mineralogical specimens. What I learned of minerals that day is not very fresh in my memory just now, but I learned one lesson that I shall never forget. The boys were constantly plying the Professor with this question, “Is this a good specimen, Doctor?” to which he frequently replied, “Well, no, not a first-rate one.” “Shall I throw it away, then?” “No, keep it till you get a better.” I have seen many opportunities, since that day, to use this wise advice; but it never seemed wiser than it does to-day, when we are urged, from many quarters, to give up all that we have ever held dear—all, in fact, that makes anything dear, or even desirable, and when many, not only of the world, but of the church, are yielding to the clamor. If one asks me to give up the Bible, I reply, “Never, till you give me something better. Write me something that contains more wisdom, more comfort, more peace, more joy, something better suited to my needs in this world, more inspiring with hope as regards the world to come, something more evidently from God than is the Bible.” This I must have before I can listen for a moment to this demand. But who can do this? Who ever attempted it? There has been no lack of those who have decried and derided the Bible from the earliest days of the Christian church to the present, but who ever attempted to supply its place? Who is ready to do it now? If the vast army of infidels, skeptics, and doubters can devise anything better, let them produce it. D’Alembert, or Diderot, it matters not which, said to his infidel comrades one day, “Gentlemen, you may deride the four Gospels as much as you will, but you all know very well that there is not one of you who can write anything comparable to them.” If an infidel exists to-day capable of doing this, let him show it. Till he does, we may be excused for saying we will hold to what we have till we get something better.—Selected.