ys ago the bark Tiger was found upon the wide sea 126 days from
Liverpool. For nine days not a mouthful of food or a drop of water was
to be had. There was on board the captain, mate, and eleven men. When
they had been out 117 days they killed the captain's dog. Nine days
more--no food, no water, and Captain Kruger stood upon the deck in the
presence of his starving crew. With a revolver in his hand, put it
upon his temple, and said, "Boys, this can't last much longer; I am
willing to die to save the rest of you." The mate grasped the revolver
from his hand, and said, "Wait;" and the next day upon the horizon of
despair was the smoke of the ship which rescued them. Do you tell me
tonight if Captain Kruger was not a Christian and he had sent that ball
crashing through his generous brain that there was an Almighty waiting
to clutch his naked soul that He might damn him forever? It won't do.

Ah, but they tell me "You have no right to pick the bad things out of
the bible." I say, an infinite God has no right to put bad things into
His bible. Does anybody believe if God was going to write a book now
He would uphold slavery; that He would favor polygamy; that He would
say kill the heathen, stab the women, dash out the brains of the
children? We have civilized him. We make our own God, and we make Him
better day by day.

Some honest people really believe that in some wonderful way we are
indebted to Moses for geology, to Joshua for astronomy and military
tactics, to Samson for weapons of war, to Daniel for holy curses, to
Solomon for the art of cross-examination, to Jonah for the science of
navigation, to Saint Paul for steamships and locomotives, to the four
Gospels for telegraphs and sewing-machines, to the Apocalypse; for
looms, saw-mills, and telephones; and that to the sermon on the mount
we are indebted for mortars and Krupp guns. We are told that no nation
has ever been civilized without a bible. The Jews had one, and yet
they crucified a perfectly innocent man. They couldn't have done much
worse without a bible.

God must have known 6,000 years ago that it was impossible to civilize
people without a bible just as well as they know it now. Why did He
ever allow a nation to be Without a bible? Why didn't He give a few
leaves to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Take from the bible the
miracles, and I admit that the good passages are true. If they are
true they don't need to be inspired. Miracles ar