Facts for the Times

Valuable Historical Extracts. ,,,,,,, 40,11/1/, FACTS FOR THE TIMES. A COLLECTION —OF — VALUABLE HISTORICAL EXTRACTS ON A GR.E!T VA R TETY OF SUBJECTS, OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO THE BIBLE STUDENT, FROM EMINENT AUTHORS, ANCIENT AND MODERN. REVISED BY G. I. BUTLER. " Admissions in favor of troth, from the ranks of its enemies, constitute the highest kind of evidence."—Puss. Ass Mattatc. Pr This Volume contains about One Thousand Separate Historical Statements. THIRD EDITION, ENLARGED, AND BROUGHT DOWN TO 1885. REVIEW AND HERALD, BATTLE CREEK, MICH. PACIFIC PRESS, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. PREFACE. Tax object of this volume, as its name implies, is to furnish to the inquirer a large fund of facts bearing upon important Bible subjects, which are of special interest to the present generation, • While "the Bible and the Bible alone" is the only unerring rule of faith and practice, it is very desirable oftentimes to ascertain what great and good men have believed concerning its teachings. This is especially desirable when religious doctrines are being taught which were considered new and strange by some, but which, in reality, have bad the sanction of many of the most eminent and devoted of God's servants in the past. Within the last fifty years, great changes have occurred among religious teachers and churches. Many things which were once considered important truths are now questioned or openly rejected ; while other doctrines which are thought to be strange and new are found to have the sanction of the wisest and best teachers of the past. The extracts contained in this work cover a wide range of subjects, many of them of deep interest to the general reader. We know of no book of its kind containing so many interesting quotations on important subjects of special interest. Remarkable fulfillments of prophecy; interesting comments upon difficult scriptural texts from the ablest commentators of the past; striking occurrences of natural phenom- ena; important facts in the growth of our country; useful statistics concerning population, intemperance, war, and crime; and the present condition of the religious, political, and physical world, are among the subjects treated by the various authors quoted. The book will be valuable to the general reader, but especially so to those interested in the religious subjects noticed therein. ( v ) vi PREFACE. This work is designed to assist the reader in the investigations of the prophecies,—a duty we believe to be of great importance at the present time. He will here find that the most eminent Bible students of the past have given great attention to this branch of Bible study, now so much neglected. It is also calculated to assist the student of Scripture in reaching correct conclusions upon many important subjects of Bible-Investiga- tion, through a knowledge of the wise and judicious opinions of the learned. The object of those who send it forth is not to teach new and strange doctrines, but to call back the attention of the reading publiC to the' old paths" of Bible truth and duty. Let us be like the noble Bereans anciently, "who searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things" were so. God grant that this book may enlighten and benefit many minds, by calling attention to important truths. COMPILER. BATTLE CREEK, Mich., July 12, 1885. FACTS FOR THE TIMES. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. THEIR GREAT IMPORTANCE. Du. ADAM CLARKE, in his " Clavis Biblica," p. 64, says :— " From this word all doctrines must be derived and proved ; and from it every man must learn his duty to God, to his neighbor, and to himself." BOYLE says :— "I use the Scriptures, not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons . but as a matchless temple, where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure; and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored."— Style of Scripture, 8d Obj, 8. MATTHEW HENRY says :— "Especially make the Bible your study. Many get wisdom by books; but wisdom toward God is to be gotten out of God's book, and that by digging. Most men do but Walk over the surface of it, and pick up here and there a flower; a few dig into it. Read other books to help you to read that book. Fetch your sermons from thence; the volume of inspiration is a full fountain, always overflowing, and has always something new." CHRYSOSTOH says :— " An intimate acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures is a se- cure haven, and an impregnable bulwark, and an immovable tower, and imperishable glory, and impenetrable armor, and unfailing joy, and perpetual delight, and whatever other ex- cellence can be uttered." FIRST WRITTEN AND FIRST PRINTED. The decalogue containing the moral law is the very foundation and center of the Holy Scriptures. And ( 7 ) 8 FACTS FOR THE TIMES. this moral law, engraved on tables of stone by the finger of God, was the first written document on earth. The great Creator set the first copy. Written language is of divine origin, and was revealed for the express pur- pose of communicating the will of God to men. Not only were the law and books of Moses the first ever written, but they were the first ever printed with types. A noted Spiritualist, speaking of the "old Bible system before the art of printing," says that science has thrown the Bible into the shade by the extremely cheap litera- ture of the present day He then calls on the people to " dismiss the old, dilapidated, and costly machine as belonging to the Dark Ages, before printing was known." Here we have a specimen of the blindness of 'infidel- ity. The Bible was not only the first book printed, but it is the cheapest' book in existence. It was the importance of Bible truth that stimulated science, and caused the invention of the art of printing ANDERSON says :— "The first book ever printed on movable metal types was the Bible, in A. D. 1455."—Anderson's Annals, p. 31. Speaking of the Scriptures, Dr. ADAM CLARKE says:— "They contain the most ancient writings in the world; the decalogue, or ten commandments, a part of the book of Exodus. being probably the first regular production in alphabetical characters ever seen by man. —Clavis Bibliea, p. 16. On the origin of written language, we find the following in the Printer for February, 1864 :— "Herodotus, Pliny, Plutarch, and others signify that Cad- mus, a Phoenician, settled in Bceotia about 1500 years before Christ, where he built the city of Thebes; and that he was the first who taught the Greeks the use of alphabetic symbols. Here, perhaps, it may be well to suggest that Cadmus was con- temporary with Moses ; and the time of his migration into Greece, making a little allowance for the discrepancies of chronologers, corresponds, as near as need be, with the time when the Israelites came into the possession of the promised land. Now Moses, we are fully assured, had been qualified to write the commandments of God at Sinai; and it is but reason- able to suppose that an art so valuable as writing would, when once learned, rapidly circulate among the most learned of the THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 9 Hebrews. The inference, therefore, from these premises, Is, that before he left Asia, Cadmus had, by an intercourse with some of the Hebrew people, learned the use of letters ; and when he emigrated to Greece, he carried the art with him, in which country it was unknown until he taught it. " .Maurice on this subject, says: 'I cannot, however, avoid owning myself very much inclined to join in opinion with Mr. Bryant, and other genuine sons of science, not infected with the French skeptical philosophy, that so divine an art could not have its origin- in the unassisted powers of the human mind.' And the same author, after having adverted to a num- ber of arguments relative to the first application of letters to the purposes- of human correspondence, concludes his disserta- tion with the following energetic language: `In this state of uncertainty the mode of conduct for us to pursue, at once the most consistent with reason, the most conformable to true science, and the most agreeable to sound religion, is to con- clude tiat, though some sort of characters, as before observed, formed by the ingenuity of man, or founded upon the basis of . the ancient hieroglyphic system, was occasionally used in the early ages of the world, so divine an art—an art apparently so far surpassing human powers to invent, as alphabetic writing, in the perfection in which it has descended down to us from an Asiatic source, through the medium of the Greeks and Romans—could have its origin in inspiration only, and was at first revealed to man amid the awful promulgations at Ho- reb; amid the thunders that shook the basis of Mount Sinai?" "It is a remarkable fact that, although with respect to other arts, as for instance those of music and metal working, the Hebrews have assigned the honor of their discovery to the heroes *of a remote antiquity, there is no trace or tradition whatever of the origin of letters, a discovery many times more rEmarkable and important than either of these. Throughout the book of Genesis there is not a single allusion, direct or in- direct, either to the practice or to the existence of writing. The word cathav, 'to write,' does not once occur, none of its derivatives are used; and eapher, ' a book,' is found in a single passage [Gen.

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