g to explain things. That is a bad symptom. The greater the
miracle the greater the reward for believing it. God cannot afford to
reward a man for believing anything reasonable. Why, even the scribes
and Pharisees would believe a reasonable thing. Do you suppose God is
to crown you with eternal joy and give you a musical instrument for
believing something where the evidence is clear? No, sir. The larger
the miracle the more grace. And let me advise the ministers of Chicago
and of this country, never to explain a miracle; it cannot be
explained. If you succeed in explaining it, the miracle is gone. If
you fail you are gone. My advice to the clergy is, use assertion; just
say "it is so," and the larger the miracle the greater the glory reaped
by the eternal. And yet this man is trying to explain, pretending that
He had some raw material of some kind on hand. And then I objected to
the fact that He didn't make the sun until the fourth day, and that,
consequently, the grass could not have grown--could not have thrown its
mantle of green over the shoulders of the hill--and that the trees
would not blossom and cast their shade upon the sod without some
sunshine; and what does this man say? Why, that the rocks, when they
crystallized, emitted light, even enough to raise a crop by. And he
says "vegetation might have depended on the glare of volcanoes in the
moon." What do you think would be the fate of agriculture depending on
the "glare of volcanoes in the moon?" Then he says "the aurora
borealis." Why, you couldn't raise cucumbers by the aurora borealis.
And he says "liquid rivers of molten granite." I would like to have a
farm on that stream. He guesses everything of the kind except
lightning-bugs and foxfire. Now, think of that explanation in the last
half of the nineteenth century by a minister. The truth is, the
gentleman who wrote the account knew nothing of astronomy--knew as
little as the modern preacher does--just about the same; and if they
don't know more about the next world than they do about this, it is
hardly worth while talking with them on the subject. There was a time,
you know, when the minister was the educated man in the country, and
when, if you wanted to know anything, you asked him. Now you do if you
don't. So I find this man expounding the flood, and he says it was not
very wet. He begins to doubt whether God had water enough to cover the
whole earth. Why not stand by his book? He sa