Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 11
October 29, 1959
NUMBER 25, PAGE 8a

Necessary Inference

Pryde E. Hinton, Dora, Alabama

The year must have been about 1934, or '35. Cecil Douthitt was then preaching for the West End Church, Birmingham, Alabama. We lived in Selma, Alabama and it was during Brother Douthitt's stay with us in a meeting that it happened. Brethren Floyd Horton, A. H. Manor, and Ealon V. Wilson were the other preachers present, besides myself. Sometime during Brother Douthitt's concise, rich sermon he had referred to the Princess getting little Moses out of the River Nile; and he said that when they lifted the lid from the ark, the babe cried, etc.

All day long (nearly) the preachers joked Cecil about the "lid". All went down town in the afternoon but Douthitt and me. So, we watched, and just as the boys were coming into the house, where we had eaten lunch, I timed my reading aloud to Cecil so that I would be saying, "And she opened it, and saw the child; and behold, the babe wept." Then Brother Douthitt said, "Well, if she OPENED it, it had to have a LID!" And that ended that discussion.

Certainly, the ark in which the babe Moses was put by his mother had a "lid," or some kind of covering, though it is not specifically mentioned, is it? If the Bible had said: "And she saw the child when her maidens brought the ark to her; and, behold, the child wept," there would be no necessary grounds to say that the ark had a "lid" on it.

Let us be certain that the sacred language carries that inescapable inference, before we preach it. Be sure it is unavoidable; not added to the Word of God!