The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1889-01-25
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Necessity of the Sabbath in
Carrying Out Gods Plans.
&c is Not of Necessity Day Devoid OF
Pleasures. But Man May Not VIo-
late Its SanctItv with Con-
tinued Impunitys

Rev. T. Dewitt TaImage took for the
subject of a recent sermon in Brooklyn
Tabernacle: "The Delights of the Sab
BATH" His text was:
And call the Sabbath deIight.-Isaiah
lviii. 18
There is an element of gloom striking
through all false religions. Paganism is
q brood Of horrors. The god of Con-
fucius frowned upon its victims with
blind fate. Mohammedanism promises
nothing to those exhausted with sin in
this world, but. an eternity of the same
passional indulgences. But God in
tended that our religion should have the
grand characteristic of cheerfuIness. st.
Paul struck the keynote when he said:
tfRejoice evermore. and again say, re-
joice." This religion has no spikes for
the feet; it has no hooks for the shoulder;
it has no long privileges to take, it has no
funeral pyres upon which to leap, it has
no iuggernauts before which to fall. Its
good cheer is symbolized in the Bible by
the brightness of waters and the redo
1ence of lilies, and the sweetness of
music, and the hilarities of a banquet. A
choir of seraphim chanted at its induc-
ton, and pea1ing trumpet, and waving
palm, and tapping wings of archangel
are to celebrate its triumphs. 1t began
it's chief mission with the shout: "GlOry
to God in the highest?" and it will close
its earthly mission with the ascription:
''Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth!"
But men have said that our religion is
not cheerful, because we have such a
doleful Sabbath. They say; ''You can
have your religious assemblages, and
your long faces, and your shifting cant,
and your Psalm books, and your Bible.
Give us the Sunday excursion, and the
eonvivial laughter. We have so much Joy
that we want to spread it all over the sew
en- days of the week, and you shall not
have one of our days of worldly satisfac-
ton for religious doIefulness." I want to
show these men-it there are any such in
this house this morning-that they are
under great delusion, and that God in
tended the ffty-two Sundays Of the year
to be hung up like bells in tower, beat
ing a perpetual chime of JOY and glory
and salvation and Heaven; for want to
carry out the idea of the text, 'tand call
the Sabbath delight.'
I remark, in the first place, we are to
find in this day the JOY Of healthy repose.
| In this democratic country we all have to
| work-some with hands, some with brains,
/ some with foot. If there is in all this
! house @ hand that has not, during the past
! year, been stretched forth to some kind of
! toll, let it be lifted. Not one, not one.
| You sell the goods. You teach the school.
| You doctor in the sick room. You prac-
| tice at the bar. You edit q newspaper.
! You tan the hides. You preach the Cos
/ pei. You mend the shoes. You sit at the
! shuttle. You carry the hod of bricks up
the ladder on the wall. And the one occu-
/ patton is as honorable as the other, pro-
| vided God calls you to it. I care not what
you do, if you only do it well. But when
Saturday night comes you are jaded and
worn.
The hand can not so skil1fu11y manufact
ire; the eye can not see so well; the
| brain is not so clear; the Judgment is not
SO we'll balanced. A prominent manufact-
uret told me that he could see differ
6nce between the goods which went out Of
! his establishment on Saturday from the
goods that went out on Monday. He said:
IsThey were very different indeed. Those
! that were made in the former Pert of the
| week, because of the rest that had been
| previously given, we're better than those
that we're made in the latter part of the
week, when the men were tired out" The
Sabbath comes, and it bathes the sore
| hess from the limbs, quiets the agitated
brain and puts out the fires Of anxiety
that have been burning all the week. Our
bodies are seven-day clocks, and unless
or the seventh day they are wound up
they run down into the grave:
The Sabbath was intended as a savings
/ bank. Into il we are to gather the re-
sources upon which we are to-draw all the
/ week: That man who breaks the Sabbath
robs his own nerve, his own MUSCLE, his
own brain, his own bone. He dips up the
wine of his own life and throws it away.
He who breaks the Lords day gives a
mortgage to disease and death upon his
entire physical estate, and at the most
unexpected moment that mortgage VIII
be foreclosed and the soul elected from
the premises. Every gland, and pore, and
cell, and fnger-nai1 demands the seventh
day for. repose The respiration OF the
lungs, the thrObs Of the pulse IN the wrist,
the motion OF the bone in its socket de-
clare: Remember the Sabbath day to
keep it holy" There are thousands Of
men who have had their lives dashed out
sgaiust the golden gates Of the Sabbath.
a prominent London Merchant testthes
that thirty years ago went to London:
He saws: "Ihave during that time watched
minutely, and have noticed that the men
who went to business on the Lords day
/ or opened their counting houses have,
without a single exception, come to fafl5
ure." A prominent Christian merchant
in Boston says: 81 find it don't pay to
work on Sunday. When 1 was boy
/ botieed out on Long Wharf there were
merchants who loaded their vessels on the
2 morning till night, and it is my Obserya-
ton that they themselves came to Moth
. ing-these merchants-and their children
! came to nothing. It doesn't pay" he says,
, ''to work on the Sabbath"
appeal to your observation. Where
t are the men who, twenty years ago, we're
: Sabbath breakers, and who have been
Sabbath breakers ever sincef Without 9
single exception, you viii tell me, they
10 0fuH
I beggary. defy you to point out single
I exception. and you can take the whole
Il world Tor your fie1d. It has either been I
financial or moral defalcation III sTery
instance. Six hundred and forty physi
clans in London petition in Parliament
: saying; eve must have the saDbat
/ obeved We can not have health IN thl
!. city and in this nation unless the 5abeau
# is observed" Those In our own countr
+ have given evidence on the same side
8 The man who takes down the shutters 0
n bis store on the sabbath takes down tn
d curse Of the Almighty God. That farme
: who cultures his ground on the Sabbat
Il dav raises a crop Of neuralgia and Of COZ
9 Sumption and Of death. A farmer said
Z Z 81 defy your Christian Sabbath. 1 wi
Z raise a Sunday crop.'f 50 he went TO wor
4 and plowed the ground on Sunday, an
narrowed it on Sunday, and he plante
corn on Sunday, and he reaped the COZ
on Sunday, and he gathered it into Z
harm on Sunday. 'sThere," he says,
have yroved to you that all this ide
y about a. fatality accompanying Sabbai
% work is a perfect sham. Ny corn
garnered and all is we'll" But beto
y many weeks passed the Lord God stru'
: that barn with His lightning and aW'
: went the Sunday crop.
= Again, remark, we ought to have IN I
= Sabbath the JOY Of domestic reunion a
- conservation. There are some very go
= parents who'have the faculty Of maxi
= The sabbath great gloom. Their Ga