The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-05-27

y
devil III some one should malign your
father, or mother. or wife. or husband.
or child, you would flush up quick, and
either with an indignant word or
doubled-up fist, make response. And
yet, here is our Christian religion,
which has done so much for you
and so much for the world that it viii
take all eternity to celebrate it, and
yet, when it was attacked, you did not
so much as say: 81 differ. I object
I am sorry TO hear you say that There
is another side to this" You Chris
tan people ought in such times as
these to go armed, not with earthly
weapons but with the sword of the
spirit You ought to have four or five
questions with which you could con-
found any man who attacks Chris
tianity. A man ninety years old was
telling me a few days ago how he put
TO fight a scoffer. My aged friend said
TO the sleptic: "Did you ever read the
history of Joseph in the Bible?r 'sYes,"
said the man, lit is fine story, and as
interesting n story as / ever read"
well, now" said my old friend, ''sup-
pose that account of Joseph stopped
half way?" ''0h," said the man, ''then
it would not be entertaining, swell
now" said my friend, 1--WE have in this
world only half of everything, and do
you not think that when we hear the
last half, things may be consistent,
and that then we may find that God
was right?"
Oh. friends, better load up with a few
interrogation points You can not af-
ford to be silent when God and the
Bible and the things of eternity are as
sailed. Your silence gives consent to
the bombardment of your fathers
house. You allow a slur to be cast on
your mothers dying pillow. In behalf
of the Christ, who for you went through
the agonies of assassination on the
rocky bluff back of Jerusalem, you
dared not face a siclxly joke. Better
load up with few questions, so that
next time you will be ready. Say to
the scoffer: my dear sir, win you tell
me what makes the difference between
the condition of women in China and
the United States? What do you think
of the sermon on the mount? How do
you like the golden rule laid down in
the Scriptures? Are you in favor of
the ten commandments? In your
large and extensive reading have
you come across lovelier
character than Jesus Christ? viii
you please to name the triumphant
death-bed of infidels and atheists? How
do you account for the fact that among
the Out-and-out believers in Christiani-
ty were such persons as Benjamin
Il. IL ~
lyle, Darlington Mccaulay, William
Penn, Walter Scott, Charles Kingsley,
Horace Bushnell, James. A. Garfield,
Robert L. Lee, Stonewal Jackson, Adj
miral Foote, Admiral Farragut, Ulysses
S. Grant, John Milton, William Shake
speare, Chief-Justice Marshall, John
Adams, Daniel Webster, George Wash
ington? How do you account for their
fondness for the Christian religion?
Among the innumerable colleges and
universities of the earth, will you name
me three started by infidels and
now supported by infidels? Down
in your heart are you really happy in
the position you occupy antagonistic to
the Christian religion?
But then there are occasions when
cised when He said: 81 charge thee to
come out of him." takes people by the
wholesale. In the most responsive re-
Hgious audience have you noticed how
many people never sing at all? They
have book and they have a voice and
they know how to read. They know
many of the tunes, and yet are silent
while the great raptures of music pass
by. Among those who sing not one out
of hundred sings loud enough to hear
his own voice. They hum it. They give
a sort of religious grunt- They make the
lips go, but it is inaudible. With voice
strong enough to stop a street car one
block away, all they can afford in the
praise of God is about half whisper
With enough sopranos, enough altos,
enough bassos to make a small
heaven between the four walls they let
the opportunity go by unimproved.
The volume of voice that ascends from
the largest audience that ever assem-
bled ought to be multiplied about two
thousand fold. But the minister rises
and gives out the hymn; the audience
are standing so that the lungs may
have full expansion, and mighty har-
mony is about to ascend, when the evil
spirit spoken of in my text-the
dumb devil-spreads his two wings,
one over the lips of one-haf the
audience and the other wing over the
lips of the other half of the au-
dience, and the voices roll back in
to the threats from which they started,
and only here and there anything is
heard, and nine-tenths of the holy pow
er is destroyed; and the dumb devil,
as he flies away, says: Il could not
keep Isaac Watts from writing that
hymn, and l could not keep Lowell
Mason from composing the tune to
which it is set, but smote into silence
or half silence the lips from which it
would have spread abroad to bless
neighborhoods and cities, and then
mount the wide-open heavens" Give
the long-meter doxology the full sup
port of Christendom, and those four
lines would take the whole earth for
God.
During the cotton famine in Ian
cashire, England, when the suffering
was something terrific, as the first
wagon load of cotton rolled in, the
starving people unlocked the horses
and drew the load themselves, singing,
until all Lancashire Joined in with tri-
umphant voices, their cheeks sopp1ng
with tears: Praise God from whom
all blessings fow," When Commodore
Perry, with his war-ship, the Missis-
sipi, lay off the coast of Japan he bonn
barded the shores with "Old Hundred"
played by the marine band. Glorious