The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1892-06-10


his arm-food he had begged, / suppose,
at the doors As he passed ON over the
slippery pavement cautiously and care
fully, steadied him until his crutch
slipped and he fell helped him mp as
well as / could, gathered up the frag-
ments of the package as well as l could,
put them under one arm and the crutch
under the other; but when / saw the
blood run down his pale cheek / was
completely overcome. Fifty essays about
the suffering of the poor could not
touch one like that little drama of acct
dent and suffering.
Oh! we want in all our different de-
partments of usefulness-and address
hundreds of people who are trying to
do good-we want more of the dramatic
element and less of the didactic. The
tendency in this day is to drone religion,
10 whine religion, to can't religion, to
moan religion, to croak religion, to
sepulchrize religion, when we ought to
present it in animated and spectacular
manner.
Sabbath morning by Sabbath morn
ing address many theological students
who are preparing for the ministry.
They come in here from the different
institutions. / say to them this morn.
ing: If you will go home and look over
the history of the church you will find
that those men have brought most souls
to Christ who have been dramatic: Row
land Hill, dramatic; Thomas Chalmers,
dramatic; Thomas Guthrie, dramatic;
John Knox, dramatic; Robert Nc
Cheyne, dramatic; Christmas Evans, dra-
matte; George Whitfield, dramatic;
Robert Hall, dramatic; Robert South,
dramatic; Fenelon, dramatic; John
Mason, dramatic; DIR. Knott, dramatic.
When you get into the ministry, If
you attempt to culture that element,
and try to WELD it for God, you will
meet with mighty rebuff and carica-
ture, and ecclesiastical council will take
your case in charge. and they will try
to put you down; but the God who
starts you will help you through, and
great will be the eternal for the assidu-
Gus and the plucky.
What we want, ministers and lay
men, is to get our sermons and our ex-
hOrtations and our prayers out of the
old rut. see a great deal of discus
sion in the religious papers about why
people do not come to church. They
do not come because they are not inter-
ested. The hackneyed religious phrases
that come moving down through the
centuries will never arrest the masses.
What we want to-day, you in your
sphere and in my sphere, is to freshen
up. People do not want in their
Il l. Ia "a
the millinery shop, but the ia
ponicas wet with the morning dew;
nor the heavy bones of extinct mega
therium of past ages, but the living
reindeer caught last August at the edge
of Schroon lake. We want to drive out
the drowsy, and the prosaic, and the
tedious, and the humdrum, and intro
duce the brightness and vivacity, and
the holy sarcasm, and the sanctiffcd
wit, and the epigramatic power, and the
blood-red earnestness, and the fire of
religious zeal, and do not know of any
way of doing it as well as through the
dramatic Attention! Behold! Harki
Selahi
Next l speak of the Selah of perpe-
tuity. The Targum, which is the Bible
in Chaldee, renders this word of my
text forever" Many writer's agree in
believing and stating that one meaning
of this word is forever" In this very
verse from which take my text Selab
means not only poetic significance and
intcrmission and emphasis, but itmeans
eternal northumberland! Gods
government forever, Gods goodness
forever, the gladness of the righteous
forever. OF course, you and ]
have not surveyors chain with enough
links to measure that domain of mean
ing. In this world we must build every.
thing on small scale. A hundred
years are a great while. A tower five
hundred feet is great height. A jour.
ney of four thousand miles is very long.
But eternity! if the archangel has not
strength of wing to fly across it, but
flutters and drops like a wounded sea
gull, there is no need of our trying in
the small shallow of human thought to
voyage across it.
A skeptic desiring to show his con-
tempt for the passing years, and to show
that he could build enduringly, had his
own sepulcher made of the finest and
put on the door the words: ''For time
and for eternity" but it so happened
that the seed of tree somehow got in to
an unseen crevice of the marble. That
seed grew and enlarged until it became
tree, and split the marble to pieces.
There can be no Generalization of any
thing earthly. But foreverl Will you
and / live as long as that? We are
apt to think of the grave as the
terminus. We are apt to think of
the hearse as our last vehicle.
We are apt to think of seventy or
eighty or ninety years, and then ces-
sation. Instead of that we find the
marble slab of the tomb is only mile
stone marking the first mile, and that
the great journey is beyond. We have
only time enough in this world to put
on the sandals and to clasp our girdle
and to pick up our staff. We take our
first step from cradle to grave, and then
we open the door and start-great God,
whittier? The clock strikes the passing
away of time, but not the passing away
of eternity. Measureless! Measure
less! This Selah of perpetuity makes
earthly inequalities so Insignificant, the
difference between sceptre and needle,
between Alhambra and hut, between
chariot and cart, between throne and
curbstone, between Administer and bare
floor, between satin and sackcloth, very
trivial This Selah of perpetuity makes
our getting ready so important. For
such prolongation of travel, what outfit
of guide books, of passports and of es-
oorto Ara xx-a TY,ffipo ont On a desert