The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-12-01

where / was lifted to the top, and when
that newspaper was taken off my
wound I read on it something that
saved my soul, and it was one of your
sermons. Goodnight" he said, as he
passed on, leaving me transfixed with
grateful emotion
And who knows but the words now
speak, blessed of God, may reach some
wounded soul deep down in the black
mine of sin, and that these words may
be blessed to the staunching of the
wound and the eternal life of thesoul?
Settle this matter Instantly, positively
and forever. Stay the last ''if" Bury
deep the last Eff How to do it?
Fling body, mind and soul in a
prayer as earnest as that of Moses
in the text. Can you doubt the
earnestness of this prayer of the text?
1t is SO heavy with emotion that it
breaks down in the middle. It was so
earnest that the translators in the
modern'copies of the Bible were obliged
to put mark, straight line, dash,
for an commission that will never be
flied up. Such an abrupt pause,
such sudden swapping off of
the sentence. You can not parse
my text. 1t is an offense to grammat-
ical construction. But that dash put
in by the type-setters is mighty sug
gestive. eff thou wilt forgive their
sin then comes the dash /; and if not.
blot me, pray thee, out of Thy book
Some of the most earnest prayers ever
uttered could not be parsed and were
poor specimens of language. They
halted, they broke down, they
passed into sobs or groans or ST.
lences. God cares nothing for the syn
tax of prayers, nothing for the rhetoric
of prayers. Oh, the worthless prayers!
If they were piled up they would reach
to the rainbow that arches the throne
of God. A deep sigh may mean more
than whole liturgy. Out of the one
hundred and sixteen thousand words
of the English language there may not
be word enough expressive for the
soul. The most effective prayers l
have ever heard have been prayers
that broke down with emotion; the
young man for the first time arising in
a prayer meeting and saying: 80, Lord
Jesusr' and then sitting down, burying
the face in the handkerchief; the peni-
tent in the inquiry room kneeling ana
saying: ''God help me, +" and getting no
further; the broken prayer that started
a great revival III my church in Phila-
delphia.
Between the first and last sentences
of my text there was a paroXysm of
earnestness too mighty for words. 1t
will take half of an eternity to tell of
all the answers of earnest and faithful
prayer. In his last journal. David
Livingstone, in Africa, records the
prayer so soon to be answered.:
s'19 March-Birthday My Jesus,
my God, my life, my All.
again dedicate my whole self to Thee
Accept me, and grant o gracious
Father that ere this year is gone, 1 may
finish my task. In Jesus name 1 ask
it. Amen" When the dusky servant
looked into Livingstones tent and
found him dead on his knees, he saw
that the prayer had been answered,
But Notwithstanding the earnestness
of the prayer of Moses in the text
it was a defeated prayer, and
was not answered. / think the
two ''ifs'' in the prayer defeated it, and
one ''if'' is enough to defeat any
prayer, whatever good characteristics
it may have. "If thou wilt forgive
their sins; and if not, blot me, I
pray thee, out of Thy book God did
neither. AS the following verses show,
He punished their sins, but I am sure
did not blot out one letter of the name
of Moses from the Book of Life.
There is only one kind of prayer in
which you need to put the If and
that is the prayer for temporal bless.
ings. Pray for riches and they may en-
gulf us, or for fame, and it may be-
witch us, or for worldly success of any
sort and it may destroy us. Better
say: IF it be best, eff l car make
proper use of it." ''If Thou seest
need it." A wife, praying
for the recovery of her hus-
band from illness, stamped her foot
and said with frightful emphasis: 81
will not have him die; God shall not
take him." Her prayer was answered.
but few years after, the community
was shocked by the fact that The in a
moment of anger had slain her.
A mother. praying for a sons
recovery from illness, told the
Lord He had no right to take
him, and the boy recovered, but
plunged into all denominations and died
renegade. Better in all such prayers
pertaining to our temporal welfare,
put an ''if," saying: ''If it be Thy will!'.
But praying for spiritual good and the
salvation of our soul we need never in
sert an if Our spiritual welfare is
sure to be for the best, and away with
the ''ifs.''
Abraham's prayer for the rescue of
Sodom was grand prayer in some re-
spects, but there were six Ifs in it;
or ''peradventures, which mean the
same thing. "Peradventure there may
be fifty righteous in the city, peradven-
ture forty-five, peradven ture forty, per-
adventure thirty, peradventure TWEEN
ty, peradventure ten" Those six per-
adventures, those six Ifs killed the
prayer and Sodom went down and went
under. Nearly all the prayers that
were answered had no ifs in them.
The prayer of Elijah that changed
dry weather to wet weather. The
prayer that changed Hezekiah
from sick man to we'll
man. The prayer that halted
sun and moon without shaking
the universe to pieces. Oh, rally your
soul for a prayer with no ifs" In it
Say in substance: Lord, thou hast
promised pardon and l take it. Here
are my wounds, heal them. Here Is
my blindness, irradiate it. Here are
nv chains of bondape. bV the Gospel