The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-01-20

hear it ring. Invite them to Christ and
they will call you fanatic. Let there
be contention among Christians, and
they will say: "Hurrahi the church is
in decadence." Christ intended that
His church should always remain
specified bird. Let birds of another
feather pick at her, but they can not
rob her of single plume. Like the
albatross, she can sleep on the bosom
of TEMPEST. She has gone through
the fires of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace
and not got burned, through the waters
of the Red sea and not been drowned,
through the shipwreck on the breakers
of Melita and not been foundered. Let
all earth and hell try to hunt down
this speckled bird, but far above hui
man scorn and Internal assault, it shall
sing over every mountain top and fly
over every nation, and her triumphant
song shall be, 1.-THE Church of Godl
The pillar and ground of the truth.
The gates of hell shall not prevail
against her."
But we can not stop here. From
tall cliff hanging over the sea hear
the eagle calling unto the tempest and
lifting its wing to smite the whirl-
wind. Moses, jeremiah, Hosea and
Habakkul at times in their writings,
take their pen from the eagles wing.
1t is a bird with ferceness in its eye,
its feet armed with claws of iron,
and its head with a dreaded beak.
Two or three of them can fill the
heavens with clangor. But general
ly this monster of the air is
alone and unaccOmpanied, for the rea-
son that its habits are so predaceous it
requires five or ten miles of aerial or
earthly dominion all for itself. The
black-brown of its back, and the white
of its lower feathers, and the fire of its
eye, and the long flap of its wing take
one glimpse of it as it swings down in
to the valley to pick up a rabbit or a
child and then swings back to it's throne
on the rock, something never to be for
gotten. Scattered about its eyrie of al
titudinous solitude are the bones
of its conquests. But while
the beak and the claws of the
travele rs of the air, the mother eagle
is most kind and gentle to her young.
God compares His treatment of His
people to the eagles care of the eaglets.
Deuteronomy xxi, il: LAS an eagle
stirreth up her nest, futtereth over her
young, spreading abroad her wings,
taketh them, beareth them on her
wings, so the Lord alone did lead"
The old eagle first shoves one out of
the nest in order to make it fly, and
then takes it on her back and flies with
it, and shakes it off in the air, and if it
seems like falling, quickly flies under it
and takes it on her wing again. So
God does with US. Disaster, failure in
business, disappointment, bereave-
ment, is only Gods way of
shaking us out of our comfortable nest
in order that we may learn how to fly.
You who are complaining that you
have no faith or courage or Christian
zeal, have had it too easy. You never
will learn to fly in that comfortable
nest. Like an eagle, Christ has carried
us on His back. At times we have been
shaken off. and when we were about to
fall, He came under us again and
brought us ont of the gloomy valley to
the sunny mountain. Never an eagle
brooded with such love and care over
her young as Gods wings have been
over us. Across what oceans of trouble
we have gone in safety upon the AL
mighty's wings. From what mountains
of sin we have been carried and at
times have been borne far up above
the gunshot of the world and the arrow
of the devil. When our time on earth
is closed on these great wings of God
we shall speed with infinite quickness
from earth's mountains to Heavens
hills, and as from the eagles circuit
under the sun men on the ground seem
small and insignificant as lizards on a
rock, so all earthly things shall dwindle
into a specl1, and the raging river of
death SO far beneath will seem as
smooth and CLASSY as a Swiss lake.
1t was thought in ancient times that
an eagle could not only moult his
feathers in old age, but that after ar
irving to great age, it would renew its
strength and become entirely young
again. To this Isaiah alludes when he
says: ''They that wait on the Lord
shall renew their strength, they shall
mount up with wings OF eagles" Even
SO the Chris tan in old age will renew
his spiritual strength. He shall be
young in ardor and enthusiasm
for Christ, and as the body
fails the soul will grow in
elasticity, till at death it will spring
up like gladdened child into tho
bosom of God. Yea, in this pathological
study, see that Job says: "His days
fly as an eagle that hasteth to it's prey"
The speed of a hungry eagle when il
saw it's prey a score of miles distant was
unimaginable. 1t went like a thun-
derbolt for speed and power. So fly
our days. Sixty minutes, each
worth a heaven, since we assem-
bled in this place, have shot like
lightning into eternity. The, old earth
rush of days add months and years and
ages. swift as an eagle that hasteth
to it's prey" Behold the fowls of the
air. Have you considered that they
have as you and have not the power
to change their eyes so that one minute
they may be telescope and the next
microscopic Now seeing something
mile away, and by telescope eyesight,
and then dropping to it's food on the
ground. able to see it close by, and
with microscopic eyesight.
But what a senseless passage OF
Scripture that is, until you know the
fact, which says: THE sparrow hath
found a house and the swallow rest
for herself, where she may lay her
young, even thine affairs, o, Lord O.
hosts, my King and my God" What
has the swallow to do with the affairs
of the temple at Jerusalem? All!
you know that swallows are all the
,uorId o1ar VOW 4apoe and in summer