The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-03-17

height of SOlomon's temple was thirty
cubits Christ entered upon His active
ministry at thirty years of age. Judas
sold him for thirty pieces of silver. Oh,
the thirtiesI What "a word suggestive
of triumph or disaster. Your decade Is
the one that will probably afford the
greatest opportunity for victory, be-
cause there is the greatest necessity for
struggle. Read the worlds history
and know what are the thirties for
good or bad. Alexander the Great
closed his career at thirty-two. Fred
erick the Great made Europe tremble
with his armies at thirty-five Cortes
conquered Mexico at thirty. Grant
fought Shiloh and Donelson when
thirty-eight- Raphael died at thirty
seven. Luther was the hero of the
Reformation at thirty-five. Sir Philip
Next accost the forties. Yours is
the decade of discovery. do not mean
the discovery of the outside, but the
discovery of yourself. No man knows
himself until he is forty. He overesti-
mates himself. Ry that time he has
learned what he can do, or what he can
not do. He thought he had comm ercial
genius enough to become millionaire,
but now he is satisfied to make a COM
Portable living. He thought he had
rhetorical power that would bring him
into the United States senate; now he
is content if he can successfully argue
a common case before petit jury. He
thought he@had medical skill that
would make him a Mott or a Crosse or
Willard Parker or Sims; now he
finds his sphere is that of family ply
sician, prescribing for the ordinary
sailing on in fog and could
not take a reckoning, but now
it clears up enough to allow him to find
out his real latitude and longitude. He
has been climbing, but now he has got
to the top of the hill and he takes
long breath. He is halfway through
the journey at least, and he is in po-
sition to look backward or forward.
He has more good sense than he ever
had. He knows human nature, for he
has been cheated often enough to see
the bad side of it, and he has met so
many gracious and kindly and splendid
souls, he also knows the good side of it.
Now, calm yourself. Thank God for
the past, and deliberately set your
compass for another voyage. You have
chased enough thistledown. You have
| blown enough soap bubbles. You have
seen the unsatisfying nature of all
earthly things. Open a new chapter
with God and the world. This de-
cade of the forties ought to
eclipse all its predecessors in
worship. in usefulness and in
happiness. Forty" is a great word in
the Bible. Gods ancient people were
forty years in the wilderness. David
and Solomon and Jehoash reigned for
ty years. When Joseph visited his
brethren he was forty years old. Oh,
this mountain top of the forties! You
have now the character you viii prob
ably have fof all time and all eternity.
God, by His grace, sometimes changes
a man after the forties, but after that
! a man never changes himself. Tell me,
| oh, men and women who are in the
| forties, your habits of thought and
| life, and l will tell you what you will
forever be. / might make mistake
once in Thousand times, but not more
than in that proportion.
My sermon next accosts the fifties.
How queer it looks when, in writing
your age, you make the first of the two
| figures "5." This is the decade which
shows what the other decades have
been. If a young man has sown wild
oats, and he has lived to this time, he
reaps the harvest of it in the fifties, or
| if by necessity he was compelled to over
toll in honest directions, he is called to
settle up with exacting nature some
1 - i a. 4 -
| so hard in early life that they are oc-
| togenarians at fifty. Sciaticas, and
rheumatisms, and neuralgias, and YER
| tigos, and insomnias have their play
| ground in the fifties. A mans hair be-
| gins to whiten, and, although he may
| have worn spectacles before, now he
asks the optician for No ii, or No. II,
| or No. 10. When he gets a cough and
| is almost cured, he hacks and clears
| his throat a good while afterward. Oh,
We who are in the fifties think of iti
! A half century of blessing to be thank
full for, and half century subtracted
| from an existence which, in the most
marked case of longevity, hardly ever
reaches a whole century. BY this time
you ought to be eminent for piety.
You have been in SO many battles you
| ought to be brave soldier. You have
made SO many voyages you ought to be
a good sailor. So long protected and
blessed, you ought to have soul full
of doxology.
NY sermon next accosts the sixties
| The beginning of that decade is more
startling than any other. In his chro-
biological journey the man rides rather
smoothly over the figures "two' and
three" and -four" and five" but the
figure six gives him "a big jolt He
says: ''It can not be that am sixty.
| Let me examine the old family record.
/ guess they made a mistake. They
| got my name down wrong in the roll
of births But, no, the older brothers
or sisters remember the time of his ad-
vent, and there is some relative year
older and another relative a year
younger, and sure enough the fact is
established beyond all disputation.
Sixty! Now your great danger is the
temptation to fold up your faculties
and quit. You will feel a tend
ency to reminisce. If you do
not look out you will begin
almost everything with the words:
when was boy" But you ought
to make the sixties more memorable
for God and the truth than the ffties
or the forties or the thirties- You ought
to do more during the next ten years
| than you did in any thirty years of
your life, because of all the experience
you have had. You have committed
enough mistakes in life to make you