The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-03-17
WORDS FOR ALL MEN.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Reviews the
Epochs of Human Life.
The Ambitions OF Youth, the Successes
and DIsappoIntments OF Mature Years
and the GIOries of Right
eous Old Age.

The following discourse on the sub
iect: From Twenty to Seventy" was
delivered by Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage in
the Brooklyn tabernacle from the text:
The days Of our years arc three score and
ten.-Psalm &c. 10.
The SEVENTEEN milestone of life is
here planted as at the end of journey.
A few go beyond it; multitudes never
reach it. The oldest person of modern
times expired at 169 years. A Greek,
by the name of Stravaride, lived to t32
years An Englishman, by the name
Thomas Parr, lived 152 years. Before
the time of Moses people lived $50
years, and if you go far enough back
they lived 500 years Well, that was nee
essary, because the story of the world
must come down by tradition, and it
needed long life safely to transmit the
news OF the past. If the generations
had been short-lived. the story would SO
often have changed lips that it might
have got all astray But after Moses
began to write it down, and parch-
ment told it from century to century,
1t was not necessary that people live
81 1OuB 10 IHC
events of the past. If, in our time,
people lived only only twenty-five
years, sthat would not affect history,
since it is put in print and is no longer
dependent on tradition. Whatever
your age, will to-day directly address
you, and shall speak to those who are
in the twenties the thirties, the forties,
the fifties, the sixties, and to those who
are in seventies and beyond.
First, then, accost those of you who
are in the twenties. You are full of ex-
pectation. You are ambitious-that is,
If you amount to anything-for some
kind of success, commercial, or me-
chanical, or professional, or literary, or
agricultural, or social, or moral. If
] find someone in the twenties without
any sort of ambition, feel like say
ing; my friend, you have got on the
wrong planet. This is not the world
for you. You are going to be in the
way. Have you made your choice of
poorhouses? You will never be able
to pay for your cradle. Who is going
to settle for your board? There is a
mistake about the fact that you were
born at all" But supposing you have
ambition, let me say to all the twen-
ties, expect everything through Divine
manipulation, and then you will get
all you want or something better. Are
you looking for wealth? Well, remem-
Der that God controls the money mar
kets, the harvests, the drought, the
caterpillars, the locusts, the sunshine,
the storm, the land, the sea, and you
Will get wealth. Perhaps not that
which is stored up in banks, in safe de-
posits, in United States securities, in
houses and lands, but your clothing
and board and shelter, and that is
about all you can appropriate anyhow.
You cost the Lord a great deal. To
feed and clothe and shelter you for a
lifetime requires big sum of money,
and if you get nothing more than the
absolute necessities you get an enor-
nous amount of supply. Expect as
much as you will of any kind of sue
cess If you expect it from the Lord
you are safe. Depend on any other re-
source and you may be badly cha
grinned, but depend on God and all will
be well. 1t is good thing in the crises
of life to have a man of large means
back you up. 1t is a good thing to
have a money institution stand be-
hind you in your undertaking. But it
is mightier thing to have the God of
Heaven and earth your coadjutor, and
and you may have Him. / am so glad
that / meet you while you are in the
! twenties You are laying out your
plans and all your life in this world
and the next for five hundred million
years of your existence will be affected
by those plans. 1t is about eight o'clock
in the morning of your life, and you are
just starting out. Which way are you
| going to start? Oh. the twentiesl
Next / accost those in the thirties.
You are at an age when you find what
a tough thing it is to get recognized
and established in your occupation or
profession. Ten years ago you thought
all that was necessary for success was
to put on your shutters the sign of
physician or dentist or attorney or bro
l1er or agent, and you would have
| plenty of business. How many hours
/ you sat and waited for business and
waited in vain, three persons only
know God, your wife and yourself
In commercial life you have not had
the promotion and the increase in sal
airy you anticipated, or the place you
/ expected to occupy in the firm has not
been vacated. The produce of the
farm, with which you expected to sup
| port yourself and those depending on
you, and to pay the interest on the
1 mortgage, has been far less than you
anticipated, or the prices were down,
or special expenses for sickness made
dTaughts on your resources that you
could not have expected In
some respects the hardest de-
cade of life is the thirties, because the
results are generally so far behind the
anticipations. 1t is very rare, indeed,
that a young man does as did the
young man last Sunday night when he
came to me and said: 81 have been
SO marvelously prospered since I came
to this country that / feel, as a matter
of gratitude, that i ought to dedicate
myself to God" Nine-tenths of the
poetry of life has been knocked out Of
you since you came into the thirties.
| Men in the different professions and
occupations saw that you were rising
and they must put an estoppel on you
or You might somehow stand in the
way. They think you must be sup
pressed. From thirty to forty it is an
especially hard time for young doctors,
young lawyers, young merchants,
young farmers, young mechanics,
young ministers. The struggle of the
thirties 10 for honest and helpful
aud remunerative recognition. But
few Old people know how "a