The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-06-23
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Threshing Process Which
Every Mortal Must Endure.
The Great Trials of Life Evidence of the
Souls Great vaIue-God Gives Us
Our Burdens and the Strength
to Bear Them.

Kew II. Dewitt Talmage delivered thu
following discourse on the subject O.
''The Threshing Machine i'm the Brook
lyn tabernacle, taking for his text:
For She fltches are not threshed with thresh
Ing instrument neither is n cart wheel turned
about upon the cummin, but the fitches are
beaten out with a staff and the cummin with q
rod Bread corn Is bruised. because he vii
not ever be threshing it--Isaiah xviii. 81 q
There are three kinds of seed men
toned: fitches. cummin and corn. o.
the last we all know. But it may be
well to state that the fitches and the
cummin were small seeds, like the car
raway or the thick-pea. When these
grains or herbs were to be threshed
they were thrown on the floor and the
workmen come around with staff, on
rod, or fail, and beat them until the
seed would be separated; but when the
corn was to be thrashed that was
thrown on the floor, and the men
would fasten horses or oxen to a cart
with iron-dented wheels; that cart
would be drawn around the threshing
floor, and so the work would be accom-
plished. Different kinds of threshing
for different products. 1.-THE fitches
are not threshed with threshing in
strument, neither is cart-wheel
turned about upon the cummin; but
the fitches are beaten out with a staff
and the cummin with a rod. Bread
corn is bruised, because it will not ever
be thrcshing it"
The great thought that the text
presses upon our souls is that we all go
through some kind of threshing pro-
cess. The fact that you may be devot-
ing your life to honorable and noble
purposes will not win you any escape.
Wilberforce, the Christian emancipation,
was in his day derisively called DIR.
Cantwell." Thomas Darlington Macau-
lay, the advocate of all that was good
before he became the most conspicu
Gus historian of his day, was carica-
tured in one of the quarterly reviews
as "Babbletongue Macaulay." Nor
man Mcleod, the great friend of the
Scotch poor, was industriously ma
ligned in all quarters, although on the
day when he was carried out to his
burial workman stood and looked at
the funeral procession and said: IF he
had done nothing for anybody more
than he has for me, he should shine as
the stars forever and ever" All The
small wits of London had their fling at
John Wesley, the father of Methodism.
If such men could not escape the ma
igning of the world, neither can you
expect to get rid of the sharp, keen
stroke of the tribulum. All who live
godly in Jesus Christ must suffer per-
secution. Besides that, there are the
and the bankruptcies, and
the irritations, and the disappointments
which are ever putting a cup of aloes
to your lip. Those wrinkles on your
face are hieroglyphics which, if de-
ciphered, would make out thrilling
story of trouble. The footstep of the
rabbit is seen the next morning on the
snow, and on the white hairs of the
aged are the footprints showing where
swift trouble alighted.
Even amid the joys and hilarities of
life, trouble will sometimes break in.
As when the people were assembled in
the Charlestown theater, during the
war, and while they
we're witnessing a farce, and the au-
Hence was in great graduation, the
runs of an advancing enemy was heard,
IND the audience broke up in wild
panic and ran for their lives, so oftimes
while you are seated amid the joys and
festivities of this world you hear the
of some great Disaster All
he fitches and the cummin and the
;orn must come down on the threshing
ioor and be pounded.
My subject, in the first place, teaches
is that it is no compliment to us if we
,ummin on the threshing floor might
ook over to the corn on another floor
md say: Look at that poor, miser-
Ible, bruised corn. We have only been
} little pounded, but that has been al
aost destroyed" Well, the corn, if it
lad lips, would answer and say: do
-ou know the reason you have not
,een as much pounded as have? 1t is
because you are not of SO much worth
IS l am; if you were you would be as
everely run over" Yet there are men
Who suppose they are the Lords favor
ties simply because their barns are
ull, and their bank account is flush,
md there are no funerals in the house.
t may be because they are fitches and
while down at the end of the
ane the poor widow may be the Lords
:orn. You are but little pounded be-
:ause you are but little worth, and she
bruised and pounded because she is the
,est part of the harvest.
The heft of the threshing machine is
according to the value of the grain. If
Tou have not been much threshed in
life, perhaps there is not much to
hreshl If you have not been much
haken of trouble, perhaps it is be-
.ause there is going to be a very small
Tield. When there are plenty of black
berries the gatherers go out with large
but when the drought has al
most consumed the fruit, then quart
Measure will do as we'll. 1t took the
snake on Paul's hand and
he pounding of him with stones until |
lie was taken up for dead, and the jam
ming against him of prison gates, and |
he Ephesian vociferation, and the |
kinned ankles of the painful stocks,
md the laundering of the Alexandrian |
orn-snip, and tho beheading stroke of !
he Roman sheriff to bring Paul to his |
roper development
1t was not because Robert Moffat and |
.ady Rachel Russell and Frederick |
)berlin were worse than any other |
,eople that they had to suffer, it was
because they were better, and God |
wanted to make them best BY the |
arefulness of the threshing you
nav ALWAYS conclude the value of the |
ram.
Next, my text teaches us that God !
our trials to what we can |
rrln e.. IA GAnhnr IT,.