The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-10-27


of night, then the great st. Paul's
mark the hours, making all
the other sounds seem utterly insig-
nifcant as with mighty tongue IL am
nounced the hour of the night, every
stroke an overmastering boom My
friends, it was intended that all the
lesser sounds of the world should be
drowned out in the mighty tongue of
congregational song beating against
the gates of Heaven. Do you know
how they mark the hours in Heaven?
They have no clocks, as they have no
candles, but a great pendulum of hal
lelujah swinging across Heaven from
eternity to eternity.
let those refuse 10 sing
Who never knew our God:
But children OF the Heavenly King
Should speak their joy abroad.
Again remark that sanctuary help
ought to come from the sermon. Of
thousand people in this or any other
audience, how many want sympathetic
help? Do you guess a hundred? Do
| Won guess five hundred? You have
guessed wrong. will tell you just
the proportion. Out of a thousand
people in this audience there are just
one Thousand who need sympathetic
help These young people want it just
as much as the old. The old people
sometimes seem to think they have a
monopoly of the rheumatisms, and the
neuralgias, and the headaches, and the
physical disorders of the world; but /
tell you there are mo worse heart
i~O 1,ow Fo1 H. -
young people. Do you know that
much of the work is done by the young?
Raphael died at thirty-seven; Gustavus
Adolphus died at thirty-eight; limo
cent III. came to his mightiest inf1u-
ence at thirty-seven; Cortes conquered
Mexico at thirty; Don John won La
panto at twenty-five; Grotius was at
torney-general at twenty-four; and /
have noticed all classes of men that
some of the seyerest battles and the
toughest work comes before thirty.
Therefore we must have our sermons
and our exhortation in prayer meet
ing all sympathetic with the
young. And so with these people
further on in life. What do these doc
tors and lawyers and merchants and
mechanics care about the distractions
of our religion? What they want is
help to bear the whimsicalities of
patients, the browbeating of legal OPP
ponents, the unfairness of customers,
who have plenty of fault-fnding for
every imperfect of handiwork, but no
praise for twenty excellences. What
does that brain-raclzed, hand-blistered
man care for Zwingle's Doctrine of
Original Sin," or Augustine's ''Anthro-
pology?" You might as well go to
man who has the pleurisy and put on
his side plaster made out of DIR. PARIS
Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence"
While all of sermon may not be
helpful alike to all, if it be Christian
sermon. preached by a Christian man,
there will be help for everyone some
where. We go into an apothecary
store. We see others being waited on;
we do not complain because we do not
Immediately get the medicine; we
know our turn will come after awhile.
And SO while all parts of a sermon may
not be appropriate to our case, if we
wait prayerfully before the sermon is
through we shall have the Divine
prescription. / say TO these young
men who come here Sabbath by
Sabbath, and who are going to
preach the Gospel, these theological
students say to them, we want in
our sermons not more metaphysics, nor
more imagination, nor more logic,
nor more profnndity. What we want
in our sermons and Christian exhorta-
tions is more sympathy. When Father
Taylor preached in the Sailors Bethel
at Boston, the jaclk-tars felt that they
had help for their duties among therat-
lines and the forecastles. When Rich
ard Weaver preached to the operatives
in Oldham, England, all the working
men felt they had more grace for the
spindles. When DIR. South preached
to kings and princes and princesses all
the mighty men and women who heard
him felt preparation for their high sta
ton.
Again / remark, that sanctuary help
ought to come through the prayers of
all the people. The door of the sternal
storehouse is hung on one hinge, a gold
hinge, the hinge of prayer, and when
the whole audience lay hold of that
door it must come open. There are
here many people spending their first
Sabbath after some great bereavement.
4 W AAdb VIII yOuA w III
How will it help the tomb in that
mans heart? Here are people who
have not been to church before for
ten years; what will your prayer
do for them by rolling over their
soul holy memories? Here are
people in crises of awful temp
tation. They are on the verge of
despair, or wild laundering, or
theft or suicide. What will your prayer
do for them this morning in the way of
giving them strength to resist? VIII
you be chiefly anxious about the fit of
the glove that you put toyour forehead
while you prayed? VIII you be chiefly
critical of the rhetoric of the pastors
petition? No. No. A thousand people
will feel ''that prayer is for me- and
at every step of the prayer chains ought
to drop off, and temples of sin ought to
crush into dust, and jubilees of deliver
ance ought to brandish their trumpets
In most of our churches we have
three prayers-the opening prayer,
what is called the long prayer"
and the closing prayer. There
are many people who spend
the first prayer in arranging their APP
perel after entrance, and spend the
second prayer, the long prayer" in
wishing it were through, and spend the
last prayer in preparing to start for
home. The most insignificant part of
every religious service is the sermon.