The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1894-01-12

himself up and he takes stimuIants to
keep himself up until the stimulants
keep him down, or man has been going
along for 80 or 40 years in unsuccess full
business, and here is am opening where
by one dishonorable action he can lift
himself and lift his family from all
financial embarrassment He attempts
TO leap the chasm, and he falls into it.
Then it is in after life that the great
temptation of success comes If man
make fortune before so years of age,
he generally loses it before 40. The
solid and the permanent fortunes for
the most part do not come to their
climax until midlife or I'm old age. The
most of the bank presidents have
white hair. Many of those who have
been largely successful have been full
of arrogance or worldliness or dissipa-
tion in old age. They may not have
lost their integrity, but they have be-
come so worldly and so selfish under
the influence of large success that it is
evident to everybody that their success
has been temporal calamity and an
eternal damage.
Concerning many people it may be
said it seems as if it would have been
better If they could have embarked
from this life at 90 or 80 years of age
Do you know the reason why the vast
ma ority of people die before 30? 1t
is because they have not the moral
endurance for that which is beyond
the so, and merciful God will not
allow them to be put to the fearful
strain.
Again, there is a blessing in abbre-
waited earthly existence in the fact
that one is the sooner taken off the de-
fensive. AS soon as one is old enough
to take care of himself, he is put on his
guard. Bolts on the door to keep out
the robbers Fireproof safes to keep
off the flames Life insurance and fire
insurance against accidents. Receipts
Iest you have to pay debt twice. Life
boat against shipwreck Westing-
house air brake against railroad col
lision. There are many ready to over
reach you and take all you have. De-
Tense against cold, defense against
heat, defense against sickness, defense
against the worlds abuse, defense all
the way down to the grave, and even
the tombstone sometimes is not suffi-
cient barricade.
If a soldier who has been on guard,
shivering and stung with the cold, pae-
ing up and down the parapet with
shouldered muslSet, is glad when some
one comes to relieve guard and he can go
inside the fortress, ought not that man
to shout for joy who can put down his
weapon of earthly defense and go into
the kings castle? Who is the more
fortunate, the soldier who has to stand
guard II hours, or the man who has to
stand guard six hours? We have com
mon sense about everything but relig-
ion, common sense about everything
but transference from this world
Again, there is blessing in an alb
breviated earthly existence in the fact
that one escapes SO many bereave-
ments The longer we live the more
attachments and the more kindred. the
more chords to be wounded, or rasped,
or sundered. If man live on to seven
ty or eighty years of age, how many
graves are cleft at his feet? In that
long reach of time father and mother
go, brothers and sisters go, children 60,
grandchildren go, personal friends out
side the family circle whom they had
loved with love like that of David
and Jonathan.
Besides that, some men have a nat
ural trepidation about dissolution, and
ever and anon during forty OF fifty or
sixty years this horror of their dissolu-
tion shudders through soul and body.
Now, suppose the lad goes at 16 years
of age. He escapes fifty funerals, fifty
caskets, fifty obsequies, fifty awful
wrenchings of the heart. 1t is hard
enough for us to bear their departure,
but is it not easier for us to bear their
departure than for them to stay and
bear fifty departures? Shall we not,
by the grace of God, rouse ourselves
into generosity of bereavement which
will practically say, at is hard enough
for me to go through this bereavement,
but how glad / am that he will never
have to go through it!'
So l reason with myself, and so you
will find it helpful to reason with your
selves. David lost his son. Though
David was king he lay on the earth
mourning and inconsolable for some
time. At this distance of time, which
do you really think was the one to be
congratulated, the short lived child or
the long lived father? Had David died
as early as that child died, he would in
the first place have escaped that particu-
lar bereavement, then he would have es-
capped the worse bereavement of Absa-
lom, his recreant son, and the pur-
suit of the Phillistines, and the
fatigue of his military campaign, AID
the jealousy of Saul, and the perfdy
of Ahithophel, and the curse of Shimei
and the destruction of his family at
Ziklag, and, above all, he would have
escaped the two great calamities of his
life, the great sins of uncleanness and
murder. David lived to be of vast use
to the church and the world, but so far
as his own happiness vas concerned,
does it not seem to you that it would
have been better for him to have gone
early?
Now, this, my friends explains some
things that TO you have been inexplic-
able. This shows you why when God
takes little children from a household
he is very apt to take the brightest, the
most genial, the most sympathetic, the
most talented. Why? 1t is because
that kind of nature suffers the most
when it does suffer and is most liable
TO temptation. God saw the tempest
sweeping up from the Caribbean, and
he put the delicate craft into the first
harbor. Taken away from the evil to
come"
Again. nv friends there is a blassin0