The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1895-03-08

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mouth make escape impossible for
anything it has once seized. Yet BEN
aiah puts his heel on the neck of the
liking of all beasts" Was it dagger?
Was it a javelin? Was it knife?
can not tell, but everything depended
on il. But for that. Benaiah's body
under one craunch of the mon
ster would have been left limp and
tumbled in the snow. And when you
and go into the fight with temptation,
il we have not the right kind of weap-
on, instead of our Staying the lion,
the lion will Stay us. The sword of
the spirit Nothing in earth or hell
can stand before that. Victory
with that or. no victory at all.
by that I mean prayer to God,
confidence in His rescuing power, saw
ing grace, Almighty deliverance.
do not care what you call it; l call it
Sword of Spirit" And if the lions of
all the jungles of perdition should at
once spring upon your soul, by that
weapon of heavenly metal you can
thrust them back. and cut them down,
and stab them through, and leave them
powerless at your feet. Your good res
olution welded against the powers
which assault you is a toy pistol against
| an Armstrong gun; is a penknife held
out against the braRdished sabers of
Heintzelman's cavalry charge. Go in
/ TO the fight against sin on your own
strength, and the result will be the hot
breath of the lion in your blanched
face, and his front paws, one on each
lung. Alas! for the man not fully
4 i I
day. and before him lion.
All my hearers and readers have a
big fight of some sort on hand, but the
| biggest and the wrathiest lion which
you have to fight is what the Bible
calls ''The roaring lion, who walketh
about, seeking whom he may devOur"
| Now, you have never seen a real lion
unless you have seen him in India or
Africa, just after capture. Long Gag
ing breaks his spirit, and the con-
slant presence of human beings
tames him. But you ought to see
him spring against the iron bars
in the geological gardens of Calcutta,
and hear him roar for the prey. 1t
makes ones blood curdle, and you
shrink back, although you know there
is no peril. Plenty of Ions in olden
time. Six hundred of them were
slaughtered on one occasion in the
presence of Pompey in the Roman
amphitheater. Lions came out and
destroyed the camels which car
ried the baggage of Xerxes' army.
In Bible times there were SO many
lions that they are frequently al
luded to in the Scriptures. Joel, the
prophet, describes the ''cheek teeth"
of great lion; and Isaiah mentions
among the attractions of Heaven that
mo lion shall be there;" and Amos
! speaks of a shepherd taking lambs
ear out of the mouth of a lion; and
Solomon describes the righteous as
a Iion;" and Daniel was a great lion
tanner; and David, and jeremiah, and
| st. John often speak of this creature.
But most am impressed by what l
have quoted from the Apostle Peter
when he calls the devil lion. That
means strength. That means blood
thirstiness. That means cruelty. That
means destruction. Some of you have
felt the strength of his paw and the
| sharpness of his tooth, and the horror
| of his rage. Yes, he is a savage
devil. He roared at everything
good when Lord Claverhouse
assailed the Covenanters, and at Bar
tholemew against the Huguenots, one
August night when the bell tolled for
the butchery to begin, and the CHASTITY
joke in the street was, "Blood letting
is good in August" and fifty thousand
assassin knives were plunged into
the victims, and this monster
| L., 81
the grandest souls of all time, and,
fattened with the spoils of centuries,
he comes for you. But l am glad to
say to all of you who have got the
worst in such a struggle, that there is
lion on our side if you want Him:
Revelations, v, 5, 1.-The lion of Judah'S
tribe" A lamb to us, but lion to
meet that other lion, and you can
easily guess who will beat in that
fight, and who will be beaten. When
two opposing lions meet in a jungle in
India, you can not tell which will
overcome and which will be overcome.
| They glare at each other for moment,
and then with full strength of mus
Gle they dash against each other like
| two thunderbolts of coliding storm
clouds, and with jaws like the crush
of avalanches, and with a resounding
voice that makes the HimaIayas trem-
BILE, and with a pull, and tear, and
clutch, and trample, and shaking of
the head from side to side, until it is
too much for human end urance to wit
ness, and though one lion may be left
| dead, the one which has conquered
crawls away lacerated, and gashed,
and lame, and eyeless, to bleed to
death in an adjoining jungle. But if you
and feel enough of our weakness in this
battle of temptation, and you ask for
Divine help against that old lion OF
hell, described in ST. Peter, will GO the
stronger Lion described in Revelation,
and it will be no uncertain grapple;
but, under one Omnipotent stroke, the
devouring monster that would Stay
your soul shall go reeling back into
pit ten thousand times deeper than
that in which Benaiah slew the lion
on snow day.
Well it will be better than that when
some of you are seen entering the har-
Dor of Heaven. You have had rough
voyage-no mistake about that. Snowy
day after snowy day. Again and again
the machinery of health and courage
broke down, and the waves of tempta-
ton have swept clear over the
hurricane deck, so that yoa
were often compelled to say: 'All