The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1895-03-15

/ ter than to read Bunyan's "Pilgrim'a
/ Progress" Whenever father and moth
er talked of religion they threw down
the corners of their mouth and rolled
up their eyes. If any one thing will
send a boy or girl to ruin sooner
| than another, that is it. If 1 had had
such a father and mother / fear
should have been an infideL When l
was a boy in Sunday-school, at one
| time we had a teacher who when we
were not attentive, struck us over the
head with New Testament, and there
is way of using even the Bible SO as
to make is offensive.
Remember, skepticism always has
some reason, good or bad, for existing.
Goetae's irreligion started wheII the
news came to Germany of the earth.
quake at Lisbon, November 1, ITS.
That sixty thousand people should
have perished in that earthquake and
in the after-rising of the Tagus so
stirred Lis sympathies that he threw
up his belief in the goodness of God.
Again, there is a field of usefulness
bat little touched occupied by those
who are astray in their habits. All
northern nations, like those of North
America, and England, and Scotland,
| that is, in the colder climates, are
devastated by alcoholism. They take
the fire to keep up the warmth. In
southern countries, like Arabia
and Spain, the blood is SO
4arm they are not tempted to fiery
liquids. The great Roman armies neVet
drank anything stronger than water
tinged with vinegar, but under our
northern climate the temptation to
heating ttimulants is most mighty. and
millions succumb. When mans
habits go wrong the church drops him,
the social circle drops him, good inf1u
ence drops him, we all drop him. OF all
tile nie1 get off the track, but few ever
get on again. Near my summer resi-.
dence there is life-saving station on
the beach. There are all the ropes
and rockets. the boats, the machinery
for getting people off shipwrecks. One
summer L Iaw there fifteen or twenty
men who w ire breakfasting, after hav-
| ing just escaped with their lives and
nothing more. Up and down our
coasts are built these useful structures,
and the mariners know it, and they
feel that if they are driven into
the breakers, there will be apt
| from shore to C7Iue a rescue. The
churches of God Ought to be SO many
| life-saving stations, not SO much to
help those who are in smooth waters,
but those who have been shipwrecked.
Come, let us run out the lifeboatsi
And who will man them2 We do not
preach enough to such men; we have
not enough faith in their release.
Alas, if when they come to hear us, we
are labriously trying to show the diff
| ference between sublapsarianism
and subralapsarianism, while they
| have thousand Vipers OF
remOrse and despair coiling around
and biting their immortal spirits.
The church is not chiefly for goodish
sort of men whose proclivities are al
right, and who could get to Heaven
praying and singing in their own
homes. 1t is on the beach to help the
drowning. Those bad cases are the
cases that God likes to take hold of
| He can save big sinner as well as
small sinner, and when a man calls
earnestly to God for help He viii go out
| todeliver such one. If it were neces-
sary, God would come down from the
sky, followed by all the artillery OF
Heaven, and million angels with
drawn swords. Get one hundred such
redeemed men in each of your churches,
and nothing could stand before them,
for such men are generally warm
| hearted and enthusiastic. No formal
prayers then. No heartless singing
| then. No cold conventionalisms then.
Furthermore, the destitute children
of the streets offer a field of work COM
paratively unoccupied. The uncared.
for children are in the majority in most
of our cities. Their condition was well
illustrated by what boy in this city
said when he was found under a cart
| gnawing a bone, and someone said to
him: Where do you liver" and he an
swered: Don't live nowhere, sir" Sew.
enty thousand of the children of New
York city can neither read nor write.
! When they grrow up, if unreformed,
! they will outvote your children, and
| the will govern your children. The
whisky ring will hatch out other
whisky rings, and grog shops will kill
with their hOrrid stencil public So
briefly, unless the church of.God rises up
with'outstretched arms and enfolds this
| dying population in their bosom.
| Public schools can not do it. Art gall
Ieries can not dOit. Blackwells island
can not do it. Alms-houses can not d1
| it. New York Tombs can not do it.
| Sing Sing can not do it. People OF
| God, wake up to your magnificent mis-
sion! You can do it. Get somewhere,
somehow, to work.
The Prussian cavalry mount by put
ting their right foot into the stirrup
whilethe American cavalry mount by
putting their left foot into the stirrup.
/ don't care how you mount your war
charger, if you only get into this bat
tie for God. and get there soon, right
stirrup or left stirrup, or no stirrup at
all. The unoccupied fields are all
around us, and why should we build on
another mans foundation?
/ have heard of what was called tns
'thundering legion" 1t was in 179, a
part of the Roman army to which some
! Christians belonged, and their prayers.
| il was said, were answered by thunder
and lightning aud hail and tempest
which overthrow an invading army
and saved the empire. And / would
| to God that you could be so mighty
in prayer and work that you would
become "a laundering legion. before
which the forces of sin might be routed,
and the gates to hell made to trembIe.
All aboard now on the Gospel shipl II
| you can not be a captain or a frsi
mate, be a stcker, or a deckhand.
or ready at command to clint