The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1896-05-22
BEFORE THEY ADJOURN.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Directs q Dis
course to Congress.
National Affairs Treated of From a Re-
Hgious Sfandpoint-No Parry Can
DO It's Duty Unless tt Acc
knowledgcs God

national congress, on the topic: BE
fore They Adjourn" was delivered by
Rev. T.. Dewitt Talmage before his
Washington congregation. The text
was.
And teach his senators wisdom.-Ps Psalms ev.,
Senators in this text stand for law
makers. Joseph was the lord treas
urer of the Egyptian government, and
among other great things which he
teach his senators wisdom, and il any
man on earth ought to be endowed
with wisdom it Is senator's, whether
they stand in congress, parliaments, or
reichstag, or legislatures. BY their
decisions nations go up or down.
Lawmakers arc sometimes so tempted
by prejudices, by sectional prefer
ences, by opportunity of personal add
vancement, and sometimes what is
best to do Is so doubtful that they
ought to be prayed for and encour-
aged in every possible way, instead of
severely criticised and blamed and ex-
cOriated, as is much of time the
case. Our public men are so often
because they obtain eminence which
other men wanted but could not reach,
that more injustices are hurled at our
national legislature than the people
of the United States can possibly inn
agine. The wholesale belying of our
public men is simply damnable. By
residence in Washington have come
10 find out that many of our public
men are persistently misrepresented,
and some of the best Of them, the pur-
est in their lives and most faithful in
the discharge of their duties, are the
worst DETAINED. Some day 1 want to
preach a sermon from the text in III.
Peter: ''They are not afraid to speak
evil of dignities. Whereas angels,
which are greater in power and
ton against them before the
beasts, made to be taken and de-
stroyed, speak evil of the things that
they understand not So constant
and malignant is the work of depreci-
alton and standardization in regard to
our public men that all over the land
there are those who suppose that the
city Of Washington is the center of all
corruption, while, what with its parks,
and its equestrian statuary, and its
wide streets, ~and its architectural
symmetries, and its lovely homes, il is
not only the most beautiful city under
the sun. but has the highest style of
citizenship. i have seen but one in
toxicated man in the more than six
months of my residence, and 1 do not
think any man can give similar testi-
mony to any other city on the Ameri-
can continent
The gavels of our two houses of ma
tional legislature will soon fall. and
adjournment of two bodies of men as
talented, as upright, and as
patriotic as ever graced the capt.
toll will take place. The two or
three unfortunate outbreaks which
you have noticed only make more con-
spicuous the dignity, the fraternity,
the eloquenee, the fidelity which have
characterized these two bodies during
the long months of important and
anxious elaboration. We put a halo
around great men of the past because
they were so rare in their time. Our
have five such men where once they
had one. But it will not be until after
they are dead that they will get appre-
ciated. The world finds it safer to
praise the dead than the living, because
the departed, having a heavy pile of
marble above them, may not rise to
become rivals. But before the gavels
of adjournment drop and the doors of
Capitol Hill shut, there are one or two
things that ought to be done, and let
us pray to God that they may be ac-
complished. More forcibly than ever
before, congress has been implored to
acknowledge God in our constitution.
The Methodist church. church which
Is always doing glorious things, has,
in its recent Wilmington conference,
requested our congress to amend the
immortal document, which has been
the foundation and wall and dome of
our United States government, by in
sorting the words: Trusting in Al
mighty God" If that amendment is
made, it will not only please all the
good people of the country, but will
please the heavens. 1t was only an
oversight or mental accident that
the fathers who made the constitution
did not insert a divinely worshipful
sentence. They all, so far as they
amounted to anything, believed in
God, the Father Almighty, the Maker
of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus
Christ, His only begotten Son." The
constitution would have been fail
ure had it not been for the Divine in
reference. The members of the con-
vention could agree on nothing until,
in response to Benjamin Franklin's
request that the meeting be opened by
prayer, the Lord was called on to in
terfere and help, and then the way
was cleared, and all the states signed
the document; a historical fact that
all the rat terriers of modern infidelity
can not bark out of existence!
know that there was an exception
20 the fact that the prominent men of
those times were good men. Tom
Paine, a Hbertine and a sot, did not
believe in anything good until he was
dying, and then he shrieked out
for Gods mercy. And Ethan Allen,
from one of whose descendants have
received within few days a confirma-
tion of the incident I mentioned in a
recent sermon, as saying to his dying
daughter that she had better take her
mothers Christian religion than his
own infidelity, The article sent me
says: The story has been denied by
some of the Allen family, but the
Bronson family, some of whom were
with 4ha 1vivcr Girl aNGrr, %h1F ~ ss