The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-11-05

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he can lift himself and lift his amily
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
makes fortune before 80 years of age,
he generally loses it before 40. The
solid and permanent fortunes for the
most part do not come to their climax
until in mid-life, or in old age. The
most of the bank presidents have white
hair. Many of those who have been
largely successful have been flung of
arrogance or worldliness or dissipation
in old age. They may not have lost
their integrity, but they have become
so worldly and SO selfish under the in
| fluence of large success that it is evil
dent to everybody that their success
has been a temporal calamity and an
eternal damage. Concerning many
people, it may be said it seems as If it
would have been better il they could
have embarked from this life at 90 or
so years of age.
Do you know the reason why the
vast majority of people die before SO?
1t is because they have not the moral
endurance for that which is beyond
the so, and a merciful God will not al
low them to be put to the fearful strain.
Again: There is a blessing in an
abbreviated earthly existence in the
fact that one is the Sooner taken off the
| defensive. As soon as one is old enough
to take care of himself he is put on his
guard. Bolts on the doors to keep out
the robbers. Fireproof safes to keep
off the flames. Life insurance and fire
insurance against accident. Receipts
lest you have to pay a debt twice.
Lifeboat against shipwreck. Westing-
house air-brake against railroad col
lision, and hundreds ofshands ready to
overreach you and take all you have.
Defense against cold, defense against
heat, defense against sickness, defense
against the worlds abuse, defense
all the way down to the grave, and
even the tombstones sometimes is not
a sufficient barricade.
If soldier, who has been on guard,
shivering and stung with the cold,
pacing up and down the parapet with
shouldered musket, 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 unfortunate, the soldier who
has to stand guard twelve hours or the
man who has to stand guard six hours?
We have common sense about every
thing but religion, common sense
about everything but transference
from this world.
Again: There is blessing in an ab-
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 20 or 80 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
go, grandchildren go, personal friends
outside the family circle whom they
had loved with love like that of Da-
vid and Jonathan. Besides that,
some men have a natural trepi-
dation about dissolution, and ever
and anon during forty or fifty
or sixty years, this horror
of their dissolution shudders through
soul and body. Now, suppose the lad
goes at Ii years of age? lie escapes SO
funerals, so caskets, SO obsequies, so
awful wrenchings of the heart 1t is
hard enough for us to bear their depar
ture, but is it not easier for US to bear
their departure than for them to stay
and bear SO departures? Shall we not
by the grace of God rouse ourselves
into generosity of bereavement which
will practically say: 1T is hard
enough for me to go through this be-
reavement, but how glad am that he
will never have to go through it." So
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 es-
capped that particular bereavement,
then he would have escaped the worse
bereavement of Absalom, his recreant
son, and the pursuit of the Philistines,
and the fatigues of his military cam
paign, and the jealousy of Saul, and
the perfidy of Ahithopel, and the curse
of Shimei, and the destruction of his
family at Ziklag, and. above all, he
would have escaped the two great ca
lamities 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
was 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 inexpli-
cable. This shows you why when God
takes little children from q household,
He is very apt to take the brightest,
the most genial, the most sympathetic,
the most talented. Why? 1t is be-
cause 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 Carrib-
bean, and he put the delicate craft into
the first harbor. Taken away from
the evil to come"
2 Again. my friends, there is blessing
in an abbreviated earthly existence in
the fact that it puts one sooner in the
center of things. All astronomers, in
fdels as well as Christian, agree in be-
lieving that the universe swings around
some great center. Anyone who has
studied the earth and studied the
heavens knows that Gods favorite
figure in geometry is circle. When
God put forth His hand TO create the