The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-06-11

good-by, old hand hate to part with
you. You have done me a good sel-
vice for many years, but it seems you
must go Good-by."
A celebrated surgeon told me of a
scene in the clinical department of
one of the New York hospitals,
when a poor man with wounded leg
was brought in before the students to
be operated on. The surgeon was
pointing out this and that to the stu
dents and handling the wounded leg,
and was about to proceed to amputa-
ton when the poor man leaped from
the table and hobbled to the door and
said, Gentlemen, / am sorry to disap-
point you, but by the help of God
will die with my leg on" What ter
rife loss is the loss of our physical fac
ulties!"
The way the battle of Crecy was de-
cided against France was by the
Welshmen killing the French horses,
and that brought their riders to the
ground. And when you cripple this
body, which is merely the animal on
which the soul rides, you may some
times defeat the soul.
Yet how many suffer from this phys
ical taking off! Good cheer, my broth
err! God will make it up to you some
how. The grace, the sympathy of God,
will be more to you than anything you
have lost. If God allows part of your
resources to be cut off in one place, he
will add it on somewhere else. AS
Augustus, the emperor, took off a day
from February, making it the shortest
month in the year, and added it to Au-
gust, the month named after himself,
so advantages taken from one part of
your nature will be added on to anoth-
er. But it is amazing how much of the
worlds work has been done by men of
subtracted physical organization. S. S.
Preston, the great orator of the south
west, went limping all his life, but
there was no foot put down upon any
platform of his day that resounded so
far as his clubfoot. Beethoven was go
deaf that he could not hear the crash
of the orchestra rendering his orator
los. Thomas Carlyle, the dyspeptic mar
tyr, was given the commission to drive
can't out of the worlds literature. Rev.
Thomas Stockton, of Philadelphia,
with one lung raised his audience
nearer Heaven than most ministers can
raise them with two lungs. In the
banks, the insurance companies, the
commercial Establishments, the reform
atory associations, the churches, there
are tens of thousands of men and
women to-day doubled up with rheu-
matism or subject to the neuralgias
or with only fragments of limbs, the
rest of which they left at Chattanooga
or South Mountain or the Wilderness,
and they are worth more to the world,
and more to the church, and more to
God than those of us who have never
so much as had finger joint stiffened
by felon.
Put to full use all the faculties that
and charge on all opposing cir
cumstances with the determination of
John of Bohemia, who was totally
blind, and yet at a battle cried out, II
pray and beseech you to lead me so far
into the fight that l may strike one
good blow with this sword of miner
Do not think so much Of what facul-
ties you have lost as of what faculties
remain. You have enough left to
make yourself felt in three worlds.
while you help the earth and balk
hell and win Heaven. Arise from
your encouragement, o men and
women of depleted or crippled ply
steal faculties, and see what, by the
special help of God, you can accom-
plish! The skilled horsemen stood
around Bucephalus, unable to mount
or manage him, so wild was the steed.
But Alexander noticed that the sight of
his own shadow seemed to disturb the
horse. So Alexander clutched him by
the bride and turned his head away
from the shadow and toward the sun,
and the horses agitation was gone,
and Alexander mounted him and rode
off, to the astonishment Of all who
stood by. And what you people need
is to have your sight turned away
from the shadows of your earthly lot,
over which you have SO long pondered,
and your head turned toward the sun
the glorious sun of gospel consolation
and Christian hope and spiritual tri-
umph.
And then remember that all physical
will after awhile van
ish. Let those who have been rheuma-
tismed out of a foot, or cataracted out
Of an eye, or by the perpetual roar of
our cities Numbered out of an ear,
look forward to the day when this old
tenement house OF flesh will come
down and a better one shall be build
ed. The resurrection morning will
provide you with a better outfit.
Either the unstrung, worn out, blunt
ed and crippled organs will be so re-
that you will not know
them, or an entire new set of eyes and
ears and feet will be given you. just
what it means by corruption putting
on interruption we do not know, save
that it will be glory ineffable, no
limping in Heaven, no straining OF the
eyesight to see things a little way off,
no putting of the hand behind the ear
to double the capacity of the tympan-
nm, but faculties perfect, all the keys
Of the instrument attuned for the
sweep of the fingers of ecstacy. But
until that day of resumption comes let
rs bear each others burdens and 80
fulfill the law of Christ
Another form of disadvantage under
which many labor is lack of early edu-
ca ton. There will be no excuse for ig-
norance in the next generation. Free
schools and illimitable opportunity of
will make ignorance a crime.
believe in compulsory education, and
those parents who neglect to put their
under educational advantages
have but one right left, and that is the
penitentiary. But there are multitudes
Of men and women in midlife who
have had no opportunity. Free schools
had not yet been established, and vast
had little or no school at
all. They feel it when as Christian men
they come to speak or pray in religious
or public occasions, patri-
otic or political or educational. They
are silent because they do not feel