The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-12-24

| NhA~AChOA JAob III pIOBOA bAOAA W IN
has given US. Physical energy ought
to be a type of moral power. We
ought to have as good digestion of
truth as we have capacity to assimilate
food. Our spiritual hearing ought to
be as good as our physical hearing.
Our spiritual taste ought to be as clear
as our tongue. Samsons in body, we
ought to be giants in moral power.
But while you find great many men
who realize that they ought to use
their money Alright and use their in
tellige11ce Alright how few men you
find aware of the fact that they ought
to use their physical organ ism Alright!
With every thump of the heart there
is something saying: Work! workP'
and, lest we should complain that we
have no tools to work vita, God gives
US our hands and feet, with every
knuekle, and with every joint, and
with every muscle saying to usi Lay
! hold and do something"
But how often it is that men with
physical strength do not serve Christ!
They are like ship full manned and
full rugged, capable of vast tonnage,
able to endure all stress of weather,
yet swinging idly at the docks. when
these men ought to be crossing and
and recrossing the great ocean of hui
man suffering of sin with Gods sup
plies of mercy. How often it is that
| physical strength is used in doing pos
tive damage, or in luxurious ease,
when, with sleeves rolled up and
| bronzed bosom, fearless of the shafts
of opposition, it ought to be laying
hold with all its might, and Juggling
away to lift up this sunken wreck of a
world.
| 1t is most shameless fact that much
of the business of the church and of
the world must be done by those COM
parativeIy invalid. Richard Baxter,
| by reason of his diseases all his days
sitting in the door of the tomb, yet
writing more than 100 volumes, and
sending out an influence for God that
will endure as long as the Saints
Everlasting Rest" Edward Payson,
| never knowing a well day, yet how he
preached, and how he wrote, helping
| thousands of dying souls like himself
to swim in a sea of glOryw And Rob-
ert McCheyne, a walking skeleton, yet
you know what he did in Dundee, and
how he shook Scotland with zeal for
God. Philip Doddridge, advised by
his friends, because of his illness, not
to enter the ministry, yet you know
what he did for the rise and progress
of religion" in the church and in the
world.
Behold, also, in the story of my text,
illustration of the damage that strength
can do if it be misguided. 1t seems to
me that this man spent a great deal of
his time in doing evil-this Samson of
my text. To pay bet which he had
lost by guessing of his riddle he robs
and kills thirty people. He was not
only gigantic in strength, but gigantic
in mischief, and a type of those men in
all ages of the world who, powerful in
body or mind, or any faculty of social
position or wealth, have used their
strength for ubiquitous purposes.
1t is not the small, weak men of the
day who do the damage. These small
men who go swearing and loafing
about your stores and shops and bank
ing houses, assailiuS Christ and the BIZ
bic and the church-they do not do the
damage. They have no influence.
They are vermin that you crush with
your foot. But it is the giants of the
day, the misguided giants, giants in
physical power, or giants in mental
acumen, or giants in social position, or
giants in wealth, who do the damage.
The men with sharp pens that stab re-
ligion and throw their poison all
through our literature; the men who
use the power of wealth to sanction
;,,1 nj ha III
truth and honor bow to their golden
scepter Misguided giants-look out
for them! In the middle and latter
part of the last century no doubt there
were thousands of men in Paris and
Edinburgh and London who hated
God and blasphemed the name of the
Almighty; but they did but little mis-
chief-they were small men, insigniti
cant men. Yet they were giants in
those days.
Who can calculate the soul havoc of
a Rousseau going on with very en-
thusiasm of iniquity, with fiery i'm
agination Selling upon all the inn
pulsive natures of t he day? or David
Hume, who employed his life as
spider employs its summer in spinning
out silken webs to trap the unwary?
or Voltaire, the most learned man of
his day, marshaling a great host of
skeptics and leading them out in the
dark land of intidelity? or Gibbon, who
showed an uncomfortable grudge
against religion in his history of one
of the most fascinating periods of the
worlds existence-the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire"-a book in
which, with all the splendOrs of his
genius, he magnified the errors of
Christian disciples, while, with a
sparseness of notice that never can be
forgiven. he treated of the Christian
heroes of whom the world was not
worthy?
Oh, men of stout physical health,
men of great mental stature, men of
high social position, men of great pow
er of any sort, l want you to under
stand your power, and L want you to
know that that power devoted to God
will be crown on earth, to you typ
zeal of a crown in Heaven; but mis-
guided, bedraggled in sin, administra-
tive of evil, God will thunder against
you with His condemnation in the day
when millionaire and pauper, master
and slave, king and subject, shall stand
side by side in the Judgment; and
money-bags, and judicial ermine, and
royal robe shall be riven with the
lightning.
Behold also how a giant may be
slain! Delilah started the train of cir
cumstances that pulled down the tenn
pie of Dagon about Samson's ears. And
tens of thousands of giants have gone