The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-10-01

like in Heaven a great deal better than
others. Yonder is a constellation of
stately Christians. They lived OH earth
by rigid rule. They never laughed.
They walked every hour anxious lest
they should lose their dignity. But
they loved God, and yonder they shine
in brilliant constellation. Yet l shall
not long to get in that particular
group. Yonder Is constellation of
small-hearted Christians-asteroids III
the eternal astronomy. While some
souls go up from Christian battle, and
blaze like Mars, these asteroids dart n
feeble ray like Vesta. Yonder is con-
stellation of martyrs, of apostles, of
patriarchs. Our souls, as they go up
to Heaven, will seek out the most con-
genial society.
Yonder is a constellation almost
merry with the play oflight. On earth
they were full of sympathies and songs
and tears and raptures and congratula-
tions. When they prayed, their words
took fire; when they sang, the tune
could not hold them; when they wept
over worlds woes, they sobbed as if
heart-broken; when they worked for
Christ, they famed with enthusiasm.
Yonder they are circle of light con-
stellation of joy! galaxy of firel Oh,
that you and 1, by that grace which
can transform the worst into the best,
might at last sail in the wake of that
glorious group, as the stars forever and
ever.
Again: Christian workers will shine
lil1e-the stars in swiftness of motion.
The worlds do not stop to shine. There
are no fixed stars save as to relative
position. The star apparently most
thoroughly fixed flies thousands of
miles minute. The astronomer, us
ing his telescope for an alpenstock,
leaps from world-crag to world-crag,
and finds no star standing still. The
chamois hunter has to fly to catch his
prey, but not so swift is his game as
that which the scientist tries to shoot
through the tower of observatory.
like petrels mid-Atlantic, that seem to
come from no shore, and be bound
to no landing place-fying, flying
so these great fiocks of worlds rest not
as they go-wIng and wing-age after
age-forever and ever. The eagle
hastes to its prey, but we shall in
speed beat the eagles. You have no
ticed the velocity of the swift horse,
under whose feet the miles slip like
smooth ribbon, and, as he passes, the
four hoofs strike the earth in such
quick beat, your pulses take the same
But all these things are
not swift in comparison with the mo-
ton of which l speak. The moon
moves 81, 200 miles in day. Yonder,
Neptune flashes on 1900 miles an
hour. Yonder, Mercury goes 10000
miles in an hour. So like the stars the
Christian shall shine in swiftness of
motion.
You hear now of father or mother or
child sick 1000 miles away, and it
takes you two days to get to them.
You hear of some case of suffering that
demands your immediate attention,
but it takes you an hour to get there.
Oh, the joy when you shall, in fulfil
ment of the text, take starry speed and
be equal to 100, 900 miles an hour! Hav-
ing on earth got used to Christian
work, you will not quit when death
strikes you. You will only take on
more velocity. There is dying
child in London, and its spirit
must be taken up to God; you are
there in an instant to do it. There is
a young man in New York to be ar
rested from going into that gate of sin;
you are there in an instant to arrest
him. Whether with spring of foot, or
stroke of wing, or by the force of some
new law that shall hurl you to the
spot where you would go, know not;
but my text suggest velocity. All space
open before you, with nothing to him
der you in mission of light and love and
Joy, you shall shine in swiftness of mo-
ton as the stars forever and ever.
Again: Christian workers, like tho
stars, shine in magnitude. The most
illiterate man knows that these things
in the sky, looking like gilt buttons,
are great masses of matter. To weigh
them, one would think it would require
scales with pillar hundreds of thou
dreds of thousands of miles long, and
at the bottom of the chains basins on
either side hundreds of thousands of
miles wide, and that then Omnipotence
alone could put the mountain into the
scales and the hills into the balance.
But puny man has been equal to the
and has set little bal
ance on his geometry, and weighed
world against world? Yea, he has
pulled out his measuring line, and an
nounced that Herschel is &c, 600 miles
IN diameter, Saturn 49, miles in
diameter, and Jupiter $4,000 miles in
10 of onA thof tho 11ncf ~
On the beach of Heaven is immense be-
yond all imagination. So all they who
nave toiled for Christ on earth shall
rise up to a magnitude of privilege,
Ind magnitude of strength, and mag
1itude of holiness, and a magnitude of
Joy, and the weakest saint in glory be-
come greater than all that we can inn
lgine of an archangel.
Brethren, at doth not yet appear
what we shall be-" Wisdom that shall |
Know everything; wealth that shall |
possess everything; strength that shall |
10 everything; glorv that shall cir
ike a taper set in a sick mans window,
II bundle of sticks lxindled on the |
peach to warm a shlvering crew; but |
rou must take the diameter and the |
circumference of a world if you would |
ret any idea of the greatness of our es-
ate when we shall shine as the stars |
orever and ever.
To the ancients the stars were sym
,ols of eternity. But here the figure
# my text breaks down-not in defeat,
,ut in the majesties of the judgment.
The stars shall not shine forever. The |
Bible says they shall fall like autumn
lal leaves. As when the connecting |
actory band slips at nightfall from
he main wheel, all the smaller wheels
lacken their speed, and with slower
nd slower motion thew turn until