The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-08-27

OFeT Tue tnreSnOIu. IL Iney come up
the long fight of stairs and knock at
the door, meet them face to face
and kindly yet firmly refuse
them admittance. Have few
family portraits on the wall, if you
brought them with you from your
country home. Have a Bible on the
stand. If you can afford it and can
play one, have an instrument of music
harp, or flute, or cornet, or melo-
deon, or violin, or piano. Every morn
ing before you leave that room pray.
Every night after you come home in
! that room pray. Make that room your
Gibraltar, your Sebastopol, your Mount
Zion. Let no bad book or newspaper
come into that room any more than
you would allow a cobra to coil on
your table.
Take care of yourself. Nobody else
will take care of you. Your help will
not come up two, or three, or four
flights of stairs; your help will come
through the roof, down from Heaven,
from that God who in 5000 years of
the worlds history never betrayed
young man who tried to be good
and a Christian. Let me say in re-
gard to your adverse worldly circum-
stances, in passing, that you are
on a level now with those who
are finally to succeed. Mark my words,
| young man, and think of it thirty
years from now. You will find that
! those who thirty years from now
are the millionaires of this country,
who are the orators of the country,
who are the poets of the country, who
are the strong merchants of the coun-
try, who are the great philanthropists
of the CONFERENCE.-THE in church
and state-are this morning on level
| with you, not an inch above, and you
| in Strengthened circumstances now.
All! when L told you to take care of
yourself, you misunderstood me if you
thought L meant you are to depend
| upon human resolution, which may be
dissolved in the foam OF the wine cup,
or may be blown out with the first
| gust of temptation. Here is the helmet,
the sword of the Lord God Almighty.
| Clothe yourself in that panoply, and
you shall not be put to confusion. Sin
pays well neither in this world nor the
next, but right thinking, and right be-
lieving, and right acting will take you
in safety through this life and in trans
port through the next.
I.shall never forget prayer | heard
a young man make some Is years ago.
1t was very short prayer, but was a
tremendous prayer: ''Oh, Lord, help
us. We find it very easy to do wrong
and SO hard to do right, Lord help u.s."
That prayer, L warrant you, reached
the ear of God, aud reached His hear t.
And there are a hundred men who
have found out-a thousand Young
men, perhaps, who have found out that
very thing. 1t is SO very easy to do
wrong, and so hard to do right. | got
letter one day, only one paragraph,
which l shall read:
Having moved around somewhat. /
have run across many young men of in
telligence. ardent strivers after that
the-wisp- fortune-and of one
of these l would speak. lie was a
young Englishman of % or "a years,
who came to New York, where
he had no acquaintance, with
barely sufficient to keep him
couple of weeks. He had been
tenderly reared, perhaps l should say
too tenderly, and was not used to
earning his living, and found it ex-
tremely difficult to get any position
that he was capable OF filing. After
many vain efforts in this direction he
found himself on Sunday evening in
Brooklyn near your church with about
SIS left of his small capital. Providence
seemed to lead him to your door, and
he determined to go in and hear you.
He told me his going to hear you
that night was undoubtedly the turn
ing point in his life, for when he went
into your church he felt desperate, but
while listening to your discourse his
better nature got the mastery. l truly
believe from what this young man
told NE that your sounding the depths
of his heart that night alone brought
him back to his God whom he was SO
near leaving
That is the echo of multitudes. / am
not preaching an abstraction, but a
great reality. O! friendless young
man. o. prodigal young man. o!
broken-hearted young man, L com
mend to you Christ this day, the
best friend man ever had.
He meets you this morning. Despise
not that emotion rising in your soul;
it is divinely lifted. Look into the
face of Christ. Lift one prayer to your
fathers God, to your mothers God, and
this morning get the pardoning bless
ing. Now, while L speak, you are at
the forks of the road, and this is the
right road, and that is the wrong road, |
and | see you start on the right read.
One Sabbath morning, at the close of
the service, | saw gold watch of the
world-renowned and deeply-lamented
violinist, Ole Bull. You remember he
died in his island home off the coast of
Norway. That gold watch he had
wound up day after day through his
last illness, and then he said to his |
companion: Now, l want to wind this |
watch as long as can, and then when |
am gone L want you to keep it wound |
up until it goes to my friend, DIR. |
DoremuS, in New York, and then he |
will keep it wound up until his life is |
done, and then l want the watch to go |
TO his young son, my especial favorite."
The great musician who more than |
any other artist had made the violin |
speak and sing and weep and laugh |
and triumph-for it seemed when he |
drew the bow across the strings as If |
all earth and Heaven snivered in de-
lighted sympathy-the great mu
stefan, in room looking off
upon the sea, and surrounded by |
his favorite instruments of mu-
sic, closed his eyes in death. While all
the world was mourning at his depart
ure, 16 crowded steamers fell into
line of funeral procession to carry |
his body to the mainland. There
were so, 900 of his country men gath
cred in an amphitheater of the hills