The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1898-03-05

dias and Alfalfa, and DOrcas and the
Marys, excellent and abandoned--it is
high time some of the attention we
have been giving to these conspicuous
women of the Bible be given to Julia,
an ordinary woman, amid ordinary cir
cumstances, attending to duties, and
meeting ordinary responsibilities.
Then there are all the ordinary bust
ness men. They need Divine and
Christian help. When we begin to
talk ABOUT business life we shoot right
off and talk about men who did bust
ness on large scale, and who sold
millions of dollars of goods year; and
the vast majority of business men do
not sell million dollars of goods, nor
half million, nor quarter of million,
nor the eighth part of million. Put
all the business men of our cities,
towns, villages, and neighborhoods
side by side, and you will find that
they sell less than a hundred thou
sand dollars worth of goods. All
those men in ordinary business life
want Divine help. You see how the
wrinkles are printing on the counte-
nance the story of worriment and care.
You can not tell how old a business
man is by looking at him. Gray hairs
at 80. A man at As with the stoop of a
nonogenarian. No time to attend to
improved dentistry, the grinders cease
because they are few. Actually dying
of old age at 40 or so, when they ought
to be at the meridian. Many of these
business men have bodies like q
neglected clock, to which you come,
and when you wind it up it begins to
buzz and roar, and then the hands
start around very rapidly, and then the
clock strikes five, or ten, or 40, and
strikes without any sense, and then
suddenly stops. So is the body of that
WORKOUT businessman. 1t is neglect
ed clock, and though by some summer
recreation it may be wound up, still
the machinery is all out of gear.
The hands turn around with a
velocity that excites the aston
ishment of the world Men can
not understand the wonderful activity,
and there is roar, a buzz, and rattle
about these disordered lives, and they
| strike IL when they ought to strike six,
and they strike 40 when they ought to
strike nothing, and suddenly they
stop. Post-mortem examination re-
veals the fact that all the springs, and
pivots, and weights, and balance
wheels of health are completely de-
ranged. The human clock is simply
run down. And at the time when the
steady hand ought to be pointing to
the industrious hours on clear and
sunlit dial, the whole machinery of
body, mind and earthly capacity stops
forever. Oak Hill and Greenwood
have thousands of business men who
died of old age at 80, 35, 40, As.
! Now, what is wanted is grace-di-
vine grace for ordinary business men,
men who are harnessed from morn till
night and all the days of their life
harnessed IN business. Not grace to
lose 100000, but grace to lose $40.
| Not grace to supervise $50 employees in
a factory, but grace to supervise the
bookkeeper and two statesmen, and the
small boy that sweeps out the store.
/ Grace to invest not the $4,000 of net
! profit, but the $500 of clear gain.
Grace not to endure the loss of whole
ship load of spices from the Indies, but
grace to endure the loss of paper OF
collars from the leakage of displaced
single on a paper roof. Grace not tc
endure the hardness of the American
congress in passing a necessary law
but grace to endure the hardness of al
errand boy stopping to play marbles
when he ought to deliver the goods
Such grace as thousands of business
men have to-day-keeping them tran
quill, whether goods sell or do not sell
whether customers pay or do not pay
whether tariff is up or tariff is down
whether the crops are luxuriant or
dead failure-calm in all circumstance
and amid all vicissitudes. That is tn
kind of grace we want
Millions of men want it, and the,
may have it for the asking. Som
hero or heroine comes to town, and a
the procession passes through tn
street the business men come out, stan
on tiptoe on their store step and lool
: at some one who, in arctic cline, or il
ocean storm, or in day of battle, or il
hospital agonies, did the brave thing
not realizing that they, the enthusi
astic spectators, have gone through
trials in business life that are just a
, great before God. There are men wht
have gone through freezing arctics an
burning torrents, and awful Marengoe
} of experiences without moving fiv,
: miles from their own doorstep.
, Now, what ordinary business me
7 need is to realize that they have tn
: friendship of that Christ who locke
| after the religious interests of Ma
! thew, the custom-house clerk, an
helped Lydia, of Thyatira, to sell tn
5 dry goods, and who opened baker
: and fishmarket in the wilderness {
e Asia Minor to feed the 5000 who ha
e come out on religious picnic, and VIII
counts the hairs of your head with {
t much particularly as though the
S were the plumes of coronation, an
f who took the trouble to stoop dow
h with His finger writing on the groun'
n although the first shuttle of fe,
d obliterated the divine caligraphy
a and who knows just no
n many locusts there were
:. the Egyptian plague, and knew ju
d how many ravens were necessary
o supply Elijahs pantry by the broc
e Cherith, and who, as floral commando