The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1898-12-09
BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
There Is Sunshine on Every Cloud
Says DR.. Talmage.
What We Consider Gods Affections
on Us Are Always Influences for
GOOd-Why the Useful Are
Taken.

ICopyright. 1881 Washington. Dec. l.
In this discourse DIR. Talmage takes
an optimistic view of many Things that
are usually accounted as ineXp1icabIe
in human experience and shows us that
even trouble and affliction may not be
/ wholly without their brighter side
Text, Psalm 1914: II will open my dark
saying upon the harp"
The world is full of the ineXplicab BILE,
the impossible, the unfathomable, the
insurmountable. We cannot go three
steps in any direction without coming
up against hard wall of mystery, rid
dies. Paradoxes, profundities, laby
rinths, problems that we cannot solve
hieroglyphics that we cannot decipher,
anagrams we cannot spell out, sphinxes
that will not speak. For that reason
David in my text proposed 10 take up
some of these somber and dark things
and try to set them to sweet music
81 will open my dark sayings on a
harp" So look off upon society and
find people in unhappy conjunction of
circumstances, and they do not know
what it means. and they have right to
ask: Why is this? Why is that? And
think | will be doing a good work by
trying to explain some of these strange
things and make you more content with
your lot. and | shall only be answering
questions that have often been asked
me or that we have all asked ourselves
while | try to set these mysteries to
music and open my dark sayings on
harp.
Interrogation the first: Why does
God take out of the world those who
are useful and whom we cannot spare
and leave alive and in good health so
many who are only nuisance to the
world? | thought | would begin with
the very toughest of oil the seeming
inscruta bles. Many Of the most useful
men and women die at 80 or 40 years
of age, while you often find useless peo-
pie alive at co and 70 and SCI John
Careless wrote to Bradford, who was
soon to be put to death, saying: 'Why
doth God suffer me and other such cat
erpillars to live that can do nothing but
consume the aims of the church and
take away so many worthy workmen
in the Lords vineyard?" Similar ques-
tions are often asked Here are two
men. The one is a noble character and
a Christian man. He chooses for a
lifetime companion one who has been
tenderly reared, and she is worthy of
him and he is worthy of her. As mer-
chant or farmer or professional man
or mechanic or artist he tolls to edu
- ie e
ceeding, but he has not yet established
for his family a full competency. He
seems indispensable to that household,
but one day, before he has paid off the
mortgage on his house, he is coming
home through a strong northeast wind,
and a chill strikes through him, and
four days of pneumonia end his earth
ly career, and the wife and children go
into a struggle for shelter and food.
His next door neighbor is man who,
though strong and well, let's his wife
support him. He is around at the gro
Gerry store or some general loafng place
in the evenings, while his wife sews.
His boys are initiating his example and
lounge and swagger ard swear. All the
use that man is in that house is to rave
because the coffee is cold when he comes
to a late breakfast or to say cutting
things about his wife's looks, when he
furnishes nothing for her wardrobe.
The best thing that could happen to
that family would be that mans fu-
neral, but he declines to die. He lives
on and on and on. So we have all no
ticed that many of the useful are early
cut off, while the parasites have great
vital tenacity.
take up this dark saying on my harp
and give three or four thrums on the
string in the way of surmising and
hopeful guess. Perhaps the useful man
was taken out of the world because he
and his family were So constructed that
they could not have endured some great
prosperity that might have been just
and they all together might have
gone down in the vortex of worldliness
which every year swallows up 10000
households. And so he went while he
was humble and consecrated. and they
were by the seventies of life kept close
to Christ and fitted for usefulness here
and high seats in Heaven, and when
will acknowledge that. though the fur
mace was hot, it purified them and pre-
pared them for the eternal career of
glory and reward for which no other
kind of life could have fitted them. On
the other hand, the useless man lived
on to so or 60 or 20 years because all
the ease he ever can have he must have
In this world, and you ought not there
fore begrudge him his earthly longev-
ity. In all the ages there has not a
single loafer ever entered Heaven.
There is no place for him there to hang
around.
Interrogation the second: Why do
good people have SO much trouble. sick
ness, bankruptcy, persecution, the
three black vultures, sometimes put
ting their fierce beals into one set of
tangled nerves? think now of a good
friend I once had. He was a conse-
Grated Christian man, an elder in the
church. and as polished a Christian gen
tleman as ever walked Broadway.
First his general health gave way. and
be hobb!ed around on a cane, an old
man at 40. After awhile paralysis
struck him. Having by poor health
been compelled suddenly to quit busi-
ness, he lost what property he had.
Then his beautiful daughter died;
then a son became hopelessly demented.
son. splendid of mind and COM
manding of presence, resolved that be
would take care of his fathers house