The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1898-02-25

towns, villages, and neighborhood:
side by side, and YOU viii find that
they sell less than a hundred thou
sand dollars worth of goods. AL
those men in ordinary business life
want Divine help. You see how tbs
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 30. a man at IS with the stoop of &
nOnOgenarian. No time to attend tC
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 a neglect
cd clock, and though by some summe4
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 u roar. buzz, and a 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 a 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, IS.
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 25O employees in
| factory, but grace to supervise the
bOohkeeper. and two statesmen. and the
small boy that sweeps out the store
Grace to invest not the $50, 900 of net
profit, but the s.. 500 of clear gain.
Grace not to endure the loss of a whole
ship load of spices from the Indies, but
grace to endure the loss of a paper of
collars from the leakage of displaced
Single on a paper roof. Grace not to
endure the hardness of the American
congress in passing a necessary law
but grace to endure the hardness of an
errand boy stopping to play marbles
when he ought to deliver the goods
Such a grace as thousands of business
men have tO-day-Seeping them tran
gull. 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 a
dead failure-calmin all circumstances
and amid all vicissitudes. That IS the
kind of grace we want.
Millions of men want it, and they
may have it for the asking. Some
hero or heroine comes to town. and as
the procession passes through the
street the business men come out. stand
on tiptoe on their store step and look
at some one who. in arctic cline. or in
ocean storm, or in day of battle or in
hospital agOnies. did the brave thing.
not realizing that they, the enthusi-
astic spectators, have gone through
trials in business life that are Just as
great before God. There are men who
have gone through freezing arctics and
burning torrents, and awful Marengoas
of experiences without moving five
miles from their own doorstep.
Now, what ordinary business men
need is to realize that they have the
friendship of that Christ who looked
after the religious interests of Mat
thew, the custOm-house clerk. and
helped Lydia, of Thyatira, to sell the
dry goods, and who opened a bakery
and fishmarket in the wilderness of
Asia Minor to feed the 5000 who had
come out on a religious picnic, and who
counts the hairs of your head with as
much particularly as though they
were the plumes of a coronation, and
who took the trouble to stOop down
with His finger writing on the ground.
obliterated the divine caligraphv.
and who knows just how
many lOcusts there were in
the Egyptian plague, and knew just
how many ravens were necessary to
supply EIijah's pantry by the brook
Cherith, and who, as floral commander,
leads forth all the regiments of prim-
roses, foXgloves, daffodils, hyacinths
and lilies which pitch their tents of
beauty and l1indle their camp-fires of
color around the hemiSphere-thatt that
Christ and that God know the most
minute affairs of your business life and
however inconsiderable, understanding
all the affairs of that woman who
keeps a thread-and-needle store as well
as all the affairs of a Rothschild and
Barring.
Then there are all the ordinary farm
ers. We talk about agricultural life,
and we Immediately shoot off to talk
about Cincirnatus, the patrician, who
went from the pillow to high position,
and after he got through the Dictator
ship. in p days went back again to
the pillow. What encouragement is that
to ordinary farmers? The vast major
ity of them-none of them will be pa
tricians. Perhaps none of them will be
senators. If any of them have dicta-
torshipS it will be over 40, so or 100
acres OF the old homestead. What
these men want is grace to keep their
patience while blowing with balzy OK
Land to keep cheeful amid the drought
that destroys the corn crop, and that
enables them to restore the garden the
day after the neighbours cattle have
broken in and trampled out the straw
berry bed and gone through the Lima
bean patch, and eaten up the sweet