The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1898-10-14

| happened to know at different times
if not now, have had trouble after
! them, sharp-muzzled trouble after
ot you have made the mistake of try
ing to fight them. Somebody meanly
attacked you, and you atta clSed them;
or they deprecated yoC, you de-
preciated them; or they veIreached
you in n bargain, and you tried, in
Wall street parlance, to get n corner
on them; or you have had a bereavc-
ment, and, instead of being submits
sive, you charge on the doctors vino
failed to effect a cure; or you charge
on the carelessness of the railroad
company through which the accident
occurred; or you are a chronic in
valid, and you fret, and worry, and
scold, and wonder why you can not
be well like other people, and you
angrily blame the neuralgia, or the
laryngitis, or the ague, or the sick
headache. The fact is, you are a deer
at bay. Instead of running to the
waters of divine consolation. and slak-
ing your thirst and cooling your body
and soul in the good cheer of the Cos
pei, and swimming away into the
mighty deeps of Gods love, you are
fighting a whole kennel of barriers.
| saw in the Adirondacks a dog ly-
ing across the road, and he seemed
unable to get up, and | said to some
hunters near by: What is the mat
! ter with that dog?" They answered.
| "A deer hurt him" And l saw he had
a great swollen paw and a battered
head, showing where the antlers
| struck him. And the probability is
that some of you might give a mighty
| clip to your pursuers, you might dam
| age their business, you might worry
| them into i'll health, you might hurt
them as much as they hurt you, but,
after all, it is not worth while. You
only have hurt hound. Better be off
for the Upper Saranac, into which the
| mountains of Gods eternal strength
look down and moor their shadows.
As for your physical disorders, the
worst strychnine you can take is fret
fulness, and the best medicine is re-
ligion. l know people who were only
little disOrdered, yet have fretted
themselves ito complete valetudina-
in God and come up from the very
shadows of death, and have lived COM
fOrtably twenty-five years with only
one lung. A man with one lung, but
God with him, is better off than a
Goddess man with two lungs. Some of
you have been for a long time sailing
around Cape Fear when you ought 10
have been sailing around Cape Good
Hope. Do not turn back, but go ahead.
The deer will accomplish more with
its swift feet than with its horns.
saw whole chains of lakes in the
AdirOndacks, and from one height YOU
can see thirty, and there are said 10
be over eight hundred in the great
wilderness of New York. So near are
they to each other that your mountain
guide picks up and carries the boat
from lake to lake, the small distance
between them for that reason called
a carry" And the realm of Gods
word is one long chain of bright, re-
freshing lakes; each promise a lake,
very short carry between them, and,
though for ages the pursued have
been drinking out of them, they are
full up to the top of the green banks,
and the same David describes them,
and they seem so near together that
in three different places he speakes of
them as continuous river, saying:
There is a river, the streams whereof
shall make glad the city of Cod"
Thou shalt make them drink of the
rivers of thy pleasures" Thou
greatly enrichest it with the river OF
God, which is full of water"
But many of you have turned your
back on that. supply, and confront
your trouble, and you are soured with
your own circumstances, and YOU are
fighting society, and you are fighting
a pursuing world, and troubles, in
stead of driving you into the cool lane
of heavenly comfort, have made YOU
stop and turn around and lower your
head, and it is simply antler against
tooth. 1 do not blame you. Proba-
bly, under the same circumstances l
would have done worse. But YOU are
all wrong. You need to do as the
reindeer does in February and March
it sheds its horns. The Rabbinical
writer's allude to this resignation of
antlers by the stag when they say of
man who ventures his money in risky |
enterprises, he has hung it on the |
stays horns; and a proverb in the far i
east tells man who has foolishly lost |
his fortune to go and find where the |
deer sheds her horns. My brother, |
quit the antagOnism of your circum- |
stances, quit misanthropy, quit COM |
plant, quit pitching into your pur-
suers, be as wise as, next spring, will |
be all the deer of the Adirondacks. |
Shed your horns.
But very many of you who are !
wronged in the world-and if in any |
assembly between here and Golden
Gate, San Francisco, it were asked /
that all those that had been some
times badly treated should raise both
their hands, and full response should
be made, there would be twice as
many hands lifted as persons present
I say many of you would declare:
eve have always done the best we
could and tried to be useful, and why
we should become the victims of ma
lignment, or invalidism, or mishap, is
Why, do you know the
finer the deer and the more elegant its
and the more beautiful
it's bearing. the more anxious the
hunters and the hounds are to cap
turs it. Had the roe buck a ragged
fur and broken hoofs and an obliter-
ated eye and a limping gait, the hunt
ers would have said: ''Pshaw! don't |
let us waste our ammunition on a sick
deer" And the hounds would have
given a few shifts of the scent. and
then darted off in another direction
for better game. But when they see
a deer with antlers lifted in mighty