The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-11-17
ALL IN GODS HANDS.
DR.. Talmage on Divine Interposition
in Human Affairs.
Fate of Nations AS Well ms of I'm,
dividuaIs Settled I'm Heaven
World Not Governed Ia
n Haphazard Way.
Copyright, 1899. by Louis Klopsch.)
Washington

6LC db lOOSC ClOS anu SOlhS at ia JhdL-
ard is in this discourse combated by
d.. Talmage. The text is Psalm 119,
s: Forever, o Lord, Thy word is set
tied in Heaven"
This world has been in process of
change ever since il was created
mountains born, mountains dying, and
they have both cradle and grave.
Once this planet was all fluid, and no
being such as you or / have ever seen
could have lived on it a minute. Our
hemisphere turns its face to the sun
and then turns its back. The axis of
the earth's revolution has shifted. The
earth's center of gravity is changed.
Once flowers grew in the arctic and
there was snow in the tropics. There
has been a redistribution of land and
sea, the land crumbling into the sea,
the sea swallowing the land. Ice and
fire have fought for the possession of
this planet The chemical compost
tion of it is different now from what
it once was. Volcanoes once terribly
alive are dead, not one throb of fiery
pulse, not one breath of vapor-the
ocean changing it's amount of saline
quantities. The internal fires of the
earth are gradually eating their way
to the surfaces-upheaval and sub
sidence of vast realms of continent.
High up in the palace of the sun at
least five things are settled-that ma
tions which go continuously and per-
sistently wrong perish; that happi-
ness is the result of spiritual condi-
tion and not of earthly environment;
that this world is a schoolhouse for
splendid or disgraceful graduation;
that with or without us the world is to
be made over into a scene of arbores-
cence and purity; that all who are adj
Joined to the unparalleled One of Beth
lehem and Nazareth and Golgotha will
be the subjects of a supernal felicity
without any taking off.
Do you doubt my first proposition
that nations which go wrong perish 4?
We have in this American nation all
the elements of permanence and de-
struction. We need not borrow from
others any trowels for upbuilding or
torches for demolition. Elements Of
ruin-nihiIism, infidelity, agnosticism,
Sabbath desecration, inebriety, sensual
ity, extravaganza, fraud; they are all
here. Elements of safety-God-wor-
Shipping men and women by the scores
of millions, honesty, benevOlence, truth
fulness, self sacrifice, industry, sobri-
ETY. and more religion than has char
acterized any nation that has ever ex-
listed; they are all here, The only
question is as to which of the forces will
gain dominancy-the one class ascend
ant, and this United States government
/ think, will continue as long as the
world exists; the other class ascend
ant, and the United States goes into
such small pieces that other govern
ments would hardly think them worth
picking up.
Have you ever noticed the size of the
cemetery of dead nations, the vast
Greenwood and Pere. lie Chaise, where
mighty Kingdoms were buried? Open
the gate and walk through this GEM
etery and read the epitaphs. Here lies
Carthage, born 100 years before Rome,
great commercial metropolis on the
bay of Tunis, a part of an empire that
gave the alphabet to the Greeks and
their great language to the Hebrews;
her arms the terror of nations, COM
manding at one time 10000 miles of
coast; her Hamilcar leading forth 80
myriads, or 800, 900 troops; her Hanni
bal carrying out in manhood the oath
he had taken in boyhood to preserve
eternal enmity to Rome, leaving costly
and imposing monuments at Agrigen
tum ghastly heap of ruins; Carthage,
her colonies on every coast, her ships
plowing every sea; Carthage-where
are her splendors now? All extin-
guished. Where are her swords? The
last one broken. Where are her tow
ers and long ranges of magnificent
architecture? Buried under the sands
of the Bagradas. As ballast of foreign
ships much of her radiant marble has
been carried away to build the walls
of trans-Mediterranean cathedrals,
while other blocks have been blasted
in modern times by the makers of the
Tunis railway. And all of that great
and mighty city and kingdom that the
tourist finds to-day is here and there
a broken arch of what was once a So
mile aqueduct. Our talented and
genial friend, Henry NJ. Field, in one
of his matchless books of travel, la
bors hard to prove that the slight ruins
of that city are really worth visiting.
Carthage buried in the cemetery of
dead nations. Not one altar to the
true God did she rear. Not one of the
Ten Commandments but she conspicu=
ously violated. Her doom was settled
in Heaven when it was decided far back
in the eternities that the nation and
kingdom that will not serve God shall
perish.
Our own nation will be judged by the
same moral laws by which all other
nations have been judged. The judg-
Hent day for individuals will probably
come far on in the future. Judgment
day for nations is every day, every day
weighed, every day approved or every
day condemned. Never before in the
history of this country has the Amer
lean nation been more surely in the
balances than it is this minute. Do
right, and we go up. Do wrong, and
we 60 down. l am not so anxious to
know what this statesman or that war
rior thinks we had better do with Cuba
and Porto Rico and the Philippines as
/ am anxious to know what God thinks
we had beffer do The destiny of this