The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-06-30


your Christ in Il Kitchen.
These seven candIesticks of which |
speak were not made of pewter or iron.
/ They were golden candlesticks, and
gold is not only a valuable, but bright
metal. Have everything about your
church bright-your ushers with smil-
! ing faces, your music jubiIant, your
! handshaking cordial, your entire serv-
! ice attractive. Many people feel that
! in church they must look dull, in or
| der to be reverentiaI, and many whose
| faces in other kinds of assemblage show
all the different phases of emotion have
| in church no more expression than the
| back wheel of hcarse. Brighten up
and be responsive. If you feel like
weeping, weep. If you feel like smil-
| ing, smile. If you feel indignant at
! some wrong assailed from the pulpit,
! frown. Do not leave your naturalness
| and resiliency home because it is Sun
| day morning. If as officers of a church
you meet people at the church door
with a black look, and have the music
| black and the minister in black preach
black sermon, and from invocation to
| benedictiOn have the impression black
| few will come, and those who do come
will wish they had not come at all.
| Golden candIGsticls! Scour up the
! six lilies on each branch and known that
| the more lovely and bright they are the
more fit they are to hold the light. But
a Christless light is a damage to the
world rather than a good. Cromwell
l.; IT,
| cathedral, and many now use thechurch
in which to stable vanities and wOrldli-
ness. a worldly church is Il candlestiCk
without the candle, and it had its prOto-
type in ST. Sophia, in ConstantinopIe,
built to the glory of God by Constantine,
but transformed to base uses by Mo
hammed the second. Built out of col
Ored marble, a cupOla with 24 win
dOws soaring to a height of $50 feet, the
ceiling one great bewiIderment of mo-
sale, galleries supported by eight col
umns of pOrphyry and 67 columns of
green jasper, nine bronze doors with
alto relieve work fascinating to the eye
of any artist, vases and vestments in
Crusted with all manner of precious
stones. Four walls on fire with indie
scribable splendor.
Though labor was cheap, the building
cost 81, 800, 900. Ecclesiastical structure,
almost supernatural in pomp and majes-
ty. But Mohammedanism tore down
from the walls of that building all the
sanity and Christly images, and high
up in the dome the figure of the cross
was rubbed out that the crescent of the
barbarous Turk might be substituted.
\ great church, but no Christ. A
gorgeous candlestick, but no candle!
Ten thousand such churches would not
give the world as much light as one
homemade tallOw candle by which last
night some grandmother in the eighties
put on her spectacles and read the
Psalms of David in large type. Upwith
the churches by all means. Hundreds
of them, thousands of them, and the
more the better. But let each one be a
blaze of heavenly light, making the
world brighter and brighter, till the
last shadow has disappeared and the
last of the suffering children of God
shall have reached the land where they
have no need of candlestick or "of can
die, neither light of the sun, for the
Lord God giveth them light, and they
shall reign forever and ever" Seven
candlesticks the complete number of
lights! Let your light shine before
men, that they, seeing your good works,
may glorify your Father which is in
Heaven.
Turn now in your Bible to the seven
stars. We are distinctly told that they
are the ministers of religion. Some are
large stars, some of them small stars,
some of them sweep wide circuit and
some of them a small circuit, but so far
as they are genuine they get their light
from the great central sun around
whom they make revolution. Let each
one keep in his own sphere. The solar
system would be soon wrecked if the
stars, instead of keeping their own or
bits, should 90 to hunting down other
stars. Ministers of religion should
never clash. But in all the centuries of
the Christian church some of these
stars have been hunting an Edward
Irving or a Horace Bushnell or an AL
bert Barnes, and the stars that were in
pursuit of the other stars lost their own
orbit, and some of them could never
again find it. Alas for the heresy hunt
ers! The best way to destory error is
to preach the truth. The best way to
scatter darkness is to strike a light.
There is in immensity room enough for
all the stars and in the church room
enough for all the ministers. The min
listers who give up Righteousness and
the truth will get punishment enough
anyhow, for they are the wandering
stars for whom is reserved the black
ness of darkness forever"
The ministers are not all Pecksmffs
and canting hypocFitcs, as some would
have you think! Forgive me if, having
at other times glnrifed the medical pro-
feSsion and the legal profession and the
literary profession, | glorify my own. |
| have seen Them in their homes and |
heard them in their pulpits, and a
grandcr array Of men never breathed, |
and the Bible figure is not strained |
when it calls them stars. And whole |
consultations of glorious ministers |
have already taken their places on high, |
where they shine even brighter than |
they shone on earth. Edward n. Kirk |
of the Congregational church, Stephen
H. Tying Of the Episcopal church, Mat
thew Simpson of the Methodist church, |
John Bowling cf the Baptist church,
Samuel L. Talmage of the Presbyterian
church, Thomas De Witt of the Re- |
formed church, John Chambers of the |
Independent church, and there stop, |
for it so happens that have mentioned |
the seven stars of the seven churches.
| Dass on TO another miohtv Bible |