The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-06-09
FAVORS EXPANSION.
DR.. Talmage Discusses al Absorb
ing Theme.
Points Out the way for the An;eri-
can People to Perform Il Mighty
Work-A Splendid OPP
pOrtunity.
[Copyright, 1899. bJ Louis Klopsch.l
Washington.

our time and recommends that which
will meet the approval of all who hope
for the perpetuity of our republic and
the welfare of other lands; text, Gene
sis 2S:I4: Thou shalt spread abroad
to the west and to the east"
Since the American-Hispanic war is
concluded and the United States am
bassador is on the way to Madrid and
the Spanish ambassador is on the way
to Washington the people of our coun-
try are divided into eXpansiomsts and
anti-eXpansionists. From a different
standpoint from that usually taken
discuss this alI-absorbing theme. |
leave the political aspect of this subject
to statesmen and warriors and pray
Almighty God that they may be en-
Gbled to rightly settle the question
whether the islands in controversy shall
be finally annexed or held under pro-
tectorate, or resigned to themselves,
while | call attention to the fact that
a campaign of moral and religious eN-
pansionoughtt to be Immediately opened
on widest and grandest scale.
At the close of this war God has put
into the hands of this country the key
to the worlds redemption. Heretofore
the religious movement in pagan lands
had to precede the educational. After
in China and India and the islands of
the sea the missionaries have labOred
over so or rs years the printing press
and the secular school came in. Now
to better advantage than ever before
cpon1ar PnliUb tpn01p0t
may go side by side, and so the work be
accomplished in short time and more
thoroughly. Starting with the fact that
in Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philip
pine islands at least three-fourths of
the people can neither read nor write,
what an opportunity for school and
printing press! Within five years every
man in those islands may be taught to
read not only the Bible, but the Decla-
ration of Independence and the consti-
tuition of the United States and the
biography of George Washington and
of Abraham Lincoln.
1t seems to me that the government
of the United States ought by vote of
congress afford common schools and
printing presses to those benighted
regions. Our national legislature by
one vote appropriated $5O,OO0,0O0 to give
bread and medicine to Cuba. Why not
by similar generosity give 100000
for feeding and healing the minds and
souls of those ignorant and besOtted
archipelagOes. In the name of God, !
nominate a school for every neighbor-
hood of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Phil
ippines. AS soon as the gaveI falls at
II o'clock of next December on the
table of senate and house of representa-
tives and the roll has been called and
the preliminaries observed let some
member of our national legislature,
with mind and soul and voice strong
enough to be heard not only through
those halls, but through Christendom,
propose measure for the mental and
moral disenthrallment of the islands
in controversy.
What has made American civiliZa-
ton the highest civilization the world
has ever seen? Next to the Bible and
the church, schools, common schools,
schools reaching from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and from British America
to the gulf of Mexico. Five years I'M
der such educational advantages and
the whole subject that keeps our public
men agitated, some of them to froth-
ing at the mouth, viii settle itself Give
those islands readers, spoilers, arith-
metics, histories, blackboards, maps,
biographies, globes. Let the state leg
islatures at their next meeting, some of
them assembling in early autumn, take
parts of those islands under their espe-
cial educational patronage. What is
needed is state and national action in
this matter of schools.
Still further, here is a wide open door
for Christianity. First of all, we have
the attention of those people, The
heathen nations are for the most part
soporific. The American missionaries
heretofore had great difficulty in get
ting heathendom to listen. They ex-
cited some comment by their attire,
so different was the parting of the hair,
and the shape of the hat, and the cut
OF the coat, and the formation of the
shoe of the evangelizers, but the ques-
tions constantly arose in regard to the
"Who is hep" What is
he here for?" And then the interroga-
tor would relax into the previous stu
pid Indifference. But that condition of
things has passed. The guns of our
American navy have awakened those
They do not ask who we
are. They have found out. They are
now listening to what American civiIi-
Zation and our Christian religion have
to say on any subject. Now is the time,
while their ears and eyes are wide open,
to tell them of the rescuing and saliva
BILE and inspiriting power of the Cos
pei of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the
world. The steam printing press which
secular education plants there may be
used and will be used to print religious
newspapers and tracts and sermons and
mighty discussions of questions tenn
poral and eternal.
Now, church of God, now all Chris
tian philanthropists is your opportu-
nifty. Nothing like it has occurred since
Christ came. Perhaps there may be
nothing like it until His second coming.
Here is a defniteness of aim that is
most helpful and inspiring. The mil
lions of dollars given for the redemp-
ton of the world and the thousands
of glorious missionaries who have as
gone forth among barbaric
nations, were given and enlisted under