The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-10-26

worshiping reformer. 1t is Joash, the
friend of God. 1t is Joash, the demoral-
izer of Baalitish idolatry. Rock him
tenderly, nurse him gently. Athaliah,
you may kill all the other children, but
are thrown all around him, and this
clergyman's wife, Jehosheba, will
snatch him up from the palace nursery
and will run down with him into the
house of the Lord, and there she will
hide him for six years, and at the end
of that time he will come forth for
your dethronement and obliteration.
Well, my friends, just as poor botch
does the world always make of extin-
gushing righteousness. Superstition
rises up and says: 81 will just put an
end to pure religion" Domitian slew
10000 Christians, Diocletian slew 644,-
900 Christians. And the scythe of per-
secution has been swung through all
ages, and the flames hissed, and the
guillotine chopped, and the Bastile
groaned, but did the foes of Christian
ity exterminate it? Did they ex-
terminate Alban, the first British sac
rifice, or Zwingh, the Swiss reformer,
or John Oldcastle, the Christian no
bleman, or Abdallah, the Ara bian mar
tyr, or Anne Askew or Sanders or Gran
mer? Great work of determination
they made of it. Just at the time when
they thought they had slain all the
royal family of Jesus some Joash would
spring up and out and take the throne
of power and WELD very scepter of
Christian dominion.
InfdeHty says: 81 will exterminate
the Bible" and the Scriptures were
thrown into the street for the mob to
trample on, and they were piled up in
the public squares and set on fire, and
mountains of indignant contempt were
hurled on them, and learned universi-
ties decreed the Bible out of existence.
Thomas Paine said: "In my Age of
Reason l have annihilated the Scrip
lures. Your Washington is pusil-
luminous Christian, but l am the foe
of Bibles and churches" Oh, how
many assaults upon that word! All
the hostilities that have ever been ere
ated on earth are not to be compared
with the hostilities against that book.
Said one man in his infidel desperation
to his wife: you must not be read
ing that Bible" and he snatched it
away from her. And though in that
Bible was a lock of hair of the dead
child-the only child that God had
ever given them-he pitched the book
with it's contents into the fire and
stirred it with the tongs and spat on
nd : GEC11Say
have any more of that damnable stuff
here"
How many individual and organized
attempts have been made to eXter-
inmate that Bible? Have its enemies
done it? Have they exterminated the
American Bible society? Have they
exterminated the British and Foreign
Bible society? Have they exterminated
the thousands of Christian institutions
whose only object is to multiply copies
of the Scriptures and spread them
broadcast around the world? They
have exterminated until instead of one
or two copies of the Bible in our houses
we have eight or ten, and we pile them
up in the corners of our Saba ath-school
rooms and send great boxes of them
everywhere. If they get on as well as
they are now going on in the work of
determination, do not know but that
our children may live to see the mil
lennium. Yea, if there should come
a time of persecution in which all the
known Bibles of the earth should be
destroyed, all these lamps of life that
biaze in our pulpits and in our fam
lilies extinguished, in the very day that
infidelity and sin should be holding ju
bilee over the universal extinction there
would be in some secret closet of a
backwoods church a secreted Bible,
and this Joash of eternal literature
would come out and come up and take
the throne, and the Athaliah of infidel-
ity and persecution would fly out of
the back door of the palace and drop
her miserable carcass under the hoofs
of the horses of the kings stables. You
cannot extermjnate Christianity! You
cannot kill Joash!
The second thought hand you from
my subject is that there are opportu-
mites in which we may save royal life.
You know that profane history is re-
plete with stories of strangled mon
archs and of young princes who have
been put out of the way. Here is the
story of a young king saved. How
Jehosheba, the clergyman's wife, must
have trembled as she rushed into the
imperial nursery and snatched up
Joash! How she hushed him lest by
his cry he hinder the escape! Fly with
him, Jehosheba! You hold in your
arms the cause of God and good gov
ernment. Fail, and he is slain. Sue
ceed, and you turn the tide of the
worlds history in the right direction.
1t seems as if between that young
king and his assassins there is nothing
but the frail arm of a woman. But
why should we spend our time in prais-
ing this bravery of expedition when
God asks the same thing of you and
me? All around US the imperial chill
dren of a great King. They are born
of Almighty parentage and will come
to throne if permitted. But sin, the
o.d Athaliah, goes forth to the mas
sacre. Murderous temptations are out
for the assassina ton. Valens, the en-
peror, was told that there was some
body in his realm who would usurp his
throne and that the name of the man
who should be the usurper would be-
gin with the letters T, II, E, o, D, and
the edict went forth from the en-
peror's throne: Kill everybody whose
name begins with 7, H, E, o, d. And
hundreds were slain, hoping by thai
massacre tarznut an end to that one
usurper. but sin is more terrific in its
denunciat ation. 1t matters not how you
spell your name, you come under its
knife, under its sword, under its doom,