The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-10-19

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panions are gathered? Do their jests
and their entertainments make the
hours go blithely by when you are
with them? Have you taken a sip
from their cup of sin or gone with
them in one path of unrighteousness?
Turn back. From Babylon they came
and to Babylon they would carry you.
If so many plague stricken men
would like to enter your companion
ship, before anyone is allowed to pass
into the intimacy of your heart put
on them severest quarantine.
Let me say to those Christian parents
who are doing their best in the educa-
tion of their children: Take good heart;
your sons this morning may be far
away from you and in distant city,
but God, to whom you dedicated them,
will take care of them. The God of
Daniel will take care of them far away
in Babylon. "Train up child in the
way he should go, and when he is old
he will not depart from it," He may
wander away for awhile and fall into
sin and break your heart, but before
he is done with this life, you having
commended him to God, he will come
back again. for / put the emphasis in
the right place and on the word "old'
when l repeat that passage and say,
''Train up a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not de-
part from it," May you all have the
glorious satisfaction of seeing your
children walk in paths of righteousness
and peace! One with them on earth,
may you be one with them in Heaven!
But 1 learn also from this subject
the beauty of Christian sobriety. The
meat and the wine that were to come
to Daniels table were to come from the
kings table. Well, Daniel had no right
to take that food. The king was
heather, and, like all the heathens, was
accustomed to ask blessings before he
partook of food, and in that blessing
they always dedicated the food to the
gods. So that if Daniel had taken this
food he would have broken the law
which forbade the taking of food dedi-
Gated to idols. He chose pulse. 1t was
a miracle that he did not dwindle
away. There is nothing in pulse, such
poor herb to make a man ruddy and
healthful. Some people talk as though
that were a kind of diet which would
make man swarthy and competent to
do the duties of this life. That is
not the lesson at all. But for a pos
itive miracle Daniel would have dwin-
died away, and when God for his self
denial puts upon him this benediction
He puts a benediction upon all Chris
tian sobriety. 1 would not have you
class your preacher among those who
would put unnecessary restraint upon
lawful appetites. There are those in
this day who dispute the grant which
God gave to man for animal food, and
they make a religion of their hunger as
the Pharisees expected Heaven for
their fasting. Daniel did not always
live on pulse. He was not a Grahamite;
he was not a vegetarian. He went
through that self-denial because the
food offered him was idolatrous food.
When l see God filling the earth with
all varieties of food, l have not much
confidence in the teaching of those who
would put us on severe regimen. They
are parents who, with a wrong theory
in this respect, deny their children all
harmless luXuries and without suffi-
cient inquiry send them out to board
ing schools where their intellects are
cultivated to the disadvantage of their
starved bodies, so that from many a
boarding school class of 20 will grad
uate, 10 of them ghosts. Now, when
I see the three angels eating the calf
which Abraham slew and when I find
Christ eating broiled fish even after His
resurrection, l come to the conclusion
that the theories of the vegetarian are
not from a religious standpoint we'll
founded.
But, oh, how many temptations to
dissipation! With so many things to
tempt the appetite, how many tempta-
tions to gluttony! With so many spark
ling beverages, how much temptation
to drunkenness! Could 1 bring before
you this morning the mothers and the
wives and the sisters who have wept
at the graves of the inebriate, your
soul would be overpowered with the
spectacle. Could / show you the
manly forms robbed of their beauty,
the eye f1ashings quenched in the wine
cup, the ruddy cheek from which rum
has wormed the rose, your soul would
recoil with horror, and you would rise
up and cry: "Begone, thou dream of
HE'LL"
Charles Lamb, who made all the
world laugh at his humor, and then
afterward made all the world weep at
his fate. who outwitted everybody
and was at last outwitted of his own
appetites, wrote thus: "The waters
have gone over me: but out of the
depths, could 1 be heard. would cry
out to all those who have set foot in
the perilous flood. Could the youth
to whom the flavor of the first wine
is delicious as the opening scenes of
his life, or the entering upon some
newly discovered paradise-could he
look into my desolation and be made
to understand what a dreary thing
it is when a man shall feel himself go
ing down precipice with open eyes
and passive will; to see his destruc-
yet feel it all the way emanating
from himself: to see all godliness
empty out of him, and yet not able to
forget the time when it was other
wise; to bear about the piteous spec
tacle of his own ruin-could he see
my feverish eye, feverish with last
nights drinking and feverishly look
ing for to-night's repetition of that
folly-could he but feel the body of
the death out of which / cry hourly
with feeble outcry to be delivered,
it were enough to make him dash the
sparkling beverage to the earth in all
the pride of its mantling temptation"
Are you fond of pictures? Here is
one drawn by Solomon: ''Who hath
woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath
contentious? Who hath babbling?
IL