The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-01-05

1
stand before such a story of persona
rescue, personal transformation. per.
sonal illumination. The mightiest and
most skillful argument against Chris
tiauity collapses under the ingram
matical but sincere statement. The
atheistic professor of natural philoso
ply goes down under the story of that
baCkwoOdsman's conversion.
The New Testament suggests the
power of the tale shat is told" Christ
was the most effective story teller o1
all the ages. The parallels are only
tales well told. Matchless stories:
That of the traveller cut up by the
thieves and the Samaritan paying bis
board bill at the tavern; that of the big
dinner, to which the invited guests sent
in fictitious regrets; that of the shep-
herd answering the bleat of the lost
sheep and all the rural neighbors that
night helping him celebrate the faat
that it was safe in the barnyard; that
of the bad boy, reduced to the swines
! trough, greeted home with such ban
quoting and jewelry that it stuffed the
older son with jealousy and disgruntle-
ment; that of the Pharisee full of brag-
gadocio and the publican shifting his
4 lbreast with a stroke that brought down
the heavens in commiseration; stories
about leprosy, about paralysis, about
catalepsy, about dropsy, about ophthal-
mia-stories that he so well told that
they have rolled down to the present
and will roll down through the entire
future.
The most of the Old Testament is
made up of inspired anecdotes about
Adam and Eve, about Jacob, about
| Esau, about Ahab and Jezebel, about
| Jonah. about Daniel, about Deborah,
about Vashti, about men and women of
whom the story gave an accurate photo
| graph long before human photography
was born. Let all Christian workers,
prayer meeting takers, Sunday school
| teachers and preachers know The power
of that which my text calls the "tale
that is told"
| If you have had experiences of par
| don and comfort and disenthrallment,
| tell of il. Tell il in the most pointed
| and dramatic way you can manage.
Tell il soon, or you may never tell it at
| all. Oh, the power of 1.-The tale that is
| told!" An hours discourse about the
fact that blasphemous behavior is
sometimes punished in this world
| would not impress us as much as the
simple story that in a town of New
/ York state, at the close of the last cen
! tury, Sc profane men formed them
/ selves into a club. calling them
selves Society of the Druds." They
met regularly to deride and damage
! Christianity. One night in their awful
| meeting they burned Bible and ad-
ministered the sacrament to a dog.
| Two of them died that night. Within
three days three were drowned. In
| five years all the 90 came 10 bad end.
Before justices of the peace it was
sworn that two were starved TO death,
seven were drowned, eight were shot.
| five committed suicide, seven died on
| the gallows, one was frozen TO death,
/ and three died accidentally. Incidents
| like that. sworn tG, would balk any pro-
posed irreverent and blasphemOus be-
| havior.
In what way could the fact that in
| fidelity will not help anyone die well
be so powerfully presented as by the
| incident concerning man falling i'll in
Paris just after the death of Noltaire,
| when professional nurse was called in
and she asked: "Is the gentleman a
| Christian?' why do you ask that?'
said the messenger. Il am the nurse
who attended Voltafre in his last ILL
ness, and for all the wealth of Europe
would never see another infidel die"
What discourse in its moral and spirit
ual effect could equal tale like that?
You might argue upon the fact that
those fallen are our brothers and sis
tiers, but could we impress anyone
with such n truth so well as by the
scene near Victoria park, London,
where men were digging deep drain
and the snoring gave way and a great
pile of earth fell upon the workmen.
y man stood there with his hands in
his pockets looking at those who were
trying to shovel away the earth from
those who were buried, but when
some one said to the spectator: bill,
your brother is down there" then the
spectator threw off his coat and went
to work with an agony of earnestness
to fetch up his brother. What course
of argument could so well as that in
cident set forth that when we toll for
the salvation of a soul it is a brother
whom we are trying TO save?
A second reading of my text re-
minds me that life is not only a story
told, but that it is a brief story. a
long narrative stretched out indef-
nitely loses its interest. 1t is general
ly the story that takes only minute
or half a minute to rehearse that ar
rests the attention. And that gives
additional interest to the story of our
life. 1t is a short story. Subtract
from our lives all the hours of neg
essary sleep, all the hours of incapac-
ity through fatigue or illness, all the
hours of childhood and youth before
we get fairly to work. and you have
abbreviated the story of life so much
that you can appreciate the Apostle
James expression when he compares
life to "a vapOr that appeareth for a
little season and then vanishes away"
1t does not take long to tell all the
vicissitudes of Gfe-the gladness and
the griefs. the arrivals and the de-
partures, the successes and the fail
ures, the victories and the defeats, the
ups and the downs. 1he longer we
live the shorter the years. We hard
~ get over the bewildering fatigue of
selecting gifts for children and
friends and see hat the presents get
of in time to arrive on the appropri-
ate day than we see another advanc-
ing group of holidays. Autumnal
fruit so sharply chases the summer
harvest. ad the snow of the white