The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1900-07-27

column began to adjust itself, and the
cords of the neck began to be more sup
pie, and the eyes that could see only
the ground before, now looked into the
face of Christ with gratitude and up
toward Heaven in transport. Straight!
I After IS weary and exhausting years,
straight The poise, the gracefulness,
the beauty of healthy womanhood re-
instated. The SO years case was a
man who lay on a mattress near the
mineral baths at Jerusalem. There
were five apartments where lame peo-
pie were brought, so that they could get
the advantage of these mineral baths.
The stone basin of the bath is still
visible, although the waters have dis
appeared, probably through some con-
vulsion of nature. The bath, 120 feet
long, 40 feet wide and eight feet deep.
| All, poor man, if you had been lame ana
helpless 80 years, the mineral bath can
not restore you. Why, 3S years is more
| than the average of human life. Moth
ing but the grave will cure you. But
Christ the Surgeon walks along these
baths and l have no doubt passes by
some patients who have been only six
months disordered, or year or five
years and comes to the mattress of the
man who had been nearly four decades
helpless, and to this 3S years invalid
said: "Wilt thou be made whole?"
The question asked not because the
surgeon did not understand the pro-
tractedness, the desperateness, of the
case, but to evoke the mans pathetic
narrative. "Wiltthou be made whole ?"
would you like to get well?" "Oh,
yes," says the man. ''That is what
came to these mineral baths for.
have tried everything. All the sur
! geons have failed, and all the pre-
scriptions have proved valueless, and
I got worse and worse, and I can
neither move hand nor foot nor head.
Oh, if could only be free from this
pain of 3S years." Christ and surgeon
could not stand. that. Bending over
the man on the mattress, and in a
voice tender with all sympathy, but
strong with all omnipotence, he says:
"Rise!" And the invalid instantly
scrambles to his knees and then puts
out his right foot, then his left foot,
and then stood upright as though he
had never been prostrated. While he
stands looking at the doctor, with a
| Joy too much to hold, the doctor says:
shoulder this mattress, for you are
not only well enough to walk, but we'll
enough to work, and start out from
these mineral baths. Take up thy bed
and walk" Oh. what a surgeon for
chronic cases then and. for chronic
| cases now!
This is not applicable SO much to
those who are only little hurt of sin
and only for a short time, but to those
prostrated of sin IL years, 18 years,
| 38 years. Here is a surgeon able to
give immortal health. "Oh," you say,
Il am SO completely overthrown and
trampled down of sin that 1 cannot
rise.'' Are you fatter down than this
patient at the mineral baths? No.
Then rise. In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth, the surgeon who offers you
His right hand of help, bid thee rise.
Not cases of acute sin, but of chronic
sin-those who have not prayed for
| 3S years, those who have not been to
church for SO years, those who have
| been gamblers, or ibertines, or thieves,
or outlaws, or blasphemers, or infidels,
or atheists, and all these together, for
SO years. A Christ for exigencies! A
Christ for a dead lift! A surgeon who
never loses a case!
In speaking of Christ as a surgeon
| must consider him as an oculist or
eye doctor, and an aurist or ear doc
tor. Was there e~er such another ocu-
list? That he was particularly sorry
for the blind folks take from the fact
that the most of His works were with
the diseased optic nerves. l have not
time to count up the number of blind
people mentioned who got His cure.
Two blind men in one house; also one
who was born blind; SO that it was
not removal of a visual obstruction,
but the creation of the cornea and
ciIiary muscle and crystalline lens and
retina and optic nerve and tear gland,
also the blind man of Bethsaida, cured
by the saliva which the Surgeon took
from the tip of His own tongue and
put upon the eyelids; also two blind
men who sat by the wayside.
In our civilized lands we have blind
ness enough, the ratio fearfully in
creasing, according to the statement
of European and American oculists,
because of the reading of morning and
evening newspapers on the jolting cars
by the multitudes who live out of the
city and come in to business. But in
the lands where the Divine surgeon
operated the cases of blindness were
multiplied beyond everything by the
particles of sand floating in the air,
and the night dews falling on the eye
lids of those who slept on the top of
their houses, and in some of these lands
it is estimated that 20 out of 100 peo
pie are totally blind. Amid all that
crowd of visionless people, what work
for an oculist! And I do not believe
that more than one out of hundred
of that surgeons cures were reported.
That is the oculist we all need. Till
he touches our eyes we are blind.
Yea, we were born blind. By nature
we see things wrong, if we see them
at all. Our best eternal interests are
put before US, and we cannot see
them. The glories of a loving and
pardoning Christ are projected, and
we do not behold them. Or we have
defective sight which makes the
things of this world larger than the
things of the future, time bigger than
eternity. Or, we are color blind and
cannot see the difference between the
bIackness of darkness forever and the
roseate morning of an everlasting
day. But Christ the Surgeon comes
in, and though we shrink back, afraid
to have Him touch US, yet He puts
His fingers on the closed eyelids of