The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-01-04

was blind, that one OF the grandeSt
musicians of all the ages-Beethoven
was deaf, and that Stewart, in some
respects the greatest merchant that
America ever saw, began in his small
store, dining on bread and cheese be-
! hind the counter in a snatched inter
| regnum between customers, he open
ing the store and closing it, sweeping
it out with his own broom and bein~
his own errand boy. Show them that
within ten minutes walk there are
stores, shops, and factories, and homes
! where as brave deeds have been done
as those of Leonidas at Thermopylae,
as that of Horatius at the bridge, as
that of Colin Campbell at Balaklava.
Tell them what Napoleon said to his
staff officer when that officer de-
clared a certain military attempt to
be impossible. "Impossible!" said the
great commander. Impossible is the
adjective of fools"
Show them also that what is true
in worldly directions is more true in
| spiritual directions. Call the roll of
prophets, apostles and martyrs and
private Christians from the time the
world began and ask them to mention
| x
useful who was not deprecated and
failed and made a laughing stock.
Racks and prisons and whips and
shipwrecks and axes of beheadment
did their worst, yet the heroes We're
more than conquerors. With such
things you will illustrate that word
courage" and they will go out from
your presence to start anew and right,
challenging all earth and hell to the
| combat.
| There are four or five words which
| fifty spoken, might soothe and enamel
pate and rescue. Go to those from
whose homes Christ has taken to Him
self a loved one and try the word ere
union"-not under wintry sky, but in
everlasting springtide; not a land
where they can be struck with disease,
| but where the inhabitant never says:
Il am sick" not a reunion that can be
! followed by separation, but in a place
from which they shall go no more out
| forever" For emaciatiOn and sigh
ing, immortal health. Reunion, or, if
you like the word better, anticipation.
| There is nothing left for them in this
world. Try them with Heaven. With
=
one of the - gates. Give them one note
| of seraphic harp, one flash from the sea
of glass. one clatter of the hoofs of the
! horses on which victors ride. That
word reunion, or anticipation, fifty
spoken-well, no fruit heaped up in sill
yer baskets could equal it. OF the 1000
! kinds of apples that have blessed the
| world, not one is so mellow or so rich
or so aromatic, but we take the sugges-
ton of the text. and compare that
word of comfort, fifty spoken, to apples
of gold in baskets of silver.
There must be no Impotence in the
| warning we give others. We must
realize that but for the kindness of
God to us we would have been in the
same rapids. That man going wrong
may be struggling with a tide OF evil
inherited from father and grandfather
and great-grandfather The present
temptation may be the accumulated
force of generations and centuries.
No" you say, t'his father was a
good man. I knew him. But did you
know his grandfather? Evil habit
| is apt to skip one generation, fact
recognized in the Ten Commandments,
which speak of the third and fourth
generations, but say nothing of the
second generation.
Or the man astray may have an I'M
happy home, and that is enough to
wreck anyone. We often speak of
men who destroy their homes, but do
not say anything about the fact that
there are thousands of wives in Amer
lea who by petulance and fretting and
reconsideration and lack of economy
and all manner of disa
drive their husbands into dissipation.
The reason that thousands of men
spend their evenings in clubhouses
and taverns is because they cannot
stand it at home. l know men who
are 30-year martyrs in the fact that
they are awfulIy married. That mar
riage was not made in Heaven. With
out asking Divine guidance they en-
tered into an alliance which ought
never to have been made. That is
what is the matter with many men
you and l know. They may be very
brave and heroic and say nothing
about it but all the neighbors know.
Now, if the man going wrong has such
domestic misfortune, be very lenient
and eXcusatory in your word of warn
ing. The difference between you and
him may be that you would have gone
down faster than he is going down if
YOU had the same kind of coniugal
wretchedness.
In mentioning fine arts people are
apt to speak of music and painting
and sculpture and architecture, but
they forget to mention the finest of
all the fine arts-the art of doing
good, the art of helping others, the
art of saving men. An art to be
studied as you study music, for it is
music in the fact that it drives out
moral discord and substitutes eternal
harmony; an art to be studied like
sculpture, for it is sculpture in the
fact that it builds man, not in the
cold statue, but in immortal shape,
that will last long after pentelican
marble has crumbled; an art to be
studied as you study architecture, for
it is architecture in the fact that it
builds for him house of God, eternal
in the heavens, but an art that we
cannot fully learn unless God helps
US. Ourselves saved by grace Divine,
we can go forth to save others, and
with tenderness and compassion and
a pity that we could not otherwise eX-
ercise we can pronounce the warning
word with magnificent result. The
Lord said to the prophet Amos:
amos what seest thOu?" And he