The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-02-01
SUBSCRIPTION: $1.OO Per Year


evolution and about the survival of the
fttest,' and 1 will read up what the
theologians say about advanced
thought I will leave the ship awhile,
and 1 will go ashore and stay there
till my net is mended." Do that, my
brother, and youwil have no net left. In
stead of their helping you mend your
net, they will steal the pieces that re-
main. Better stay in the Gospel boat,
where you have all the means for mend
ing your net What are they? do you
ask. / answer, all you need you have
where you are-namely, a Bible and
place to pray. The more you study
evolution and adopt what is called ad-
vanced thought, the more useless you
will be. Stay in the ship and mend
your net. That is where James, the
son of Zebedee, and John, his brother,
staid. That is where all who get their
nets mended stay.
I notice that all who leave the Cos
pei boat and go ashore to mend their
nets stay there. Or if they try again
to fish they do not catch anything.
Get out of the Gospel boat and go up
into the world to get your net mend
ed, and you will live to see the day
when you will feel like the man who,
ing forsaken Christianity, sighed: Il
would give a thousand pounds to feel
as did in 1S20'' The time will come
when you would be willing to give
| thousand pounds to feel as you did in
1901. These men who have given up
their religion cannot help you bit.
These dear brethren of all denomi-
N Of with than1nnical fiHo-
cts, had better go to mending nets in
stead of breaking them. Before they
break up the old religion and try to
foist on us a new religion let them go
through some great sacrifice for God
that will prove them worthy for such
a work, taking the advice of Tallyrand
to a man who wanted to upset the re-
ligion of Jesus Christ and start new
one when he said: go and be cruci-
fed and then raise yourself from the
grave the third day!" Those who
propose to mend their nets by secu-
lar and skeptical books are like the
man who has just one week for fish
ing, and six of the days he spends in
reading Izaak Walton's Complete
Angler and Wheatley's "Rod and
Line" and Scott's Fishing in Northern
Waters" and Pullman's "Vade Mecum
of Fly Fishing for Trout" and then
on Saturday morning. his last day out,
goes to the river to ply his art. But
that day the fish will not bite, and
late on Saturday night he goes to his
home with empty basket. Alas, alasi
if when the Saturday night of our
life drops on us it shall be found that
we have spent our time in the libraries
of worldly philosophy, trying to mend
our nets, and we have only few souls
to report as brought to God through
our instrumentality, while some hum
BILE fisherman, his library made up of
Bible and an almanac, shall come
home laden with the results, his
trophies all the souls within Is miles
of his log cabin meeting house.
In the time of great disturbance in
Naples in 1649 Massaniello. barefoot
ed fishing boy, dropped his fishing rod
and by strange magnetism took COM
mand of that city of 100000 souls. He
took eff his fishing jacket and put on a
robe of gold in the presence of bowling
mobs. He put his hand on his lip as
a signal, and they were silent. He
waved his hand away from him, and
IneN reC1reQ 10 InSlT nOIuSS. AIhllCS
passed in review before him. He be-
came the nations idol. The rapid rise
and complete supremacy of that young
fisherman, Massaniello, has no parallel
in all history. But something equal to
that and better than that is an every
day occurrence in Heaven. God takes
some of those who in this world were
fishers of men and who toiled very
humbly, but because of the way they
mended their nets and employed their
nets after they were mended He sud-
denly hoists them and robes them and
scepters them and crowns them anc
makes them rulers over many cities,
and He marches armies of saved ones
before them in review.
But do not spend your time fishing
with hook and line. Why did not
James, the son of Zebedee, sit on the
wharf at Cana. his feet hanging over
the lake, and with long pole and a
worm on the hook dipped into the wave
wait for some mullet to swim up and
be caught? Why did not Zebedee
spend his afternoon trying to catch one
eel? No, that work was too slow.
These men were not mending hook
and line; they were mending their
nets. So let the church of God not be
content with having here one soul and
next month another soul brought into
the kingdom. Sweep all the seas with
nets-scoop nets, seine nets, dragnets,
all encompassing nets, and take the
treasures in by hundreds and thou
sands and millions, and nations will be
born in day and the hemispheres
quake with the tread of a ransoming
God. Do you know what Will be the
two most tremendous hours in our
Heavenly existence? Among the quad
rillions of ages which shall roll on
what two occasions will be to US the
greatest? The day of our arrival there
will be to us one of the two greatest.
The second greatest, 1 think, will be
the day when we shall have put in
parallel lines before us what Christ did
for us and what we did for Christ, the
one so great, the other so little. That
will be the only embarrassment in
Heaven. My Lord and my God. What
will we do and what will we say when
on one side are placed the Saviour's
great sacrifices for us and our small
sacrifices for Him; His exile, His hu-
initiation, His agonies OF one hand and
our poor, weak, insufficient sacrinces
on the other. To make the contrast
less overwhelming let US quickly mend
our nets, and, like the Galilean fisher
men, may we be divinely helped to cast
them on the right side of the ship