The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-03-15
MINISTRY OF TEARS.
DR.. Talmage Puts Misfortunes of
Life in Cheerful Light.
shows That IL They Were Borne In
the Right Spirit They Might
Prove to BE Advantage
Sympathy of jesus.


Copyright. 1901. by Louis Klopsch. n. VI
New York.
A vast audience crowded the Acad-
envy of Music in this city to-day to
hear DIR. Talmage. Discoursing on
1.-The Ministry of Tears" he put the
misfortunes of life in cheerful
light, showing that if they were borne
in the right spirit they might prove
to be advantages. His text was Rev.
vii, II: "And God shall wipe away
all tears from their eyes,"
What spectacle a few weeks ago
when the nations were in tears!
Queen Victoria assembled from the
highest throne on earth to throne
in Heaven. The prayer more often
Ga years had been answered, and God
did save the queen. All round the
world the bells were tolling, and the
minute guns were booming at the
obsequies of the most honored wom-
an of many centuries. AS near four
years ago the English and American
nations shook hands in congratula-
ton at the queens jubilee, so in
these times two nations shook hands
in mournful sympathy at the queens
departure. No people outside Great
Britain SO deeply felt that mighty
grief as our people. The cradles of
many of our ancestors were rocked
in Great Britain. Those ancestors
played in childhood on the banks of
the Tweed or the Thames or the
Shannon. Take from our veins the
English blood or the Welsh blood
or the Irish blood or the Scotch
blood and the stream of our life
would be a mere shallow. They are
over there bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh. 1t is our WILDER
force, our Coleridge, our De Quincy,
our Robert Burns, our John Wesley,
our John Knox, our Thomas Chal-
mers, our Walter Scott, our Bishop
Charnock, our Latimer, our Ridley,
our Robert Emmett, our Daniel
O'Connell, our Havelock, our Ruskin,
our Gladstone, our good and great
and glorious Victoria.
The language in which we offered
the English nation our coincidence is
the same language in which John
Runyan dreamed and Milton sang
and Shakespeare dramatized and
Richard Baxter prayed and George
Whiteield Numbered. The prince of
Wales, now king, paid reverential Wis
It to WashingtoR's tomb at Mount
Vernon, and Longfellow's statue
adorns Westminster abbey, and Abra-
ham Lincoln in bronze looks down
upon Scotland's capital. 1t was nat
ural that these two nations be in
tears. But I am not going to speak
of national tears, but of individual
tears and Bible tears.
Riding across western prairie,
wild flowers up to the hub of the
carriage wheel, and while long dis
tance from any shelter, there came
n sudden shower, and, while the rain
was falling in torrents, the sun was
shining as brightly as I ever saw
it shine, and 1 thought: What a
beautiful spectacle is this! So the
tears of the Bible are not midnight
storm, but rain on paDsied prairies
in Gods sweet and golden sunlight.
You remember that bottle which
David labeled as containing tears, and
Marys tears and Paurs tears and
Christ's tears, and the harvest of Joy
that is to spring from the sowing of
tears. God mixes them; God rounds
them; God shows them where to fall;
God exhales them. a census is taken
of them, and there is a record as to
the moment when they were born
and as to the place of their grave.
Tears of bad men are not kept. AL
exander in his sorrow had the hair
clipped from his horses and mules
and made a great ado about his grief,
but in all the vases of Heaven there
is not one of Alexander's tears. 1
speak of the tears of Gods children.
Alas, me! they are falling all the
time! In summer you sometimes
hear the growing thunder, and you
see there is a storm miles away, but
you know from the drift of the
clouds that it will not come any
where near you. So, though it be all
bright around about you, there is
shower of trouble somewhere all the
time. Tears, tears!
What is the use of them. anyhow =?
Why not substitute laughter? Why not
make this world where all the people
are we'll and eternal strangers to pains
ana acnSS WHAT Is the use OF a east
ern storm when we might have per-
petual nor'wester? Why, when fam
lily is put together, not have them all
stay, or, if they must be trans planted
to make other homes, then have them
all live, the family record telling
story of marriages and births, but of
no deaths? Why not have the harvests
chase each other without fatiguipg
toll? Why the hard pillow, the hard
crust, the hard struggle? 1t is easy
enough to explain smile or a success
bring all your dictionaries and all your
PHILOSOPHERS and all your religions and
help me explain tear. A chemist will
tell you that it is made up of salt and
lime and other component parts, but he
misses the chief ingredients-the acid
of a soured life, the viperine sting of
a bitter memory, the fragments of
broken heart. / will tell you what
tear is. 1t is agony in solution. Hear,
then, while discourse of the ministry
of tears or the practical use of sorrow:
First, it is the design of trouble to
keep this world from being too at
tractive. Something must be done to
make us willing to quit this existence.
If it were not for trouble, this would
be a good enough Heaven for US. You
and l would be willing to take lease
Of this life for hundred million years
Ii there were se trouble. The earth,