The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-01-11

| fering and sorrow and wretchedness
in our cities, and we see light
streaming through from the other
side, and we know we are on the way
to morning-more than that, on the
way to "a morning without Clouds"
1 want you to understand, all you
who are toiling for Christ, that the
castles of sin are all going to be cap
tured. The victory for Christ in these
great towns is going to be so COM
plete that not man on earth or an
angel in Heaven or a devil in hell will
dispute it. How do 1 know? 1 know
it just as certainly as God lives and
that this is holy truth. The old Bible
is full of it. The nation is to be
saved. 1t makes a great difference
with you and with me whether we are
toiling on toward a defeat or toiling
on toward a victory.
Now, in this municipal elevation of
which 1 speak, have to remark there
will be greater financial prosperity
than our cities have ever seen. Some
people seem to have a morbid idea of
the millennium, and they think when
the better time comes to our cities
and the world people will give their
time up to psalm singing and the re-
lating of their religious experience,
and as all social life will be purified
there will be no hilarity. and as all
business will be purified there will be
no enterprise. There is no ground for
such an absurd anticipation. In the
time of which l speak, where now one
fortune is made there will be hun
dred fortunes made. We all know
business prosperity depends upon con-
fidence between man and man. Now,
when that time comes of which 1
speak, and all double dealing, all dis
honesty and all fraud are gone out of
commercial circles. thorough conf
dence will be established, and there
will be better business done and
larger fortunes gathered and mightier
successes achieved.
The great business disasters of this
country have como from the work OF
goddess spectators and infamous
stock gamblers. The great foe to
business is crime. When the right
shall have hurled back the wrong, anS
shall have purified the commercial
code, and shall have thundered down
fraudulent establishments, and shall
have put into the hands of honest
men the keys of business, blessed time
for the bargain makers. | am not
making a guess. l am telling you
Gods eternal truth.
In that better time also coming to
these cities the churches of Christ will
be more numerous. and they will be
larger, and they will be more devoted
to the service of Jesus Christ, and
they will accomplish greater infiu-
ences for good. Now it is often the
case that churches are envious of each
other, and denomination collide with
each other, and even ministers of
Christ sometimes forget the bond of
brotherhood, but in the time of which
I speak. while there will be just as
many differences of opinion as there
are now. there will be no acerbity, no
hypercriticism, no eXclusiveness.
In our great cities the churches are
not to-day large enough to hold more
than a fourth of TIE population. The
churches that are built-comparati
w few of them are fully occupied. The
average attendance in the churches of
the United States to-day is not 400.
Now. in the glorious time of which 1
speak, there are going to be vast
churches. and they are going to be all
thronged with worshipers. Oh, what
rousing songs they will sing! Oh.
what earnest sermons they will preach: !:
Oh. what fervent prayers they will of
ferI Now. in our time, what is called
a fashionable church is a place where
a few people having attended very care
fully to their toilet, come and sit
down-they do not want to be crowded,
they like a whole seat 10 themselves
and then, if they have any time left
from thinking of their store, and from
Examining the style of the hat in from I
of them. they sit and listen to a ser
mon warranted to hit no mans sins,
and lisen to music which is rendered
by choir warranted to sing tunes
that nobody knows! And then after
an hour and a half of indolent yawning
they go home refreshed. Every man
feels better that he has had a sleep!
In many of the churches of Christ in
our day the music is simply a mockery.
| have not cultivated ear nor culiva-
ted voice vet no man can do my sin gin g
for me. 1 have nothing to say against
artistic music. The two dollars or five
dollars l pay to hear one of the great
queens of song is a good investment.
But when the people assemble in re-
ligious convocation. and the hymn is
read. and the angels of God step from
their throne to catch the music on
their wings, do not let us drive them
away by our Indifference.
Mr. Eesler, of England. had a theory
that if the natural forces of the wind
and tide and sunshine and wave were
rightly applied and rightly developed
it would make this whole earth a
Paradise. In a book of great genius
and which rushed from edition to edi-
ton he said: Fellow men, l promise
to show the means of creating Para
disc within ten years, where every
thing desirable for human life may
De had by every man in superabund-
ance without labor and without pay
where the whole face of nature shall
be changed into the most beautiful
farms, and man may live in the most
magnificent palaces, in all imaginable
refiuements of luxury, and in the
most delightful gardens-where he
may accomplish without labor in one
wear more than hitherto could be
done in thousands of years, and may
level a continent, sink valleys, create
lakes, drain ponds and swamps and
intersect the land everywhere with
beautiful canals and roads for trans