The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-02-01
MENDING THE NETS.
DR.. Ialmage breaches a Sermon on
the Story of the Fishermen.
Christ's Disciples as Fishers of Men
The Gospel Net and How 1t
Should Be Kept i'm
Repair.
copyright, 1901, by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington

Washington.
In this discourse DR.. Talmage de-
| scribes the Gospel net and how it is to
| be repaired after being damaged; !;
| text, Matthew 4:21, "James, the son of
| Zebedee, and John, his brother, in a
ship with Zebedee, their father, mend
| ing their nets"
II go a-fshing!" cried Simon Peter
| to his comrades, and the most of the
| apostles had hands hard from fishing
tackle. The fisheries of the world have
| always attracted attention. In the
third century the queen of Egypt had
for pin money $47O,OOO, received from
| the fisheries of Lake Moeris. And, if
| the time should ever come when the
| immensity of the worlds population
could not be fed by the vegetables and
| meats of the land. the sea has an
| amount of animal life that would feed
| all the population of the earth and fat
ten them with a food that by its phos-
phorus would make generation
brainy and intellectual beyond any
| thing that the world has ever imag-
| ined. My text takes us among the Cali
| lean fishermen. One day Walter Scott,
while hunting in an old drawer, found
| among some old fishing tackle the
manuscript of his immortal book,
"Waverley," which he had put away
| there as of no worth, and who knows
| but that to-day we may find some un-
known wealth of thought while look
ing at the fishing tackle in the text.
1t is not a. good day for fishing, and
three men are in the boat repairing
La G-l..
fishing with hook and line. and the
fish will not bite, it is a good time to
put the anglers apparatus into better
condition. Perhaps the last fish you
hauled in was so large that something
snapped, or, if you were fishing with a
net, there was mighty foundering
of the scales or an exposed nail on the
side of the boat which broke some of
the threads and let part or all of the
captives of the deep escape into their
natural element. And hardly any,
thing is more provoking than to nearly
land score or a hundred trophies
from the deep, and when you are in the
full glee of hauling in the spotted
treasures, through some imperfection
of the net they splash back into the
wave. That is too much of trial of
patience for most fishermen to endure.
and many a man ordinarily correct of
speech in such circumstances comes to
an intensity of utterance unjustifable.
Therefore no good fisherman consid-
ers the time wasted that is spent in
mending his net. Now, the Bible again
and again represents Christian work
ers as fishers of men, and we are all
sweeping through the sea of humanity
some kind of net. Indeed there have
been enough nets out and enough fish
ermen busy to have landed the whole
human race in the kingdom of God
long before this. What is the matter?
The Gospel is all right, and it has been
a good time for catching souls for thou
sands of years. Why, then, the fail
ures? The trouble is with the nets.
and most of them need to be mended.
propose to show you what is the mat
ter with most of the nets and how to
mend them. In the text old Zebedee
and his two boys, James and John,
were doing a good thing when they sat
in the boat mending their nets.
The trouble with many OF our nets
is that the meshes are too large. If
body through the network, he tears
and rends and works his way out, and
leaves the place through which he
squirmed a tangle of broken threads.
In our desire to make everything so
easy we relax, we loosen, we widen.
We let men after they are once in
the Gospel net escape into the world,
and go into indulgences and swim all
around Galilee, from north side to
south side, and from east side to west
side, expecting that they will come
back again. We ought to make it easy
for them to get into the Kingdom of
God, and, as far as we can, make it
impossible for them to get out. The
poor advice nowadays to many is:
go and do just as you did before you
were captured for God and Heaven.
The net was not intended to be any
restraint or any hindrance. What you
did before you were a Christian do
now. Go to all styles of amusement.
read all the styles of books. engage
in all styles of behavior as before you
were converted" And so, through
these meshes of permission and laxity.
they wriggle out through this open
ing and that opening, tearing the net
as they go, and soon all the souls that
we expected to land in Heaven, be-
fore we know it, are back in the deep
sea of the world. Oh, when we go
a-Gospel fishing, let us make it as easy
as possible for souls to get in and as
hard as possible to get out.
Is the Bible language an unmeaning
verbiage when it talks about self-de-
nial, and keeping the body under and
about walking the narrow way and
entering the strait gate and about
carrying the cross? Is there to be no
way of telling whether a man is a
Christian except by his taking the
communion chalice on sacramental
day? May man be as reckless about
his thoughts, about his words, about
his temper, about his amusements
after conversion as before? Alas, the
words of Christ are so little needed
when He said: "Whosoever doth not
bear his cross and come after me can
not be my disciple" The church is
fast becoming as bad as the world,
and when it gets as bad as the world
it will be worse than the world by so
much, as it will add hypocrisy of a
most appalling kind to its other de-
fects-