The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-01-18

| glory and power!
The bigot ascends with just enough
grace to save him. AS he comes up
to the shining gate he sees standing
| inside of it some whom he used to
meet every Sunday morning on the
| street going to some other church of
| some other denomination, and he
cries out: Are you there?" L never
expected to see you in such a glorious
place. You were all wrong in your
religious theories on earth and in
your form of church government.
How did you get imp" Saved by
grace" is the Heavenly reply. Saved
by grace!" The bigot is embarrassed
and feels for his creed and his cate
chism, and, 10, they were left on the
banks of the River Jordan as he
passed through, and he cries out:
L think 1 will have to enter on the
same terms. Saved by grace! Saved
by grace!"
Again, the penurious Christian will
not have an abundant entrance. Per-
haps he was not converted until all his
habits of tight-fistedness were fixed
beyond recovery. The people who are
generous were taught to be generous
in childhood. You can tell from the
way the boy divides the apple what his
characteristics for generosity or mean
ness will be for the next so years, if he
lives so long. If he eat it all himself
while others look wistfully on, he will
be a Shylock; if he give half of it to
some one who has no apple, he will be
an ordinarily generous man; if he give
% ~ ha will
be a Baron Hirsch or a George Pea
body.
For 80 years this man has been prac-
ticing an economy which prided itself
on never passing a pin without picking
it up, and if he responded at all in
church would put on the collection
plate SO insignificant coin that he
held his hand over it so that no one
could discover the smallness of the
denomination. Somewhere in the fif-
ties or sixties of has life, during a re-
vival of religion, he became a Chris
tan. He is very much changed in
most respects, but his all-absorbing &C
quisitiveness still influences him. To
extract from him a gift for an orphan
age or a church or poor woman who
j
ment. You and / know very good men,
their Christian character beyond dis
pute, and yet they are pronounced by
all as penurious, and they know it
themselves and pray against it. We
all have our bad habits, and yet expect
to get to Heaven, and this skinfiint has
his mighty temptation. The passion
of avarice well illustrated its strength
when in one of the houses of eXhumed
Pompeii was found the skeleton of a
man who was trying to escape with go
coins and a silver saucepan. For those
valua bles he dared the ashes and
scoria of Vesuvius which overwhelmed
him, and many good man has been
held nightly by avarice.
But that brings me to the other
thought of my text, that there are
those who will, when they leave this
life, bound into Heaven amid saluta
tions infinite. For so an entrance
shall be administered unto you album
dainty" Such exultant admission will
await those who enter Heaven after
on earth living a life for others and
without reference to conspicuity. On
the banks of the Ohio or the Tuscaloosa
or the Androscoggin is a large family,
all of whom have been carefully and
religiously reared. In the earlier
stages of that family there were many
priva tions. The mother of the house
hold never had any amusements. Per-
haps once in a year a poor theatrical
play was enacted in the neighboring
schoolhouse or a squawking concert in
the town hall, and that was all the d.
version afforded for the winter season.
1 asked the manager of an insane asy-
lum in Kentucky: From what class of
persons do you get most of your pa
tients?" and he said: From farmers
wives" L asked the same question of
the manager of an insane asylum in
Pennsylvania, and the same question
of the manager of an insane asylum in
Massachusetts,. and got the same reply:
eve have on our rolls for treatment
more farmers wives than persons
coming from any other class" That
answer will be surprise to some; it
was no surprise to me. The simple rea-
son Is. farmers wives as a general
thing have no diversion. 1t is break
fast, dinner and supper, sewing, scour-
ing, scrubbing, knitting, mending.
year in and year out. That mother is
the milliner, the mantua maker. the
nurse the doctor, the accountant of
the whole family. She plans the ward
robe of spring, of summer, of autumn,
of winter, cutting, fitting, completing
garments. out of which the children
soon grow and must have something
else. The newspaper does not come, or,
if coming, there is no time to read it.
No selection of good books. The neigh
bors calling in are full of the same
grinding routine. No wonder so many
of them 60 into dementiai
Now, the mother of whom 1 speak as
living on the banks of that river in
Ohio or Alabama or Maine has gone
through all the drudgery mem ioned.
and her children have turned out well,
good and useful men and women, orna-
ments of society, pillars in the house
of God, and that whole family, after
the years have passed by and. their
work is done. will meet in the Heaven
ly country. From such a family some
will certainly have preceded her, and
the time of her expected arrival will be
announced to all the members of that
family already gloriied and to the old
earthly neighbors who put down their
tolls little sooner than she did. and
she will have the warmest kind of home
coming.
There is another kind Of spirit who
will have radiant admission to the
upper dominion. There is fact
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