The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1901-03-01


to death by sword or instrument of
torture was more of a martyr than
that man who has been wrung to
death by the demands of official po-
sition. The scars may not be visible,
for these are scars on the brain,
and scars on the nerve and scars on
the heart, but nevertheless are they
scars, and God counts them and their
reward will be abundant.
In all lands there are veterans of
war who may not have had their face
scraped with one bullet or their foot
famed by one bursting shell and who
could not roll up their sleeve and
show you one mark suggestive of
battle, yet carry with them weak
nesses got in exposures to disease
along malarial swamps or from
many miles of marching, and ever
and anon they feel a twinge of pain,
each recurrence of which is sharper
or more lasting, until after awhile
they will be captured for the tomb
by disorders which started 20 or 30
or 40 years before. And their scars
are all unseen by human eyes. But
those people are as certainly the vic
Tins of war as though they had been
blown up in an undermined fortress
or thrust through with a cavalry
mans lance. What I want to make
out is that there are scars which
are never counted except as God
counts them, and I want to enlarge
your sympathies.
There are many who can, in the same
sense that Paul uttered it. say: 81 bear
in my body the marks of the Lord Je-
sus'-that is, for the sake of Christ
and His cause they carry scars which
keep their indenture through all time
and all eternity. Do you think that
Paul was accurate when he said that?
If you have studied his career, you have
no doubt of it. In his youth he learned
how to fashion the hair of the Cilician
goat into canvas, a quiet trade, and
then went to college, the president of
which was Gamaliel, an institution
which scholars say could not have been
very thorough because of what they
call Paul's imperfect command of
Greek syntax. But his history became
exciting on the road to Damascus,
where he was endorsed and blinded.
His conversion was a CONFUSION.
Whether that fall from the horse may
have left mark upon him 1 know not.
but the mob soon took after him and
logged and imprisoned and maltreated
him until he had scars more than
enough to assure the truthfulness of
his utterance: 81 bear in my body the
marks of the Lord Jesus"
All of PauIs suffering was for
Christ's sake. He had intellectual
powers which could have achieved for
him all worldly successes. You see
what he could do in a courtroom when
with extemporaneous speech he made
the judicial bench tremble; when on
Mars hill he COMPOUNDED the Athenian
critics; When he preached amid the ex-
citement of a tumbling penitentiary;
when in a storm at sea he took COM
mand of the ship, the only one on board
DOL headed. With his inspired logic,
and his courage of utterance, and his
power of illustration, and his capacity
to move audiences, and his spirit of de-
fiance, there was no height of worldly
power he might not have gained.
What Hannibal was to an army,
what Draco was in making laws, what
Homer was to poetry, what Demos
themes was in power of persuasion,
what Socrates was to philosophy. what
Aeschylus was to the drama, that Paul
might have been to all centuries. God
never before and never since made an
other human being like him. But with
all his capacity and opportunity of
achieving worldly renown he turns his
back on home and becomes an exile, on
bounteous tables and eats his hard
crust by the roadside, on the pleasure
yachts that sailed the Mediterranean
and embarked on a freightboat from
Alexandria, on scholars in Athens and
talks to fishermen. Instead of plaudits
of aroused and enthusiastic as
semblages he addressed audiences that
talked back and asked insolent ques-
tons and broke up in a riot. Instead
of garlands flung at his feet they hurled
stones upon his head. Five times he
was scourged, at each whipping 80
strokes, the fortieth stroke spared not
from mercy, but because 40 strokes
we're the severest punishment the law
allowed, and they feared, through
counting wrong, they might make it
Al and so themselves be punished.
Why, Paul must have been SCARED all
over, and he only tells the plain truth
without any commentary when he de-
clares: 81 bear in my body the marks
of the Lord Jesus" 1t was is much as
to say: "See those long scars? There
is where they whipped me. See you
that ugly indenture. That is where
they stoned me. See you that encir-
ling scar on my wrist? That is where
they handcuffed me. See those ugly
curves around my ankles? There is
where they made my feet fast in the
stocks"
There are many who, like that apos-
tolic martyr, have on them the mark
of the Lord Jesus. There is the great
army of foreign missionaries, some
times maligned by dissolute American,
English and Scotch merchants, who at
Hong-Kong and Calcutta and Constan-
tinople have had their wickedness re-
proved by the pure home life of those
missionaries. There is the great army
of the ministers of the Gospel, now in
Heaven, who, on small salaries and
amid fatigues that slew them, served
their day and generation. There is an
other great army of private Christians
who, in Sabbath schools and in tract
distribution and in humanitarian and
evangelistic efforts have put their life
in sacrifice on the affairs of God. There
is another army of Christian invaders
who lost their life in overwork for the
church and the worlds redemption.