The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-02-27

fiftieth year it came back to him. II
he had fooled it away, it was re-
turned without farthing to pay. It
q man had been enslaved, he was in
that year emancipated. A trumpet
was sounded loud and clear and long.
and it was the trumpet of jubilee.
They shook hands, they laughed, they
congratulated. What time it was,
that fiftieth year! And if under the
old dispsnsation it was such glad
time, under our new and more glo-
rious dispensation let all who have
come to the fifties hear the trumpet
of jubilee that now blow. That was
the allusion made by Mr.. Toplady, the
great hymnologist, when he wrote:
BLOW ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound;
Let all the nations know,
To earths remotest bound,
The year Of jubilee is come;
Return, We ransomed sinners, home.
"Ye who have sold for naught
Your heritage above
Shall have 1t back unbought,
The gift of Jesus love.
The year of jubilee has come;
Return. We ransomed sinners. home"
My sermon next accosts the sixties.
The beginning of that decade is more
startling than any other. In his
chronological journey the man rides
rather smoothly over the figures
and and 4 and S, but the figure 8
gives him big jolt. He says: ut
cannot be that I am 60. Let me ex-
anime the old family record. l guess
they made a mistake. They got my
name down wrong in the roll OF
births" But, no, the older brothers
or sisters remember the time of his
advent, and there is some relative
year older and another relative
year younger, and, sure enough, the
fact is established beyond all dis
putation. Sixty! Now your great
danger is the temptation to fold up
your faculties and quit. You will feel
a tendency to Renaissance. If you
do not look out, you will begin al
most everything with the words:
"When I was boy But you ought
to make the sixties more memorable
for God and the truth than the fifties
or the forties or the thirties. You
ought to do more during the next ten
years than you did in any 30 years
of your life, because of all the expe-
rience you have mad. You have COM
mitted enough mistakes in life to
make you wise above your juniors.
Now, under the accumulated light
of your past experimenting, go to
work for God as never before. When
man in the sixties folds up his en-
ergy and feels he has done enough,
| it is the devil of Incidence to which
he is surrendering, and God generally
takes the man at his word and lets
him die right away. His brain, that
under the tension of hard work is ac-
tive, now suddenly shrivels. Men,
whether they retire from secular or
religious work, generally retire to
the grave. No well man has right
to retire. The world was made to
work. There remaineth rest for
the people of God, but it is in a
sphere beyond the reach of tele--
scopes.
NV subject next accosts those in the
seventies and beyond. My word to
them is congratulation. You have got
nearly if not quite through. You have
safely crossed the sea of life and are
about to enter the harbor. You have
fought at Gettysburg, and the warts
over-here and there skirmish with
the remaining sin of your own heart
and the sin of the world, but | guess
you are about done. There may be
some work for you yet on small or
large scale. Bismarck, of Germany, vig-
|orous in the eighties. The prime minis
ter of England strong at 72, Haydn
composing his oratorio, "The Crea-
tion," at 20 years of age. Isocrates
doing some of his beet work at "A.
Plato busy thinking for all succeeding
centuries at 81. Noah Webster, after
making his world renowned dictionary
hard at work until IS years old. Rev.
Daniel Waldo praying in my pulpit al
100 years of age. Humboldt producing
the immortal Cosmos" at rs years
William Blake at 81 learning Italian SC
as to read Dante in the original.
But the most of you will never
reach the eighties or the seventies OF
the sixties or the fifties or the forties
He who passes into the forties ha.
gone far beyond the average of ku
man life. Amid the uncertaintiei
take God through Jesus Christ al
: your present and eternal safety. TIL,
longest life is only small fragmen
: of the great eternity. We will all o
; us soon be there.
Eternity. how near 1t rolls!
Count the vast value of your souls.
Beware and count the awful cost
| What they have gained whose souls ar
lost