The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1888-06-13

O ride! he said: NOW, II you please, LII get
out here Just help me down on my crutches,
sir. Good morning. Good morning. You
have been feet to the lame. sir, you have.
Good morning" Swarthy men had gone the
road that day. I do not know where they
came out. but every hobble of that old man
was toward the shining gate. With his old
crutch be had struck down many Sen:
nacherib of temptation which has mastered
youland me- Lame, so fearfully lame, so aW-
fully lame; but he took the prey.
A step further: There are in all com.
munities many orphans. During our last
war, and in the years immediately following,
how many children we heard say: "Oh! my
father was killed in the war;" Have you ever
.noticed-I fear you have not-how we'll those
children have turned out? Starting under, the
greatest disadvantages, no orphan asylum
could do for them what their father would
have done had he lived. The skirmisher sat
one night, by the light of fagots. in the
swamp, writing letter home, when sharp
shooters bullet ended the letter which was
never folded, never posted AMI never read.
Those children came up under great dlsad-
vantage. No father to fight their way for
them Perhaps there was in the old family
Bible an old yellow letter pasted fast, which
told the story of that fathers long march,
and how he suffered in the hospital; but they
looked still further on in the Bible and they
came to the story of how God is the father of
| The fatherless, and the widows portion, and
they soon took their fathers place in that
household. They battled the way for their
mother. They came on up. and many. of
them have in the years since the war taken
positions in church and state. While many
of those who suffered nothing during those
times have had sons 60 out into lives OF in
dolence and vagabondage, those who started
under so many disadvantages because they
were so early bereft, these are the lame who
took the prey.
A step further: There are those who
would like to be good. They say: ooh!
it l only had wealth. or, if ! had elo'
how much I would accomplish for God
and the church," u stand here to-day to
tell you that you have great opportunities
| for usefulness.
Who built the Pyramids The King who
ordered them builtl No; the plain workmen
who added stone after stone and stone after
stone Who built the dikes Of Holland9 The
! government that ordered the enterprise? No;
| the plain workmen who carried the earth
and rupg their trowel on the wall. Who are
| Jnose VINO nave built these vast cities:
The capitalists No; the carpenters, the
masops, the plumbers, the plasterers. the
wages for livelihood. And so in the great
work of assuaging human suffering and en-
tightening human ignorance and halting hu..
man iniquity. In that great work, the chief
part is to be done by ordinary men, with
ordinary speech, in an ordinary man
ner, and by ordinary means. Ihe
colonels and brigdier generals We are not
willing to march with the rank and file and
to do duty with the private soldier. We
want to belong to the reserve corps, and read
about the battle while warming ourselves at
the campfires. or on furlough at home, our
feet upon an ottoman, we sagging back into
an arm chair.
AS you 20 down the street you see an
excavation, and four or five men are work
ing, and perhaps twenty or thirty leaning on
the rail and looking over ut them. That is
the way it is in the church of God to-day:
where you find one Christian hard at work,
there are fifty men watching the job.
work and preach this Gospel! You say: II
have no pulpit" You have 1t may be the
carpenters bench, it may be the mason's
wall The robe in which you are to
proclaim this Gospel may be q shoemaker's
apron. But WOO unto you if you
preach not this Gospel somewhere, some.
howl If this world is ever brought
to Christ it will be through the unanimous
waiting for no special endowment, conse-
crate to God what they have. Among the
most useless people in the world are men with
ten talents, while many one with only two
talents, or no talent at all, is doing. great
work, and so "the lame take the prey"
There are thousands Of ministers of whom
you have never Eeard-in log cabins at the
West, in mission chapels at the h.ast-who
are warning against the lcgions Of darkness,
successfully warning. Tract distributors,
month by month undermining the citadels
of sin. You do not know their going or their
coming; but the footballs of their ministry
are heard in the palaces Of heaven. Who
are the workers in our Sabbath. schools
brated, men brilliant, men of vast es-
tate! For the most part, not that at all.
I have noticed that the chief characters
tics Of the most Of those who are success
full in the work is that they know their
Bibles, are earnest in prayer, are anxious
for the salvation OF the young, and Sabbath.
by Sabbath are willing to sit down un-
observed and tell of Christ and the resurrec-
tion. These are the humble workers who
are recruiting the great army of Christian
youth-not by might, not by power, not
by profound argument, not by brilliant
antithesIs, but by the blessing of God on
plain talk, and humble story, and silent
tear, and anxious look. 1.-THE lame take the
prey"
Oh! this work of saving tks youth of our
country-how few appreciate what it is
This generation trampfng on to the grave
We will soon all be gone. What next;
An engineer on q locomotive going across
the western prairies day after day saw q
little child come out in front of a cabin and
wave to him; so he got in the habit OF WaV-
ing back to the little child, and it was the
days joy to him to see the little one come out
in front of the cabin door and wave to him,
while he answered back
One day the train was belated it came on
to the dusk of the evening. AS the engineer
stood at his post he saw by the headlight that
little girl on the track, wondering why
the train did not come, looking
for the, train, knowing nothing OF
the engineer. He reversed the engine. He
gave it in charge of the other man on board,
and then he climbed over the engine, and
he came down on the cow catcher. He said.
though he had reversed the engine, it seemed
as though it were gong at lightning speed,
faster and faster, though it was really slow
ing up, and with almost supernatural clutch
he caught that child by the hair and lifted it
up, and when the train stopped and the pas
sengers gathered around to see what was the
matter, there the old engineer lay, tainted
dead away, the little child alive and in his
Swarthy arms.
"Oh!n you say, that was well done"
But want you to exercise some kindness
and appreciation toward those in the
community who are snatching the lit
tie ones from under the wheels of tempta-
ton and sin-snatching them from
under laundering rail trains and eternal
| disaster, bringing them up into respectabillty
in this world and into glory for the world to
come You appreciate what the engineer did:
why can you not appreciate the grander
work done by every Sabbath-school teacher
this afternoon?