Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1892-01-16
REV. DR.. 9ALMAGH.
The Eminent Brooklyn Diyins's Sun
day Sermon.
Subject: "The sundIal of Ahaz."

Subject: 1.-THE sundiaI of Ahaz."
TExr: "And Isaiah the prophet cried
unto the Lord: and He brought the slnd
oto ten degrees backward by ,chtch IL had
| gone doWn IN the dial Of Ahozn-II King
XIX, II.
Here is the first clock or watch or chro.
rometer or timepiece OF which the world
has any knowledge. But 1t was watch
that did not tick and clock that did not
strike. 1t was a sundial. Ahaz, the king.
invented it. Between the hours given to
statecraft AMI the cares of Office he Invented
something by which he could tell the time
| of day. This sundial may have been great
| column, and when ths shadow of that col
umn reached one point it was nine o'clock
A. NJ, and when it reacled another point it
was three O'Clock P. NJ, and all the hours and
half hours were so measured Or it NAV
I have been flight o; stairs such as may now
be found in Hindostan and other old coun-
| tries and when the shadow reached one step
1t was ten O'Clock A. NJ, or another step it
| was four o'clock r NJ and likewise other
! hours may have been indicated.
J The ciepsydra or water clock followed the
4 sundial, and the sandglass followed the
1 clepsydra. Then came the candle clock of
Alfred the Great and the candle was marked
! into three parts, and while the first part
was burning he gave himself to religion. and
while the second part was burning he gave
himself to politics, and while the third part
was burning he gave himself to rest. After
/ awhile came the wheel ami weight clock.
and Pope Sylvester the Second, was its most
important inventor And the skill of CEN
| turtles OF exquisite mechanism toIled Mt the
! timepeces Until the word had the Vick's
/ clock of the Fourteenth century and Huy-
| ghens, the inventor, swung the first pendu-
lum and Dr. Hoose coltriyed the re-
/ aaNrf ~ IL
chain 70 lowell AMI the ratchet and
| pinion lever" took its place and
the compensation balance AMI the
stemwinder followed and now we have the
buzz and Gang of the great clock ami watch
| factories of Switzerland and Germany and
England AMI America turning out what
| seems to be the perfection of timepieces 1t
/ took the worli six thousand years to make
the present chro1ometar 50 with the
measurement OF longer spaces than minutes
and hours. Time was calculated fro n new
moon to new moon; then from harvest to
harvest. Then the year was pronounced to
be three hundred AMI fifty-four DAYS and
then three hundred and sixty DAYS. and not
until long while a. ter three hundred and
I sixty-f1ve days. Thea events were calcu-
lated from the foundation of Rome after
ward from the Olympic games Then the
! Babylonians had cir measurement of the
| year and the Romans theirs and
docs theirs. Chronology was busy
! for centuries studying monuments,
Inscriptions, coins, mummies and astrou-
omY, trying TO lay u plan by which all
/ question of dates might be settled AMI
events put in their right place in the pro-
cession of the ages. But the chronologists
only heaped up mountain of confusion and
bewilderment until in the sixth century
Dionyslus ExguuS, Roman abbot, said,
/ Let everything date from the birth at
/ bethlehem of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
/ Saviour of the world" The abbot proposed
10 have things dated backward and forward
! from that great event. What a splendid
thought for the world What a mighty
/ thing for Christianity II would have been
most natural to date everything from tue
I creation of the world. But | am glad
( the chronologists could not too easily guess
how old the world was in order to get the
nations i'll the habit of dating from that
occurrence in its documents and his
tories. Forever fixed is it that all history is
| to be dated with reference to the birth of
/ Christ, and, this matter settled, Hales, the
/ chief chronoiogist declared that the world
was made five thousand four hundred and
| eleven years before Christ and the deluye
came three thousand ons hundred and fifty.
| five years betore Christ, aud all the illus
/ trious events of the nineteen centuries and
/ all the great events of all time to come have
! been or shall be dated from the birth of
/ Christ These things | say that you NAV
know what watch is, what a clock is, what
an almanac Is, and learn TO appreciate
through what tolls and hardships and per-
plexitles the world came to its present con-
veniencss AMI comforts, AMI to help you TO
more res ectful consideration of that sun
dial Of AhGz planted in my text.
We are told that Hezekiah, til, king, was
| dying of boil. 1t must have been one of
the wort kind Of carbuncles, a boil without
any central core and sometimes beautiful.
tiy was put upon it as poultice. Hezalah
! did not want to die then. His son. who was
to take the kingdom, had no. yet been born,
and Hezeliahs death would have been the
death OF the nation. So he prays for re-
covery and is told he will get well. But he
wants some miraculous sign 10 make him
sure OF it. He has the choice of having the
shadow on the suniial of Ahaz advances or
retreat. He replied it would not be so won.
derful to have the sun go down, for 1t al
ways does go down sooner or later.
He asks that it go backward In
other words let the day instead of going
on towarl shutdown turn and go toward
sunrise. l see the invalid king bolstered up
and wrapped in blankets looking out of the
window upon the sun dial in the courtyard.
While he watches the sha low on the dial
the shadow begius to retreat. Instead of
going on toward six o'clock in the eyenin,
u goes oack toward six o'clock in the morn
ing. The big poutics had been drawing for
some time, and sure enough the boil broke
and Hezekiah got we'll Now / expect YOU
VIII come on with your higher criticism
and try to explain this away ant say it
was an optical delusion of Hezakiah and the
shadow only seemed to 90 back or a cloud
came over and it was uncertain which wav
me shadow dld go, and as Hezekiah expected
! 1t to go back he took the action of
bis own mind for the retrograde move
ment. No; the shadow went back on
all the dlals of that land ami other lands.
! Turn to Ii Chronicles xxi. 81. and find
that away off in Babylon the mighty men of
the palace noticed the same phenomenon.
And If you do not like the Bible authority
turn over your copy of Herodotus and find
that away off in Egypt the people noticed
That there was something the matter with
the sun. The fact is that the whole universe
waits upon God and suns and moons and
stars are not very big things to Him, and He
can with HIS little finger turn back an en-
tire world as easily as you can set back the
hour hand or minute hand of your clock or
| watch
At the opening of the new year people are
noralizing on the fight of time. You all
/ ieel that you are moving on toward sun
down and many OF you are under conse-
quent depression. | propose this morning
to set the hands of your watches and clocks
to going the other way, l propose to show
you how you make the shadow OF your dial
stop going forward and make it go back
ward. You think have big undertaking
on hand, but it can be done if the same Lord
who reversed the shadow in Hezxiah's court
yard moves upon us. While looking at the
sundial of HezSiah aud we find the shadow
retreatng we ought to learn that God
contros the shadows. We are all
ready to acknowledge His manage
ment of the sunshine We stand in the
glow of a bright morning aud we say in
our feelings if not with so many words
This life is from God, this warmth is from
God Or, We have rush of prosperity
and we say, THESE successes are from God.
What providential thing it was l bought
that lot just before the rise of real estatel
How grateful to God l am that l made
that investment Why, they have declared
ten per cent. dividend! What mercy it was
hat sold out my shares before that col
lapsep On, yes; we acknowledge God in
the sunshine o. q bright day or the sun
shine of a great prosperity But suppose
the day is dark You have to light the
gas at noon. The sun does not show him
self all day long. There is nothing Int
shadow. How slow we are to rea1izs that
the storm is from Col and the darkness
from God and the chill from Col, Or wa
BUY the day before the market retreats or
we make an investment that never paws. or
we purchase goods that we cannot DISPOSE
or or crop of grain we sowed is ruined
by drought or fresnet, or wnsn we took ac-
count of stock on the first of January we
found ourselves thousands OF dollars worse
off than we expected Who under such cir
cumstances says, This loss is fro II Col. |
must have been allowed to go into that un-