Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1894-02-24

k1nu act. one cheerful smile, on mis-
sion that will last until the world be-
comes bonfire, and out Of that blaze it
7 will pass into the heavens, never to halt
as long as God lives.
WHAT ORDINARY PERSONS CAN DO.
There were in the seventeenth century
men and women whose names you never
heard of who are today influencing
schools, colleges, churches, nations. You
can no more measure the gracious re-
suits of their lifetime than you could
measure the length and breadth and
depth of the phosphorescence last night
following the ship of the White Star line
1900 miles out at sea. How the courage
and conservation of others inspire us to
follow, as general in the American
army, cool amid the flying bullets, in
spired trembling soldier, who said aft
erward, II was nearly scared to death,
but saw the old mans white mustache
over his shoulder and went on" Aye,
we are ali following somebody either IN
right or wrong directions.
A few days ago l stood beside the gar
landed casket of gospel minister, and
in my remarks had occasion to recall d
snowy night in farmhouse when l was
q boy and an evangelist spending a
night at my fathers house, who said
something so tender and beautiful and
impressive that it led me into the king
dom Of God and decided my destiny for
this world and the next. You will, be-
fore "A hours go by, meet some man or
woman with big pack of care and trou-
BILE, and you may say something to him
or her that will endure until this world
shall have been SO far lost in the past
that nothing but the stretch Of angelic
memory will be able to realize that it
ever existed at all.
l am not talking of remarkable men
and women, but Of what ordinary folks
can do. am not speaking of the phos-
phorescence in the wake of Campania,
but of the phosphorescence in the track
of a Newfoundland fishing smack. God
makes thunderbolts out OF sparks, and
out of the small words and deeds of
small life he can launch power that
will fash and burn and thunder through
the eternities.
How do you like this prolongation Of
your earthly life by deathless influence!
Many babe that died at months of
age by the anxiety created In the parents
heart to meet that child in realms Sc
raphic is living yet in the transformed
heart and life of those parents and will
live on forever in the history of that
family. If this be the opportunity of or
binary souls, what is the opportunity of
those who have especial intellectual or
social or monetary equipment?
Have you any arithmetic capable of es-
timating the influence Of our good and
gracious friend who few days ago went
up to rest-George W. Childs of Phila-
delphia? From newspaper that was
printed for 30 years without one word of
defamation or scurrility or scandal and
putting chief emphasis on virtue and
charity and clean intelligence, he reaped
n fortune for himself and then distrib-
uted a vast amount of it among the poor
and struggling, putting his invalid and
aged reporters on pensions, until his
name stands everywhere for large heart
edness and sympathy and help and high
est STYLE of Christian gentleman.
In an era which had in the chairs Of
| its Journalism Hortce Greeley, and a
Henry J. Raymond, and James Gordon
Bennett, and an Erastus Brooks, and a
George William Curtis, and an 1renaeus
Prime none of them will be longer re-
membered than George ". Childs. Stay
ing away from the unwilling of the mon
ument he had reared at large expense in
our Greenwood in memory of Professor
Proctor, the astronomer, lest should
say something in praise of the man who
had paid for the monument. BY all ac-
knowledged representative of the high
est American journalism.
If YOU would calculate his influence
for good, you must count how many
sheets of his newspapers have been pub
lished in the last quarter of century,
and how many people fFve read them,
and the effect, not only upon those read
ers, but upon all whom they shall influ-
ence for all time, while you add to all
that the work of the churches he helped
build and of the institutions of mercy he
helped found. Better give up before you
start the measuring of the phosphores-
cence in the wake of that ship of the &C.
lestial line. Who can tell the post NOR
tenn influence Of Sayonarola, C. Win
kelried, Gutenberg, Marlborough, a
Decatur, Toussaint, a Bolivar, a Clark
son. q Robert Raikes, Harlan Page,
who had 125 Sabbath scholars, 81 Of
whom became Christians, and six of them
ministers of the gospel.
THE BRIGHT PATH.
With gratitude and penitence and wor-
ship 1 mention the grandest life that was
ever lived. That ship of light was
launched from the heavens nearly 1900
years ago, angelic hosts chanting, and
from the celestial wharves the ship
sprang into the toughest sea that ever
tossed. Its pillows were made up of the
wrath of men and devils, Herodic and
sanhedrinic prosecutions stirring the
deep with red wrath, and all the hurri-
canes of woe smote 1t until OH the rocks
of Golg6tha that life struck with a ra-
sound of agony that appalled, the earth
and the heavens. But in the wake OF
that life what a phosphorescence Of
smiles on the cheeks of souls pardoned,
and lives reformed, and nations re-
deemed. The millennium itself is only
one roll of that irradiated wave of glad
ness and benediction. In the sublimest
of all senses it may be said of him, "He
maketh path to shine after him."
But 1 cannot look upon that luminosi-
ty that follows ships without realizing
how fond the Lord is of life. That fire
of the deep is life, myriads of creatures
all a-swim and a-play and a-romp in