Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1894-01-06


! As years of age mans nervous system
/ changes, and some one tells him he must
take stimulants to keep himself up, and
he takes stimulants to keep himself up
i until the stimulants keep him down, or
I man has been going along for 30 or 40
/ years in unsuccessful business, and here
Is an opening where by one dishonorable
action he can lift himself and lift his
family from all financial embarrassment.
He attempts to leap the chasm, and he
! falls into it.
Then it is in after life that the great
| temptation of success comes. If a man
make fortune before 80 years of age,
he generally loses it before 40. The sol
| id and the permanent fortunes for the
most part do not come to their climax
until midlife or in old age. The most Of
the bank presidents have white hair
Many of those who have been largely
successful have been full of arrogance
I or worldliness or dissipation in old age.
They may not have lost their integrity,
! but they have become so worldly and so
sselfish under the influence of large sue
cess that it is evident to everybody that
i their success has been a temporal calam-
i-ity and an eternal damage.
i Concerning many people it may be said
it seems as if it would have been better
| if they could have embarked from this
life at 20 or 30 years of age. Do you
lglnow the reason why the vast majority
of people die before 30? 1t is because
they have not the moral endurance for
that which is beyond the 80, and mer-
ciful God will not allow them to be put
10 the fearful strain.
Again, there is blessing in an alb
breviated earthly existence in the fact
that one is the sooner taken off the de-
fensive. AS soon as one is old enough to
take care of himself, he is put on his
guard. Bolts on the door to keep out
the robbers. Fireproof safes to keep off
the flames. Life insurance and fire in
surance against accidents. Receipts lest
you have to pay debt twice. Lifeboat
against shipwreck. Westinghouse air
brake against railroad collision. There.
are many ready to overreach you and
take all you have. Defense against cold,
defense against heat, defense against
sickness, defense against the worlds
abuse, defense all the way down to the
grave, and even the tombstone some
times is not sufficient barricade.
# q soldier who has been on guard,
shivering and stung with the cold, pacing
up and down the parapet with Shout
dered musliet, is glad when some one
comes to relieve guard and he can go in
side the fortress, ought not that man to
shout for JOY who can put down his
weapon of. earthly defense and go into
the kings castle? Who is the more for
tunate, the soldier who has to stand guard
u hours, or the man who has to stand
guard six hours? Wehave common sense
about everything but religion, common
sense about everything but transference
from this world.
THE EVIL TO COME.
gain, there is a blessing in an abb
sarthly existence III the fact
.t!ITT,s- longer We i've the more attach
isments and the more kindred, the more
chords to be wounded or rasped or sun
Idered. If man live on to 70 or so years
J of age, how many graves are cleft at his
| feet? In that long reach of time father
! and mother go, brothers and sisters go,
children go, grandchildren go, personal
! friends outside the family circle whom
they had lovedswith love like that of
David and Jonathan.
Besides that, some men have natural
trepidation about dissolution, and ever
and anon during 40 or so or go years this
horror of their dissolution shudders
through soul and body. Now, suppose
the lad goes at 16 years of age. He es-
capes so funerals, so caskets, so obse-
ouies. 80 awful wrenchings of the heart.
Il is hard enough for us to bear their de-
parture, but is it not easier for us to bear
their departure than for them to stay
and bear so departures? Shall we not, by
the grace of God, rouse ourselves into
generosity of bereavement which will
practically say, sit is hard enough for
me to go through this bereavement, but
how glad am that he will never have to
go through itl''
So 1 reason with myself, and so you
will find it helpful to reason with your
selves. David lost his son. Though
David was king, he lay on the earth
mourning and inconsolable for some
time. At this distance of time, which
do you really think was the one to be
congratulated, the short lived child or
the long lived father? Had David died
as early as that child died, he would in
the first place have escaped that particu-
lar bereavement, then he would have es-
capped the worse bereavement of Absa-
lon, his recreant son, and the pursuit of
the Philistines, and the fatigues of his
military campaign, and the jealousy of
Saul, and the perfdy of Ahithophel, and
the curse of Shimei, and the destruction
of his family at Ziklag, and, above all,
he would have escaped the two great ca
lamities of his life, the great sins of I'M
cleanness and murder. David lived to
be of vast use to the church and the
world, but so far as his own happiness
was concerned, does it not seem to you
that it would have been better for him
to have gone early?
Now, this, my friends, explains some
things that to you have been inexplica-
Bile. This shows you why when God
takes little children from household
he is very apt to take the brightest, the
most genial, the most sympathetic, the
most talented. Why? 1t is because that
kind of nature suffers the most when it
does suffer and is most liable to tempta-
ton. God saw the tempest sweeping
Up from the Caribbean, and he put the
delicate craft into the first harbor.
"Taken away from the evil to come"
Again, my friends. there is a blessing
| :, ~, oJ,l,ro,-;o +ad on rth1v existence in the