Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1897-04-03
The Best Sermon.

The Best Sermon.
In the first place, we owe to their
language our New Testament. All of 1t
was first written III Greek, except the
book of Matthew, and that, written III
the Arampan language, was soon put
into Greek by our Saviour's brother
james. To the Greek language we owe
the best sermon ever preached, the best
letters ever written, the best visions
ever kindled. All the parallels i'll Greek
All the miracles in Greek The sermon
OH the mount in Greek. The story of
Bethlehem. and Golgotha, and Olivet,
and Jordan banks, and Galilcan beaches,
and Pauline embarkation and Pente-
costal tongues, and seven trumpets that
sounded over Patmos, haye come to the
world in liquid, symmetric, picturesque,
philosophic, unrivaled Greek. instead
of the gibberish language i'll which
many of the nations of the earth at that
time iabbercd. Who can forget it, and
who can exaggerate its thrilling impor-
lance, that Christ and heaven were in
troduced to us in the language of the
Greeks, the language i'll which Homer
had sung, and Sophocles dra1natized,
and Plato dialogucd, and Socrates dis
coursed, and Lycurgus legislated, and
Demosthencs Numbered his Grafton on
1.-The Crown Everlasting thanks to
God that the waters of life were not
handed TO the world in the unwashed
cup of corrupt languages from which
nations had been drinking, but in the
clean, bright, golden Tipped, emerald
handled chalice of the Hellenes. Learn
ed Curtius wrote whole volume about
the Greek verb Philologists century
after century have been measuring the
symmetry of that language, laden with
elegy and philippe, drama and comedy,
Odyssey" and "Iliad." but the grand
est thing that Greek language ever ac-
complishcd was to give to the world the
benediction, the comfort, the irradia-
ton, the salvation, of the gospel of the
Son of God. For that we are debtors to
the Greeks.
And while speaking of our philolog-
ical obligation let me call your atten-
ton to the fact that many Of the intel
lectual and moral and theological lead
ers OF the ages got much of their disci-
pline and effectiveness from Greek lit
erature. 1t is popular 10 scott at the dead
languages hut so per cent of the worlds
intellectually would have been taken
off if through learned institutions our
young men had not, under competent
professors. been drilled in Gleok mas
terpieces, Hesiod's Weeks and Days, ;"
or the eulogium by Simonides of TIE
slain in war, or Pindar's "Odcs of Vic
tory" or The Recollections of Soc
rates." or 1.-The Art of Words" by
Corax, or Xenophon's "Anabasis -
Leaders of the Ages.
From the Greeks the world learned
how to make history. Had there been
no Herodotus ard Thucydides there
would have beon no Macaulay or
Bancroft. Had there been no Sopho-
cles in tragedy there would have been
no Shakespeare Had there been no
Homer, there would have been no Mil
ton. The modern wits, who are now or
have been out Oh the divine mission of
making the world laugh at the right
time, can be traced back to Aristophanes,
the Athenian, and many of the jCccsities
that are now taken as new had their sug-
gestions 2, 800 years ago in the 8 1 COM
edies of that master of merriment. Gre
clan mythology has been the richest
mine from which orators and essayists
have drawn their illustrations and Iaint-
ers the themes for their canvas, and, al
though now an exhausted mine, Grecian
mythology has done work tina. moth
ing else could have accomplished. b.
reas, representing the north wind, Sissy
plus, rolling the stone up the hill, only
to have the same thing to d. over again;