Connecticut western news., 1898-05-12

is very long time, but you see God can remember promise 400 years as well as you can remember 400 minutes Four hundred years include all your ancestry that you know anything about and all the promises made to them, and we may expect fulfillment in our heart and life blessings that were predicted to our Christian ancestry centuries ago. You have dim remem brance, if any remembrance at all, of your great-grand- father, but God sees those who were on their knees in 1898 as we'll as those on their knees in 1898, and the blessings he promised the former and their de- scendants have arrived or will arrive. While piety is not hereditary it is grand thing to have had pious ances- try. So God in this chapter calls up the pedigree of the people whom Moses was to deliver, and Moses is ordered to say to them, "The Lord God of your fa- thers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you." If that thought be di- vinely accurate, let me ask, What are we doing by prayer and by holy life for the redemption of the next 400 years? Our work is not only with the people of the latter part of the nineteenth century, but with those in the closing of the twentieth century and the closing of the twenty first century and the clos ing of the twenty second century and the closing of the twenty third century. For 400 years, if the world continues to swing until that time, or if it drops, then notwithstanding tho influence will go on in other attitudes and longitudes of Gods universe.
 No one realizes how great he is for good or for evil There are branohipgs out and rebounds and reverberations and elaborations of influence that can- not be estimated. The 50 or 100 years of our earthly stay is only small part of our sphere. The flap of the wing of the destroying angel that smote the Egyptian oppressors, the wash of the Red sea over the heads of the drowned Egyptians, were all fulfillments of prom ises four centuries old. And things occur in your life and in mine that we cannot account for. They may be the echoes of what was promised in the six teenth or seventeenth century. Oh, the prolongation of the divine memoryl
 Work For the Aged.
 Notice also that Moses was so years of age when he got this call to become the Israelitish deliverer. Forty years he had lived in palaces as prince another 40 years he had lived in the wilderness of Arabia. I should not wonder if he had said "Take younger man for this work. EigSty winters have exposed my health; 80 summers have poured their heats upon my head. There are 40 years that l spent among the ener- vating luxuries of palace, and then follow the 40 years of wilderness hard. ship. am too old. Let me off. Better call man ill the forties or fifties and not one who has entered upon the eighties. Nevertheless, he undertook the work, and if we want to know whether he succeeded, ask the abandon ed brick kilns of Egyptian taskmasters, and the splintered chariot wheels strewn on the beach of the Red sea, and the timbrels which Miriam olapped for the Israelites passed over and the Egyptians gone under.
 Do not retire too early. Like Moses, you may have your chief work to do after so. It may not be in the high places of the field; it may not be where strong arm and an athletic foot and clear vision are required, but there is something for you yet to do. Perhaps is may be to round off the work you have already done; to demonstrate the pa- tience you have been recommending all yc1r lifetime; perhaps to stand light house at the mouth of the bay to light others into harbor; perhaps to show how glorious sunset may come after stormy day.
 If aged men do not feel strong enough for anything else, let them sit around in our churches and pray, and perhaps in that way they may accomplish more good than they ever did in the meridian of their lifo. It makes us feel strong to see aged men and women all up and down the pews, their faces showing they have been on mountains of trans fguration. We want in all our churches more men like Moses, men who have been through the deeps and climbed up the shelled beach on the other side. We want aged Jacobs, who have seen lad ders which let down heaven into their dreams. We want aged Peters, who have been at Pentecosts, and aged Pauls, who have made Felix tremble. There are here and there those who feel like the woman of 90 years who said to Fonte- nelle, who was 85 years of age, "Death appears to have forgotten us. '" "Hush," said Fontenelle, the wit, putting his finger to his lip. No, my friend, you have not been forgotten. You will be called at the right time. Meantime, be holily occupied.
 Let the aged remember that by in- creased longevity of the race men are not as old at 60 as they used to be at 90, not as old at 70 as they used to be at 60, not as old at 80 as they used to be at 70. Sanitary precaution better un- derstood; medical science further ad- vanoed; laws of health more thoroughly adopted; dentistry continuing for lon- ger time successful mastication; homes and churches and courtrooms and places of business better ventilated-all these have prolonged life, and men and wom- en in the close of this century ought not to retire until at least 15 years later than in the opening of the century. Do not put the harness off until you have fought few more battles. Think of Moses starting out for his chief work an octogenarian; 40 years of wilderness life after 40 years of palace life. yet just be- ginning.
 There lies dying at Hawarden, Eng land, one of the most wonderful men that ever lived since the ages of time began their roll. He is the chief citizen of the whole world. Three times has he practically been king of Great Britain. Again and again coming from the house of commons, which he had thrilled and overawed by his eloquenoe, on Satur- day, on Sunday morning reading pray CTS for the people with illumined ooun- tenance and brimming eyes and re- sounding voice, saying: ''I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Hoo .AL