Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-05-14
ACCOMAg C. g. W SATURDAY MAY IA, 1885,

three years of drought and whose other
prayer brought drenching showers; the
man who wrapped up his cape of sheep
skin into roll and with it cut a path
through raging Jordan for just two men
to pass over; tho man who with wheel
of fire rode over death and escaped into
the skies without mortuary disintegra-
ton; the man who, thousands Of years
after, was called out of the oternities to
stand beside Jesus Christ on Mount Ia
Dor when it was ablazo with the SPLEEN
doris of transfguration-this man could
look back to- the time when voracious
and filthy ravens were his only caterers.
You SEQ John Knox preaching the
coronation sermon Of james VI and ar
raigning Queen Mary and Lord Darnley
in public discourse at Edinburgh and
telling tho French ambassador to go
homo and call his king murderer,
John Knox making all Christendom feel
his moral power and at his burial the
Earl of Morton saying, "Hero lieth a
man who in his life never feared the
face of man. +" Where did John Knox
got much of his schooling fer such re-
sounding and everlasting achievement:
He got twhile III chains pulling at the
boat's oar in French captivity. So tho
privations and hardships Of your life
may OIL il smaller scale be tho preface
and introduction to usefulness and vic
tory.
See also in this call Of Moses that
God has great memory. Four hundred
years before no had promised the deliy-
GRANGE of the oppressed Israelites of
Egypt. The clock of time has struck
the hour, and now Moses is called to
tho work of rescue -Four hundred years
is a very long time, bat you sec God
can remember a promise 400 years as
we'll 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 fulGllment in our heart
and life blessings that were predicted
to our Christian ancestry centuries ago.
You have Il dim remembrance, if any
remembrance all, of your great grand
father, but God sees those who were Oh
their knees in 1898 as we'll as those Oh
their knees in 1888, and the blessings
he promised the former and their de-
scendants have arrived or will arrive.
While piety is not hereditary it is a
grand thing to have had pious ances-
try. So God i'll 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 ia
theirs, the God of Abraham, the Cod Of
Isaac and tho God Of Jacob hath sent
me unto you" If that thought be di-
yinely accurate, let mo ask, What are
VIC doing by prayer and by a holy life
for the redemption Of the next 400 years!
Our work is net only with the people of
the latter part of the nineteenth century,
bit with those in the closing OF the
twentieth century and the closing of
the twenty first century and tho clos
ing of the twenty second century and
the closing OF tho twenty third century.
For 40 years, if the world continues to
swing ntiLthat time. Or # it drops,
then Notwithstanding the influence will
20 on in other ATTITUDES and longitudes
of Gods universe.
No one realizes how great he is for
good OF for evil There are branchings
out and rebounds and reverberations
and Celebrations of influence that can
not be estimated. The 80 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 fulfllments of prom
ises four centuries old. And things
occur in your life and in mine that wo
cannot account for They may be the
echoes Of what was promised in tho six
teenth or seventeenth century. Oh, the
prolongation Of the divine memory
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. / should not wonder if no
had said: "Take younger man for
this work. Eighty winters have exposed
my health; Sc summers have poured
their heats upon my head. There are
10 years that l spent among the ener-
waiting Injuries of palace, and then
follow tho 10 years of wilderness hard
ship. am too old. Let me off. Better
call man in the forties or ffties and
not enc 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 clapped for the
Israclites passed over and the Egyptians
gone under.
Do not retire too early. Like Moses,
you may have your chief work to do
after so. 1t may not be in the high
places of the field; it may not be where
IA strong arm and an athletic foot and a
clear vision are required, but there is
something fer you yet to do. Perhaps it
may be to round off the work you have
already done; to demonstrate the pa
thence you have been recommending all
your lifetime; perhaps to stand a light
house at the mouth of the bay to light
others into harbor; perhaps to show
how glorious sunset may come after a
stormy day.
If aged men douot 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 life. 1t 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
figuration. We want i'll all our churches
more men like Moses, men who have
H. l.o,.- o1;,,, to1 IN