Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-05-09

caught in net and sweetest ven1sOn that
ever dropped antlers before the hunter.
No; we are directly told the same
John had his raiment Of camel's hair
not tho fine hair of the camel which
we call cainlet but the long, coarse hair
such as beggars in the east wear-and
his only meat was of insects, the green
locust, about two inches long. roasted,
disgusting food These insects were
caught and the wings and legs torn off,
and they were stuck on wooden spits
md turned before the fire. The Bedouihs
pack them in salt and carry them in
sacks. What menu for John the Bap
list Through what deprivation he came
to what exultation!
And you will have to go down before
you go up. From the pit into which his
brothers threw him and the prison in
which his enemies incarcerated him
Joseph rose to be Egyptian prime min
lister. Elijah, who was to be the great
est of all the ancient prophets; Elijah,
who made King Ahab's knees knock to-
gether with the prophecy that the dogs
would be his only undertakers; Elijah,
whose one prayer brought more than
three years of drought and whose other
prayer brought drenehing showers; the
man who wrapped up his cape of sheep
skin into a roll and with it cut path
through raging Jordan for just two men
to pass over; the 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 eternities to
stand beside Jesus Christ on Mount Ia
Dor when it was ablaze with the splen-
doris of ransfiguration-this man could
look back to the time when voracious
and filthy ravens were his only caterers.
You see John Knox preaching the
coronation sermon of James VI and ar
raigning Queen Mary and Lord Darnley
in public discourse at edinburgh and
telling the French EN- AMBASSADOR to go
home and call his king a murderer,
John Knox making all Christendom feel
his moral power and at his burial the
Earl of Morton saying, "Here lieth
man who in his life never feared the
face of man," Where did John Knox
get much of his schooling for such re-
sounding and everlasting achievement?
boats oar in French captivity. So the
privations and hardships of your life
may on smaller scale be the preface
and introduction to usefulness and vic
tory.
See also in this call of Moses that
God has great memory. Four hundred
years before he had promised the deliv-
erance of the oppressed Israelites of
Egypt. The clock of time has struck
the hour, and now Moses is called to
the work of rescue. Four hundred years
is a very long time, but you see 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 fulfillment in our heart
and life blessings that were predicted
to our Christian ancestry centuries ago.
You have a dim remembrance, if any
rememb rance 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 a
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 ia
theirs, 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 the influence will
Of Gods universe.
No one realizes how great he is for
good or for evil. There are branchings
out and rebounds and reverberations
and Celebrations of influence that can
not be estimated. The so 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
were all fulfillments Of prom
ses 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
5eenth or seventeenth century. Oh, the
of the divine memory!
Work For the Aged.
Notice also that Moses was so years
IF age when he got this call to become
5he Israelitish deliverer. Forty years he |