The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-05-09

/ not up 10 our standard. Poetry IS not l.
rs forte" Oh. IL is a rough road 70 any
kind of valuable success. So the priva-
tons and hardships Of your life may on
a smaller scale be the preface and intro
/ duction to usefulness and victory.
See also in this call of Moses that God
| has a great memory. -Four hundred years
before he had promised the deliverance
| 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
| four hundred years. as well as you can
remember four hundred minutes. Four
| hundred years includes all your ancestry
that you know anything about, and all
| the promises made 10 them, and we may
| expect fulhllment in our heart and life OF
all the blessings predicted TO our Christian
ancestry centuries ago. You have aim
| remembrance. If any remembrance at all,
of your great-grandfather, but God sees
those who were on their knees in 1898 a S
well as those on their knees in 1898, and
the blessings he promised the former and
their descendants have arrived, or Will
arrive. While piety is not hereditary, 1t
is a grand thing to have had pious an
cestry. 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 faith
ers. the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob hath sent me unto
you" If that thought be divinely accu-
rate. let me ask, What are we doing by
prayer and by holy life for the redemp-
ton of the next four hundred 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 closing of the TWEEN
I ty-second century and the clos
ing of the twentythird CEN
fury. For four hundred years
If the world continues to swing until that
time. or If it drops, then, notwithstand-
ing the influence, will go on in other lati-
tudes and longitudes of Gods universe.
No one realizes how great he is for good
or for evil. There are branchings out and
rebounds, and reverberations, and elabo
rations of influence that cannot be esti-
mated. The fifty or one hundred 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 fulhllments of promises 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 sixteenth or seventeenth
century. Oh. the prolongation of the d.
vine memory!
Notice, also, that Moses was eighty
years of age when he got this call to be-
come the Israelitish deliverer. Forty
years he had lived In palaces as a prince;
another forty years he had lived in the
wilderness Of Arabia. I should not won
der if he had said: Take a younger man
for this work. Eighty winters have ex-
posed my health; eighty summers have
poured their heats upon my head. There
are the forty years that I spent among the
enervating luxuries of a palace and then
followed the forty years of wilderness
hardship / am too old. Let me off Bet
ter call a man in the forties or fifties, and
not one who has entered upon the elgh-
ties" Nevertheless, he undertook the
work, and if we want to know whether
he succeeded, ask the abandoned brick
kilns of Egyptian task-masters and the
| splintered chariot wheels strewn on the
| beach of the. Red sea, and the timbrels
which Miriam clapped 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
| eighty. 1t may not be in the high places
of the field; il may not be where stronS
arm and an athletic foot and a clear vision
are required, but there is something for
| YOU vet to do Perhaps it may be to
/
to demonstrate the patience you have been
recommending all your lifetime; perhaps
| to stand a lighthouse at the mouth of the
bay to light others into the harbor; per-
haps to show how glorious sunset may
| come after a 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
n In, ri af
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 TRANSPORTATION. 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 ladders 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 fee
like the woman of ninety years who said
TO Fontenelle, who was eighty-five years
of age, "Death appears TO have forgot
ten us" Hush" said Fontenelle, the
wit, putting his finger to his lip NO my
friend you have not been forgotten. You
viii be called at the right time Mean
time be holly occupied. Let the aged re-
member that by increased longevity OF
the race men are not as old at sixty as
they used 60 be at fifty. not as old at sew
enty as they used to be at sixty, not as ole
at eighty as they used to be at seventy
Sanitary precaution better understood
medical science further advanced; laws OF
health more thoroughly adopted; dentistry
continuing for longer time successful mas
tlcation; homes, and churches and court
rooms. and places of business better ven
tilated-all these have prolonged life, and
men and women in the close of this cen
fury ought not to retire until at least nj
teen years later than in the opening of the
century. Do not put the harness of until
YOU have fought a few more battles
Think of Moses starting out for his CHIEF
work an octogenarian; forty years of will
derness life after forty years of palace
life. yet just beginning.
There lies dying at Hawarden, England
one of the most wonderful men that ever
lived since the ages of time began theh
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 Com
/ r,one which he had thrilled and OVeraWed