Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-08-20

climb; climb up into tho sunlight Of
Gods favor and consolation. I can go
through tho churches and show you
men who lost fortune and health at the
same time and yet who sing all day
nnd dream of heaven all night. Ii you
have any idea that sound digestion and
steady nerves and clear eyesight and
good hearing and plenty of friends are
necessary to mako q man happy, you
have miscalculated. Isuppose that these
ovcrhanging rocks only made Jonathan
scramble the harder and tho faster to
get up and out into the sunlight, and
this combined shadow Of invalidism and
financial embarrassment has often sent
n man up the quicker into the sunlight
of God S favor and the monday of his
glorious promises.
When God Is Sought.
1t is difficult thing for man to
feel his dependence upon God when ho
has $4,000 i'll the bank and $50, 600
in government securities and q block
Of stores and three ships. "Well, :" the
man says to himself, ''it is silly for mo
to pray, Give Inc this day my daily
Bread when my pantry is full and the
canals from the west arc crowded with
breadstuffs destined for my store
houses" Oh, my friends, If the COM
bincd misfortunes and disasters Of life
have made you climb up into the arms
of sympathetic and compassionate
God, through all eternity you will bless
him that in this world there was a
sharp rock on tho ono side and sharp
rock on the other side.
Again, that man is i'll the crisis OF
tho text who has home troubles and
outside persecution at the Same time
The world treats man well just as
long as it pays to treat him we'll. AS
long as it can manufacture success out
of his bono and brain and muscle it ia
vors him. The world fattens tho horse
it wants to drive. But let man see it
his duty to cross the track Of the world,
then every bush is full of horns and
tusks thrust ut him. They will belittle
him. They will caricature him. They
will call his generosity self aggrandize-
ment and his piety sanctimoniousness
Tho very worst persecution will some
times come upon him from those who
profess to be Christians.
John Milton-great and good John
Milton-so far forgot himself as to pray
in so many words that his enemies
might DO eternally thrown down into
the darkest and deepest gulf Of hell and
be tho undermost and most detected and
the lowest down yassals Of perditlon.
And Martin Luther so far forgot him
self as to say in regard to his theolog-
ical opponents, Put them III whatever
sauce you please, roasted, or fried, or
baked, or stewed, or boiled, or hashed,
they are nothing but asses " All, my
friends, if John Milton or Martin Lu-
ther could come down to such scurrility
what may you not expect from less ele-
waited opponents? Now, sometimes the
world takes after them; the newspapers
take after them; public opinion takes
after them, and the unfortunate man is
lied about until all the dictionary Of
Billingsgate is exhausted on him. You
often see man whom you know to be
good and pure and honest set upon by
the world and mauled by whole COM
munities while vicious men take on a
supercilious air in condemnation Of him,
as though Lord Jeffreys should write
an essay OH gentleness or Henry VIII
talk about purity or King Herod take
to blessing little children.
An Inspiration.
Now, certain amount of persecution
rouses a mans defiance, stirs his blood
for magnificent battle and makes him
so times more man than he would
have been without the persecution. So
it was with the great reformer when he
said, ~ will not be put down; l will
be heard" And so it was with Willard,
the preacher, in the time of Louis ri.
When Louis XI sent word to him that
unless he stopped preaching i'll that
stvle he would throw him into the
river, he replied, "Tell tho king that
will reach heaven sooner by water than
he will reach it by fast horses. a GER
tain amount of persecution is tonic
and inspiration, but too much of it and
too long continued becomes the rock
Bozez throwing q dark shadow over a
mans life. What is he to do, then? &c
home, you say. Good advice that That
is Just the place for man to go when
the world abuses him. Go home. Blessed
be God for our quiet and sympathetic
homes But there is many Il man who
has the reputation of having home
when he has none. Through unthink-
iugness or precipitation there are many
matches made that ought never to have
been made. An officiating priest cannot
alone unite a couple The Lord al
mighty must proclaim banns. There arc
many homes in which there is no SYM
pathy and no happiness and no good
, cheer. The clamor of the battle may
not have been heard outside, but God
knows, notwithstanding all the play
ing of the wedding March, and all
the odor of the orange blossoms, and
the benediction of the officiating pastor,
there has been no marriage. So some.
times men have awakened to find Oh
one side of them the rock of persecu-
ton and on the other side Of them tie
rock of domestic infelicity What shall
such one do? Do rs Jonathan did
climb. Get up the heights of Gods con
ISOLATION, from which you may look
down in triumph upon outside persecu.
ton and home trouble While good and
great John Wesley was being silenced
by the magistrates and having bis name
written on tho board fences of London
in doggerel, at that very time his wife
was making him as miserable as she
could, acting as though she were pos
sessed by the devil, as 1 suppose she
was, never doing him kindness until
the day she ran away, so that he wrote
in his diary these words; 81 did not
forsake her; have not dismissed her;
I will not recall her." Planting one
foot upon outside persecution and the
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