Hebrews 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child… Who can say how vast are the potentialities involved in the life of a young child? More than nineteen hundred years ago, in the civil wars of Rome, the life of a beautiful child was again and again saved from the extremest peril. That child grew up to be a heavy curse to himself, a heavy curse to others; he grew up to be one of the worst men who ever lived; the Emperor Tiberius, in whose reign Christ was crucified. Again, some hundred and fifty years ago, a house in an English village was found to be in flames. The clergyman and his family — for it was the vicarage — were roused, and when they had escaped, it was found that one little boy was still in the burning house. A ladder was placed to the window, he was rescued, and handed unhurt into his father's arms. What would the world have lost had that little boy perished? For his name was John Wesley, and by his piety and zeal he fanned into flame once more the dead white embers of Christian faith. Now, who can tell what a little child may be! He may grow up, as has been said, like Beethoven, to lift the soul by the magic of Divine melody into the seventh heaven of ineffable vision and incommensurable hope; or like Newton, to weigh the far-off stars in the balance, and measure the heavings of the eternal flow; or like Luther, to scorch up what is cruel and false by a word, as by a flame; or like Milton and Burke, to awake men's hearts with the note of an organ trumpet; or like the great saints of the Churches and the great sages of the Schools, to add to those acquisitions of spiritual beauty and intellectual mastery which have, one by one, and little by little, raised men from being no higher than the brute to be only a little lower than the angels. You never know but what the child, in rags and pitiful squalor, that meets you in the streets, may have in him the germ of gilts that might add new treasure to the storehouse of beautiful things or noble acts. In that great storm of terror which swept over France in 1793, a certain man who was every hour expecting to be led off to the guillotine uttered this memorable sentiment: "Even at this incomprehensible moment," he said, "when morality, enlightenment, love of country, all of them only make death at the prison door or on the scaffold more certain — yes, on the fatal tumbril itself, with nothing free but my voice, I could still cry 'Take care' to a child that should come too near the wheel. Perhaps I may save his life; perhaps he may one day save his country." (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. |
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