The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons Author:Phillips Brooks Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m. THE YOUNG AND OLD CHKISTIAN. " The good will of Him that dwelt in the bush."— Deut. XXXIII. 16. Moses had been young and now was old. These words are... more » taken from his benediction, which he pronounced upon the children of Israel as he stood with them on the borders of the promised land. There is something very touching in the reminiscence. The long journey through the desert is over. He has done God's work nobly and successfully. Well may he be proud of this people that he has led up to the threshold of their inheritance. But now his mind is running backward. This crowning of his mission with clear success reminds him of the time when his mission started out in mystery and weakness. He sees again a bush which lie once saw by a wayside. He is a young man again, a shepherd keeping his father-in-law's nock on the back side of the desert, by Mount Horeb. He sees once more the bush on fire. He draws near again with unshod feet, and once more in his aged ears he hears the voice out of the bush commissioning him for the great work of his life. With that impulse which I suppose we all have felt, that brings up at the close of any work the freshened memory of its beginning, this old man sees the burning bush again as he saw it years before, only with deeper understanding of its meaning.and a completer sense of the love of God which it involved. He looks into the past, and all the mercy that had come in between, — all the miraculous food, and the wonderful victories, and the parted waters, and the constant guidance, — he sees now were all certainly involved in that first summons of God which he had once obeyed so blindly; and when he wants to give his people the benediction that represents to him the most complete and comprehensive love, it is touching to hear the old man go back a...« less