"Not of the blood," though they were Englishmen: "nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man", and yet the Myalls, Eneas, Jonas, George and Edward, stand in memory as NOBLE MEN. In the days of their activity, their motto seemed to be: "We will do more than any others". Of these four men two—Jonas at May's Lick, and Edward, at Maysville, Kentucky—still live, and they are my witnesses. Eneas and Jonas Myall were blacksmiths; and they shod one hundred mules in a day, at a time when mules were driven overland to market! Energy, perseverance, generosity characterized these men—each in his own way.—Remembrance of them has been with me and has been presented to the young men in many lands and on both sides of the earth.
Of Eneas Myall Longfellow's words in "THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH" are true in almost every line.
If money was to be raised for benevolent purposes Eneas Myall was the one to secure it; for he headed the list with a liberal offering, and while others did the talking, he did the work. He was more eloquent in deed than they were in speech: hence May's Lick church was in the lead of all churches in that part of the country in expenditures at home and abroad. As a deacon in the church he was well nigh perfection. I have never seen a better.
His constancy made him great in usefulness. For more than sixty years he led the songs in the May's Lick church. For a period of twenty years he was never known to be absent from the meeting on Lord's day morning and night and the Wednesday night prayer meeting except on one occasion, when he went to Paris to see his sick brother. His best singing was done, as it seems, on occasions when the boy, his protege, was in the pulpit. Such singing is seldom heard now-a-days as was heard when these men, Ed., George, Jonas and Eneas Myall sang together with Eneas to lead. There was only one occasion, as I remember, when Eneas Myall could not sing, and that was the morning when my father came forward to confess his faith in Jesus. He wept for joy; but could not talk—could not sing. The circumstances seemed to me to magnify his sincerity; for it was just at the close of the war. Eneas Myall was of strong prejudice, and he was opposed to my father politically, but the welcome he extended seemed to say: we differ out yonder in the world where political troubles are, and war rages; but here, in the church, there is peace, and we have fellowship. When I took my father down into the water to bury him with Christ in baptism, Eneas Myall had recovered himself so as to sing:
"How happy are they, who their Savior obey."
It is not strange that a man possessed of such firmness, such perseverance and such energy should become wealthy. His earnings increased: He sowed with an unsparing hand, and he reaped bountifully. Wealth did not make him proud nor dry up the fountain of his generosity. He seemed never so happy as when he was dividing what he possessed with his friends. When he and his good wife, "aunt Sallie" would spread the banquet, and he would gather all the preachers he could find and those who loved such company to his house, and around the table where he presided, what a feast for body and soul was there! What preacher who has ever been at May's Lick does not remember Eneas Myall and his family? He has gone; and shall we ever see his like again? Before him across the silent river had passed his faithful wife and the elders of the May's Lick church, as nearly models, as mortals could be expected to be, of what the Scriptures say of bishops, elders, pastors. What a church that was! over which Aaron Mitchell, Waller Small and Benjamin James presided, and taught by precept and example and led and protected, in those days when Walter Scott did the preaching and Eneas Myall led in song!
MY SHEEP.
(Page 272.)
"A sheep can never become a goat!" True of the woolly quadruped but this fact is no reply to my sermon; for the Savior was not talking about animals. He meant people when he said "My sheep hear my voice and follow me". That is what sheep (animals) do; hence people who hear his voice and follow him he calls his sheep; and says "they shall never perish". Who? His sheep; that is, people who hear his voice and follow him. If they should cease to hear his voice and follow they would cease to be his sheep and the Savior did not say of such, "they shall never perish."
But were they his sheep before they heard his voice.