his minister appeared, who said: "Sandy, why stand ye glowering there? Why don't ye gae in?" "I can't; I am too large, and my pocketbook sticks out whichever way I turn." "Sandy," replied the minister, "think how mean ye have been to the Lord's poor, and ye will be small enough to go through the eye of a needle." Sandy awoke, and began to reduce both his pocketbook and his meanness by generously lifting forward the cause of his Lord.
We may depend upon it that it is
the lifters and not the leaners who have
the joy, and the peace, and the triumph
of the Christian life.—Louis Albert
Banks.
(1829)
LIGHT
The traveler to the heavenly country will often set in contrast to the conditions described below, the time and scene in which "they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light" and "the Lamb is the light thereof."
In any large city the small hours of the
night, while most people are asleep, is the
time when the bread is made and baked, the
great newspapers printed, the food products,
such as milk and vegetables, prepared and
brought into the city. If we were obliged
to dispense with our modern systems of
illumination the world would be set back
in its civilization beyond our power to
imagine.
(1830)
Jesus stated long ago the philosophy of the paragraph below when He said "Neither cometh to the light lest their evil deeds should be reproved" and "men love darkness . . . because their deeds are evil."
The municipality had better take the cue,
less light, more crime, more light, less crime.
There are still dark spots to be found at
night within the city limits where a few
powerful arcs would wield an immediate
influence. It is easy to see that arc-lights
are cheaper than police officers and a brightly
lit city the greatest imaginable offset to
criminality in any stage or form. (Text.)—Electricity.
(1831)
An English writer has this to say
about the phosphorescent light cast by
the sea-fish called the smelt:
Anybody desirous of seeing the sort of
light which it emits may do so very easily
by purchasing an unwashed smelt from the
fish-monger, and allowing it to dry with its
natural slime upon it, then looking at it in
the dark. A sole or almost any other fish
will answer the purpose, but I name the
smelt from having found it the most reliable
in the course of my own experiments.
It emits a dull, ghostly light, with very little
penetrating power, which shows the shape
of the fish, but casts no perceptible light on
objects around.
Here the light is so dim that it gives
no illumination beyond outlining the
fish. Many men are like that. They
have a little light, but it never shines
beyond themselves. It merely outlines
their own lives and sometimes scarcely
that. (Text.)
(1832)
It has been a long stride forward from producing light and heat by means of flint to producing it by matches. What would civilization do without matches? Few realize the immense labor, capital and material used to produce this tiny article of commerce. As a matter of fact, thousands of men are employed, millions of dollars invested and vast forests cut down to meet the demand in America of 700,000,000,000 a year. One plant alone on the Pacific coast covers 240 acres and uses 200,000 feet of sugar-pine and yellow-pine logs in a day. The odds and ends will not do. A constant search is in progress for large forests of perfect trees to meet the future need.
If such labor and pains are necessary to keep at hand the means of lighting that which at best is only a temporary flame, what should measure our diligence to keep our spiritual light burning? (Text.)
(1833)
See Shining as Lamps.
LIGHT AFTER NIGHT
Mary Elliot interprets the moral cheer of recurring dawn in these musical lines:
Dawn of the red, red sun in a bleak, abandoned sky
That the moon has lately left and the stars are fast forsaking—
