Part 30 (2/2)

How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I can see about 3,000; with opera gla.s.ses I could see 30,000.

The late Franklin Adams photographed the whole canopy with 206 photographs. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and gives the conclusion that there are 1,600,000,000 stars, and that number is just about the number of humans on this earth. So then there is one star for each of us.

Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth.

Many have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that have pa.s.sed out of existence.

Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries and then tell me that one little man, on one little star we call earth, has a strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow creed, is all sufficient, and that he can give me and you and them definite rules and patterns for our belief.

Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can by experience and tests prove two and two make four. We can by practice and experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer and courage bring happiness.

These are tangible things; but when one wee Willie with sober face tells you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of G.o.d's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000 stars each with 1,600,000,000 humans and of the unnumbered generations gone by, and say, verily we must live TODAY and do the best we can today in act and thought and word.

Yesterday is dead, tomorrow is unknown; where we have been, where we will be, we know not. Where we are today we know, and G.o.d in His great plan knows only the final answer as to our future estate.

He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule for our beliefs.

Those stars testify to the certainty of G.o.d, and I believe in Him.

LEADERS

Are Ever Subject to Backbiters

When a man by his brains or by fortunate combination or circ.u.mstances arises to a position of prominence he becomes a target for the envious and a pattern for the imitator.

Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or doer of things.

The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told about him.

When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious few.

If he does a mediocre thing he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.

Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was p.r.o.nounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his s.h.i.+p on the eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has pa.s.sed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world until its end will enjoy Wagner's music, Whistler and Millet's painting will attract artists from all over the world, and inventors will reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.

The leader is a.s.sailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness.

Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader they seek to belittle him.

But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader; he had made his genius and the creature of his hopes and brains known to the world.

Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure.

<script>