Part 8 (1/2)
”Very often we read some very curious things. The manufacturer of one of the well-known breakfast foods, has placed this strange statement on the outside of each of the packages: 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.' It seems impossible to do this, and the writer of the words probably had an entirely different way of explaining how he would do it from the way we will demonstrate it here on the drawing paper today. Let us suppose that we make the statement that we can tell what a man is if we know what he eats. All right, then, here is a case: There is a certain man who eats three meals a day out of a dish shaped something like this: [Draw lines representing Step 1 of Fig. 37.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 37] [Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 38]
”And then, let us suppose that the food he eats is heaped up like this: [Add lines to change the drawing to Step 2.]
”Now, what do you think this food is? Ice cream? Ah, no, because when I tell you that this is steam rising from the food you will know it isn't ice cream: [Add lines to change the drawing to Step 3.]
”But you will begin to see what it is when I tell you that these two lines represent chopsticks: [Add lines to change the drawing to Step 5.] What is it? Rice? Yes, it is rice, and we will label it in this way. [Add the letters, to change the drawing to Step 5.]
”And now, having found out what the man eats, let us see if we can find out who he is. [Remove the sheet from the drawing board, hold it up and turn it over, exposing Fig. 38 to the audience. With the attention thus centered upon your work, the boys and girls will listen with eagerness to whatever else you may have for them.]
”And so, I tell you of another thing that we can do.
”Listen! Tell me what a boy thinks about, and I will tell you what kind of a man he will grow up to be.
”The man who swears, thought of bad things and used bad words when he was a boy. The man who is a thief thought about dishonest things when he was a boy. The man who is happy and who finds it his delight to do good, formed the habit of thinking and doing good things when he was a boy. The man who loves his work learned to like to work when he was a boy.
”And it is work that I want to speak about today.
”There is no place in the world for a lazy boy or girl. n.o.body wants them. Boys who hate to work are the kind that loaf around poolrooms and pollute the air with vile cigarette smoke and language which bespeaks an empty mind and a corrupt heart.
”As Jesus is our great example in every way, He stands out strongly as our example of how a workman should delight in his employment. We should first find the thing which G.o.d intends that we shall do, for we are all fitted to do some things better than others, and we should then put forth our best efforts to learn to do that one thing as well as we can. We must center our thoughts upon the things we want to do. Life will then become a delight, because the world is always crying for workers who know how to do their work. The other kind is always to be found but never wanted. The demand is for the ones who know how. It is a significant fact that the first recorded words of Jesus Christ are, 'Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?' This makes of Jesus a _Business boy_, and it was G.o.d's work he began so soon.
”Gladstone, an inspiring example of the true workman, says, 'The thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.'
”The happiest people in the world are those who are busy at something worth while, and the most miserable are those who are in idleness for lack of ambition or else are engaged in work which they themselves loathe because of its baseness.”
THE DOORWAY --Easter --Death
The Resurrection of Christ the Hope of the World--An Easter Thought.
THE LESSON--That death is but the doorway between the earthly life and the heavenly life of the believer.
There is no new thought or theory concerning the dead in Christ. The most profound thinkers of the ages consider death as the entrance to a future life. The ill.u.s.tration here presented has been employed in various forms, but is given with the hope that it may, at Easter, help someone to a clearer conception of the reward which awaits the faithful.
~~The Talk.~~
”James Russell Lowell, dwelling upon the darkness of the cloud of sorrow which death brings into the home, wrote:
”'Console, if you will, I can bear it, 'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other than Death!'
”How true! And G.o.d intended it should be so. Surely, it is His desire that we should love to live in the earth which He has given us. Surely, it is His desire that we should love those who are about us, and that we should mourn when the earthly parting comes. And yet, 'it is impossible,' as Jonathan Swift has said, 'that anything so natural, so necessary and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.' With this thought, we may lift our faces once more, and as we dry our tears, forget the problems, the sorrows and the triumphs of earth as we ask ourselves the question, 'What shall _we_ be in the coming ages?' Compared with this question, all others sink into insignificance. Science, discovery, commercial achievement, social problems, the rise and fall of nations--all come to us and claim attention, but we brush them aside as we repeat, with pa.s.sionate earnestness: What shall _we_ be--_we, ourselves_--in the coming time?
”No matter how long we ask the question, no matter how earnestly we seek the solution, we shall not be satisfied with an answer, for G.o.d has not intended that we should know. The Apostle John, 'whom Jesus loved,' admits that 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be.'
”Does it mean, then, that we should look ahead, and see nothing before us but the grave--the end of all? [Draw the grave, the headstone, and the word, ”Death,” with black, completing Fig. 39.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 39]