51. All Have Sinned
All Have Sinned
NOTHING BUT WHALES.—A sea-captain came to a mission-station on the Pacific; and the missionary talked with him upon religious subjects. The captain said, “I came away from Nantucket after whales; I have sailed round Cape Horn for whales; I am now up in the Pacific after whales. I think of nothing but whales. I fear your labor would be entirely lost upon me, and I ought to be honest with you. I care for nothing, by day, but whales, and I dream of them by night. If you should open my heart, I think you would find the shape of a whale there.”
SMALLPOX REVEALED.—A lady went to the photographer’s for the purpose of having a picture taken. After she had sat for it in the usual way, the photographer retired with the plate to examine it, but as the lines gradually developed in the chemical bath, a strange sight was revealed. In the portrait the lady’s face appeared covered with a number of dark spots; but yet no one looking at her that day was able to detect the slightest trace of them in her face! But the next day the explanation came. The spots had then become distinctly visible. The lady was ill of smallpox, of which she died. The faint yellow of the spots, some time before human eyes could discern it, had been marked by the pure light of the sun, and traced in darkened spots on the photographic plate, revealing the disease that already, though as yet invisible to human eyes, was there.
CRIMINAL AS THOUGHTS.—If a man covets, he steals. If a man has murderous hate, he murders. If a man broods dishonest thoughts, he is a thief. If a man harbors sharp and bitter jealousies, envies, hatreds, though he never express them by his tongue, or shape them by his hand, they are there. There are many good-seeming men, who, if all their day’s thoughts and feelings were to be developed into acts visible to the eye, would run from themselves.
MURDERED BRIDEGROOM.—There was a man who committed a murder in a Scottish castle upon a young bridegroom, at whose - marriage festivities he had hypocritically assisted. The assassin took horse in the dead of night and fled for his life through wood and winding path. When the sun dawned he slackened his pace and behold! he was emerging from a thicket in front of the very castle whence he had fled, and to which, by tortuous paths, he had returned. Horror seized Mm; he was discovered, and condemned to death.
SAVED HIS FATHER.—A regiment in the Austrian army was guilty of mutiny. They did not wish to inflict the penalty of death upon the whole regiment, so decided that one man in every ten should be shot. There was a father and a son. The son knew he could be spared better than his father. He was so anxious that he watched the officer, and saw that the lot would fall upon his father. As the officer came nearer, the son stood behind his father and pushed him into his own place, and took the place of death himself.
DIVER SAVED.—A diver observed at the bottom of the sea an oyster on a rock, with a piece of paper in its mouth, which he detached, and commenced to read through the goggles of his head-dress. It was a gospel tract, and, coming to him thus strangely and unexpectedly, so impressed his unconverted heart that he said, “I can hold out against God’s mercy in Christ no longer, since it pursues me thus.” He became, in the ocean’s depth, a repentant, sin-forgiven man.