38 Sermon Illustrations on Providence Care

Two young men, one a Christian and the other a sceptic, travelling through Switzerland, walked along the brow of a steep cliff, conversing of the providence of God. "I should not be willing to live another day," said the Christian earnestly, "if I could not believe that the Almighty directed my steps. I have no anxiety; for I trust his unerring guidance. No circumstance is too trifling for his control." The other replied, "I can control myself. See here!" And he paused to roll a stone down the precipice. "Did the Lord direct that pebble? See this lonely tree standing so near the edge! Do you suppose God ordained it should grow just in that spot? Some traveller threw the seed. Did the Almighty declare just where it should fall, and take root?" He threw one arm around a limb of the tree, and leaned against the trunk for his companion to reply. The soil began to crumble; and, before he could move, that part of the bank had fallen upon the rocks below. Only his arm around the tree, and one foot upon the stone, where it partly rested, saved his life. For an instant, both travellers stood motionless. Then the Christian fell on his knees in prayer. The sceptic came, and reverently knelt beside him. Silently they arose, and resumed their journey. God himself had spoken to the soul of the sceptic. He became a humble Christian, and a minister of the gospel. Tewksbury.

A person in Holland, who had made a considerable fortune in Philadelphia, as a butcher, went on board a ship from Amsterdam, which carried a number of German Redemptioners,* for the purpose of purchasing one to assist him in his business.

After examining the countenances of several of the passengers, without being able to please himself, his attention was arrested by the tranquil and composed countenance of a man advanced in years, but with much appearance of strength and activity.

Not less pleased with the tenor of the conversation of his fellow countryman, than with his exterior, he described the purpose for which he wanted a servant, and obtained the man's consent to purchase his indentures, providing he would also purchase those of his wife, who had accompanied him.

The parties then went ashore to complete the business, attended by the captain; and upon the names of the persons being mentioned, to insert them in the writings, they were found to be the name of the purchaser's father and mother: and, upon further inquiries,

* A redemptioner is a person who engages to article himself, by indenture, for an agreed number of years, to some one who may want him, on his arrival in America; and the captain receives the sum paid for the services of the individual so articled, as passage and subsistence money. he ascertained them to be, in fact, his father and mother, the latter declaring, that if he was their son, he had a remarkable mole upon his left arm, which proved to be the case.

Nothing could surpass the joy of all parties. The providence of God had snatched the venerable pair from poverty and servitude, and conducted them to plenty and independence, under the protection of an affectionate son.

He, it appeared, had run away from his parents when quite a boy, and, from the continual wars in Europe, neither party had heard of the other since that period.

The structural provisions of the living organism are not built on the principle of economy. On the contrary, the superabundance of tissues and mechanisms indicates clearly that safety is the goal of the animal organism. We may safely state that the living animal organism is provided in its structures with factors of safety at least as abundantly as any human-made machine.

The moral drawn from these facts is that to govern the supply of tissue and energy by means of food, nature indicates for us the same principle of affluence which controls the entire construction of the animal for the safety of its life and the perpetuation of its species. In other words, we should eat not just enough to preserve life, but a good deal more. In such cases safety is more important than economy.--S. J. MELTZER, _Science_.

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The water-hyacinth is a beautiful thing, so beautiful that some years ago an enterprising gentleman decided to introduce it in Florida. As it turned out, he not only introduced it, but he made it a part of the country. It has outgrown all bounds, formed impassible barriers in streams, caused the Government to spend thousands to get rid of it, and is still an impediment to navigation in many rivers all over the South.

The situation has become so serious in Louisiana that it is proposed to import hippopotami. At first thought, few will be able to see any relation between hippopotami and water-hyacinths, yet there is. In fact, the ordinary hippopotamus eats water-hyacinth from morning until night if he can get it. It is evident, therefore, that were there plenty of hippopotami in Louisiana there would soon be no water-hyacinth. It is for this reason that the Government will be asked to import the beasts, domesticate them, and turn them loose in Louisiana.

The hippopotamus is not a dangerous brute--altho Mr. Roosevelt has taken much credit to himself for having killed some of them--his flesh makes excellent steaks, particularly if he has fed on water-hyacinth, and he is altogether a desirable creature to have about, we are told. We trust that the Government will act quickly in this matter. Perhaps in addition to being fond of water-hyacinth the hippopotamus may also have an appetite for the boll-weevil. Let Louisiana have the beasts by all means.--_Charleston News and Courier._

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Mongolian wolves are not so dangerous as Siberian ones. The reason is that, unlike the Russians, the Mongols keep such poor sheepfolds that a wolf can help itself to a sheep whenever it likes, and so is seldom driven by hunger to attack a man.--JOHN C. LAMBERT, “Missionary Heroes in Asia.”

Blotting-paper was discovered purely by accident. Some ordinary paper was being made one day at a mill in Berkshire when a careless workman forgot to put in the sizing material. It may be imagined what angry scenes would take place in that mill, as the whole of the paper made was regarded as being quite useless. The proprietor of the mill desired to write a note shortly afterward, and he took a piece of waste paper, thinking it was good enough for the purpose. To his intense annoyance, the ink spread all over the paper. All of a sudden there flashed over his mind the thought that this paper would do instead of sand for drying ink, and he at once advertised his waste paper as “blotting.”

There was such a big demand that the mill ceased to make ordinary paper and was soon occupied making blotting only, the use of which spread to all countries. The result now is that the descendant of the discoverer owns the largest mills in the world for the manufacture of the special kind of paper. The reason the paper is of use in drying ink is that really it is a mass of hair-like tubes, which suck up liquid by capillary attraction. If a very fine glass tube is put into water the liquid will rise in it owing to capillary attraction. The art of manufacturing blotting-paper has been carried to such a degree that the product has wonderful absorbent qualities.--Boston _Herald_.

We know that an extremely severe medical examination is imposed upon immigrants to the United States, and that entrance into this country is pitilessly denied to those who seem even merely puny and sickly. The result of this examination is that the ocean transportation companies must return to their countries, at their own cost, rejected immigrants. To avoid this expense, the companies of the various countries have decided to take all the precautions necessary for protecting the health of their passengers. Thus, at Hamburg a company has had great halls built to shelter emigrants during their stay in the port before their embarkation; and, the results having been favorably recognized, they are going to build booths, capable of containing each 120 beds, arranged in accordance with the rules of up-to-date hygiene, each group of four booths to be provided with a special booth fitted up as a laundry, with vapor-baths, etc. We know, on the other hand, that the establishment of sanatoriums for consumptives had its origin in Germany in similar anxieties on the part of the insurance companies. Thus it is that the care of the pocketbook is still the surest motive power of social progress. (Text.)

See PREVISION.

FORESIGHT IN BIRDS

Some red-headed woodpeckers in South Dakota, preferring their meat fresh, evolved a way to keep it so which compares favorably with the “cold storage” of man. One bird stored nearly one hundred grasshoppers in a long crack in a post. All were living when discovered, but so tightly wedged that they could not escape, and during the long winter of that region it is to be presumed the prudent bird had his provision. The observer found other places of storage full of grasshoppers, and discovered that the red-heads lived upon them nearly all winter.--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our Brother.”

Traversing Thrace is a wonderful river flowing west and south toward the Egean Sea, named the Tearus. It is said to come from thirty-eight springs, all issuing from the same rock, some hot and some cold. The waters so mingling are pure, limpid and delicious, and are possest of remarkable medicinal properties, being efficacious for the cure of various diseases. Darius was so much pleased with this river that his army halted on its march to refresh itself with its waters. And a monument was erected at the spot as a memorial of the march, and also as a tribute to the salubrity of the waters of this magical stream. (Text.)

In a district of Glasgow where the death-rate used to be forty in a thousand, sanitation has brought it down to twenty-eight, and it has been brought down to seventeen or eighteen in some parts of London. Boston reduced its death-rate from thirty-one to twenty, and Croydon, Eng., from twenty-eight to thirteen. Even the friction-match has had its share in prolonging life. “Doubtless many a fatal pneumonia and pleurisy has been contracted when the luckless householder’s lire had died out overnight, and he was struggling with flint, steel and tinderbox.” In London during the last century nearly two hundred thousand persons perished of smallpox. Macaulay says that a person without a pitted face was the exception. But, thanks largely to vaccination, in a recent year there were only fourteen cases of smallpox among New York’s inhabitants, and in the German army, where vaccination is compulsory, the dread disease has been eradicated. The production of pure water by distillation has done much to abolish alimentary diseases among sailors at sea, and lime-juice defends them from scurvy. When the first emigrant ships went out to Australia, one-third of the passengers perished on the voyage, but when the ship-owners were forced to alter their terms and receive pay only for those they landed safely, the death-rate became smaller than when these same persons were living upon shore. In Queen Elizabeth’s time, one in two thousand of her London subjects was murdered annually. At the same rate there would be 2,500 murders every year in London now, whereas the number is no more than twelve. This is what the lighter street and a more efficient police have done for the British metropolis. Facts like these are a most wholesome and agreeable corrective for the lament over the departure of the “good old times,” so much affected by the cynic and the pessimist.--Boston _Journal_.

I had an experience a while ago on a Chautauqua platform that I never shall forget.

It was a very large assembly, and it was held in a place where I had never been before, and where I had no old friends on hand to serve as “claqueurs.” I discovered very soon after beginning my lecture that for some unaccountable reason I was not _en rapport_ with my audience, who listened to me, as it were, out of the corners of their eyes and with half-averted faces.

I felt instinctively that that lecture was foredoomed to failure unless in some way Providence interposed for my deliverance.

Well, Providence did; for presently a big dog entered the auditorium, and gazed wistfully about him. Then, facing the platform and seeing me hard at work, he compassionately concluded to come up and help me. And on he came, straight up the aisle, and climbed the platform steps, while everybody watched him.

He walked around me, sized me up, and then deliberately planted himself in front of me, sat down, and pricked up his ears like a pulpit committee listening to a candidate.

I ceased addressing the audience, and, turning to the dog, I said: “I am delighted to welcome you to this platform. I have been anxiously waiting for you, and had begun to fear that you would not be here. You have come to the kingdom for just this time, and I am happy to discover that in this large and evidently critical audience I have at last found one hearer who has sense enough to appreciate a good thing when he hears it.”

The dog seemed to understand that he was addrest; and so he howled, and then the people howled, and I went on howling. The dog went his way without ever knowing that he saved my life that day.--P. S. HENSON, _Christian Endeavor World_.

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Grant planned, but a power unseen disposed. It was his firm purpose not to remain in the army. He could not warm up to the profession of arms. He saw nothing in it for one of his temperament and bent of mind. So he resolved to prepare himself for the chair of mathematics in some college, preferably a professorship in the military academy. He wrote a letter to Professor Church, at West Point, asking to become his assistant when the next detail should be made. The answer was satisfactory, and the lieutenant was hopeful. He began to review his West Point course, but this was as far as he ever got toward the goal of his ambition. As the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the course of events defeated all his cherished plans to escape an army life. The trouble with Mexico began before Professor Church saw an opportunity to give the lieutenant an assistant professorship, and his hope of ever being ordered to the academy vanished forever.--NICHOLAS SMITH, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

See MEDICAL MISSIONS.

RESOURCES, EXHAUSTED

No life is self-sustained. For the individual and the nation, isolation means death. If the resources by which life is sustained were not furnished by others we should soon be at the end of our career.

Charles Francis Adams, the historian and publicist, of Boston, Mass., in his address at Lexington, Va., on January 19, 1907, at the centennial celebration of General Lee’s birth, told the throng of Southerners, there in the shadow of Lee’s old home, that the Confederacy was beaten in the markets of the world, that the economic laws held it in an iron grip, that if 100,000 men could have been sent to reenforce Lee, in the last days of the war, his condition would have been worse than before, as even their meager food-supply would only the sooner have been exhausted. With the South depleted of food by the four years’ of conflict, with the markets of the world closed to her, and no source of subsistence open to her armies, valor and devotion could count for only little.

This consideration enters largely into England’s determination to keep her navy stronger than those of any other two powers. So much of her food-supply comes from abroad that she must maintain control of the ocean routes of trade.

For the first time in the history of transatlantic travel, people were able to leave London on Saturday and Queenstown on Sunday, and eat dinner in New York on Thursday night (September 2, 1909). The six-day boat set the early records more than twenty-five years ago. The five-day boat came along ten years later. Friday landings in New York have been common ever since the christening days of _Lucania_ and _Campania_, fifteen years ago. Now the four-day boat is a fact.

The remarkable speed made by the _Lusitania_ was attributed to the effect of the new propellers, which were fitted to the four turbine shafts in July.

The story is told of a tramp who came to a certain valley, which was inundated by a freshet in a river. There was a great demand for help to carry persons and property in boats to a place of safety. The tramp threw down the bundle, which contained all he had in the world, and declared: “This is my harvest.” He demanded ten dollars a day, and went to work at that rate. This was true philosophy. He kept out of the labor market until the “conjuncture” of supply and demand was all on his side, and then he went in.--Prof. WILLIAM G. SUMNER, _The Independent_.

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Petroleum and natural gas, which are supplements to coal, are subjected to wanton waste. Natural gas is now being wasted at the rate of a billion cubic feet a day, by being blown into the air. In Louisiana great spouting wells of gas are burning in the open atmosphere, doing no good whatever to anybody. It is estimated that there are thus consumed in that State alone seventy million cubic feet per day, more than enough to supply Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Pittsburg.

If the present rate of increase of exploitation of highgrade iron-ore continues, the supply will not last more than fifty years. In the not distant future it is certain that we shall be obliged to turn to the lower grade ores, of which the quantity is vastly greater, but the smelting of these ores will make a much heavier draft upon our coal supply.

Like coal and iron, the output of copper and zinc has more than doubled during recent decades, and the product of the past ten years is greater than the entire previous history of exploitation of these metals in this country.

Each year, not considering loss by fire, we are consuming three and one-half times as much wood as is grown. It is estimated that we allow twenty million acres of forest to be burned over annually. Of the timber we take, from one-fourth to one-half is lost by our wasteful methods of cutting and manufacture. Already within a little more than a century of the life of this nation approximately one-half of our forest products are gone. Our system of taxation of forests encourages rapid cutting rather than conservation. We must reform our tax laws concerning forest products; we must eliminate forest fires; we must use economically the wood cut; we must reduce the total amount used per capita until the growth of one year is equal to the consumption of that year.

Our water resources, including water for domestic purposes, for irrigation, for navigation, for power, are enormous. As yet they have been only very partially utilized. Fortunately, the water continues in undiminished quantities, being ever withdrawn from the ocean through the power of the sun, and ever falling upon the land. It is a perpetual resource.--_Collier’s Weekly._

It is hardly conceivable that the economic waste represented by the neglect of the marine forests and gardens will be much longer continued. The only vegetation that exists upon two-thirds of the superficial area of the earth is seaweed. This vegetation ought to contribute to the support of the population of the land surface of the globe to such an extent that the question of food supply--the nightmare of scientific inquirers into the probable future of civilization and of the human race--need worry no one. (Text.)--_The Technical World Magazine._

There are some occupations that ought to be salvatory to those that engage in them, as that of the physician or the minister. Yet all occupations may so serve, if the man who works in them thus determines. As an instance of service salvatory to the worker, an English writer refers to the immunity from disease of those who work in the oil-fields:

There is no difficulty in accounting for this. Carbolic acid, one of the most powerful of our disinfectants, is abundantly produced in the oilworks, and this is carried by the clothes of the men, and with the fumes of the oil into the dwellings of the workmen and through all the atmosphere of the neighborhood, and has thereby counteracted some of the most deadly agencies of organic poisons. Besides this, the paraffin oil itself is a good disinfectant.

Is not the remedy for many evils to be found by allowing one destructive force to overcome another? God so makes “the wrath of man to praise him.”

One day a very small orange-tree was taken out of the ground in Australia and sent with many others across the ocean to California. On this small tree there were a few white insects. The little tree was planted again in California and soon put out many fresh, fragrant leaves. The white insects were astonished and rejoiced that day after day went by without the appearance of any red beetles. The white insects increased in numbers; there were thousands of fragrant-leaved orange-trees in California, and in a few years there were millions of white insects in them. One morning a man stood among the trees and said, “Confound these bugs; they’ll ruin me; what shall I do?” and a man who knew said, “Get some red beetles from Australia.” So this orange-grower, with some others, paid a man to go to Australia and collect some live red beetles. The collector went across the ocean, three weeks’ steady steaming, and sent back a few of the voracious little beetles in a pill-box. They were put into a tree in a California orange-orchard in which there were many cottony-cushion scale insects. The red insects promptly began eating the white ones; and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren have kept up this eating ever since. And so the orange-growers never tire of telling how the red beetles (whose name is _Vedalia_) were brought from Australia to save them from ruin by the white insects (whose name is _Icerya_).--VERNON L. KELLOGG, “Insect Stories.”