are like the animals, and how in other respects we are very unlike them.
To illustrate what I desire to say I have brought this small turtle
shell. From the way that some boys treat flies and bugs, and birds, cats
and dogs and all kinds of animals you would suppose that many boys and
some girls think that animals have no feeling. Boys who have never
suffered any bodily pain themselves, oftentimes act as though they
thought that animals could not suffer pain, but in this they are greatly
mistaken. Animals can and do suffer pain, the same as people suffer
pain, and in order to defend them against their enemies God has provided
these creatures of His hand with some means of protecting themselves.
The birds can fly away. Some animals, like foxes, have holes in the
ground where they can hide. Others, like the squirrel, hide in the
hollow trees. Bees can sting. Some cattle have horns for defence, and
some others, which are not as capable of defending themselves against
the stronger animals, God has marvellously provided with two stomachs.
The cow goes out in the field and crops off the grass rapidly and can
then go to a place of shelter and lie down, and there, protected from
the attack of wild beasts, chew what she has gathered. This is known in
the country as chewing the cud. The same is true with sheep; they also
bite off the grass and swallow it quickly. It passes into a first
stomach and then they can lie down in some quiet place and chew the cud;
or in other words chew that which they have hastily bitten off in the
fields.
[Illustration: The Turtle.]
Now the turtle cannot escape from his enemies because he cannot run very
rapidly, and so God has covered him with a coat of mail and given him a
helmet, a hard, bony covering for the head and this large bony covering
for his body, which we can very properly call his house. When danger
approaches, the turtle quickly draws his head and his feet into this
large shell, and is quite safe from the attack of his enemies. Whatever
animal might desire to eat the turtle is prevented on account of this
hard outer shell. On this lower part you will notice how the turtle can
draw the front portion up more closely, and thus the more securely shut
himself within his house. So you see how God has provided all the
animals with a means of protection and defense, first, to protect their
lives, and secondly, to save them from pain and suffering.
While God has thus successfully protected them against other animals,
they are not protected against the superior intelligence and ingenuity
of man. The birds can fly faster than the man can run, but man can shoot
the bird with an arrow or with a rifle. So with all the other animals.
Now God has made it right for us to kill animals for food, but it is
very wrong for us to destroy animals for the simple pleasure of taking
life, and it is also very wicked to inflict pain unnecessarily upon any
of the animals.
I want to tell you about a boy who was once strolling through the fields
with his sister. They found a nest of rabbits. The sister was charmed
with the beautiful nest itself and with its living occupants, but the
boy teased them, mimicking their squeaks and their struggles. In vain
his sister plead with him not to hurt these pretty little creatures, but
the wicked boy flung them up into the air one by one and shouted when
each fell dead upon the stones. Ten years after the sister sat weeping
again by that boy's side. He was in chains, sentenced to be hanged for
shooting a farmer who was hunting in a neighbor's field. They were
waiting for the awful procession to knock at the cell door. "Sister," he
said, "do you remember the nest of rabbits ten years ago; how you begged
and prayed, and how I ridiculed? I verily believe that from that day God
forsook me, and left me to follow my own inclinations. If I had yielded
to your tears then, you and I would not be weeping these bitter tears
now."
You see how it is that boys who have no regard for the suffering, or the
preservation of the life of animals are likely to inflict pain and even
to take the lives of people.
But I want to call your attention to another respect in which we are
like the animals, or perhaps, more correctly, in which the animals are
like us. The forms of most all animals have some resemblance to each
other, and all are somewhat in form like man. If you take the bird, his
wings correspond to our arms, his legs and feet are somewhat like ours,
only his toes are longer, and the nails are slightly different in form.
If you will take the horse you will see that his neck is longer than
ours, that his front legs correspond to our arms, and if you take your
fingers and press them together you will see how, if you were to study
the anatomy of the horse's foot carefully, it resembles the bones in
our hands, and the bony foot of the horse corresponds to the nails on
the ends of our fingers, only that in the case of the horse the nails
are all in one, forming the hoof, to which the blacksmith nails the
shoe. The horse's hoof, however, is not solid as you might think, but
only a shell, the same as the nails on the ends of our fingers.
[Illustration: Birds.]
Now if you were to take the turtle that lives in this shell or house you
would find that he also has four legs, the front legs corresponding to
our arms, and his hind legs corresponding to our legs and feet. On the
end of each of his feet he has nails, the same as you and I have at the
extremities of our hands and feet. But I am sure you would say that the
turtle was very much unlike us, in that he has such a hard shell of a
house which he carries about with him. But if you will feel of your
hands you will discover that you have bones inside of your hands. So you
have bones in your arms and all through your body. These bones of your
body are covered with flesh, so our bones are _inside_ of us. But with
this turtle almost all of his bones are made into one bone, and that is
on the _outside_ of his body.
Our muscles, with which we move our hands and feet and different
portions of our body, are attached to the bones which are inside of us.
His muscles are attached to the bone which is on the outside of him. So
you see that we are like him, in that both of us have bones, only his
are on the outside while ours are on the inside.
His bone or shell is a covering and a defense. Our bones, on the inside
of us, are so constructed as to enable us to defend ourselves also. God
has given the turtle a house, but He has given us the knowledge and the
skill, so that we can construct our own house. We are created with
capacity to till the earth and to subdue the wild beasts of the forest,
and with our superior intelligence to be king over all the other
creatures which God has created.
Now, there are several lessons which we may learn from what I have said.
God has protected all animals against their foes. He has not fully
protected the animals against us, but He expects us to use our
intelligence and our better nature, to be thoughtful and careful not to
inflict pain even upon the worm or insect which crawls upon the ground
beneath our feet.
While our bodies are somewhat like the bodies of birds and beasts, in
our moral nature we are not like the animals, but like God. We were made
in the moral likeness and image of God. We have intelligence and God has
made us to know right from wrong. The animals have no conscience. Cattle
do not recognize any wrong when they break out of their owner's pasture
and break into a neighbor's cornfield. We do not say that cattle have
sinned, because they know nothing of ownership. They do not know what is
right and what is wrong, and, therefore, are not accountable beings. In
our intellectual, moral and spiritual nature we are superior to
everything else that God has created. We have a moral nature. We know
what is right and what is wrong, and, therefore, we are accountable
beings. God has made us free to follow our own purpose and, therefore,
we are to be held accountable. God has created us not for a few days of
life upon the earth, but He has made us immortal, and if we have faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and accept Him as our Saviour and love and
serve Him upon the earth, our condition in the next world will be one of
great blessing and happiness.
God has given the turtle a house. He has given us intelligence and all
the materials and left us to construct the house in which we are to live
upon this earth. But in heaven He has built our house for us. Jesus
said: "In My Father's house are many mansions." The German translation
has it, "In My Father's house are many homes." "I go to prepare a place
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
Death may be a misfortune to a poor turtle, but not to a Christian man
or woman, or a Christian boy or girl. Death is only the blessed Saviour
coming to take us unto Himself.
QUESTIONS.--Do animals feel pain? Has God provided
for their protection? Does the turtle have bones?
Are your bones on the outside or the inside of
your body? Where are the turtle's bones
principally? How does the turtle protect himself?
Tell the story of the bad boy and the little
rabbits. Are the forms of animals similar to the
form of our bodies? To what part of our body do
the wings of the bird and the front legs of a
horse or cow correspond? Do animals have a moral
nature and a conscience? Are they accountable to
God for their conduct? Are we?
GRASSHOPPER AND ANT.
NEGLIGENCE AND INDUSTRY.
[Illustration: The Royal Exchange, London.]
THE largest city of the world is across the ocean, in England. In the
busiest part of London is a very large building, called the Royal
Exchange. On the top of the pinnacle, or tower, of this large stone
building is a large grasshopper, and the English people have this legend
in reference to it: It is related that some three hundred and
seventy-five years ago, a woman, whose purposes we cannot know, might
have been seen hurrying along a country lane, some distance outside of
the city. Hastening along she came to a gate leading into a field, and
looking in every direction to be sure that no one was near, she took off
her shawl and wrapped it carefully around a little baby which she had
concealed under her arm, and laid it gently by the side of a hedge. And
then turning back to the lane, she soon disappeared in the distance. An
hour or two later a little girl and a rollicking, frolicking boy,
possibly returning from school, were crossing the field. It was in the
later days of summer, when butterflies and grasshoppers abounded. As
this light-hearted boy was whistling along his way, a large grasshopper
bounded across his path, and, true to the instincts of childhood, the
boy started in pursuit of the grasshopper. The chase was only begun when
the grasshopper crossed the fence and landed in a grain field, which in
England is called a corn field. Stooping to catch his prize, the boy
discovered near by what proved to be a bright little baby, fast asleep
in its mother's shawl. Joyful with the prize which they had found, the
boy took it up in his arms, and hastened to his mother, who, although a
farmer's wife, with many cares and several children, resolved to adopt
the little stranger as her own.
[Illustration: Grasshopper.]
Years passed on, and the infant boy grew to be a man of industry and
economy, and finally became one of the richest and most influential men
in the city of London. Queen Elizabeth, who was then upon the throne,
often consulted him, and in after years, as an expression of gratitude
to the great city in which he had accumulated his wealth, and for the
royal favor which had been shown him, he built the Bourse, or what is
called the Royal Exchange, and in recognition of the kind Providence
which had used the grasshopper to lead the steps of the boy to where the
baby was lying in the fields, Sir Thomas Gresham, for that was his name,
placed this large grasshopper in stone, upon the topmost pinnacle of
this Royal Exchange. While I cannot vouch for the historical accuracy of
this legend, yet it beautifully illustrates the truth that God often
uses an humble insect for the accomplishment of His great providences.
Now, I want to tell you something about the grasshopper, and also about
the ant.
The grasshopper is very much like that class of boys who want to have a
good time, play and frolic from day to day, but never go to school or
work, but live for the play and pleasure to be enjoyed each day as it
passes. The grasshopper jumps from place to place across the field,
eating his food wherever he can find it, and then spends his days and
weeks in idleness. He never stops to think that the summer will soon
pass away, the fields will then be barren, the cold autumn will come,
when the fields will be left desolate and covered with snow. So finally
when the autumn comes, he has no food laid up for the winter, but dies
of poverty and hunger. This little poem which I read in the schoolbooks,
when I was a boy, will tell the whole story:
SONG OF THE GRASSHOPPER.
I saw a brown old grasshopper,
And he sat upon a stone,
While ever and anon he chirped
In a sad and mournful tone:
And many an anxious, troubled look
He cast around the naked plain;
Where now was but a stubble field,
Once waved the golden grain.
What ails thee, old brown grasshopper?
His voice was low and faint,
As in the language of his race
He made this dire complaint:
"O! in the long bright summer time
I treasured up no store,
Now the last full sheaf is garnered,
And the harvest days are o'er."
What didst thou, brown old grasshopper,
When the summer days were long?
"I danced on the fragrant clover tops,
With many a merry song;
O! we were a blithesome company,
And a joyous life we led;
But with the flowers and summer hours,
My gay companions fled:
Old age and poverty are come,
The autumn wind is chill,
It whistles through my tattered coat,
And my voice is cracked and shrill.
In a damp and gloomy cavern
Beneath this cold, gray stone,
I must lay me down and perish--
I must perish all alone.
Alas! that in life's golden time
I treasured up no store,
For now the sheaves are gathered in,
And the harvest days are o'er."
He ceased his melancholy wail,
And a tear was in his eye,
As he slowly slid from the cold gray stone,
And laid him down to die.
And then I thought, t'were well if all
In pleasure's idle throng,
Had seen that old brown grasshopper
And heard his dying song:
For life's bright, glowing summer
Is hasting to its close,
And winter's night is coming--
The night of long repose.
O! garner then in reaping time,
A rich, unfailing store,
Ere the summer hours are past and gone,
And the harvest days are o'er!
The little ant is not so foolish. For thousands of years the ant has
always been wise and industrious. In the Book of Proverbs, written over
twenty-five hundred years ago, Solomon tells us in the thirtieth chapter
and twenty-fifth verse: "The ants are a people not strong, yet they
prepare their meat in the summer." And in the sixth chapter, sixth,
seventh and eighth verses he says, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise; which having no guide, overseer, or
ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the
harvest." You have probably noticed the industry, activity and
perseverance of these little ants. They attempt great things. Sometimes
you will see one of these little insects carrying a burden which is
several times larger than its own body. If they come to a stone, or a
log, or some obstacle, over which they must carry their burden, if they
do not succeed the first time, they will try again; and even though they
should fall, or fail as much as a hundred times, they will persevere
until they have accomplished their undertaking. If you watch them, you
will see how rapidly they move. They are not lazy, they do not loiter
along the way, but are always in a hurry. They work with energy and
gather food during the summer, which they lay up for their supply during
the winter. Whatever the little ant can gather, it carries home and lays
up in store, not for itself alone, but all work together, each laboring
for the good and well-being of all the others.
[Illustration: Ants.]
This grasshopper very fittingly represents the feeling and thought which
come into the mind of every boy when he is at first required to work, to
go to school and study, when he is being taught to be industrious and
useful. When the days are pleasant, boys do not like to go to school.
When a pleasant Sunday morning comes in the springtime, they often wish
to stay at home, to go out to the park, or to roam about the fields, and
if most of the boys and girls had their own way about it, in the
beginning, they would live pretty much like the grasshopper. They would
get what pleasure they could out of the days as they pass, grow up in
ignorance and idleness, and in manhood and womanhood find themselves in
poverty and want. I think that pretty much all boys and girls are
naturally lazy, and that feeling can only be cured by being required to
work, being compelled to go to school and study, and being kept
persistently at it from week to week and year to year, until at last
they learn to love to work. If the parents of the grasshopper had not
themselves been lazy and grown up in idleness, they would have taught
the young grasshopper that in the spring and summer he was to look
forward to the wants and needs of the winter. The older ants always
teach the young ants to work, and in that they are very wise.
Perhaps you have seen boys and girls who have learned to work, who are
always very active, who seem always to be busy, but after all accomplish
nothing of any moment in life. If we want to live to some purpose in
this world, we must remember that we should have a purpose worthy of
ourselves, and of the great Father in Heaven who has created us. After a
few months and years the grasshoppers and the ants and all the insects
die, but you and I shall live on forever and ever. These bodies will be
laid away in the grave, but our immortal spirits shall still continue to
live. The stars in heaven which have been shining for thousands and
thousands of years shall eventually grow pale. The sun itself shall
cease to shine, and all the heavens and the universe about us shall be
rolled together as a scroll. But these immortal spirits of yours and
mine shall live on with God throughout all eternity. It is important,
therefore, that our industry and our thought and our labor should not be
for those things which perish with the using; that we should not simply
lay up treasures which we must after a time go away and leave behind us
in this world, but that we should lay up treasures in heaven, where moth
and rust do not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor
steal; that where our treasure is, there our hearts may be also; and
that we may possess and enjoy our treasure throughout all eternity.
I hope that every time you see a grasshopper or an ant, you will
remember the lesson which I have sought to teach you to-day.
QUESTIONS.--What is on the top of the Royal
Exchange in London? Who built the Exchange? Why
did he put the grasshopper there? Tell all you can
about the little boy and girl going through the
field. What kind of boys and girls is like the
grasshopper? What does the grasshopper do in
summer? What happens to him when winter comes? Is
the ant like the grasshopper, or is he
industrious? What does the Bible say about the
ant? How does he spend the summer? Does he have
food for winter use? Does each ant work for itself
alone? Who teach the young ants to work? Do boys
and girls all have to be taught to work? Do all
people who are busy accomplish something worthy of
their effort? What should we live for?
[Illustration]
BALANCES.
HOW GOD WEIGHS PEOPLE.
SUGGESTION:--Objects: A pair of ordinary balances.
A very good pair for illustration can easily be
made from a piece of wood, a few strings and a
couple of little paper boxes.
[Illustration: Balances.]
DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS: I suppose you have all stood on the scales and been
weighed. I have here a pair of balances. This was doubtless one of the
earliest kind of instruments with which people weighed different things,
and it is the kind of scales which are still used when the greatest
accuracy is desired. These are called a balance, because when I hold
them by this string you will see that this end of the arm and that end
of the arm are equal in length and equal in weight and they exactly
balance each other. Now when I place anything in the pan on this end of
the arm, and place a small weight in the pan on the opposite arm, and
then lift the balance up, you will see how I can readily tell how much
the piece of metal, or piece of wood, or whatever I have placed in the
balances, weighs. In the drug stores they use this kind of scales to
weigh medicines, and they can tell accurately the weight of a very small
quantity. In the laboratory, or the place where medicines are made, they
have this kind of scales that will weigh the smallest particle of dust;
even a small piece of a hair laid on the scales can be weighed
accurately.
In the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel we read about a king whose
name was Belshazzar, who lived in the great city of Babylon, surrounded
by a great wall three hundred feet high and eighty feet broad, and with
a hundred gates of brass, twenty-five gates on each side of the city,
and a street running from each of the gates upon the one side, straight
across the city to each of the corresponding gates upon the opposite
side, a distance of some twelve or fifteen miles; and then other streets
crossing these first twenty-five streets, running between the gates
which were upon the other two sides of the city. God had blessed this
king of Babylon and given him great wealth and great power; but he
became proud and defied God. One night he made a great feast and invited
a thousand of his lords and the generals of his army, and sent for the
golden vessels of the Temple, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought down from
Jerusalem, and Belshazzar drank wine out of these sacred vessels of the
Temple. And, like men and women when they drink liquor, they lost their
reason, and they praised the gods of gold, and of silver, and brass, and
iron, and wood, and of stone, and thus dishonored God; and there
appeared in the banqueting hall the fingers of a man's hand and wrote on
the wall so that all might see and read it, and these were the words
which were written before that wicked king: "Thou art weighed in the
balances, and art found wanting." (Daniel v: 27.)
Now you see that God weighs men and women, not for the purpose of
telling how many pounds their bodies weigh, but He weighs their
character, He weighs their conduct, He weighs their purposes, and He
weighs their principles, and so He weighed Belshazzar, and He said of
him and to him, "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found
wanting." God weighed Belshazzar as though he were placed in this side
of the balance, and on the other side of the balance were placed all his
opportunities, privileges and his blessings, and all that God had done
for him. When God thus weighed him against all these things Belshazzar
was found so light that he did not weigh as much as the privileges and
blessings which God had given him, and therefore, God said that he was
weighed in the balances and was found wanting.
In just this same way God weighs you and me, in order that we may see
whether or not we weigh enough. Suppose we turn to the twentieth chapter
of Exodus and there find what God requires of us. You will find that God
says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for
I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and
keep my commandments."
[Illustration: "Thou Art Weighed in the Balances, and Art Found
Wanting."]