Dr. F. F. Shannon, commenting on the early death of a talented man,
says:
“Such a man dead at 40?” you ask. “Why, to what purpose is this
waste?” Well, a man can make a match, but it takes God to make
a sun. We know the match must go out, the sun never does, tho
his shining face is often hidden from our eye. And so the sun
of this man’s genius--of any man’s genius--can never go out.
The flame is burning yet--in a few hearts still in the flesh,
and in countless glorified spirits before the throne. There is
not enough wind, loosed or unloosed, in the vast caverns of
the universe to blow out that flame, nor enough blackness in
the untenanted halls of space to swallow up its light! Do you
tell me that the God who is so strict in the economy of His
universe as to refuse a throb of energy to be lost, or an atom
to be wiped out of existence, or a few pieces of bread to perish
in the desert, will allow that genius, which is the breath of
His own being, to be wasted without contributing wealth to the
world, to the universe, to God Himself!
(554)