When you approach a great city at night and see only its
tens of thousands of lights, you do not for a moment attach
importance to those mechanical contrivances, the lights. The
unseen inhabitants in the tens of thousands of lighted homes
are the real objects of interest and worth. So the worlds, and
not the suns, are the objects of true worth and interest in
the universe; the worlds, the lighted and glowing houses of
God’s children, not the mechanical contrivances for making them
comfortable. Upon these must center our thought and interest.
What is the fire which warms the man and cooks his dinner,
compared with the man himself? What is the light and fire,
compared with the home? What is the sun, compared with the
world? Just here we begin to get some breath of assurance. While
the worlds in our system differ very greatly in size and glory,
while some of the great suns doubtless have correspondingly
great worlds circling about them, yet we may reasonably suppose
that among the worlds of the universe our earth is somewhere
near the middle of the scale. And we earth-dwellers, intelligent
children of the Father, are no mean citizens in the kingdom of
our God. If He has built such a mansion of light for us, and
kindled such a hearth-fire as our sun, and made us lords and
masters of such a world as this, why may we not lift up our
heads in love and triumph? (Text.)--JAMES H. ECOB.
(1967)
See SPEECH.