894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Auc4. 



grasp this thought, that a little child took so 

 quickly? Did ever a horse live that could do 

 it? Did ever a horse live who could reason 

 far enough to know that the grains of corn 

 he helped to put into the ground would, in a 

 few month's time, hear stalks with ears of 

 corn on them? The horse will reach out for 

 the corn in any stage of its growth. You 

 all agree, I am sure, that the horse is far, 

 very far, in fact immeasurably below, in 

 point of intellect, the smallest child. Every 

 Sabbath afternoon I have a very pleasant 

 Bible class down at our county infirmary. 

 Last Sabbath, I told them the little story I 

 have told you above. Now, many of these 

 people are dull of comprehension, and some 

 of them feeble in intellect, but they caught 

 the idea at once, and saw the great gulf that 

 exists between man and animals, as their 

 answers clearly indicated. 



My friends, I have told you this to show 

 how far beneath man the whole animal king- 

 dom is; how utterly incapable any of its 

 members are of grasping the simplest 

 thought, beyond food and bodily comfort. 

 The animal kingdom is far beneath us. 

 Very well. Now, do you know of any class 

 of beings that is above us? Is there any 

 thing in the universe between man and the 

 God who made him? Think a moment. Is 

 it really so that man stands alone, supreme, 

 next to God himself? Look about you ; cast 

 your eyes over the face of this little earth, 

 and tell me what you think man will accom- 

 plish, in the process of time, with his God- 

 given intellect. It is true, he has not trav- 

 eled to the sun, but he has measured the dis- 

 tance ; and, within recent date, he has had 

 the audacity to tell what kind of fuel is 

 burning in the sun 95,000,000 of miles away, 

 that makes a heat sufficient to send warmth 

 to a family of worlds. Within a few days 

 many of us have seen how it is now possible 

 not only to carry the very tones of our famil- 

 iar friends thousands of miles away, but to 

 be able to bottle them up that rising genera- 

 tions may know what the voices of their 

 great, great, great, grandmothers were like. 

 Where is to be the end? If God did not 

 make this world for mankind, solely for such 

 as you and I, what did he make it for? What 

 other motive had .he in making a world or a 

 universe, than that it might be a pleasant 

 place for us his children? for man, the high- 

 est and crowning work of his creation, were 

 all these things made. Well may you be 

 dazzled and stunned at the thought. For 

 what did he put us here, and what end did 

 he intend we should fulfil? If the universe 

 is solely for us, is he not pleased to have us 

 study and learn of him? Is he not pleased 

 here to-day, to see us studying the curious 

 little honey bees, that we, through them, 

 may know more of him? Is it probable, 

 nay farther, my friends, is it possible that 

 this great being who created us, as the 

 crowning work of his hands, has lost inter- 

 est in us after the work has proceeded thus 

 far, and now leaves us to be victims of 

 chance, or still worse, the victims of the evil 

 there is in our own natures. Does God care 

 whether you and I choose voluntarily eternal 

 ruin, or eternal life? He has given us free- 

 dom in the matter, in fact, a freedom that is 



so nearly akin to his own, that we can, if we 

 choose, to a certain extent, and for a time, 

 defy him and his laws. If God had not giv- 

 en us the liberty to be lazy if we wanted to, 

 how could we know of such a thing as 

 commendable energy and industry? There 

 would be no virtue in being truthful, if it 

 were not in our power to utter a falsehood. 

 Do you not see there is an extreme both 

 ways, in all these things? There can be no 

 virtue without the possibility of a vice in 

 the opposite direction. Man could not grow, 

 develop, and reach upward toward God, 

 were it not for the evil he has to contend 

 with. There can be no reward for well do- 

 ing', unless there is a possibility of doing ill 

 along with it. In my talk, you will observe 

 I have tried to show you God as a near rela- 

 tive. No sort of relationship is conceivable, 

 so near and so closely interwoven if I may 

 use the term, as that which should exist be- 

 tween man and his creator. The very 

 thought of it causes my heart to leap and 

 bound, when I get these occasional glimpses 

 of God and his greatness. A great king 

 might be your friend, and he might cause 

 your heart to overflow with joy and glad- 

 ness by his liberal way of remembering all 

 the little acts you had performed in trying 

 to serve him. Suppose this king's name was 

 derided and maligned, and he was falsely 

 accused of things that were most foreign to 

 his nature, and you alone stood up for him 

 against a rough, coarse rabble. Although 

 you were small and weak, and had little or 

 no influence by throwing your poor weight 

 in, in his defense, yet suppose he should 

 hear of this, and should, for the loyal spir- 

 it shown, give you a princely mansion, 

 where you could be near him, and stand by 

 his side day by day, while he wielded the af- 

 fairs of nations; what would be your feel- 

 ings toward him? In the case I have men- 

 tioned, you might be jealous of this great 

 favor, should somebody else do him a simi- 

 lar service, and be similarly rewarded ; and, 

 for this reason, all earthly pictures of God 

 utterly fail. One who learns to know and 

 love God, never wants to keep that great love 

 all to himself. Just in propoi - tion as he 

 learns of God, does his heart soften to his 

 fellow men. Jesus had it exactly right, 

 when he uttered the beautiful words of our 

 text. There is always room near to God, 

 plenty of room. 



I know how this word "love 1 '' strikes on 

 the hearts of many of you. When I was in 

 my teens, and rather felt myself too large for 

 the mother's kiss of my boyhood, I began to 

 get the idea that love was something that 

 mothers should have for babies, husbands 

 for their wives if they chose, or school girls 

 for each other. It sounded "soft" to me 

 then, especially after I had been talking 

 with some of the fast boys of our towm. Pi- 

 ous old ladies used to talk about the love of 

 God, and, if I remember rightly, about 

 something at their meetings called "love 

 feast." Please do not think now that I am 

 finding fault, for I presume they were all 

 right, and I was all wrong ; but somehow it 

 struck my ear with disgust. In fact, it used 

 to sicken me toward all things sacred and 

 holy, J was bad and wrong, I know, but, 



