1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



59 



OUR 

 HOMES, 



BY A. I. ROOT* 



Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord 

 pitieth them that fear him. — Psalm 163:13. 



No good thing will he withhold from them that 

 walk uprightly.— Psalm 84:11. 



One of our readers has been disturbed, be- 

 cause, as he says, his minister (or perhaps 

 more than one minister) has preached from 

 the pulpit that there would be no family rela- 

 tions in heaven — husband and wife, father and 

 mother, brother and sister, etc. — these would 

 all be done away with. These ministers get 

 their authority, so this good friend says, from 

 the words of Jesus, when he said to the Sad- 

 ducees, who believed in no resurrection of the 

 dead, " In the resurrection they neither marry 

 nor are given in marriage, but areas the angels 

 of God in heaven." My friend wishes my 

 opinion in regard to the matter through these 

 Home Papers. My opinion is that no minis- 

 ter has any right to make any such statement. 

 By searching the Scriptures we can find very 

 little that is definite regarding heaven. The 

 great Father seems for some reason to have 

 kept us very much in the dark in regard to 

 this, and even in regard to the whole matter 

 of the future state. I have reflected on the 

 passage in question a great many times, and 

 it has always seemed very clear to me that 

 Jesus simply rebuked their low ideals of hea- 

 ven when he answered their puzzling question, 

 or conundrum, as you may call it. Granting 

 that the Savior's words are literally true, that 

 marriages are not made in heaven, he does not 

 say that marriages made here on earth shall 

 not hold in heaven. 



In regard to the matter of one man having 

 several wives, or one woman having several 

 husbands — that is, after the first ones have 

 been taken away — I am not competent to give 

 an opinion. The whole matter, it seems to 

 me, is one beyond our comprehension ; and I 

 do not take it to be a very important matter 

 after all. Sometimes here in this world a man 

 or woman marries again, supposing the first 

 companion to be dead. When the two hus- 

 bands or two wives come to light, there is not 

 much difficulty in settling the matter pleas- 

 antly all around, and the husband and wife 

 live together happily after these things. It 

 would be strange indeed if such things could 

 not be pleasantly settled to the satisfaction of 

 all parties in that beautiful world beyond. 

 The texts I have chosen, it seems to me, should 

 answer the question. God is to be a kind 

 father to us all ; and, furthermore, we have 

 the promise that no good thing will he with- 

 hold from us ; and both promises are verified 

 here on earth while we love and trust him. If 

 you want my feeble human judgment in ref- 

 erence to the matter I should say most assur- 

 edly we shall know all our friends in the great 

 future; and I do not believe that family ties 

 will be broken up — that is, more than is neces- 

 sary for our highest happiness. If some one 

 of the family deliberately chooses iniquity 



and sin, and thus severs his relation from the 

 rest of the family, and dies in that state, I do 

 not think we should be miserable in that fu- 

 ture life because of this. If we did all we 

 could for the erring one, our affections "over 

 there " will be so purified that we shall judge 

 as God judges. And I think most ministers 

 of the gospel will, at least pretty nearly, 

 agree with me. In a recent number of the 

 Sunday School Times this matter is covered 

 very beautifully. A berea\ed mother tells us 

 how she found comfort and peace in believing 

 her loved ones, who had been taken in early 

 age, should be growing and developing — yes, 

 and waiting for her, in the world to come. 

 But, dear friends, when I chose the two texts 

 above I had another matter in mind. 



After our machinery had got to running fair- 

 ly well in the factory, so I could be spared a 

 little, I began considering some repairs in that 

 favorite apparatus of mine for storing up heat 

 from exhaust steam. I will explain briefly to 

 our new readers, that for several years we 

 have been taking exhaust steam from the fac- 

 tory and conveying it some 400 feet under 

 ground over to my dwelling. The steam has 

 always been carried through large sized drain- 

 tiles. The steam, in passing through these 

 tiles, heats the ground for several feet all 

 around them until it not only holds the heat 

 nights but over Sunday. Inside of these tiles 

 are water-pipes connected with the hot- water 

 radiators in our home. The circulation of the 

 hot water through the radiators warms our 

 dwelling nights and Sundays when the factory 

 is not running. 



Two difficulties have troubled us more or 

 less for the last five or six years, or ever since 

 this device has been in operation. In order to 

 reach the house the tiles go down into a little 

 hollow or valley, and rise up again before 

 reaching the house. The water from this con- 

 densed steam washes dirt into the tiles, and 

 fills them up with mud. Worse still, a great 

 part of the way the steam, in passing over to 

 the house, is going up hill while the hot water 

 from the condensed steam is running back 

 down hill. Let me say right here that any 

 apparatus for using steam for heating, either 

 live or exhaust steam, should gradually go 

 down hill from the starting-point ; then the 

 water. and the steam will be both going in the 

 same direction. The pounding and bumping 

 that we often hear in steam-pipes is because 

 this rule is violated. When the water is run- 

 ning one way and steam going the other, there 

 will be a conflict between the two. The steam 

 will sometimes push the water ahead of it, 

 and sometimes send it like a cannon-ball, with 

 a clang; then the water will, by force of grav- 

 ity, start back again, to be hurled once more 

 in the opposite direction. 



Well, just before the cold weather set in I 

 had, at some little expense, replaced the drain- 

 tiles, that had been in so many years, with 

 vitrified sewer-pipe. This answered for a few 

 days; but I was greatly disgusted to find in a 

 little while that the sewer-pipes were filled 

 with mud like the other. Now, I do not like 

 to be baffled, as you know. I had spent quite 

 a little money by putting in the sewer-pipes. 



