LESSON 27 

 HOW OUR COAL WAS MADE 



MEMORY VERSE 



Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or. What 

 shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? for your 

 heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 



Mail. 6 : 31, 32 



The Purpose 



A lump of coal, black and serviceable, tells us a re- 

 markable story of how the poisonous gases that covered 

 the earth at first and would have made life impossible 

 were absorbed into strange forms of vegetation; how 

 these were buried in a mass under rocks for ages; and 

 how men now dig the mass up as coal, thus using what 

 once would have brought death, for the promotion of the 

 fullest life. The children are to learn this, one of the 

 strangest stories in the book of nature, and see how it 

 bespeaks a Providence that works on long lines for the 

 welfare of all the children of earth, and turns every- 

 thing into good. It is this age-long preparation of earth 

 by God who knows all our need which warrants the trust 

 of which Jesus spoke when he said to his followers, *'Be 

 not anxious." 



Suggestions for the Teacher 



If there is a peat bog in the vicinity or a deeply wooded 

 marsh arrange for the children to visit it and show them 

 the black leaf mould that has been accumulating there. 



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