“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“Martin,” said a wise grammar-school boy to his little brother of six, “come here and tell me what you have inside you.”
“Nothing,” said Martin.
“Yes, you have. Listen! You’ve got a whole telegraph stowed away in your body, with wires running down to your very toes and out to your fingertips.”
“I’m sure I haven’t,” said Martin, looking at his feet and hands.
“You have though, and that isn’t all.
“There’s a big force-pump in the middle of you, pumping, pumping 70 times a minute, all day long, like the great engine I showed you the other day at the locomotive works.”
“There is no such thing,”—
“But there is, though; and besides, you’ve got a tree growing in you, with over 200 branches.”
“I’ve not, I’m sure I’ve not,” persisted the little fellow, almost ready to cry— “I can feel myself all over, and there’s no tree or engine, or anything else except flesh and blood.”
“Oh, that isn’t flesh and blood,” replied his learned brother, “that’s most of it water. This is what you’re made of—a few gallons of water, a little lime, phosphorus, salt, and a few other things like that.”
Of course, the grammar-school boy was quite right in his information; the telegraph is the nerves, and the force-pump is the heart, and the tree is the system of the veins and arteries that carry the blood to all the different parts of the body.
But it was not very good form to show off like he did, and try to frighten his little brother who had never been to a grammar school. I don’t think he need have been so conceited; he would never have known, if he had not been told.
But, really, it is remarkable, when you come to think of it, that, with all these wonderful things inside us—the telegraph, and engine, and tree, and all the rest of them, fitted in together in as small a space as could be imagined—we are able to move about so comfortably and well. The wonder is that some part of us is not always getting out of order. How grandly every little nerve and artery does its work, and the beautiful life goes on! How thankful we ought to be to God who made it, and who lets us enjoy so much health and strength!
For we know little about the machinery, and it is not through any wisdom of ours that it keeps going. If God did not constantly think of us and care for us, it would get out of, order very quickly.
Life and health are given to most of us for a great many years, and what we have to do is to thank God for them and use them wisely, and work with all our strength and take as much care of them as we know how. Yes, thank God every morning for giving you life, and that giving of thanks will let the sunshine into the day. Be as happy as you like, for happiness is like putting the hands together at the table and saying grace.
There was an old Cornishman whom my mother used to know, named Billy Bray. He was a good man, who couldn’t help praising God; his heart was always full of thankfulness. He used to say, “As I go along the street, I lift up one foot and it seems to say ‘Glory!’ and I lift up the other and it seems to say, ‘Amen!’ and they keep on like that all the time; one foot says ‘Thanks!’ and the other says, ‘That’s so!’”
At another time he said, “Bless the Lord, I can sing; my heavenly Father likes to hear me sing. I can’t sing so well as some, but my Father likes to hear me sing, as well as those who can sing better than I can. My Father likes to hear the crow as well as the nightingale, for He made them both.”
At Boscastle, in Cornwall, there is an old church looking out upon the sea. The tower was built for bells, but no peal has ever sounded from it. The townspeople heard the bells sounding sweetly from Tintagel, and they thought that they would like to have some too. So a set of bells was ordered in London, and sent round to Boscastle by sea.
When the vessel, in which they were being conveyed, was off Tintagel, it was close enough to the coast for those on board to hear the bells pealing across the sea. It was a welcome sound to the pilot, for it told him that he was near home. “Thank God!” he said, “I shall be ashore tonight.”
The captain heard him, and replied, “Thank the good ship rather.”
“No,” said the pilot once more, “we should thank God on the sea as well as on the land.”
Now Boscastle is a terribly dangerous place, and as the ship neared the narrow entrance of the harbor, black clouds covered the sky, a storm burst over her with the force of a hurricane, and in front of the steep rocky wall, she went down, and all were lost but the pilot. The bells never came to Boscastle, and the tower is empty to this day. And so there is many a life without bells, and without music, because the heart never learned to thank God.