Insistent Corns.
No one need be troubled with corns if he will take care of his feet, especially by wearing shoes of natural shape and large enough. But if anyone does have even one corn, he is to be pitied. The hard little intruder in the soft flesh is very tiny, but it claims more attention than all the rest of the body. It smarts and throbs and stings so agonizingly that its victim can think of little else. When it is removed, the man feels like a new creature.
The comparison to a little sin is irresistible. However small the sin, as men measure sins, it seems to fill the entire life with pain. There is no peace for its miserable owner till he gets rid of it, and then his whole life is transformed. The most important part of the comparison is that these corns of the spirit also are wholly unnecessary. Wear the shoes "of the gospel of peace," as Paul advised, and you will have no such trouble.
How Do You Clean House?
The ancient cliff-dwellers of Arizona had a queer way of cleaning house. The smoke of their fires filled their odd stone dwellings, and covered their walls with a black layer of soot.
When this became intolerable they did not wash or scrape it off, but calmly went to work and plastered over it a fresh coat of white mortar. Investigators have found no fewer than eleven such coats of soot and mortar, one above the other,—eleven housecleaning days, no one knows how many springs apart.
We smile; but those that live in precisely such houses should not throw stones.
I do not mean to say that our spring housecleaning’s are conducted in just this fashion, though I know of communities where it would not be impossible to find four or five layers of wall-paper, one over the other.
But what I do refer to is the way many of us clean house in our souls.
Instead of making a thorough job of it, rubbing and scraping and digging and washing until every least fault and every familiar sin is removed and carted to the dump, we whitewash ourselves just as we are.
The whitewash is made of carelessness and forgetfulness and conceit and presumption, and it leaves the sootiest soul a fine, glaring white. But scratch it anywhere, and—faugh! the black underneath!
Someday, under the fierce sun of God's anger, all this whitewash will peel off, and such soul-rooms will be black, black, nothing but black, and black forever.
War! War! Extra!
Many names have been proposed for the stupendous war that involved nearly all the world. One of these names is "the Great War"—a name that would answer finely if we were quite sure that the world would never suffer from a war still greater.
But the clear thinker knows of a war that is greater, infinitely greater. It is the war between good and evil, between Christ and Satan. The war began as soon as man began to sin. It has continued in full force through all ages down to the present minute. The World War is to be reckoned only an episode in this greater war. It involves all nations, the United States as well as Germany, France, and England. It involves every person—even little children are in the trenches. Some think that this war is growing more intense, more terrible, every day.
No question is more important for anyone than this: Am I on the right side of the Great War, and fighting as hard as I can?
Three-Foot Falls.
A workman in Boston was killed by a fall from a staging, and the fall was only three feet. In falling he struck his head, and was unconscious when his fellow workmen reached him. The ambulance came and carried him away, but before he reached the hospital he was dead.
Many a man has been killed by a falling brick, by a slight bruise, by a tiny white pill, by a little lead ball. It is not the big things that are most dangerous always; or, indeed, often. A fall of three feet may do as much damage as a fall of sixty feet.
And so with the moral falls. A little sin may equal in its deleterious effects the worst of the sins called "deadly." Strictly speaking, there are no little sins. Sin is a departure from the right way, and you have departed from it if you go from it an inch as truly as when you go from it a mile. It is easier to get back from the inch than from the mile, but you must get back. If you don't, the inch will be your moral ruin as much as the mile.
Here is where men make their fatal mistakes. They dally with the little sins as they would never dream of dallying with the great ones. When it is too late they discover that they have been playing with the great ones after all. They have fallen only three feet, but it has killed them.
The Castle Window.
A great and angry army tried to get into the Castle of the Body, but it seemed impregnable. At last, one dark night, they found a little window left unfastened, and in slipped a Germ. The Germ speedily flung open the great door of the Castle, and in rushed, pell-mell, a raging Fever, a Headache, a throng of cruel Pains, a crowd of Agonies, Deliriums, Aches, Chills, Dangers, Complications, Abscesses, Wastings, Contagions, Surgical Operations, Hospital Beds, Ether, Cocaine, Knives, Saws, Bandages, Sleeplessness, and scores more of varied troops. They took possession of the Castle for days, weeks, months, and it was only after a long, long counter-siege that they were driven out, and the Castle of the Body left free again. All because of the one little unfastened window. That window was a sore place, not a fourth as large as a penny, left heedlessly to take care of itself.
Fifteen-Feet Profanity.
Last year a judge in Missouri decided that in order to constitute a breach of the peace profanity must be audible for at least fifteen feet.
That may answer for the legal offense, but—how far can God hear?
Men's consciences are too often gauged to material standards. Christ said that the lustful thought constitutes adultery; the test of purity is the heart and not the outward act. The tenth commandment places covetousness at the end of the list of sins as if it were the climax, worse than adultery or murder. Indeed, it leads to both. And covetousness is of the heart, and may never go further. Christ tells us that if we hate a man we are his murderer, though we never lift a weapon against him.
In short, the doctrine of fifteen-feet profanity, however it may be regarded in earthly courts, seems to have absolutely no standing in the court of the Great Judge.
Spirits in Prison.
Thirty-five years ago a man committed murder in a drunken fight, and only a few weeks ago his good conduct obtained for him a release from prison. He did not want to be released; he had formed the prison habit. Now that he is out, he is not really out. He spends his time walking just as for all those years he walked in the prison yard, nine paces down, eight paces across. The prison has become ingrained, he will always take it with him. His spirit is in prison, though his body is free.
That is the way with sin, always. It makes its own jail. It is a jail. And only the divine Pardoner can give release.
Drowned in a Puddle:
A cow in Greenwood, Me., met with a remarkable accident. She jumped over a fence, stumbled on the other side, and fell on her head. Her horns ran under the root of a tree, and thus her head was held down. Her nose was submerged in a little pool of water, only an inch or two deep; but she was held to it, and it was as dangerous as an ocean of water would have been. She was found dead, drowned in a puddle.
I have read of a similar accident that happened to an old lady. She was very feeble, and, while tottering out one day, she fell, with her mouth and nose in a tiny puddle. She was too weak to turn over, and thus she also died.
Now anyone may see that this drowning in a puddle is a very common occurrence. Though of course I do not mean the literal happening, but its spiritual counterpart.
For it does not need a big sin to drown a soul. We often think it does. We often think that, so long as our sins do not run in black waves mountain high, or stretch out in a devastating flood, or descend in the irresistible plunge of Niagara, we are perfectly safe. The little, trifling sins, —who need trouble about them? Nothing but mud-puddles, and an hour of purifying sunshine will dry them up!
Ah, but if we are held down in them! Ah, but if our wills grow weak, and we are unable to turn away from them! Only a film of the liquor of sin suffices to shut out the life-giving air of heaven. I know many a soul that is drowning in a mud-puddle.
In the Ice.
On July 14, 1865, that terrific peak, the Matterhorn, was climbed for the first time. The ascent was made by four men, with three guides. As they were descending, exultant, one of them slipped, and carried three others along. The famous mountain-climber, Edward Whymper, had just time enough to plant himself firmly. The rope snapped, and he, with two guides, were thus saved. The others fell from precipice to precipice, a fearful fall of four thousand feet. The bodies of three were recovered, but that of the fourth, Lord Charles Douglas, must have fallen into some chasm of the ice or some pit of snow, for it was not found.
And in 5905, after four decades, his sister, Lady Florence Dixie, issued an appeal to all Alpine travelers, asking them to be on the watch for the body of her unfortunate brother. The exact rate of motion of the glacier into which it fell is known, and the portion which received the body of the young nobleman would that summer reach the valley and there melt away. The body, if found, would be perfectly preserved and easily recognizable. I have not learned, however, that it was ever found.
I could not read this account without thinking of another terrible glacier into which men fall, the horrible, moving ice-field of sin. Dante pictures central hell as a horror of cold. The picture is true. Sin benumbs all life, stiffens all action. Who does not know those upon whom this wintry fate has come?
Oh, that the Sun of Righteousness may melt away the ice! Not dead, then, as in the terrors of the Alps, but still to be revived, still with the possibilities of love and life eternal, they will be seized by their rejoicing friends, and the glad news will be flashed to the farthest reach of heaven.
A Quarter of an Inch.
Brooklyn once saw a very remarkable real-estate transaction. There was made what is probably the largest payment ever made for land, proportionately to the size of the piece. That payment was no less than one thousand dollars for a quarter of an inch.
The way it came about was this. There is a piece of land on the southwest corner of Fifty-fourth Street and Seventh Avenue, South Brooklyn. It is one hundred feet square. The title to it had been transmitted in two deeds, one calling for twenty-five feet, one and one-fourth inches of the property, and the other calling for the rest of it.
Now when the property was transferred from the original owner, a woman, that one-fourth inch was omitted from the deed. The land passed through several hands, and in the course of this transmission the extra inch was dropped from the deed.
Then came along a real-estate company which bought the whole lot, and was about to put up a building covering it, when it was discovered that a man named Fife was still the owner of one inch right in the middle of it, and the woman was still the owner of that quarter of an inch. Mr. Fife compromised for $300, but the woman held out for $1000 for her quarter-inch, and got it; for the land could not be used for the building without that fourth of an inch.
All of which, as I look upon it, is a very pretty parable. It reminds me of the way some hearts are transferred from the control of the world to the control of God. The deed is made out, and signed and sealed by church-membership. But lo! a quarter of an inch is reserved from the instrument.
There is some little sinful pleasure. It is sinful; but then, it is so little! Only a quarter of an inch. Certainly that trifling omission cannot make the least particle of difference.
But it does. Oh, it does!
Some day we want to erect a noble building in our lives. We wish to "occupy" the ground, as the Gospel has it. And we find that we cannot. We find that Satan's title, though to only that tiny fraction of it, is prohibitive of our enterprise. And we find that it is not easy to buy the devil off. One thousand dollars? That is a mere nothing compared to the time, and strength, and tears, and sorrow, before the adversary is got out of that bit of ground.
And it would all have been so easy if a complete transfer had been made in the first place!
Shot His Rescuer.
The newspapers report, in three bald sentences, an incident that reads strangely.
An old man in Taylorsport, Ky., saved a man from drowning. Within a short time the rescued fellow approached the old man, asked him if he was his rescuer, and, on receiving an affirmative answer, shot the old man through the heart.
Though many indignant bystanders fired at him, the murderer escaped.
This incident seems too strange to be true, unless the murderer was a lunatic. No sane man would or could do such a deed. It is against human nature.
So we say, and so we instinctively feel; and yet is this horrible act essentially different from the way in which persistent sinners treat their loving divine Savior?
Getting Used to Poisons.
For a long time the wise men have known that certain poisons harden the body against themselves. The first time a boy smokes a cigar, for instance, the poison in the tobacco makes him deathly sick, but after a while he can puff away proudly, with no unpleasant effects—to himself, whatever we may say of the poor people that must be in the same room with him. Of course, the poison continues to do its deadly work just the same, but the boy or the man does not realize it.
Alcohol is similar. An "old soaker" requires more and stronger liquor to make him drunk than a beginner on the downward way, though all the time the alcohol is killing him. Arsenic, morphine, cocaine, and many other poisons act in a similar manner.
But recently it has been definitely proved that there are poisons that act in just the opposite way. Instead of their apparent effects becoming less with each successive dose, they become greater. Such a poison has been obtained from the sea-anemone. Give a dog a very small dose of it, and he will be sick for a few days, and will then recover. Then give him a does only one-twentieth of what you gave him before, and he will be dangerously sick at once. The poison has made the dog more sensitive to itself.
As I read of this I asked myself, "To what class of poisons does sin belong?"
The answer is, of course, "To the first class." A sin that would terrify a young boy and would be impossible for his pure soul becomes, to the man hardened in crime, nothing but a matter of course.
And then I asked myself, "To which class of poisons does temptation belong?"
The answer is, of course, "To the second class." Yield to a temptation, and it becomes easier to yield to it the next time. Only a whiff of the odor of brandy is enough to set a toper's brain on fire.
And with both, of course, the only safe way is to avoid the first dose of the poison. The nicotine kind or the sea-anemone kind—both are deadly in their time, and the fact that one is slow about it and the other rapid, that one works under cover and the other in the open, makes little difference to me. If I am offered my choice of a stiletto or a bludgeon, I will take—neither.
Look Out for Eels.
Something rather interesting took place in the notable witch city of Salem, Mass., in the house of the former mayor of the town, Mr. John F. Hurley.
All of a sudden the water supply ceased. They got lamps and peered around in all the dark corners to which the water-pipes go. They pried and they probed, they hammered and they dug, but they could not discover the cause of the stoppage.
At last, after several hours of this work, they learned the cause of the trouble. It was a big eel. His slippery highness had made his slimy way from Wenham Lake, five miles distant. He had glided through the mains till he reached Mr. Hurley's house. Then it occurred to him to explore the smaller pipe, and in he went. He did not go very far in, however, for he was too big. His head went in and a few inches of his body, and there he stuck. The plumbers had to take him out a bit at a time.
Then the faucets began to work as usual, though perhaps the folks did not begin to drink the water right away.
And now, why have I told this not wholly pleasant story?
Because I am reminded of other pipes more important even than the water-pipes of a city. I am reminded of the channels of blessing that reach down to us straight from the pure reservoir of God's bounty, up in the everlasting hills. How freely flow the streams of His goodness! How faithfully they flow, and how endless is the supply, day and night, winter and summer, ever the same!
But no! sometimes there is a stoppage. Sometimes the faucets are dry. Perhaps in a moment they change from abundance to emptiness.
And what is the matter? An eel in the pipe, every time! The trouble is not the pipe. The trouble is not at all the lake up in the hills. The trouble is the eel, and our carelessness in letting him get there.
And the name of the eel is SIN. When the Cable Breaks.
Somewhere out in the Atlantic there is a steamer whose crew is eagerly feeling around on the far-off ocean bottom, trying to hook up the broken end of a cable.
It is the southern Western Union cable, and the search has gone on for two months and more.
Already the steamer has had to come back to port for more coal and supplies and additional lengths of cable.
One end of the broken cable has been picked up and fastened to a buoy, but the other end has thus far eluded them. A dozen times the grapple has caught hold of it, and every time, before it could be brought on board and secured, the cable has parted again, being broken off by the high waves.
This has happened so often and the breaks have been so extensive, that now there is a gap of no less than forty-six miles between the broken ends of that cable. It is like Cyrus Field's early struggles over again.
That break was a matter of a minute. Repairing it is a matter of two months already, and no one knows how many more.
It is like broken health. An overstrain, something snaps, and it is bed for half a year, and perhaps semi-invalidism for the rest of life.
It is like "making a break." A tactless speech, a hasty burst of anger, a foolish blunder, and you have made a rift between your life and another that years may not suffice to heal.
It is like a broken heart. Hearts are easily broken. A discovery that may be made in a minute may break a heart. A deed that may be performed while the clock is ticking may break a heart. And the heart may never get mended again.
Ah, these life cables, beaten and tossed by the surges of so many violent seas! God give us grace and wisdom to fashion them in strength, so that they will not break at all; and if they do break, let us have the satisfaction of knowing that at least it was through no fault of our own.
A Trachoma Parable.
Miriam Zartarian is a pleasant-faced, attractive young Armenian girl, who was kept in the detention-pen of the Boston Immigration Station for nearly two years. What was the cause of this long imprisonment? That disease of the eyes, trachoma, which is so properly dreaded in this country that those afflicted with it are not permitted to land. Miriam was a victim of the disease, but she could not be sent back to Turkey because her parents lived in Boston, and she was coming over to them.
Well, for two years Uncle Sam has been a foster father to this Armenian girl, and you may be sure she has had the best of care. She came to love the immigration officials and the attendants at the station, and they came to love her. At last it was thought that her eyes were cured. A medical board of special inquiry was constituted by the Washington authorities. The newspapers aroused public interest in her case, and the verdict was eagerly awaited. At last a telegram was received bearing the good news from Secretary Straus. The Armenian captive was free, and all Boston rejoiced.
Now I see in this incident a striking illustration of the conditions that bar souls from heaven. There is only one prohibition, only one thing that cannot enter there,-the terrible disease of sin.
No one charges the government of the United States with tyranny because it forbids the coming of trachoma. The law is reasonable and necessary. The people would insist upon such a law if there were none.
It is even more reasonable and necessary that sin should be shut out of heaven. Sin is a disease far worse than trachoma. It is more contagious. It is more hurtful. Heaven would not be heaven if it were admitted.
And just as all Boston was glad when Miriam Zartarian's eyes grew better so that she could come in, so there is joy among the angels of God when one sinner repents, and enters it to the blessed citizenship of heaven. Whether admitted or excluded, it is all of righteousness and it is all of love.
A Case of Camera Conviction.
I have just clipped from a Boston newspaper the account of a curious incident. Not even Sir Conan Doyle could devise a more ingenious way to catch a criminal—rather, to make the criminal catch himself.
Three men in South Boston posed for a traveling photographer. They then refused to pay for the pictures, beat the itinerant artist severely, and tried to smash his camera. Then they ran away, chuckling over their exploit and ridiculing the plight of their victim. But the photographer had one resource which the three rascals had quite forgotten—the undeveloped plate in his camera. This he developed, and turned over to the police. By means of the tell-tale bit of paper the three men were speedily recognized, and arrested under a charge of assault and battery. The newspaper account left them secure in the grasp of the law.
The incident is a fair history of every bad deed we do. It never fails to take its own picture. It always manufactures its own condemnation. For witness against it the great Judge does not need to turn to anything outside itself. "Be sure your sin will find you out."
It is pathetic to watch men running away from the scene of their wrongdoing, as those men in South Boston did, quite forgetting that their wrongdoing was nothing material, that it was an affair of thought, of the soul, and that as soon as the crime was committed all the universe heard about it. "If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me" (A. V.)—every sinner should know that psalm. It is true of the God of justice as well as the God of mercy.
The sinner's own memory is a camera whose picture of the wrong done is unflinchingly faithful. It is probable that our brains never forget what is once brought to their attention by eye or ear, even though we are not conscious of the impression at the time. How certainly is this true of those terrible crises, our sins! To the great Judge our memories are open books. Out of our own hearts he can condemn us. Memories long dormant he can revive for our conviction. He needs no other witnesses than our unwilling recollections.
Modern science discloses to us a marvelous camera in the very constitution of the world around us. The words we speak pulsate out forever through the air, and the angels may well have ears to hear them a thousand years after we are dead. Every act we perform leaves an impression on our body, literally changes it in some permanent way, so that our lives are veritably written out on "the fleshly tables of the heart." The entire globe is wonderfully bound together, so that we can telegraph across the ocean without wires, and even, by the mysterious force of telepathy, communicate with some dear one at the antipodes. Therefore no one dares to say how widespread and how profound is our influence upon mankind. All the world, we are coming to understand, is a camera recording our every deed and thought.
Live your life, then, as before a sensitive plate that is ever exposed, ever ready, ever faithful. Admit no thought, do no least deed, that you would not have recorded. This fact of the universal camera is a terrible fact; so live that you will make it your friend.
Automatic Locks, and Our Friends.
It happened in Boston. Three young men worked late in an office building one evening, and as they passed out to go home two of them went ahead of the third. Noticing in the hallway the vault of the building, used for storing valuable papers, and seeing that the door was open, they thought it a good joke to elude their companion by popping inside. The third clerk, however, discovered them and clapped to the doors of the vault. To his dismay, and to the horror of the two fellows entrapped, he found that the doors were automatically locked.
He flew to the telephone, called up the police department and the fire department, and told them of the trouble, bidding them hurry to the aid of the prisoners. The protective department sent an automobile full of men and tools. The fire department sent a ladder captain with two of his men. The police department sent an inspector who is a safe expert. Patrolmen from the nearest police station ran to the building. Soon the hospital ambulance arrived with doctors and with a pulmotor to restore the men from the anticipated suffocation.
But the inspector failed to open the safe, and a safe expert was summoned from a northern suburb. He rushed for the spot in a taxicab. Another taxi was dispatched to a southern suburb after the janitor. The expert went briskly to work with his tools, but without result. It seemed necessary to force the door.
The two men had been imprisoned for two hours. The practical joker outside was frantic with anxiety. At first he kept calling to his friends within, and they responded. Toward the end of the two hours they ceased to reply, and he feared the worst. He begged the safe expert to make all speed and burst the safe.
Just then the janitor arrived. He knew the combination, quickly made the necessary revolutions of the knob, and the door opened. At the entrance of fresh air the two victims immediately revived, and stepped out of their dark cell little the worse for their alarming experience. It was an old-fashioned type of vault, or they would have been dead long before.
It is safe to say that none of those three men will fool again with an automatic lock. At least they will not fool with an automatic lock of steel; but will they extend their experience into a warning against the far more dangerous automatic locks of the spirit?
Take the automatic lock of a bad habit. We enter this vault in jest.
We mean to stay there only a minute.
We were never there before, never will be again; but—just for a joke, just to see how it feels, what's the harm? Clang! The door swings to, the bolts shoot out, and you are a prisoner! Beat against the door till the crack of doom, but you cannot get out.
There is the automatic lock of an angry word. You know this vault is black, but you do not think of the blackness as you plunge in. You have heard of vault dangers, but you forget them. You do not think of anything, in fact, but your passion. Out flies the ugly word like the steel bolts of a combination lock. You are shut away from your friend. You are shut in with misery. You try in vain: you cannot break out into the light.
These dark vaults of the spirit are on every hand. They are greatly varied in shape. The doors are often concealed by flowering plants and we are inside before we realize our peril. But the lock is always there, and it is always automatic.
Of course, there are policemen. Of course, there are hospital doctors and safe experts and firemen. They will rush for you and do their best. You will hear them fumbling around outside, and tapping at the lock. They will call to you now and then. But still you will be in darkness, and the drowsiness of death will steal over you.
But there is One that knows the combination! There is One that can let you out of any prison vault of the spirit. Within every such vault is a telephone leading straight to Him. He will hear, and He will answer at once. Alas that so many remain back of the lock, and never summon Him to the rescue!
Typhoid Carriers.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reports a remarkable case of a typhoid-carrier. A typhoid-carrier is a person who, not being himself sick with typhoid fever, and being in excellent health, yet harbors in his body the germs of the dread disease, which he communicates to others.
In this case the typhoid-carrier is called Mr. A. He had typhoid fever, but recovered from it, moving into another State. Six months afterwards his three sons and his wife came down with the fever. An exigency caused a neighbor's family to stay in Mr. A's house, and soon the neighbor, his daughter, and his two sons had the fever. Mr. A's niece was in the habit of spending the week-end at his house, and she also had the fever. Mr. A's sister visited him and came down with typhoid. Mr. D took supper at Mr. A's and promptly went to the hospital with the fever. Two young men working at Mr. A's home contracted the disease. The sister of Mrs. A and her son visited in the family and became victims. So the story continues, with visitors and neighbors and friends and acquaintances whom Mr. A visited—in all, twenty-one cases. Some of them died, and all of them suffered greatly.
Suspicions were naturally aroused, and microscopic examination showed that Mr. A was a typhoid-carrier. There was no other typhoid fever in the neighborhood except what Mr. A thus brought there, and the water supply of the town was found to be above suspicion. The case was clear.
It must have been horrible for Mr. A to discover how much sickness and death he had caused, and what possibilities of further harm he still carried around with him, but the physical ills he brought about were as nothing compared with the spiritual ills which many spread abroad unconsciously.
For there are unconscious carriers of the seeds of sin as well as of the seeds of bodily disease. The sin-carrier may have committed the sin in his youth, and, though he commits it no more outwardly, he still harbors the inner liking for it and tendency toward it. He is terribly likely, while thus un-purged of the inner reality of the sin, to set others to sinning after the same sort.
Perhaps the carrier of spiritual harm is a retailer of gossip and slander. He may be only careless (only!). He may not cherish a malicious or a hateful thought, but merely pass along the evil tidings out of empty garrulity or the desire to seem well-informed and to entertain or impress his hearer. But the seeds of evil are spread abroad as surely and as widely as if the sin-carrier were the most malicious person in the world.
Perhaps the carrier passes along the specious arguments of infidelity. He does not himself believe them, he does not expect his hearer to believe them, but he likes to pose as a man of an open mind, he enjoys a hot debate and will take any side, and he wants to see what his auditor can say in response to the arguments. Thus many a seed of doubt is sown, which multiplies and becomes denial and despair and spiritual death!
Ah, better be a typhoid-carrier to the last minute of your life than be a sin-carrier for a single day! The typhoid-carrier transmits the direful germs by handling food or utensils. He can protect others by avoiding such handling. But the sin-carrier transmits the deadly evil by any chance word, by his every act, even by his bearing and by the expression of his face. His whole life becomes a fountain of disease.
It is possible for the system of a typhoid-carrier to be purged of the germs and rendered safe for the community; but always he will bear watching. Thus also let every one of us study his own heart, and make sure that the germs of evil are not lurking there without his knowledge. It is impossible to be too careful about our secret acts, our innermost feelings and impulses. For out of the heart are the issues of life; and not of your life only, but of the lives of all whom you happen to meet.
Look Out for Lions!
It was in Chicago. In a dimly lighted freight car in a railroad yard was a lions' cage, holding five young lions and their mother, Trilby. The animals belonged to an actress. They were supposed to be quite tame and harmless.
Two young men entered the cage boldly and without weapons of any kind. One was a young athlete who was the assistant of the owner of the lions, and, it is said, engaged to be married to her. The other was his assistant.
Accidentally, in the poorly lighted cage, the athlete was knocked down. Instantly the lion instinct was aroused. The six beasts flung themselves on the prostrate keeper, tore him to pieces, and began to devour his body. His assistant could not save him, and fled for his life.
In rushed the police, who wanted to shoot the lions at once; but the athlete's assistant dissuaded them, saying that the firing would rouse them to such a frenzy that they would burst through their cage as if it were paper.
It is easy to see, after the tragedy, how it might have been averted. The cage should have been well lighted. The two men should have carried weapons, and should have kept one hand upon them. Above all, they should have guarded against stumbling. But now it is too late for precautions.
Look out for lions! They may appear tame, but they never are tame. They may seem mere cubs, but the cub grows up. A lion is a lion, savageness incarnate. The wildness may be dormant, but the smell of blood or the sight of a man at their mercy will instantly wake it up. Never trust a lion.
“No," you say; "I am not such a fool."
Are you not? Look back over your life. Have you never raised the cub of a bad habit? A lion's cub is a fascinating pet. It is jolly in the extreme, a charming playmate. But look out!
Once an English officer, in Africa, I think, had such a pet. It grew slowly from day to day, and the officer still thought of it as a harmless cub. But one day he lay asleep, his hand over the side of his couch. Along came the young lion and began to lick the hand, playfully and affectionately. The rough tongue of the lion drew blood, and the taste of the blood awoke the cub's lion hood like a flash. With a growl he seized the hand. The officer awoke, perceived in a startled instant what had happened, reached under his pillow with the other hand, and promptly shot his pet dead. The cub had become a lion.
That officer may have been cherishing the lion's cub of a bad habit. If so, lucky for him if he had a pistol at hand when the cub awoke to the meaning and power of fangs.
Look out for the lions of sin. There is no such thing as a tame lion. No one can afford to be on familiar, easy terms with a lion. When you deal with a lion, keep a revolver in your hand and your finger on the trigger. And never choose a lion for a pet.