MOST of the readers of GOOD NEWS doubtless know what a Kaleidoscope is. It is an optical instrument in which we see an endless variety of colors and forms. It may be interesting to some, to trace the etymology, or origin, of its name. It appears to be compounded of three Greek words, viz., kalos, beautiful; eidos, form; and skopeo, to see. So that, putting these three together, the meaning is “to see beautiful forms,” which, we must admit, is peculiarly appropriate to the instrument referred to.
For some time past I have had an opportunity of occasionally looking into one of these interesting instruments of superior quality, and I confess that though it is many years since I was a child, yet that the sight of the varied combinations of shapes and colors which it exhibits gives me a passing pleasure. It is not, however, with the view of stating this, that I now write to my young readers, but to tell them that the almost unlimited variety of shapes and colors which the kaleidoscope displays, suggests to my mind the vast blessings and boundless beauties which the Word of God contains, and which are unfolded to us by the Spirit of Truth, as our hearts are prepared to receive them. Every believer who has been much taught of God in His Word would freely own that every time he looks into it, with true subjection to the Spirit’s teaching, he finds more and more wondrous and varied beauties and glories in it than he had seen before, as well as in Him of whom it testifies, even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Supposing that I allow the kaleidoscope to remain in its case unopened for a long period, then, though of course it still contains all its beauties, yet I am, for that time, a stranger to them. I retain only the recollection that they are there, but I am not enjoying the sight of them. So it is with the Christian who neglects the reading and hearing of the Word of God. All its blessings remain, but he is living only in the barren knowledge that they are contained in the Book, and not in the actual enjoyment of “the diligent soul,” who is “made fat” through the Word of Christ dwelling richly in Him. May we, then, both young and old, be not slothful in the reading of the Word, but followers in the footsteps of the blessed man spoken of in the 1St Psalm, of whom it is said, “His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”