THE SMALLEST CAMERA, THE MOST VALUABLE PICTURES.
Suggestion:—The object used is a small camera of any kind.
I AM going to address you again to-day as LITTLE MILLIONAIRES. Last week I showed you how your eyes were more valuable than the most costly telescopes, and to-day I want to show you how, in another way, you are little millionaires.
Very wealthy people sometimes travel in different countries, and gather very rare and beautiful paintings and pictures, oftentimes paying a thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, and sometimes very much more for a single painting. Then they bring these paintings all together in their own homes and hang them on the walls, and as the result of the expenditure of many thousands, and sometimes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, they have a very beautiful and rare collection. But God has made you and me the possessors of a vast number of pictures, more beautiful, of greater variety, and infinitely more valuable, than all the paintings that were ever hung upon the walls of any art gallery in the world.
Camera.
To illustrate my thought, I have to-day brought a camera. Sometimes such a camera as this is called a Kodak or Snap-shot. As the finest telescopes have been modeled after the human eye, so the camera is only a very imperfect imitation of the human eye. As the spy-glass and telescope have lenses, so does this camera have a lens, which you see here in the front. Just back of this lens is the dark chamber in the camera, and back of it is a ground glass, as you will see here. Now whatever is directly in front of the camera is shown on the ground glass, as you will observe, but in an inverted or up-side-down position. So the eye has its various parts, and as the rays of light pass through this lens and reflect the picture on this ground glass, so rays of light coming from any object pass first through the small opening of the eye, to the retina, where the picture is inverted just the same as upon the ground glass. When this picture is thrown upon the rear wall of the eye, which is called the retina, the seeing nerve, which is called the optic nerve and is connected with the eye, conveys the impression to the brain, and the result is what we call seeing.
The Human Eye.
What I have told you is correct, and can easily be proven by a simple experiment with the eye of some animal. If you take the eye of a dead rabbit, and cleanse the back portion of it from the fat and muscles and then hold a candle in front of it, you can see the image of the candle formed upon the retina. If you take the eye of an ox and carefully pare off from the back portion, so as to leave it very thin, and place the eye in front of (or against) a small hole made in a box; then cover your head to shut out the light you will see through the box the picture of any object which is directly in front of this eye of the ox. In both instances they will be in the inverted form. This experiment would fully demonstrate to you that the camera is only an imitation, and a very poor one too, of the human eye.
Now when pictures are taken by means of the camera, the negative can not be exposed to the light, but must be taken into a dark room, and be carefully developed by the use of necessary chemicals or liquids. Then specially prepared paper must be used for printing the photographs. This paper must also be kept in the dark until it has been thoroughly washed and cleansed. But, with the pictures which are taken upon the retina of the eye, no such delay and labor is necessary before you can look at them. The moment the eye is turned in any direction, instantly the picture is photographed upon the retina of the eye, and then stamped indelibly upon the memory and becomes a part of ourselves.
There is no cost for chemicals, no delay in adjusting the instrument with which the picture is taken, no necessity for carrying around a large camera.
The camera has many disadvantages which are not found in the human eye. The camera must be adjusted to objects near or far, and different cameras have to be used for pictures of different sizes and for different classes of pictures. These cameras are costly to purchase, a great deal of time is consumed in securing a few pictures, they are always attended with expense; and when pictures are to be removed from one place to another, the owner is subjected to much trouble and annoyance. Then, the camera also does not give us the colors of the different objects which are before it. That is the reason why, in the beginning, I spoke of these millionaires purchasing such costly paintings, because in the paintings different colors are represented.
Now, in the hundreds of pictures which are constantly being taken by your eyes, there are no delays, no expenses, no inconvenience when the pictures have once been taken. Different shades and colors are all clearly represented. And even though you were to stand on a high mountain, where you could look off over one or two hundred square miles of beautiful landscape, all that beautiful scenery would be pictured on the retina of your eye; and the picture, complete and perfect, would not be larger than one-half inch square. What would real wealthy people be willing to give for a perfect picture only one-half inch square, in which the artist had clearly defined every field and tree, the rivers, houses, roads, railways and all the beautiful landscape contained in a vast area of many square miles?
Our eyes are wonderful cameras, which God has given us so that we can be constantly taking these beautiful pictures as we pass through life, and look at them not only for the instant, but that we may treasure the pictures up in our memories and make them the rich treasures and joyous heritage of coming years.
The older we grow, the more we appreciate these memory pictures of the past—memories of our childhood days, beautiful landscapes, foreign travel, lovely sunsets, the glorious sunrise, green fields and orchards of golden fruit. As you grow old, I suppose the richest treasures in your picture gallery of the past will be the memories of your childhood home, of mother and father, brother and sister. Possibly when you have grown old, you will remember how one day your heart was almost broken, when for the first time you were leaving home; how mother's eyes filled with tears when she kissed you good-bye, and, following you to the gate, how she stood and waved her handkerchief, while home faded from your view as you rounded the turn in the road and realized for the first time that you were launching out into real life for long years of struggle.
Just as the hearts of the parents go out in great tenderness toward their son, who is leaving the Christian influences of his home to begin service in a distant city, surrounded by evil influences, and oftentimes by wicked people; so the heart of our Heavenly Father goes out in great tenderness towards you and me, while we are separated from the great eternal mansion of the skies. God's heart yearns over us in great tenderness, and while we live in the midst of the evil of this world we are constantly to remember that God has made us millionaires; not only in the possession of the eyes, and other faculties with which He has endowed us for use here upon the earth, but we are to remember that we are children of the King of Heaven, and that we are heirs of everlasting life and of everlasting glory. We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, to an inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled and that "fadeth not away." We are not simply millionaires, but we are heirs of everlasting glory.
Questions.—What instrument for taking pictures is like the human eye? Which can take pictures quicker, the eye or the camera? What is lacking in pictures taken by the camera? Do our eyes show the colors of the objects? Of what is the camera an imitation? Is it expensive to take many pictures with the camera? Why do people pay large sums for oil paintings? Was there ever a picture painted by an artist or photographed with a camera so beautiful as the small pictures taken by the eye? For size, color, variety and convenience, which are the finest pictures in the world? Which pictures are most treasured in old age?