THOUGHTS, WORDS, DEEDS—THEIR LIFE AND PERPETUITY.
Suggestion:—Seeds, or grain and fruit of any kind can be used for illustration.
MY YOUNG FRIENDS: I have here to-day quite a variety of seeds. Some of them are very small, and some, as you see, are quite large. The seeds of each class have in them a principle of life, which makes them differ from sand, or small stones of similar size, because if I plant these seeds in the ground they will grow.
Different Kinds of Seeds.
When you take different kinds of seeds, there is one thing that is very interesting about them. It is the different kinds of coverings in which they grow. For instance, if you take a chestnut, it grows in a burr with sharp thorny points; others are folded as though rolled up very tightly in leaves, as you will find in the hazel nut or filbert. Some seeds grow in rows, like beans and peas in a pod. Some grow in a very soft bed, like cotton seeds. Some grow imbedded in a downy substance which blows all around, carrying the seed with it, like the thistle, and the light fuzz of the dandelion. Sometimes the seed is buried in the inside of fruit, as in the case of apples, pears, peaches, plums, and various other kinds of fruit. Sometimes it is buried beneath the beautiful leaves of the flower. So you see there is great variety.
Now, these seeds may represent words. There are a great many varieties of words. All words have the principle of life in them, because they express thought; and these thoughts when received into our minds develop into action. Therefore we say that words have a principle of life in them, and it is important that we should be careful not to permit bad words to have a place in our minds. Very often you will see boys and girls reading worthless papers which they think will do them no injury. But the fact is, that these boys are influenced in all their living by that which they read in these papers. It might be very light and trifling, but it tends to corrupt the mind, to give the boy false ideas of life, and it gives him such opinions as are not real, and therefore very injurious to any one. It is much better that a boy's valuable time should be spent in reading good books and good papers, and securing such information as will be of value and assistance to him all through life. For the life of every boy and of every girl is a very great struggle, and no boy or girl can afford to waste time in the beginning. If they are ever to amount to anything in this world, it is important that they should begin very early in life.
I want to call your attention to another characteristic of these seeds. And that is when a single seed is planted, it grows up and produces a very great number of other seeds. If you plant a seed of wheat, it will produce 30, 60, or sometimes 100 other seeds. If you plant one sunflower seed it might produce as many as 4,000 seeds. If you plant one single thistle seed, it has been known to produce as high as 24,000 seeds in a single summer. If you were to plant only one grain of corn and let it grow until it is ripe, and then plant the seeds again which grew on these few ears of corn, and thus continue to re-plant again and again, we are told by those who have calculated it very carefully, that in only five short years the amount of corn that could be grown as the result of the planting of the one single seed would be sufficient to plant a hill of corn, with three grains in every square yard of all the dry land on all the earth. In ten years the product would be sufficient to plant not only this entire world, both land and sea, but all the planets, or worlds which circle around our sun, and some of them are even a thousand times larger than our own globe. So you see that there is wonderful multiplying power in the different kinds of grain which you plant.
So it is with the thoughts and the words which we have in our minds. Good thoughts enter into good acts, and these acts influence others just as though the same thought was sown into their minds, and then it springs up into their lives and influences them. Just so when we have read a book, whether the book is good or bad, its influence goes on reproducing itself, over and over again in our lives, every time in a multiplied form. Suppose with your money you send some Bibles to the heathen, and as a result a single person is converted. Immediately that person would influence other heathen people whom he would meet, and so, one after the other, these heathen would be influenced as the result of what you have done. This good influence would go on repeating itself over and over again, as long as the world shall stand, and only in eternity would the wonderful results of what you have done be fully known. So it is with all that we say and all that we do; it goes on repeating and multiplying itself over and over again.
Pyramids.
Egyptian Mummies.
Now, there is another interesting feature of these seeds to which I want to call your attention. And that is that the life in the seed may continue for a very long time, even hundreds of years. Over in Egypt, centuries ago, they built large pyramids, and when a king died, instead of burying his body in the ground, they embalmed it with spices and dried it, so that it would not decay. Then they wrapped it up in cloths, and with these cloths and bandages they sometimes wrapped wheat or some other kind of grain. Some of these mummies, for so they are called, which have been buried possibly twenty-five hundred years, have been found; and when the wheat has been taken out of the hands of these mummies and planted in the ground, under favorable conditions, it has grown just the same as the wheat which was harvested from the fields only last summer. The life which was in the seed had not been destroyed by the many hundreds of years which have passed since it was placed in the hand of the mummy.
Some years ago there was a very interesting case of this kind in England. At Dorchester they were digging down some thirty feet below the surface, and at that depth they came upon the remains of the body of a man, with which there had been buried some coins. By the date upon the coins, they knew that this body had been buried at least seventeen hundred years. In the stomach was found quite a large quantity of raspberry seeds. The man had doubtless eaten a large number of raspberries, and then might have been accidentally killed very soon afterward, so that the seeds were not injured by the gastric juices of the stomach. These seeds were taken to the Horticultural Garden, and there they were planted. What do you think! After seventeen hundred years and more, these seeds grew, and in a short time there was an abundant fruitage of raspberries, just the same as though the seeds had been gathered from raspberries which grew only the year before. Although hidden and seemingly dead, yet these seeds retained their life for seventeen hundred years or more.
In this same way there is a deathless power in the words which we speak, even though they are spoken hastily and without thought upon our part. Our words have in them the element of a life which is well-nigh endless. You may yourself remember some unkind words which were spoken to you months and months ago. The boy or girl who spoke them may have forgotten all about them, but you still remember them, and they cause you pain every time you think of them. Or it may be that some kind person has spoken tenderly and affectionately to you. The person himself may have been so accustomed to speaking kindly that he forgot entirely what he had said, but his kind words still live in your memory. There is a beautiful hymn written some years ago, which begins: "Kind words can never die."
About fifty years ago there were some boys in a school yard playing marbles. Two other boys were playing tag. One of the boys who were playing tag chanced to run across the ring in which the boys were playing marbles. One of these boys was accustomed to speaking ugly words and doing very hasty and cruel things. He sprang to his feet and kicked the boy who had run across the ring, wounding him in the right knee. The injury was of such a nature that the bones of that leg below the knee never grew any more, and as a result, for over forty years that boy has had to walk on crutches. You see how permanent the result of this injury has been; and the results of unkind words may be just as injurious and no less permanent than the unreasonable and wicked thing which this boy did in his anger.
You may sometimes be discouraged because the kind words which you speak and the kind deeds which you do seem to fail of a good result. But you can be assured that even though you grow to old age and your body were to be laid away in the grave, yet sometime, in the lives of those who come after you, the good you have done will surely bear its fruitage of blessing.
Questions.—Are there many different kinds of seeds? Do apple trees ever grow from peach seeds? Do good thoughts grow from bad words, or bad thoughts from good words? Do seeds have a principle of life in them? Do words and thoughts have a principle of life? How many centuries have seeds been known to retain their life? Have the teachings of the Bible retained their life for many hundreds of years? Into what do good thoughts turn? (Acts). Into what do good acts turn? (Character). Can any boy or girl afford to use their time in reading worthless books or papers? Do words and deeds have the element of unending life in them? Is it a dangerous thing to get angry? What did one of the boys who were playing marbles do to the boy who ran across the ring? As the result, how many years has the injured boy walked with crutches? Will the good that we do be as permanent as the evil that we might do?