With the Children on Sundays / Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul

by Sylvanus Stall

Nuts.

Many people remember that when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, God told them that "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" (Gen. iii: 19), and also that God drove them out of the garden to "till the ground from whence man was taken." (Gen. iii: 23.) On this account some people suppose that if Adam and Eve had not sinned it would never have been necessary for us to work, but that is a mistake. If you turn to the second chapter of Genesis, in the fifteenth verse, you will find that it says, "The Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." So you see that Adam was required to work, even before the fall. Of course his work was not as severe as it was after he was driven out of Eden and his labor brought him a richer fruitage.

Now, what do these nuts teach us? I think that most all boys and girls like to eat hickory nuts and butternuts, and chestnuts and filberts, and indeed all kinds of nuts. But did you ever stop to think that God has made it necessary that we should crack the shell before we can eat the kernel that is inside? God has purposed to teach us that labor is necessary before we can eat even of that which He gives us, so on the outside of this desired food he places the shell, in some instances hard and difficult to be broken, in order to teach us that labor is necessary before we can eat of His gifts.

Now the same thing is true with regard to the grain that grows in the field. No one ever saw potatoes grow without being planted and cultivated. Rye and oats and wheat do not grow wild. Weeds will grow without being sown or planted, but grain and vegetables not only have to be planted, but have to be taken care of. Possibly you might think that my statement was not wholly correct, because we go out into the orchard and gather apples and pears and peaches, and other kinds of fruit which have no hard shells on them, and which do not have to be planted in the spring of the year. But do you know that we could not gather this kind of rich fruit from the trees unless trees of these kinds had been cultivated for long centuries, grafted and developed so as to produce the rich fruit which is now placed upon our tables? So you see that even this has cost labor, and if we were to neglect the trees in the orchard, it would only be a few years until they would produce only a very small variety of fruit, and even that would be sour and have an unpleasant taste.

But God means to teach us this lesson also in another way. Man has found it very necessary to use the different kinds of metals, iron and copper, silver and gold. God has not laid these metals on top of the ground, but has made it necessary that we should dig down into the earth and secure these metals at the cost of a great deal of labor. The same is also true with regard to the coal and the oil, and all the rich mineral products which God has blessed us. None of them can be secured without labor.

Apple Tree.

We are all naturally lazy. I have oftentimes thought that we are all born lazy. Some learn to be industrious with less effort, but all have to be taught to work. God means that we should work. Have you ever thought that God could feed us without our labor if He chose to do so? He could rain down our food from heaven, just the same as He gave manna to the Children of Israel, while they were journeying to the promised land. He could not only feed us, but He could also clothe us from heaven. I am sure that if God gave us our clothing from heaven, He would not make such foolish fashions as wicked people over in Paris invent, and which all the rest of the world seem to think they have to imitate. Not only our food and clothing, but God could also have made it necessary that there should be no preachers. Instead of giving us His Word in the Bible, and then asking us to go into all the world and to preach it to all creatures, He might have used the stars at night, just the same as the printer uses the different kinds of type and prints the letters and words upon the page; so God could have used the stars in order to write His law upon the heavens in a universal language that would be known by all peoples, and so at night, and even in the daytime, people could look up into the heavens and read God's law. Thus it would have been unnecessary ever to have printed Bibles, or to send preachers to preach. The cost of building churches and supporting ministers would thus have been unnecessary, but God does not do things in that way. Lazy people might desire that things were arranged in this way, but God has seen fit to make it very different.

But why do you think that God means that you and I should learn to work? There are two or three good reasons which I can think of. We are so constituted that no one can be in good health for any considerable period without physical exertion, and so you see that if we want to be well—and no one can be happy who is not well—it is necessary that we should learn to work. You will always find that lazy people who eat a great deal suffer many physical ailments. They are always complaining, and I think you will always find that they really are sick, but they could be well if they would only go to work as God meant they should.