Questions.—To what does the Bible compare the law of God? For what purpose do people use a looking-glass? What does a man whose face is dirty see in the glass? What does it show that his face needs? Does it suggest that he should wash his face with the looking-glass? What does he use with which to wash his face? What does God's law show us? Does the law make us sinful? Can the law remove the effects of sin? Who is the fountain for the cleansing of our sin? Are we saved by the law, or by the grace of God?
RAIN.
GOD'S WISDOM AND POWER.
Suggestion:—A bottle partly filled with dust from the roadway will help to illustrate the condition which would quite universally prevail if the earth were not refreshed with frequent rains.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS: In view of the fact that the weather is so very warm, the earth so dried and parched and we have had no rain for a period of weeks, I thought it might be useful to-day to consider what would be the result if God should withhold the rain altogether, and then to tell you how, or in what manner God brings us the rain and refreshes the earth and makes it fruitful.
In order that you might see something of the present condition of the earth, I have brought in this bottle some dust, taken from the centre of the road. As I turn the bottle around, you see how dry it is and how it floats in the air, leaving the inside of this bottle all powdered with dust. The dust in this bottle is only a sample of what all the earth would soon become, if God did not send rain at frequent intervals throughout the year. I suppose you could all tell me of a number of instances in the Old Testament where we have accounts of drouths that extended throughout a period of years, and of the hunger and famine and death which followed.
When you are out of doors and look about you, you cannot but be impressed with how dry and dusty the trees and grass and everything about you is. If this dry weather were to continue long you could understand that soon everything would wither and die, and if it were to continue for a few years, men and beasts would not only die of thirst, but even the air itself would suck out from our bodies the moisture that is in our blood, and death would speedily follow. But if you were to remove all the moisture from the air, the earth would not only become barren, but it would become intensely cold. It is due to the moisture which is in the atmosphere that the warmth which comes to the earth from the sun is retained near the earth after the sun has gone down. If it were not so, even in a summer's night after the sun has gone down, the coldness which exists above the clouds would quickly come in contact with the earth, and the cold would become so intense that every person and every living thing would be in danger of being frozen to death in a single night.
You will remember that the great Sahara Desert is a vast tract of thousands of square miles where no rain falls, and where the heat is intense. There is, however, much moisture in the air that floats over the plains, but the reason that no rain falls is because there are no mountains in that portion of the globe for thousands of miles.