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

by Sylvanus Stall

Small Telescope.

If you were to look through a large telescope, or even one of these smaller spy-glasses, you would immediately discover that when you desire to look at objects at different distances, or in different degrees of light and shade, you would have to constantly adjust the telescope or spy-glass to these different conditions. If you would look at objects which are near, and then turn the spy-glass to look at those which are distant, you would not be able to see distinctly until you had adjusted the lenses to suit the distance. With our eyes the same adjustment has to be made, and yet it is done so quickly and without any conscious effort upon our part, that it seems as if it were not done at all. When we look at an object which is only a few inches from our face, and then turn and look at a distant object, instantly our eyes are adjusted to the difference of distance and varying degrees of light and shade.

But what makes this all still more wonderful is the fact that we have two telescopes, two eyes instead of one. Both of these little eye-telescopes instantly adjust themselves, and both adjust themselves to precisely the same necessity. If they adjusted themselves differently we would see two objects instead of one; the same as a drunken man who has lost the use of his muscles and faculties, whose eyes do not work in harmony, and therefore, instead of seeing only one object, he sees two objects and sees them in a confused way.

Did you ever think how wonderful it is that when you close your right eye, and look at something with your left eye, that you can see the object distinctly? Now, if you close the left eye, and look at the object with the right eye, you again see the same object distinctly. When you open both eyes and look at the same object, instead of seeing the object twice, or seeing two objects, you see only one object. That is because the eyes work in such perfect harmony, and that is what the Scripture means when it says that you and I should "see eye to eye" in everything that is good.

Now there is another thing to which I desire to call your attention, and that is the size of the eye. If you owned one of these very large telescopes which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, you would be regarded as a very wealthy person, but you could not carry that telescope with you from one place to another. It would be of no service to you in looking upon the beautiful scenes which surround you from day to day. If you wanted to use the telescope you would have to stay where the telescope was, instead of taking the telescope with you where you desired to go. But God has made these little eye-telescopes so perfect, and yet so compact and small, that wherever we go, on land or sea, we can take them with us, and they can be in constant use and give us the most perfect delight and satisfaction.

I am sure there is not a single boy or girl who would trade off one of these perfect little telescopes—yes, I will call it a telescope and an observatory also—for God has beautifully encased our eyes, and shielded and housed them more beautifully and satisfactorily than the most perfect observatory which was ever built for any man-made telescope. We would not trade away one of our eyes for one of the finest telescopes in the world, and we would not be willing to give both of our eyes for all the telescopes which have ever been made.

But one of these large telescopes and observatories would cost a great deal—even hundreds of thousands of dollars; yet God has given you and me these telescopes, our wonderful eyes. But because God has given them to us they are none the less valuable on that account, and I think therefore that I was correct when I addressed you to-day as little millionaires.

Now, God has given you, not simply one eye, but He has given you two eyes, two wonderful telescopes and observatories. He has given you two, so that if by any accident one should be destroyed, you would still have the other to depend upon. God has given you two eyes, and two hands, and two feet; but He has given you only one soul, and if by sin you lose that one soul, then you have lost everything, for the Scripture says, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

In Palestine, the country in which Jesus lived when He was upon the earth, the sun shines with wonderful brightness and clearness; the land also is very light in color, and consequently the eyes are oppressed by the glare, just the same as those of you who have ever been at the seashore have experienced the glare while walking along the beach; or, to some extent, like the bright sunlight shining upon the snow in winter. This light color of the soil and brightness of the sun in Palestine are the cause of blindness to many of the inhabitants. When Jesus was upon the earth, one of His greatest acts of mercy to suffering humanity was to open and heal the eyes of those who were either born blind, or who had become blind afterward.