THE WORLD'S CHILDHOOD THE BACKGROUND OF HUMAN LIFE "In the beginning God."-Gen. 1:1. A DISTINGUISHED Scotchman once wrote with his finger, in the corner of his garden, in the soft mold, the letters of his son's name. He sowed garden-cress in the furrows, covered up the seed, and smoothed the ground. Ten days after this the boy came running to his father, and with astonishment in his countenance shouted to him that his name was growing in the garden. The father laughed at the report, and seemed to disregard it, but the boy insisted on his going to see what had happened. "Yes," said the father, with assumed indifference, "I see it is so; but what is there in this worth notice? Is it not mere chance?" "It can not be so," said the boy. "Somebody must have contrived matters so as to produce it." "Look at yourself," replied the father, and consider your hands and fingers, your legs and your feet. Came you hither by chance?" "No," he answered. "Something must have made me." "And who is that something?" asked the father. He said, "I don't know." Then the father drew away the veil from this great background of human life and told him that "In the beginning God created." I This sentence which we have chosen for our text is one of the most stupendous utterances ever recorded in human language. The first time any man gives thoughtful utterance to it the mind staggers and reels under the weight of its tremendous meaning. As we steady ourselves for thought and contemplation, it is as tho we stood up against a great chain of lofty mountains-mountains so high and splendid that they form the background of wide-reaching valleys and far-stretching plains which draw all their fertility and beauty from the mountains at our back. |