And so we might take any vegetable or fruit. The blush upon the peach is
in striking contrast to the serried walls of the seed within; who will
explain the mystery of the apple, the queen of the orchard, or the nut
with its meat, its shell, and its outer covering? Who taught the tomato
vine to fling its flaming many-mansioned fruit before the gaze of the
passer-by, while the potato modestly conceals its priceless gifts within
the bosom of the earth?
I learned years ago that it is the mystery in the miracle that makes it
a stumbling block in the way of many. If you will analyze the miracle
you will find just two questions in it: _Can_ God perform a miracle?
And, would He _want_ to? The first question is easily answered. A God
who can make a world can do anything He wants to with it. We cannot deny
that God _can_ perform a miracle, without denying that God is God. But,
would God _want_ to perform a miracle? That is the question that has
given the trouble, but it has only troubled those, mark you, who are
unwilling to admit that the infinite mind of God may have reasons that
the finite mind of man does not comprehend. If, for any reason, God
desires to do so, can He not, with His infinite strength, temporarily
suspend the operation of any of His laws, as man with his feeble arm
overcomes the law of gravitation when he lifts a stone?
If among my readers any one has been presumptuous enough to attempt to
confine the power and purpose of God by man's puny understanding, let
me persuade him to abandon this absurd position by the use of an
illustration which I once found in a watermelon. I was passing through
Columbus, Ohio, some years ago and stopped to eat in the restaurant
in the depot. My attention was called to a slice of watermelon, and I
ordered it and ate it. I was so pleased with the melon that I asked the
waiter to dry some of the seeds that I might take them home and plant
them in my garden. That night a thought came into my mind--I would use
that watermelon as an illustration. So, the next morning when I reached
Chicago, I had enough seeds weighed to learn that it would take about
five thousand watermelon seeds to weigh a pound, and I estimated that
the watermelon weighed about forty pounds. Then I applied mathematics to
the watermelon. A few weeks before some one, I knew not who, had planted
a little watermelon seed in the ground. Under the influence of sunshine
and shower that little seed had taken off its coat and gone to work; it
had gathered from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight,
and forced that enormous weight through a tiny stem and built a
watermelon. On the outside it had put a covering of green, within that
a rind of white and within the white a core of red, and then it had
scattered through the red core little seeds, each one capable of doing
the same work over again. What architect drew the plan? Where did that
little watermelon seed get its tremendous strength? Where did it find
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