With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-SoulStall, Sylvanus
Religion
With the Children on Sundays: Through Eye-Gate and Ear-Gate into the City of Child-Soul
Stall, Sylvanus
Children -- Religious life; Children's sermons; Moral education
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.
Now suppose that there were to be no rain at all, and people should
undertake to water the earth by bringing the water from the rivers. On
an average of about thirty-three inches of rain fall upon the surface of
the entire earth each year, in some places more, in others less. The
weight of this water in one single square mile would be nearly two and
one-half millions of tons, and if this water which falls upon one single
square mile had to be drawn in cars, it would require 100,000 carloads
of water to keep this one single mile as wet as God usually keeps it
throughout the year by the rain from heaven. I think you will see, from
what I have said, that all the cars in the entire United States, and
there are hundreds of thousands of them, would not be sufficient to haul
water from the rivers for any considerable distance to keep more than
ten miles square of earth watered. But you can also see that if all
these cars were to be run on a piece of ground only ten miles square,
that entire piece of ground would be almost completely covered with
railroad tracks, and we would scarcely be able to raise anything on it
in the way of grain or vegetables or food of any kind. But even if we
could successfully water ten miles square of land, what would that be
compared with the absolute necessity of watering the entire continent
and all the continents of the globe in order to make life possible upon
the earth. Now the question arises, how does God accomplish this great
result?
[Illustration: Train of Cars.]
I suppose you have all noticed the teakettle when it is upon the stove
and the steam is coming out of the spout, and around the lid. You have
there had a practical demonstration of how God can cause the water,
which is 800 times heavier than the atmosphere or the air, to rise and
float, for you know that any substance heavier than air will always fall
to the earth. In the instance of the teakettle you will see how heat
causes the water to become steam and thus to rise in the air and float
away, rising to the height of the clouds which float two, three and
four and sometimes more miles high above the earth.
Now, just in this same way God makes the heat from the rays of the sun
to cause that from every river and lake and all the expanse of the
ocean, as well as from the surface of the earth, there shall constantly
arise a very fine vapor, which, although it is somewhat like steam, is
still so much finer that you and I cannot see it with our unaided eyes.
It is by means of this vapor that God raises the moisture from the
oceans and all bodies of water and from the earth, to fall again in
gentle showers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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