the little child, knows just as much about the mystery of life as does the most learned atheist. We have our thoughts, our hopes, our fears, and yet we know that in a moment a change may come over any one of us that will convert a living, breathing human being into a mass of lifeless clay. What is it, that, having, we live, and, having not, we are as the clod? We know as little of the mystery of life to-day as they knew in the dawn of creation and yet behold the civilization that man has wrought.

And love that makes life worth living is also a mystery. Have you ever read a scientific definition of love? You never will. Why? Because a man does not know what love is until he gets into it, and then he is not scientific until he gets out again. And even if we could understand the mysterious tie that brings two hearts together from out the multitude, and on a united life builds the home, earth's only paradise, we still would be unable to understand that larger mystery that manifests itself when a human heart reaches out and links itself to every other heart.

And patriotism, also, is a mystery—intangible, invisible, and yet eternal. Because there has been in the past such a thing as patriotism, millions have given their lives for their country. Patriotism could command millions of lives to-day. Our country is not lacking in patriotism; we have as much as can be found anywhere else, and it is of as high a quality. There ought to be more patriotism here than elsewhere; as citizenship in the United States carries more benefits with it than citizenship in any other land, the American citizen should be willing to sacrifice more than any other citizen to make sure that the blessings of our government shall descend unimpaired to children and to children's children. The atheist knows as little about these mysteries as the Christian does and yet he lives, he loves and he is patriotic.

But our case is even stronger: Everything with which man deals is full of mystery. The very food we eat is mysterious; sometimes man-made food becomes so mysterious that we are compelled to enact pure food laws in order that we may know what we are eating. And God-made food is as mysterious as man-made food, though we cannot compel Jehovah to make known the formula.

We encourage children to raise vegetables; a little child can learn how to raise vegetables, but no grown person understands the mystery that is wrapped up in every vegetable that grows. Let me illustrate: I am fond of radishes; my good wife knows it and keeps me supplied with them when she can. I eat radishes in the morning; I eat radishes at noon; I eat radishes at night; I eat radishes between meals; I like radishes. I plant radish seed—put the little seed into the ground, and go out in a few days and find a full grown radish. The top is green, the body of the root is white and almost transparent, and around it I sometimes find a delicate pink or red. Whose hand caught the hues of a summer sunset and wrapped them around the radish's root down there in the darkness in the ground? I cannot understand a radish; can you? If one refused to eat anything until he could understand the mystery of its growth, he would die of starvation; but mystery does not bother us in the dining-room,—it is only in the church that mystery seems to give us trouble.

In travelling around the world I found that the egg is a universal form of food. When we reached Asia the cooking was so different from ours that the boiled egg was sometimes the only home-like thing we could find on the table. I became so attached to the egg, that, when I returned to the United States, for weeks I felt like taking my hat off to every hen I met. What is more mysterious than an egg? Take a fresh egg; it is not only good food, but an important article of merchandise. But loan a fresh egg to a hen, after the hen has developed a well-settled tendency to sit, and let her keep the egg under her for a week, and, as any housewife will tell you, it loses a large part of its market value. But be patient with the hen; let her have it for two weeks more and she will give you back a chicken that you could not find in the egg. No one can understand the egg, but we all like eggs.

Water is essential to human life, and has been from the beginning, but it is only a short time ago, relatively speaking, that we learned that water is composed of gas. Two gases got mixed together and could not get apart and we call the mixture water, but it was much more important that man should have had water to drink all these years than it was to find out that water is composed of gas. And there is one thing about water that we do not yet understand, viz., why it differs from other things in this, that other things continue to contract indefinitely under the influence of cold, while water contracts until it reaches a certain temperature and then, the rule being reversed, expands under the influence of more intense cold? It does not make much difference whether we ever learn why this is true, but it is important to the world to know that it is so.

Sometimes I go into a community and find a young man who has come in from the country and obtained a smattering of knowledge; then his head swells and he begins to swagger around and say that an intelligent man like himself cannot afford to have anything to do with anything that he cannot understand. Poor boy, he will be surprised to find out how few things he will be able to deal with if he adopts that rule. I feel like suggesting to him that the next time he goes home to show himself off to his parents on the farm he address himself to the first mystery that ever came under his observation, and has not yet been solved, notwithstanding the wonderful progress made by our agricultural colleges. Let him find out, if he can, why it is that a black cow can eat green grass and then give white milk with yellow butter in it? Will the mystery disturb him? No. He will enjoy the milk and the butter without worrying about the mystery in them.

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