Worthington Hooker

“ Snow-flakes are beautiful things to look at even with the naked eye. How light, and delicate, and feathery they are! When they are very large and the air is still, how slowly and steadily they fall! Let a few of them light upon your coat sleeve, where you can look at them, and you will admire their beauty; and when we look at them through a microscope, we see that there is not only beauty, but a great variety of beauty in them, as there is in all the other works of God. ”

“ I have told you that the blood is the building material from which all the parts of the body are made. The use of food, you have seen, is to make the blood, and the chief use of the breathing is to keep the blood in good order. The heart, with its arteries and veins, keeps the blood moving all about the body, so that it may be used in building and repairing. But what is the body built and kept in repair for? It is a house for the mind or soul. The soul—the thinking part of you—so long as it remains in this world, dwells in the body. ”

“ As your cat lies quietly purring in your lap, look at her paws. The claws are all concealed, and the paw, with its cushions, seems a very gentle, peaceable thing; but wake her up and let her play with a string, and as she tries to catch it with her paw, the claws now thrust out make it look like a powerful weapon, as it really is in the eyes of rats and mice. There are muscles that work those claws when the cat’s mind tells them to do it. When the claws are not thrust out these muscles are quiet, but they are ever ready to act when a message comes to them from the brain. ”

“ How beautiful are the motions of many of the birds as they fly in the air! How easily and gracefully their wings work! See that bird as it goes up and up; and now see it as it makes a turn, and comes down so swiftly on its outstretched wings, taking a beautiful sweep off at a distance; and then up it goes again to come down, in the same way that boys do when they travel up a long hill to slide down so swiftly on their sleds. The swallow, as he has this fine sport, is, at the same time, getting his living. ”

“ How beautiful is the scene when the snow has fallen gently without wind, and has covered the branches of trees and bushes! Look up into a tree thus covered. There the crystals lie, piled [3107] up, like tufts of cotton, out to the very tips of all the branches. Millions and millions of them are on every twig. How many must there be on the whole tree! And how many on all the trees and bushes, and over the whole surface of the ground!
How easily now can God destroy all these crystals! ”

“ You remember that I told you that a flower is never like the sap from which it is made. The same is true of the fruit. Bite the stem of a cluster of grapes, and you will see that the sap in it has none of the sweetness of the grapes; and yet they are made from it, just as the flowers were before them.
How different the fruit often is from the flower that was before it, though they are both made from the same sap! It may not, perhaps, seem strange to you that the sweet orange and its fragrant blossom can be made of the same sap; for, though they have different colors, they are both sweet. ”

“ Almost every body says when looking at a handsome plant or tree, how beautiful it is! But you will say something more than this. You will say how beautiful and how wonderful too! You think of the sap going up and down in the pipes, of the busy mouths in the roots drinking it up from the ground, of the many different things that are made from the sap, of the beautiful leaves acting as the lungs of the plant, and of the leaf-buds from which the leaves are made. ”

“ The bird thinks more than the worm. Some think faster than others. The humming-bird, that darts so quickly from flower to flower, thinks as fast as he works. But the lazy toad is a slow thinker. His mind does not work the machinery of his muscles much, and so does but little thinking. But even he once in a while thinks quickly. Let a fly walk along pretty near him, and he will catch it with his tongue so quickly that you can not see just how he does it. He watches the fly intently, keeping very still all the while; and when it gets near enough, he thrusts out his tongue, and the fly is gone. ”

“ The mind in his little brain thinks of every fly that comes buzzing along, and is anxious that it should get its legs entangled in the snares that he has woven. How glad he feels when he sees one caught by these snares! And if he thinks that they are not strong enough to hold the fly, he runs and quickly weaves some more threads about him. ”

“ Let them do every day what they can, just as each leaf does. Great men, that excite the wonder of the world, can do a great deal of good; but they can not do any thing like as much as is done by a great many people together that do each a little in a noiseless way. Every child, in doing little kind things, may, like the small leaf, do his part of the good that is to be done in the world. And if much of the good that he does is not noticed by others, God sees it all, just as he sees all the moisture that is breathed out by each little leaf. ”

“ This is all owing to a motion of the earth that I have not yet told you about. As the earth goes round the sun, it also turns every day around on itself. It is this motion that makes day and night for us. As the earth thus rolls over, where the sun shines upon it it is day, and where it does not shine upon it it is night. ”

“ When the wind blows upon you, it is air in motion that you feel. When there is a gust of wind, as we say, the air comes against you just as a wave of water does. When you fan yourself, you make the air strike upon your face, and you feel it as you feel any thing else that strikes you, as water or a stick.
The air is transparent, or clear, like glass; that is, it lets the light come through it to your eyes. Sometimes glass is not clear, and you can not see things plainly through it. So, also, the air is sometimes not clear, as when there is dust flying in it, or when there is a fog. ”

“ When the sun shines brightly all the different colors of the leaves make the woods look at a little distance as if they were all covered with blossoms. It is a very splendid sight that you see when you look off from a high hill over the woods on the hills and valleys. It looks as if monstrous bouquets of flowers had been stuck down thick together in the ground. ”

“ He can send a warm sun, the wind, or a rain, and they are dissolved and changed into water again. The earth’s winter robe, all made of pure white gems, is gone. But God can, whenever he will, turn the clouds above us again into crystals, and strew the earth with them as before. ”

“ There are the hard wood, the rough bark, the tender leaves, the beautiful blossoms, and the pleasant fruit, all made from the same sap. But the variety of things made from your blood is much more wonderful. ”

“ All these different colors, mingled with the fresh green leaves, make a feast for our eyes.
And then we love to look at each flower by itself. Some flowers we like better than we do others. A pretty little flower that smells sweet, we like better than we do a large one that has no perfume. The peony is very beautiful, but we do not love it as we do the little pink with its delightful fragrance. ”

“ How little do most people think of the wonderful things he is doing before them continually! If they are told that God, with his cold, makes the moisture from their breath into beautiful crystals, they can hardly believe it, and yet they have seen these crystals in the delicate frostwork on their windows winter after winter all their lives.
The figures of this crystal frostwork are often like leaves and flowers, such as we sometimes see on vessels of silver, only much more delicate and beautiful. ”

“ Man is compared in the Bible to a flower for another reason. Flowers live but a little while. This is true even of those that live the longest. Some last but a few hours, as I told you about the flowers of the morning-glory and the cypress-vine. So it is with mankind. Some die very young. These are like the morning-glories. They are beautiful while they live, and parents and friends like to look at them, just as we like to look at the beautiful flowers. But their life is short, very short, like a flower that blooms only for a day, and then withers and falls. ”

“ The Creator strews beautiful things even on the bottom of the ocean for us. If the coverings, or houses, as we may call them, of all the animals that live there were as homely as that of the oyster, they would be as useful and comfortable for them as they are now, decked with their elegant colors. So far as they are concerned, the beauty is thrown away. But men gather the shells, and, while they admire them, they see in the beauty which the Creator lavishes even in the depths of the sea the evidence of his abounding goodness. ”

“ No wonder that the bat can fly so swiftly with such very broad and light wings as he has. Did you ever observe how a bat’s wing is made? It is a very curious and really beautiful thing. It is an exceedingly fine, thin skin, on a frame-work of long, slender bones. These are to it what sticks of whalebone are to an umbrella; and the wings can be folded up somewhat as an umbrella is. This is done whenever the bat is not flying. When it is on the ground it is very awkward in its movements. ”

“ The insects have got through with their work and their play, and have gone to the places where they sleep. If you look just at dusk at a plant that you have seen all alive with insects in the day, you will find all quiet. The insects are all gone, except, perhaps, some little ones that have gone into the flowers to sleep on the soft and elegant bed they find there. ”

“ I have told you in Parts First and Second much about what heat does to life in vegetables and animals. The heat of spring wakes up the seeds and the buds; and stalks, and leaves, and flowers, and fruits come forth from them, making the earth cheerful and gay. ”

“ But as we are carried along on the earth as it goes around the sun, there are none of these things to let us know that we are moving. Every thing goes along with us—trees, houses, fences, and every thing else. We do not go through the air, but the air goes along with us. Then, too, the motion is very even. The earth is not jostled and jarred in its course. ”

“ So, too, it is very beautiful when, with the sun overhead, broken clouds are passing quickly in the sky. The swift shadows of the clouds give constant changes to the scene. One shadow seems to be chasing another over a bed of flowers.
When the leaves put on these bright colors it is the beginning of their death. They soon fall to the ground, and decay, and become a part of the earth. Some one has said that flowers are [1085] God’s smiles. So we may say that God smiles upon us in the dying leaf, when he makes it so much like a flower. ”

“ Now, as in a compound flower there are a great many flowers together, so it is with the eyes of insects. The eye of a common fly is made up of thousands of eyes; so, when he looks at any thing, there are thousands of very little images of it made by the light in these eyes, and the nerves tell the fly’s mind, in his little brain, about them. These eyes are so exceedingly small that you can not see them without a microscope. How fine, then, must be the nerves that go from them to the fly’s brain! ”

“ And if he sings at the same time that he plays, his mind is sending messages also to the muscles of the chest, and throat, and mouth. And what adds greatly to the wonder is, that all this time that the mind is sending out so many messages, it is receiving messages from the senses. Messages are going from the sounds of the piano and the voice along the nerves of the ear to the mind. They go also from the tips of the busy fingers as they press the keys. How wonderful that all these messages are going back and forth so rapidly, and the mind in the brain manages them without any confusion! ”

“ You can see in other things that the color of a thing depends on the way in which the light strikes it, and is reflected to your eyes. You see this in the changeable silk. As you move it, the light strikes it differently, and so different colors are reflected to your eyes. When you see the ice scattered on the ground from the trees in winter, shining in the bright sun, you see in one direction all the colors of the rainbow sparkling from the millions of pieces of ice; but if you look in the opposite direction you see none of these colors, but the ice looks white. ”

“ The mouths in the root of a plant do not, you know, suck up all the soil. They drink in only what is good to make the plant grow. So the mouths in the stomach of an animal do not suck up all the food; they suck up only that part of the food that will make the animal grow—that is, what will make good blood. There is, you know, no sap in the ground, but there is what can be made into sap. So there is no blood in your food, but there is in it what can be made into blood. ”

“ Some kinds of fire-works are made in such a way that the powder does not burn all at once, as it does in a gun or cannon. You know that when a rocket goes up, it is not sent up by one blast of the powder, as a ball is sent out of a gun. The powder is placed in the tail of the rocket, which is so made that the powder burns all the time that it is going up, the last of it making an explosion high up in the air, scattering the sparks which fall in so beautiful a shower. ”

“ Why light things rise in the air and in the water.
Wood will not sink in water as the stone does, for it is not drawn down to the earth as hard as the water is; but wood will fall through air to the ground, because the wood is attracted by the earth more strongly than the air is. If you put a block of wood down in the water, and then let it go, it rises to the surface. Why is this? It is because the water, being more strongly drawn down by the earth than the wood, pushes the wood up out of the way. It is for the same reason that the balloon filled with hot air or with light gas rises. ”

“ Suppose that a man should show you a great quantity of a red liquid, and tell you that with that he intended to build a house and furnish it—that he should make from it all his stones, and bricks, and timbers, and glass, and nails, and plaster, and papers for his walls, and paints of different colors, and then his carpets, and mirrors, and chairs, and curtains, etc., etc. You would say that the man is crazy. But God makes from that red fluid, the blood, all the parts of the house of the soul. ”