I have brought you here, children, four things that will throw some light on our topic for today. The first is a little seed. Here it is. How is it ever going to grow to be a great, strong plant? Well, first it will reach up into the fresh, warm air two little leaflets. Then it will reach down into the warm, rich soil some tiny rootlets. It will lengthen these more and more, all the time groping around in the soil and air for water and plant food, and all of these things that it finds it will build up into itself until it becomes a great, strong plant.
That is one way we can grow strong, children. We can reach out with our minds and get hold of all sorts of knowledge, from books, and from our teachers, and from the beautiful world in which God has placed us. And if we build up into our memories all the knowledge we find, we shall soon become very strong plants indeed. Just try it.
But the second thing I want to show you will tell you quite another way of growing strong. here it is—a picture of a river. You know how the river grows. It does not do anything but receive the little streams that flow into it as it moves along. Here they come and there, down from the far-away hills, through fields and forests and farms and towns, and all of them into one river, so that by and by it is a very great river indeed, and all it has done is simply to keep going on day after day and receiving it all.
You see, children, when you think of it, there are lots and lots of things in our lives we never could get, no matter how much we reached out after them, as this seed is going to reach out with its roots and leaves. It is God who must send them to us, and all we do is to keep still and take them. Our dear friends, our good health, our good looks, our happy homes, and noble schools, and ever so many things,—we have done almost nothing to get them, and yet God sends them. Let us be glad that we can be strengthened just by keeping still and taking what he so kindly gives us.
The third thing I have brought to show you is a pocket-knife. Do you know how its sharp blade was hardened? They took the steel, made it red-hot, and then plunged it into cold water, and they did this again and again till it was very hard; and there was no other way of hardening it except by this process of fire.
In just this way, children, God sometimes finds it best to make us strong by fire. He plunges us into trials that seem so terrible,—our own sickness, or the sickness and death of those we love, or some bitter disappointment, or some sad failure. O, it is hard indeed to bear; but if we are true and patient, at the end we shall find ourselves all the stronger for the fiery trials through which God has made us pass, just as this knife could not have grown strong without its fiery bath.
And now for my fourth object. You do not see what it is? Well, it is just my arm. You know how it can get strong, and the only way. Yes, by exercise. The more I work it and the more it gets tired, strange to say, the more it gets able to do, and the less it gets tired in doing it.
That is just the way—the very best way of all—to strengthen your minds and hearts, dear boys and girls, as well as your bodies—set them at work, and keep them at work. Help people all you can, love people all you can, and you will soon grow so strong that every one will come to lean on you. Try it and see.