THE QUIET HOUR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 15

THE QUIET HOUR.

(Published by Arrangement - with, the Hawera Ministers’ Association.) ALTRUISM. : I remember the ? outline .of an incident recorded years; ago. : It was sunset in the Alps.-v. The--mountains, were bathed in , sunset,;'""eplemloufs. The shivering wiuds blew wildly about the siiow-covered monarchs. A traveller had climbed up the slopes of a mountain, and at-evening tlirned; his steps toward his home in th© ;; valley.'A storm' arose. The cold;- wind blew, a hurricane. The snow began!.tit fall. The frost began to bite. The man became bewildered arid lost, his path. The shadows of night gathered about him.. He became-discouraged,; at last . exhausted, and sank down in the snow to die. He committed his soul to God. He was about to sleep the sleep of death when he heard a cry of distress. It pierced his heart. He . -was aroused from his stupor, and arose from his frosty bed of death. He followed in the direction of the cry. At last he. found a fellow traveller who -was ready to lie down in his winding-sheet of snow and frost. "With desperate; effort he aroused his brother. But the energy expended in shaking' 1 the lethargy from his brother sent liis. own blood coursing through his body; It often happens that when you rescue another you rescue yourself. Help another, and God’ helps you.—-R. O. H-. v LAW! ; A Some spring day’ you find a young bird lying on the ground, its 'wings broken, or perhaps its life crushed out; while the other fledglings are safe in the nest above. Or, here is a, flower that has pushed itself above the . soil in early April; every voice of its 'kind reasoned, “You would better wait a while’ ’; every neighbourly Anger tried to hold it back; but it had its;,own way, and of course the frost nipped ■ it and left it helpless. A fish, -could see no sense in having to stay in one ; element all the while; there were other creatures on shore; why- not lie?' And so he threw himself out of the Water, and on the hot sand panted his life '■ ■ out. “ ■ A A:. ’ They all violated the inherent laws .[ of their lend. They all broke some rules. They disregarded their peculiar ; decalogue, arid disaster followed.— ' T. H. H. - , WORK. ;• '! In the following account a traveller in the Fiji Islands tells us;what hap- ■ peris to races that do’ not : show them- ' selves capable of steady industry: The aborigines cut out, . with crude tools, holes in logs for carfyirig water. They are cumbersome,-hut are better than nothing for thekhative. He does not know that there is anything bet- . ter, hence is satisfied.' We said that they were all lazy:,;- They were horn tired, and have-been tired ever since. : This race must, of- course, give way* to the. stronger—the white mail. In the Fiji Islands theie are two deaths among the natives to one birth. This would indicate that the race will soon become extinct. They won’t work, and hence must give way’ to the race that will. The Indian will soon take possession of the island. God’ said, ‘‘By the sweat of the brow shall man live.” When this laAv is broken, disaster follows. The aborigines iri Australia will, no doubt, some day become extinct too. PERSISTENT PLODDING. The reward of diligent toil is rather humourously told in these verses by Mr Louis E. Thayer: He wanted a job and, like evervone else, He wanted a good one, you know; Where his clothes would notAsoil and his hands would keep clean, * And the salary mustn’t be low. He asked for a pen, but they gave him a spade. , And he half turned away With a shrug; But he altered his mind and, seizing the spade—he. dug! , ; • He worked with a will that is bound to succeed, And the months and the years went along. The way it was rough and the labour was hard, - But his heart he kept filled with a song. Some jeered him arid sneered at the task, but he plugged Just as hard as he ever could plug; Their words never seemed to disturb r' him a Lit-—as he dug. 1; The day came at last when, they called for the spade - j And gave him a pen in its place. : The 'joy of; achievement was sweet to I*. his taste, ' ’ " And victory shone in his face. _ We can’t always get what we hope for at first—- _ Success cuts many queer jigs, But one thing is sure—a man will sue—j ceed—if he digs. j i :1 MORAL ATTRACTION. c■‘ ' ‘ ' t Attention has recently been called £ anew to the mineral wealth qf the 0 sea. It is known that sea-water cpn- ■ tains gold in'solution. The Lancet re,s marks as follows: “On the estimate that a ton of sea-water contains"approximately one grain, the yield, would r amount to something like 200 tons of -- gold per cubic mile, and as the volume h of the world’s oceans is estimated at •t 400,000,000 cubic miles the total possible yield of gold would be no less i* than 100,000,000,000 tons—a truly at■s tractive prospect to the company pi : 6e moter. . . *- - We now learn that a serious attempt 11 is to be made to wrest a proportion, at any’ rate, of this vast wealth. from ri the sea, and' that a company is about n to start the necessary machinery and it plant somewhere on the south coast of. le England. One method suggested ,is ie that the steamships carrying electric io. installations start a system of electrog plating by’ suspending a couple of copper plates into the sea which, when re connected with the dynamos, would is serve as electrodes, and collect the d gold while the ship was making its y voyage. This may or may not he pracit ticable, it matters not-; at- any Tate, it l.e points clearly’ to \vkat'ive kriow toi be a 1- fact, that this world is full of golden n opportunities for enriching the soulis life, and that all one needs is to be ie charged with the right spirit for it gathering the good, and the rich gold is will be collected as one passes on his it voyage of life. That spirit is none :y other than the spirit of love spoken of s- in 1 Cor., xiii., and Paul assures us' td that “all things work together for a!good to them that love God.” —Rom. id jviii., 28.—G. E. B.