THE VERY GERM OF JOY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2860, 6 January 1909, Page 72

THE VERY GERM OF JOY.

To show that the very germ of joy is embodied in light should not be difficult, and yet it is no lees true that the light of the most radiant planet may be hidden by the guttering flame of a cheap candle. The warm firelight of earthly love and fireside contentment may draw us with a magnet, against wfhich all the splendidly remote brilliance- of the starry heavens is powerless. What measureless magic lies in the very i word Light! To realise its power of I suggestion is to realise that the dictionary has its peerage as veil as Debrett, that in the woild of words theTe is a nobility, an aristocracy, and a — canaille. In that nobility of words, a few — simple enough, God knows! — curt and unbedizened, such a3 Life, Love, Death, stands towering peers of an ideal Tealnfc 'high above their fellows. Among them, an aureole about his brow, is Light. The word is a jewel of a thousand facts. It is a gem of speech from which a million thinkers in a genera. : tion cut more flawless diamonds than the ! master lapidaries have wrought for Edward Rex from the great Cullinan diamond. - Think of the word in the oldest chronicle current among vs — in that dim chaos of the Beginning — when One said, " Let there be light', and there was light," and " saw that it was good." Think of the same word in the newest sense of man's invention, still "good" and beneficent, following in strange new ways its unalienabl© mission, working in strange aa-j-d diverse directions, men's modern mercies to men. Such is the light — one almost feels like saying the " sacred " blue light — of the Finsen Institute. How those blue rays have brought hope to the hopeless, soundness to the unsound, comeliness and self respect to the hapless ones who otherwise lived to loathe their own flesh. Think again of the great silent messages flashing across ths sea each night from a thousand ilighfchouses, as the Old World swings steadily on, and the little 6hips of men feel their way over the vast waterways of God. We who have watched, lounging in our deck chairs, snuggling down into our lugs and cushions; or, gay and vibrant, pacing the deck as the steamer forged swiftly and steadily on through calm seas — we, I say, who have thus watched the distant flash of light piercing the dusk as we " picked up " one lighthouse after another on our rocky coasts — what do wo know of the meaning of these messages? But the eailors who read the book of the I sea from cover to cover ; the men in the