What Keeps Us Alive

After God had created the earth, He made the trees and the flowers, the fruits and the vegetables. Only God could have done this, for all the men in the world can not make so much as a blade of grass. And they have really tried and are still trying to make any kind of plant that will grow and they can not do it.

How many of you have ever picked dandelions? And when the dandelions have grown old and gray, have you ever tried to blow away their white, silky hair? Do you know what the dandelion’s white hair really is? Each little silky tuft carries at its base a tiny seed; it is the umbrella to which the seed clings so that the wind can give it a ride. And after the seed has made its first trip through the air, it lies down and goes to sleep in the soft earth. When its nap is over, it wakes up, stretches itself, pushes its legs down into the soil, thrusts its head up into the air and soon it is a full-grown plant with leaves and buds and flowers.

God made the dandelion and made it so its flowers would change into seeds and the seeds into other dandelions. God has given men wonderful brains and they can make marvellous machinery, aeroplanes and submarines, but He has not given them the power to make the smallest plant, and all the men in the world can not make a tiny dandelion seed.

God next made the animals—the fishes and birds, the lions and elephants and camels and bears and horses and cows and dogs and rabbits and all the others.

Last of all God made the first man and woman. He made them with bodies like the animals, but He put in their bodies something the animals have not got—a soul. You and I are their children and like them we have a body and a soul.

The soul is a spirit and can never die. We can not see our soul, but when it leaves our body, our body dies. When a car gets off its trolley, it can no longer move and we say it is dead. We can not see the electricity that makes a live car go, neither can we see the soul that gives us life. If a dead car gets back on its trolley, it is alive again. So, too, when the end of the world comes, every one’s soul will go back to its body and the dead body will come alive again and the soul will never leave it more.

Our soul is worth ever so much more than our body, and so we should give it much better care than we give our body. What do we do for our body every day? What do we do for our soul every day?

You see our body will die anyway, no matter how kindly we treat it; but if we take good care of our soul, we shall live with God forever in Heaven; whereas, if we do not take care of it, we shall burn forever in terrible fire in the awful torments of hell.

Let us start now to care for our soul. Let us learn today to make the sign of the cross. Let us make the sign of the cross the first thing in the morning, the last thing at night and many times during the day. If on the street we do not like to make a large sign of the cross, we can make a small one over our heart.

Once there were two little girls named Mary and Lucy. Their father was very, very rich, and he gave them each a pretty little silver locket and inside of each locket was a costly pearl. He told them that they must take very good care of the lockets on account of the pearls and that when they were twenty-one years old, they might open the lockets and see the pearls.

After a while Lucy grew tired of taking care of her locket and began to think that the pearl might not be worth very much, anyway. Besides, she had to wait so many years before she could see it. Then one day she threw it aside thoughtlessly.

But Mary knew that her father meant every word he had said, and year after year she guarded her locket with the greatest care. At last she was twenty-one years old and all the family stood about her as her father unfastened the locket and lo! there was a pearl of the purest white, so beautiful that for a moment they all held their breath.

Then Lucy thought of her locket and ran to look for it. All her searching was in vain. It was lost, and though she cried and cried she never found it.

God is our Father and He has given each of us a priceless pearl in a silver locket. The locket is our body and the pearl is our soul. If we take care of our soul, we shall be happy forever in Heaven, but if we lose our soul, we shall cry forever in the flames of hell.