Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-04-12
nsiIg afaaebse sournaL.
A SUNBEAM.

- Where would your crops be without
sunbeams Did you ever attempt to an
alyke onee Did you ever try to think out
what sunbeam isp To my thought it is
Just rag from Him who is The Life y
and laden with His attributes, Love and
Wisdom and Power. 1t is His way of i'm
parting these. @ 90
It does thousand things besides max
ing crops and photographs, and it is full
of seeming paradoxes.
1t is the most potent and versatile force
we have, and yet it behaves itself like the
gentlest and most accommodating. No
thing can fall more softly or more silently
upon the earth than the rays of our lunli-
nary - not even the feathery flakes of
snow, which thread their way through the
atmosphere as If they were too tilmy to
yield to the demands Of gravity like gross
or things. The most delicate slip of gold
leaf, exposed as a target to the suns
shafts, is not stirred to the extent of hair,
though an infants faintest breath would
set it in trcmulous motion The tenderest
of human organs, the apple of the eye,
though pierced and buffeted each day by
thousands of sunbeams, suffers no pain
during the process, but reioioeS in their
sweetness, and blesses the useful light
Yet q few of those rays, insinuating them
selves into mass of iron, like the Britain
mia Tubular Bridge, will compel the close
ly knt particles to separate, and will move
the whole enormous fabric with as much
ease as q giant would stir a straw. The
play Of those beams upon our sheets of
water lifts up layer after layer into the
atmosphere, and hoists whole rivers from
their beds. only to drop them again in
SHOWS upon the hills, or in fattehing show
ers upon the plains. Let but the air drink
In o little more sunshine at one place than
another, and out of it springs the tempest
or the hurricane, which desolates whole
region in its lunatic wrath. The marvel
is, that power which is capable of as
Stunning such a diversity of forms, and of
producing such stupendous results, should
come to us in SO gentle, so peaceful, and
so unpretentious a gulse
How few recognize the fact, when they
sit by the Preside, that the cheering
warmth comes from the sunbeams of long
gone days, when their power and life ena-
BLEED vegetable growth to separate carbon
from the carbonic acid in the air and store
it up in stems those stems afterwards, it
may be, converted into coal! Who thinks,
when he sees factory wheels turning, that
the water moving them was lifted by sun
beams, and does its work by falling a
small part Of the height to which it was
lifted ? or when swiftly moving along the
railway that sunbeams are the real motive
powerp Yet it is even so.
Did you ever attentively study stick of
6re-wood? There are many curious things
about it, Il we only know how to see them.
The trunk of tree is a bundle of long
slender fibers running from root to top Il
huge skein Of woody thread "a web all
warp and no wool. But these fibers,
sometimes many feet long, are hollow i
they are THY tubes, up and down which
play the currents of the fluids which feed
the opening buds of spring and the rich
fruits OF autumn. Each tree has its pecu-
liar pattern, according to which its It's
sues are always woven, and by which we
always recognize the species to which it
belongs.
Then, again, let us look at the end of
the stick cut across by the saw. How Gu
riously these parallel lines Of fibres are
in circles round the CENTER
Some are broader than others. Count
them; their number will tell you the age
of the tree - it has celebrated each year
with birthday ring. But they are more
than mere calendar,-- some are broad,
while others are narrow. Here we have
a selfrecorded register of the weather for
years past These broad rings mark the
years Of large growth, and tell us that
such year was one of generous showers
and abundant sunshine. The thinner
bands mark the years of scanty rain and
colder skies. Here, again, we touch Ma
lures wand the scepter Of her magic
power the sunbeam! 1t touches the
cold, dead, frozen earth, and it grows glo-
rious with leafy emerald and bearded gold.
Year after year these wide-armed trees
nave stretched forth their leafy hands,
gathering in the wealth of the golden sun
beams, absorbing their warmth, hiding
md boarding away down among the fibers
If their trunks and branches - carbon
And what is carbon? Sometimes we see
It as charcoal, sometimes as diamond.
as graphite, sometimes as an
bhracite, all alike carbon yet how unlike
Would you know The Uhole story of a sun
beam Well, you may when we see as
we are seen. Gods works are all Won
derful, what we cali little works as well
a. what we call great, for great and small
do not attach to the Infinite; inexhausti-
BILE are they all. yet sought out by those
who have pleasure therein.