Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-01-13
MEN WHO RECOGNIZED,


They were eminently the men who recog-
nized. There is a plain distinction between
observation and recognition; between seeing
q man and knowing who and what kind of
man he is; between seeing wheel in a ma
chine and knowing what the wheel is for;
between seeing a star and knowing as much
about it as Professor Langley knows; be-
tween reading sentence OF Plato or St.
John, and recognizing the meaning of
which the words are the messengers. There
Is plain distinction, 1 say, between obser-
walton and recognition.
A little child was one day carried in his
mothers arms into the most sacred building
in the world. The mother and the child had
journeyed in from Bethlehem. They had
Travelled over country roads and city streets,
meeting many people, but not attracting
anybody's straying attention. And thev
stood in the temple court amid crowd of
Others, quite unnotlced. A great many
people saw them, but what they saw was
only peasant woman with q baby; a CON-
mon sight. Nobody looked twice at them.
But suddenly an old man chanced to see
them, and at once ne recognized them. A
voice spoke in his heart and told him the
great secret. He took the child in his arms
and thanked God. Here was the child of
ancient promise; here was the Savior.
Lord, " he cried, Mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation" But the bystanders saw no SAL
walton. They were only observers. Here
was one who recognized.
Our Lord stopped, one cay, in the midst
of a crowd which was pressing upon Him,
and asked a question which the disciples
thought was very queer question, indeed.
He said, "Who touched Me?" Why. they
were all touching Him. Yes; they were all
touching Him, just as all the people in the
temple were beholding the holy child, Just
as everybody in the world was seeing the
Epiphany star. But there was only one
who was touching Him in the sense in
which He meant it-with the touch which
gained a blessing, the touch of spiritual
closeness, Of recognition.
There are always two conditions necessary
to the act of seeing: there must be a visible |
object, and there must be seeing eve, 1 !
suppose that hardly any two people see the |
same object in precisely the same way. be-
cause we all look ont of different ewes.
"The eye sees what it brings of seelpp.' |
have heard of one to whom the whole world |
is gray. The world. as he sees it. is a world |
of gray grass and gray trees and gray sum-
sets and gray people. But the grayness is |
in the mans eyes. / know a man who |
misses one little corner out of every star. |
Every point of light-an electric iamp. a |
moon, or a star-has little piece nicked |
out of the lower lefthand corner But there |
is no nick in the star.
These things are parallels of this growth |
of recognition of which 1 speak. To one |
man all things connected with the spiritual |
life, with the great problems which have
engaged the great thinkers-all these things |
are simply uninteresting. The church. |
which stands for these things; the creed |
which voices the profoundest Interpretation
which the race has put upon these things, he
sets quite aside. They are without interest |
to him. They are all q dull gray. But the !
duh gray is all in the man.
THE MIND SEES