The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-06-07

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his protecting webs over the home
and the church and the schoolhouse
and society at large. There are great
multitudes of satanic destroyers ready
to pounce upon them. God says: "Man
| you must guard these treasure houses
of virtue and purity and truth. You
must guard them. You must not only
bow the knee and worship me, but you
must also fight my satanic foes as
well. By the myriads Of protecting
spider webs l would teach you this les.
son."
But l was very much surprised as
began to study this subject to learn
that the spider was susceptible to the
influence of love. For years and years
l had known that the spider was a
cannibal. Just the same as the savage
tribes of the African Kongo would go
forth and battle against the neighbor-
ing tribes and then come home with
rejoicing and kill and eat their prison
ers captured in war, so spiders will not
only eat spiders of other families, but
they will also eat their own brothers
and sisters and fathers and mothers.
That Is the reason spider silk cannot
be developed and made marketable
like the threads of the sllkworms.
Many years ago the Royal academy
of France tried to develop the spider
silk industry. The silk thread with
which the spider surrounds her eggs
is of beautiful color, almost as strong
as that made by the silkwOrm. M.
Bon of Languedoc manufactured arti-
cles of wearing apparel out of the
spiders web. But the industry had to
be abandoned because the spiders
would destroy one another until every
one Of them except the biggest and
the strongest of them had been slain in
their cells. Thus the spider used to be
to me the symbol Of ingratitude, feroc-
ity and hate. He was the symbol of
all that was cruel and loathsome and
repulsive. l thought God gave to the
spider his hideous physiognomy, his
rows of cleaning eyes, his bloated
body trunks adhering together by a
small connection, as were the two
bodies of the Siamese twins; his many
jointed, disproportionate legs, which
make it possible for him to travel in
any direction he would without turn
ing around; his poisons which are Sc
creted at the mandible tips and his
cannibalistic tendencies which compel
him to live a hermit life, because God
wanted every one to turn from the
spider in complete disgust But after
l went on in my Investigations l found
that even this low, vile repulsive form
of life as found in the spider is sus-
ceptible to the influence of love.
An Ancient Tradition.
An ancient tradition states that when
st. Felix of Nolan was being pursued
by the pagans who wished to put him
to death he fed into a cave and the
spiders took pity ON him and covered
the entrance of the cave with a per-
feet web There he lived for six long
months, safely protected from his
would be destroyers. That is a mere
legend. But history is full of Incl
dents where men have made pets out
of spiders. When Poisson was con-
fined for many months in the Bastille,
the famous French prison, his only
was a spider which he do
When Poisson played on
a musical instrument the spider would
come regularly to eat flies out of his
hand. 1t was written by Staveley that |
a certain Frenchman tanned over 800 |
different spiders, which would come to |
him to be fed as lot of chickens will |
run to the call of the farmers wife |
when she is about " feed them.
Though the spiders seem to be canni- |
balls, yet the natural love of a spider |
for her young is very strong. 1t is
ike the love of the eagle for her |
1estlings. She will fercely battle for
her eggs before they are Matched.
When the eggs are Matched, she will
allow the young spiders to climb upon
Ter BACK and she will carry them for
ong distances. Thus by the lesson of
he spider we can assert that even in
he most depraved and ferocious and
,ruel and bitter and sinful forms of
human life there lies somewhere in
he heart the germ seeds of love. If
his crude form OF love can only be
cached in the right way for God, it
AN be developed into a true, pure,
jpotless form of Christian life, even
Is the love of a spider through the
musical notes of Poisson can make
his repulsive animal answer to the
'alls of love.
But there Is still a more wonderful
act about these spiders than any /
lave as yet mentioned 1t is the
most wonderful symbol OF gospel
restoration which is to be found in the
spider reproducing one of its broken
limbs injured in battle 1t is the gos-
bel symbol which says, Though a man
las sinned seventy times seven-aye,
hough he may have sinned seven hun
lred times seven hundred and has
seemed to smash all his earthly gospel
lsefulness forever-yet by the grace OF
Tod that sinner may be spiritually re
reated and do valiant service for the
Easter before he dies"
A More Wonderful Fact.
Now, spider has a marvellous power
# recreation in many ways. Wonder
III is the spiders ability to fix a bro
zen web. If on account of the rain a
alling stone snaps some of the threads ]
nd entangles them like a snarled mass {
# Irvine, the spider waits patiently
ntil the storm is over and fair wealth
r is at hand. The spider cannot af-
ord to waste any of her precious
bread, but she always has enough
bread to do her legitimate work. Like
he mamma in the wilderness, there is
lways enough food for each day, but
.ot enough food for two DAVIS i'm the y