the work of men and women who have not yet solved the mystery of
their own lives.

And our food, must we understand it before we eat it? If we refused to
eat anything until we could understand the mystery of its growth, we
would die of starvation. But mystery does not bother us in the
dining-room; it is only in the church that it is a stumbling block.

I was eating a piece of watermelon some months ago and was struck with
its beauty. I took some of the seeds and dried them and weighed them,
and found that it would require some five thousand seeds to weigh a
pound; and then I applied mathematics to that forty-pound melon. One of
these seeds, put into the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened
by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it gathers from
somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forcing this
raw material through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon. It ornaments
the outside with a covering of green; inside the green it puts a layer
of white, and within the white a core of red, and all through the red it
scatters seeds, each one capable of continuing the work of reproduction.
Where does that little seed get its tremendous power? Where does it find
its coloring matter? How does it collect its flavoring extract? How does
it build a watermelon? Until you can explain a watermelon, do not be too
sure that you can set limits to the power of the Almighty and say just
what He would do or how He would do it. I cannot explain the watermelon,
but I eat it and enjoy it.

The egg is the most universal of foods and its use dates from the
beginning, but what is more mysterious than an egg? When an egg is fresh
it is an important article of merchandise; a hen can destroy its market
value in a week's time, but in two weeks more she can bring forth from
it what man could not find in it. We eat eggs, but we cannot explain an
egg.

Water has been used from the birth of man; we learned after it had been
used for ages that it is merely a mixture of gases, but it is far more
important that we have water to drink than that we know that it is not
water.

Everything that grows tells a like story of infinite power. Why should I
deny that a divine hand fed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes
when I see hundreds of millions fed every year by a hand which converts
the seeds scattered over the field into an abundant harvest? We know
that food can be multiplied in a few months' time; shall we deny the