Impression | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 28, 1871

Impression.

If a wafer be laid on a surface of polished metal, which is then breathed upon, and if, when the moisture of the breath has evaporated, the wafer be shaken off, we shall find that the whole polished surface is not as it was before, although our senses can detect no difference; for if we breathe again upon it, the surface will be moist everywhere except on the spot previously sheltered by the wafer, which will now appear as a spectral image on the surface. Again and again we breathe, and the moisture evaporates, but still the spectral wafer reappears. This experiment succeeds after the lapse of many months, if the metal be carefully put aside where its surface cannot be disturbed. If a sheet of paper, on which a key has been laid, be exposed for some minutes to the sunshine, and then instantaneously viewed in the dark, the key being removed, a fading specter of the key will be visible. Let this paper be put aside for many months where nothing can disturb it, and then in darkness be laid on a plate of hot metal, the specter of the key will again appear. In the case of bodies more highly phosphorescent than paper, the specters of many different objects which may have been laid on in succession, will, on warming, emerge in their proper order. This is equally true of our bodies and our minds. We are involved in the universal metamorphosis. Nothing leaves us wholly as it found us. Every man we meet, every book we read, every picture or landscape we see, every word or tone we hear, mingles with our being, and modifies it. Should not this thought make us careful of our influence? careful also of exposing ourselves to sinful associations?—Sel.