p. 15 | No Deed of Love Lost by Louis Albert Banks

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 25, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 33.

No Deed of Love Lost

By Louis Albert Banks

God has so made the world that every generous, Christlike deed shall have its influence, not only now and here, but evermore and everywhere. In Gray’s famous “Elegy” there is a line which bemoans the fate of the flowers that waste their sweetness on the desert air. But modern scientists assure us that the poet was wrong in his conception, and that no flower ever yet thus wasted its sweetness. They explain to us that all the flowers in the world, whether they be the laurels and the rhododendrons of the lofty mountains and the deep forests, or the palms of India and Africa, or the gorgeous century-plants of the American desert, or the roses of the valleys, are perpetually enriching the atmosphere and making the earth a healthier and sweeter place in which to live.

Many of these great gardens of God grow and flourish hundreds of miles from any human habitation, but cause the winds to catch up their fragrance, and the air is sweeter in Cleveland because there are flowers growing in South America and China. The God who knows how to make the flower-perfume cross the oceans, will not be at a loss to find a way to make your deed of forgiving love and mercy help the world, and that not only now but long after the deed is done.— Louis Albert Banks, D.D.