A Japanese Girl's Simile.
At a class-meeting in Japan where a number of Christian girls were gathered together, the subject was, "How to glorify Christ by our lives." One of the girls said: "It seems to me like this: one spring my mother got some flower seeds, little ugly, black things, and planted them; they grew and blossomed beautifully. One day a neighbor coming in and seeing these flowers said, 'Oh, how beautiful! I must have some too; won't you please give me some seed?' Now if this neighbor had only just seen the flower seeds, she wouldn't have called for them; 'twas only when she saw how beautiful was the blossom that she wanted the seed. And so with Christianity; when we speak to our friends of the truths of the Bible, they seem to them hard and uninteresting, and they say: 'We don't care to hear about these things; they are not so interesting as our own stories;' but when they see these same truths blossoming out in our lives into kindly words and good acts, then they say, 'How beautiful these lives! What makes them different from other lives?' And when they hear that 'tis Jesus' teaching, then they say, 'We must have it too!' And thus by our lives more than by our tongues, we can preach Christ to our unbelieving friends."—Sel.