LESSONS FROM THE SPIDER.
By John Henry Durland
THE wise man says of the spider, "The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in king's palaces." Prov. 30:28. From this insect we may learn some of the most instructive lessons in faith and devotion. "The spider taketh hold with her hands," or, as it has been translated, "with both hands," "and is in king's palaces." Here is whole-hearted effort. He puts both hands to the work. How few of the best of people do that! One hand grasping the world, and the other holding onto Christ. Half of our service is given to the Lord, and the other half to Satan. "No man can serve two masters." How often has the persistent spider taught men to hold on! His perseverance once saved the kingdom of Scotland, when its faltering chieftain was about to give up after a terrible defeat; but the sight of a spider trying six times in vain to gain his point, and succeeding in the seventh, nerved him anew to the conflict. What a lesson of appropriating faith we have in the spider. He takes hold. It is a good thing to learn to take hold of God; to "take the water of life freely," to use and claim the precious promises which God has given us, and which faith may weave into cables of infinite strength by which we may take hold and rise to the infinite heights of grace and glory. Then what encouragement there is to aspire to a higher sphere in Christian life. The spider is in king's palaces. He claims the highest place, and wherever he is you may usually expect to find him at the top. Sometimes, as in the case of the gossamer spider, he is found away at the top of the highest towers, floating on his aerial bridge far up towards heaven. What a beautiful picture of faith and holy aspiration! How earnest the Christian should be to get up higher from day to day! As he advances upward in the Christian life, he comes down in his own estimation of himself. There is another spider whose amphibious habits teach even a yet finer lesson of devotion. It is the water-spider, whose lovely submarine home has been exquisitely described. Leaping from a leaf on the edge of a pond into the water, he carries with him a large bubble of air. Guiding it to the bottom, he moors it safely, and returns for another and another, until he has a large cavity under the water which is dry and clean. This he makes his home, there he dwells under the crystal lake in his exquisite house, living beneath the water, but breathing the air of the upper world. So it seems to us the followers of Jesus should always live. Dwelling amid the tides of worldliness and sin, but encompassed ever, as he passes through the world, by a circle of light which has descended from above; living and walking in the Holy Ghost and breathing the air of Heaven. Such an experience is like a rainbow, made up of drops of grief of earth and beams of the bliss of Heaven.