Your ShelfYour Projects

Chains of Association

5%

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 13, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 31.

Read the full edition

Chains of Association

ONE thought suggests another. One thing brings to mind some other thing. Some familiar time or place recalls something associated with it. Home is made dear by its old associations.
Following this mental law, two Scotchmen returning to California from their native land longed to take something from the old associations. One carried with him the thistle, the other the honey-bee. And thus some parts of California became infested with thistles and blessed with honey-bees.
An Englishman sailing for New York wished to continue the old association of the little brown sparrow hopping about his door. In this way the little creature was introduced into America.
Christ used this mental law in the prophecy of the betrayal by Peter. He said that before the cock crowed twice, Peter would deny Him thrice. In making the prophecy, He showed with what minutiae divine Providence foresees and prepares. But more than that, the denial was associated with the crowing of the cock. And when the whole incident came out just as Christ foretold, it helped Peter to remember and recover himself. As the cock crowed the second time, by the law of association, he turned his eyes upon the Christ. Jesus at that psychological moment was looking in sadness but in love at Peter.
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is based upon the same mental law. We have had associated for us by the Lord Himself the bread and wine with His body and blood. As we in solemnity see the first, we think of the last. We are taught by the association. We are reminded of the higher by means of the lower. Thus we mount by the steps of the tangible up into the home of the spiritual.
On the same principle the Sabbath institution is founded—six days of labor and one day of rest to remind us of the six days of creative work in the first week of time and the ensuing rest on the part of the Creator. As the day weekly recurs, by its association it reminds us of the One who has the power and wisdom and goodness to provide ever for His creatures, because of what He did on that first cycle of time.
The law is a broad one, and has many incidents in every life to show its power and universality.
Once a convict was converted by seeing a piece of matting of the same pattern as that in the little church in England where he worshiped with his mother when a boy.
An outcast, seemingly, is abandoned to vice and sin. She meets a child carrying a bunch of cowslips, violets, and lilacs. Old associations visit the memory. A tender chord is touched. Her innocent past comes back. Overpowered by the contrast, conscience is awakened, and reform follows.
As I sat one evening in my living-room, studying my Bible, with my mother near, in a city in the Middle West, a drunken man came into the room. He wanted a dime, and in return offered to clean my hat. It was nine o’clock at night. I gave him my hat, and he stooped over it and began his work. Suddenly he burst into tears. Then he told of how once he had earned money—not by cleaning hats; of his opportunities; and of his dear old mother,—all called to mind by the associations of the moment. "Money, tho," he exclaimed, "isn’t what I want."
A slave to drink, from a family of wealth and influence, himself a graduate from an Eastern university, he had disgraced himself and his family. But there was still hope and welcome waiting him in the old home.
He explained that the son and the mother sitting in the quiet and happiness of the room had called to him in an irresistible manner. He would change his life. He would write to his mother. He would go home.
What a bond associations become to uplift or to degrade!
Sin associated with anything makes it a sacrament, so to speak, of evil. Good associated with anything makes that a sacrament of holiness.
Good associations will bring to us no whisper of aught that is evil. All life will be a sacrament of God. What an ideal! O that we may attain to it!
But some men can not even smell the odor of yeast without, through the law of association, being driven to the debauchery of lager-beer. A look, a word, associated with impurity, will drive others into the depths of vice.
What chains we forge when we form associations! Let them all be chains that hold us to the good.
But if we are bound to some low and evil thing, there is a way out.
Christ came to break every yoke, and to let the oppressed go free.
He will link you up with all good associations.