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Influence

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 14, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 11.

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Influence

By Hart Hall

A BEAUTIFUL ship swings from her moorings, her colors streaming from the masthead; passengers line the railing, waving adieu to friends; bells clang and clang in the engine room; the water begins to boil and churn at the stern, leaving in her wake a long, broad, silvery path. She is gone to sea, with a great cargo and many passengers.
Days pass, and far from sight of land the good ship plows through the deep. The pilot holds her — so he thinks — to one of ocean's trackless paths; but suddenly through the darkness there loom high the rocky ledges of an unknown shore.
Too late the bells clang reverse.
Too late spins the pilot wheel.
The ship is lost! What was the cause?
The carpenter, in making repairs, had driven a nail too close to the compass. The nail's influence would have been unnoticed by other nails or material; but the delicate compass needle was drawn away, and the ship surged ahead on a wrong course — because of the influence of a nail!
Is there anything that does not exert an influence? Note how the sun draws to itself the faces of the flowers, the waters of the ocean. Metals attract other metals. The law of attraction is universal.
Cast a stone into the lake and watch the ripples that widen and widen till they reach the shore. So the influence of our lives widens and still widens, tho we are cast without our choosing into the great sea of life.
Imperceptibly, perhaps, to us, we cast upon our pathway light or shade. Like the planets that deviate somewhat from their courses through the influence of other planets, so our lives influence other lives that we meet as —
Ships that pass in the night, And speak to each other in passing.
The Bible says, "None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." What we say or do or are reacts upon others to greater or less extent, influencing them for good or ill. Legions of tragedies are occurring daily that will all be traced by an unerring finger, in the day of final reckoning, to somebody's influence.
Shall we see that ours is for good?
HART HALL.
Los Angeles, California.