THE LIGHT 



JESUS IS THE LIGHT.




NELLIE GREEN lived in a dull, gloomy back room of a rear tenement house. She was a little six-year-old girl who had been deprived of sight by scarlet fever. One could scarcely believe, to look at the great brown eyes, that "wisdom from this entrance was quite shut out." But so it was; and pitying glances often rested upon the unconscious little one. 

But she was blessed with a sunny spirit, and her active mind and busy fingers were ever at work, feeling after what she could not see. At Sabbath school hers were the brightest questions and readiest replies. But whatever might be the lesson or remark, it always ended with," May we sing, 'The light of the world is Jesus'!

"Oh, I want to sing, ‘The light of the world is Jesus'"!  Very touching it was to see her dimmed eyes gazing blindly, but to feel that the windows of her soul were wide open to the light" that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."




"BRIGHTING ALL IT CAN."


THE day had been dark and gloomy, when suddenly, towards night, the clouds broke, and the sun's rays streamed through, shedding a flood of golden light upon the whole country.

A sweet voice at the window cried out in joyful tones, "Look! O look papa! The sun's brighting all it can."

"Brighting all it can? So it is," answered papa; "and you can be like the sun, if you choose."

"How, papa? Tell me how."

"By looking happy, and smiling on us all day, and never letting any tearful rain come into the blue of those eyes. Only be happy and good; that is all."

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What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food, 

Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Have been hardened into wood 

That, to the world, are children;

Through them it feels the glow 

Of a brighter and sunnier climate

Than reaches the trunks below.




Longfellow.