Sylvanus Stall

Suggestion:—Objects: A small camera and a small looking glass.

These words refer to the great Judgment Day. I suppose that you know that we must all die, but possibly you did not know, or have forgotten, that after a time God will raise up all the dead and will separate the good people from the bad people, the righteous from the wicked. The time when God will do this is called the great Judgment Day. It is then that the words which I have read as my text tell us that "the books shall be opened," and then all that we have ever done or said in this life shall be found written in these books.

Now, if God is keeping a record of all our deeds and words, and even our inmost thoughts, which He also knows; and not only keeping a record of your words and thoughts and mine, but also of those of every man, woman and child—a record of all the fourteen hundred millions now living upon our earth—you might think that millions of angels would be kept very busy writing all these things down in these books. I do not know just how God is doing this, but I do know two ways in which He could easily accomplish what to us may seem a difficult or impossible task.

I will now try to show you how God might keep the record of everything we do; and next Sunday I will try to tell you how, with equal ease, God might secure and keep the record of all we say, of each and every word we speak.

I suppose you have all gone to a photograph gallery and had your pictures taken. When you stood before an instrument, something like this, only perhaps much larger, the artist went behind the big instrument, which was pointed right toward you, and throwing a black cloth over his head, he moved about the camera, told you just how to hold your head, and finally when everything was arranged and he was ready, he pressed a small rubber ball which opened the little slide, just as you would open your eye to look at any object, and in an instant your picture was taken.

That large camera, with which the artist took your picture, was in principle just like the smaller and more simple one which I have shown you, and both are made to imitate, or in a rude way to be like the human eye.

Now, if I point this camera toward you, make it dark back of the camera, either by placing a black cloth over my head or in any other way, your picture will at once appear upon this glass which is at the back of the camera. Now the reason why I can see your photograph on this ground glass is because the rays of light which are reflected or come from your face, into this opening in the camera, have your likeness upon them, and when the light falls against this glass I can see your picture which is photographed upon the rays of light, just the same as your picture is photographed on paper. So every object about us is photographed on the rays of light and the picture becomes visible when we turn our eye, which is a small but perfect camera, so that the rays of light can go straight into our eye and the picture fall upon the back of the eye, which is called the retina, and with which this glass in the camera corresponds.

An ordinary looking-glass will demonstrate or show the same thing. This covering on the back of the glass corresponds to the black cloth with which the photographer shuts out the rays of light which come from the back of the camera. In the same way the ground at the bottom of the pond cuts off the rays from beneath, and on this account you can see the hills, or stars, or clouds reflected in the water; so also in the looking-glass, as you turn it in different directions you can see the photographs of persons or objects which are pictured upon the rays of light.

You may have thought that you saw the person or objects themselves, but this is not the case. With your eyes you can see nothing in the dark; even the cat and the owl must have some light, although they do not need as much as we, before they can see. The rays of light carry the pictures of the objects, and where there are no rays of light we can see nothing.

Now, while your photograph is being taken from the few rays of light which pass into a camera, you see that we might place hundreds of cameras one above another, and if they were all pointed at you they might each take a photograph of you at the same instant—the same as one thousand different persons in an audience with their two thousand eyes all look toward the speaker and see him at one and the same instant.

Now, if I have succeeded in making my thought plain, you will readily understand that as we have great books with pictures upon every page, so God might use these rays of light as the pages of the great book upon which each act of our life instantly records itself, it matters not how rapidly it is done or how many persons and objects there may be in motion or action at the same instant. The fact that the different rays of light carry the pictures of the objects from which they are reflected, is illustrated in the wonderful cameras with which "moving pictures" are taken.

To older persons I might add that if you recall the scientific fact that these rays of light, bearing the images or photographs of persons and objects from which they are reflected, dash out into space at the rate of 192,000 miles in one second, and that they continue to move on indefinitely, you see how the rays of light which were reflected and are now carrying the image of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, of Noah coming out of the ark, of the battle of Bunker Hill, and those carrying the pictures of all other objects and actions since the Creation until now, are still sweeping on through space, and if you and I could be present where these rays of light are now sweeping onward, we could see these things as actually and really as if they were even now taking place in our presence upon the earth. And you will also understand how, as God is everywhere present, He is also present in space where these rays of light are at this moment, and so every scene in the entire history of the world is perpetually visible to Him. And so, even with our feeble understanding, you see how the past may always be present to the Infinite and everywhere-present God.

Now, my dear young friends, remember as we see the acts of each other, so God sees all that we do, even when no one else is present to see us. Do not think that God sees and then forgets. All we do is being constantly photographed, not in a camera like this, but upon the rays of light as upon the pages of a great book, and in the great Judgment Day, God will judge us out of the things recorded against us in these books. Our acts record themselves, and in that great day we shall no more be able to deny the correctness of the record than we would be able to deny the personality or identity of our own photograph.