A PARABLE OF IMPOSSIBILITIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2562, 24 July 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

A PARABLE OF IMPOSSIBILITIES.

A dog tried to open a door. He scratched it, threw himself against it, struggled to get his nose under it and burrow liis way out, but at last he decided that the door would not open and never could open, so he lay down before it, and went to sleep. A child was watching the dog, and he laughed and turned the handle with his small fingers, and the door \yas open. Then ho took a book, and sitting on the floor, he turned over the leaves one by one and gazed at the queer black marks upon them, without knowing what they meant, for he was a very little child and he could not read. As there were no pictures to be found, lie tossed it away —The Boy and the Impossible.— But a boy picked up the book and laughed, and read page after page of a wonderful fairy tale. Then ho went to school and puzzled his head over a sum which- had to be brought to the class that morning. Try as he might the sum would not prove, and the boy said, “I can’t do it. I’m 6ure it can’t be done. There must ho a mistake in the book.” s But the pupil teacher laughed, and taking the blotted exorcise book from the boy, ho quickly worked out and proved the sum. Then he'turned to his’ own studies and went into the -laboratory ; for he was learning chemistry. All the morning he labored among the gases and the acids, hut he could not get the right combinations, and only succeeded in making a loud explosion. “It’s all rubbish to say that potash and carbon form potassium!” he said, “they simply explode, and I defy anyone to say they don’t!” —The Teacher and. the Impossible.— But the master, who had heard the noise, came and took it into liis own hands, and soon the metal was dropping from the condenser. Afier school was over, the master, who was getting an old man, sat iii his study reading a paper on modern scientific thought. As he read, his brow darkened, and at last he flung it down and said, “It is a monstrous idea. How can the creation of the world have taken millions of years? The good old Bible account of the six days of creation is good enough for me.” —The Scientific Man and the Impossible.— And lio,wrote an -angry letter of remonstrance to the great professor who had sent him the paper. But the professor only smiled, for lie was a geologist, and had read the message of the rocks. Ho himself, one of the deepest thinkers of the day, sat late into the night among his books, trying to fit so mo newly-discovered laws of physics into liis schemes of things -and to bring his mind/ nearer to a solution of the great Why of the Universe. At last he bowed -liis head and said, “It is impossible. Facts are too conflicting. I cannot explain them, and I doubt if there is an explanation. I have no proof of the existence of a Divino First Cause oar of a spiritual world, and therefore I (refuse to take cognisance of them.” * m ■ ■ * * * Just, beyond the limit of our own- understanding lies the Impossible. So whites Miss E. Fox Howard, in “Friends’ Fellowship Papers.”