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little one slipt a sixpence shyly into his hand with the request that he use it for something special. He bought with it a prayer-book, and gave it to a poor work-*house girl who had been sent from England to go into service on an Australian farm. She promised to read it faithfully. Several weeks later a rough-looking man came and asked him if he were the person who had given his servant a prayer-book. His wife was very ill and wanted to see him. Altho it was twenty miles inland, the clergyman went and ministered to the poor woman. A little while later the man came once more to the minister and said that he and his neighbors had built a little church and paid for it and wanted him to come and conduct services among them. Thus an entirely new work was opened as a result of the little child's sixpence.

(1864)

See.

LITTLE SINS

And I am afraid of little sins because they grow so great. No one can tell whereunto sin will lead. The beginnings of sin are like the leakings of water from a mighty reservoir; first an innocent ooze, then a drip, then a tiny stream, then a larger vein, then a flood, and the rampart gives way and the town is swept to ruin. The habits of sin are like the habits of burglars, who sometimes take a little fellow and put him through a window too small for a man to enter, and the child must open the door for the burglar gang to pass. So with little sins; they creep in and open the door for larger to enter. A little sin is the thin edge of the wedge, and when once inserted it can be driven home till it splits and ruins the life.—

(1865)

I remember, when a lad, the so-called army-*worms first swept across the fields. They went straight ahead, and moved like a mighty host with captains. They were little things, but when they were gone the fields looked as tho they had been swept by a fire. So a thousand little wrongs in the life can rob it of beauty as really as one great, blazing, public transgression.—

(1866)

I am afraid of little sins because they involve a great principle. You go into a bank with a check for $1,000, and in his hurry the clerk passes out $1,100, and you walk out of the bank with that sum. You agree with me, I suppose, that you do a dishonest thing—that you have stolen $100. Would it not be the same if your check called for $5, and he gave you $6 by mistake? You ride on a train to Boston, and by some oversight your ticket is not collected, and you ride back on that very same ticket. You agree with me that the thing is wrong. Is it not the same when you ride on a trolley car and elude the conductor, or slip past the gateman and enter the train? In either case the man is a thief.—

(1867)

LITTLE THINGS

We belong to a scheme of nature in which the chief factor is the infinitesimal. The composition of the elements depends on the multitudinous accretions of particles. We are most in danger when we overlook the power of mere atoms to affect us, and when we despise trivial causes of mischief.

A cathedral clock with its musical chimes suddenly stopt intoning its sacred and beautiful melodies. The cause was for a time a perplexity, as nothing could be discovered to have gone wrong with the machinery of the chimes. But at length it was found that a frail brown butterfly had become entangled in the wheelworks, and had brought to a complete standstill the clock and its chimes. (Text.)

(1868)

Dr. S. P. Henson says:

What a multitude of threads make up a fringe; and yet how beautiful and costly when completed! And here is found a beauty of the real Christian life. There are not a few who may be willing upon rare and notable occasions to do or suffer some great thing, but the ten thousand little things of life are entirely beneath their notice, as they also suppose them to be beneath the notice of the Lord. (Text.)

(1869)

See.

Lives Corresponding to the Bible—See .

LIVES THAT SHINE

Don't waste your time in longing For bright, impossible things; Don't sit supinely yearning For the swiftness of angel wings;