I was passing through Columbus Ohio some years ago, says William Jennings Bryan, and stopped to eat in the restaurant in the depot. My attention was called to a slice of watermelon and I ordered it and ate it.
I was so pleased with the melon that I asked the waiter to dry some of the seeds that I might take them home and plant them in my garden. That night a thought came into my mind- I would use that watermelon as an illustration. So, the next morning when I reached Chicago, I had enough seeds weighed to find out that it would take about five thousand watermelon seeds to weigh a pound, and I estimated that the watermelon weighed about forty pounds.
Then I applied mathematics to the watermelon. A few weeks before, someone, I know not who, had planted a little seed in the ground. Under the influence of sunshine and shower that little watermelon seed had taken off its coat and gone to work – it had gathered from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forced that enormous weight through a tiny stem and built a watermelon. On the outside it had put a covering of green, within that a core of red, and then had scattered through the red, little seeds, each one capable of doing the same work over again.
What architect drew the plan? Where did that little watermelon seed get its tremendous strength? Where did it find its flavoring extract and its coloring matter? How did it build a watermelon? - Until you can explain a watermelon, do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power of the Almighty, or tell just what He would do, or how He would do it. The most learned man in the world cannot explain a watermelon, but the most ignorant man can eat a watermelon and enjoy it.
God has given us the things that we need and He has given us the knowledge necessary to use those things, and the truth that He has revealed to us infinitely more important for our welfare than it would be to understand the mysteries that He has seen fit to conceal from us.
“So with Christianity; if you ask me if I can understand everything in the
Bible, I answer: No, I understand some things that I did not understand ten years ago, and if I live ten years longer, I hope some things will be clear that are now obscure. But there is something more important than understanding everything in the Bible, - it is this if we will only try to live up to the things that we DO understand we will not have time to worry about the things tat we DO NOT understand.”
NOTE: - One thing is perfectly clear and may be tested by anyone, “But as many as received him (Jesus Christ), to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12).
First to translate the N.T. into English.