The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42
A Gleam of Sunshine
A Gleam of Sunshine,
and the eternal quiver of the sun. For he says, "The next thing he tells us is that the grass began to grow, and the branches of the trees laughed into blossom, and the grass ran up the shoulders of the hills, and yet not a solitary ray of light had left the eternal quiver of the sun. Not a blade of grass had ever been touched by a gleam of light. And I do not think that grass will grow to hurt without a gleam of sunshine." I think the man who wrote that was very foolish, or else made a serious mistake in displaying so much ignorance. For the narrative tells no such story. It says nothing which can be so construed without violence. His knowledge of the growth of vegetation must have been left shamefully uncultivated. I fear the sunshine has scorched him so severely as to prevent his natural development. He thought the grass could not grow without the gloriously bright rays of the sun falling upon it. He never paid a visit to a deep wooded glen where the foliage of the forest entirely shut out the golden brightness of the sunshine from the almost impenetrably luxuriant undergrowth, where the grass, the fern, and the tender shrubs vie with each other in their attempts at perfection. Had he been privileged to obtain a few hours' education in such a school of nature, probably a less foolish remark would have fallen from him; for there he would have beheld the grass and other members of the vegetable kingdom growing to such consummate excellence as was never presented to the eye on a spot where the heat of the sun's rays fall and suck up the moisture from the soil. Therefore it is a natural and indisputable fact that grass will not only grow without sunshine, but that it will grow more luxuriantly when deeply shaded from its scorching rays. It must be observed that Ingersoll has grossly garbled the text when he says that "not a blade of grass had been touched by a gleam of light." This is a direct contradiction of his previous remarks about the "light being divided from the darkness," as the work of the second day of creation. If, then, the light and the darkness were divided on the second day, surely there must have been light falling upon the grass during the second day! I think he is extremely subject to making mistakes. But the man who wishes to renovate society should assiduously guard against this blemish: for to be above suspicion, and to be looked up to as an example of rectitude, is one of the chief things in the constitution of a social leader. And with all charity, I must confess that these frequent mistakes in regard to so important a matter are very suspicious. I can see no excuse for a man who has been so long conversant with the world and its ways falling into these initial errors. I really cannot conceive that he was in his sober senses when he allowed himself to go so egregiously wrong. He lays himself open to the same charge when speaking of the