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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
June, 1936
The POWER That TRANSFORMS B y ROBERT G. LEE* Memphis, TenfiT
hundred dyes in five thousand shades have been made from black carbon tar. Fruit flavors that we eat in cake and ice cream come from tar. Take hydrogen— a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas, fourteen and one-half times lighter than an equal volume of air and 11,160 times lighter than water. Man combines this hydrogen with tasteless black carbon and with color less, tasteless oxygen and gets—what do you suppose?— white sugar. Wonderful the transformation wrought by the chemist and scientist in the realm of nature! But time will not per mit us to go more into detail just here. We pass on, there fore, asking you to observe another type of change. II. N ote the T ransformation in M odes of T ransportation and C ommunication W rought by the I nventor Once it was the horse, the scythe, the sailing ship. Now it is the locomotive, the reaper, the ocean greyhound. Once it was the beacon signal fire, the tallow candle, the bellows. Now it is wireless telegraphy, the incandescent light, the blast furnace. Once it was the kite. Now it is the airplane. Once the goose-quill pen; now the fountain pen, the type writer, the linotype. Once the hand brake; now the air brake. Once the stairway, the treadmill, the spade. Now the escalator, the elevator, the steam shovel. In this country, in 1800, there were no macadam roads. News of Madison’s election was three weeks in reaching Kentucky. Jefferson voyaged to represent our nation at the court o f Paris with hardly more advantage of travel than Columbus enjoyed. Colonial trade was carried over sea by sail and over land by caravan as when Venice was queen o f commerce. Mails and messages were speeded on their way as when David watched from the city walls for news o f his wayward boy. But today ships cross oceans, trains traverse continents in four days! Garfield was the first President to use a telephone. Now twenty million telephone stations exchange daily approximately one hun dred and seventy-five million messages for the welfare of the American people. The world is at our very doors. We view its acts of yesterday at the breakfast table. Today mills are linked to mills, cities to cities, nations to nations in a vast mutualism o f intercommunication—all the re sultant of the inventor’s accomplishments. III. N ote the T ransformations T h at H ave B een W rought in H um an L ives These are the greatest transformations o f all— the transformations seen in the personalities that become a torch for God to kindle His fires— transformations o f hu man lives that were saved out o f a life o f which self was the center into a life of which love is the center. There are names once besmirched with dishonor, now resplendent with honor; names once black with the soot of sin, now white with the snow o f righteousness; names once scarlet with shame, now fragrant with the perfume of love; names once a hiss and a byword in the mouths of
“ Be ye transformed ” (Rom . 12:2). W HAT IS TRANSFORMATION ? W h a t d oes transformation mean? In alchemy it means to change into a different substance, or the change of one metal into another. In mathematics it means to change one mathematical expression or oper ation into another equivalent to it, or having similar properties, by substi tuting new variables or elements for
Robert G. Lee
the original ones. In the electrical realm it means to change the potential of, or the type of, as a current from higher to lower voltage, or from alternating to continuous. In mechanics it means to change the energy of, as mechanical into electrical. In physiology it means the change that takes place in the blood during its passage through the capillaries of the vascular system. In physics it means the change from a solid to a liquid, or from a liquid to a gaseous form, or the reverse— all in all, it means the change of one form of energy into another. In pathology it means a morbid change o f tissue into a form not proper for the organ. l o j i f e and matters of the soul it means to change the charactef”"or nature o f— as Paul going to Damascus as a red-handed murderer and returning as a preaching saint and apostle. And it is the transformation in life that we are con- cernedrabouTin this message and— in your lives! The greatest thing in the world is life. And the greatest thing in life is love. And the greatest thing in love is joy. And the greatest joy is the joy o f the Lord as it comes in the transformed life consecrated to His service! I. N ote the T ransformations W rought in N ature ’ s R ealm — by C hem ists and S cientists A gay pair o f hydrogen atoms seize an oxygen atom and begin to fox-trot among the molecules, the three of them together—and the transformation is water, a differ ent-looking thing entirely from the gas each o f them was before the chemical fox trot. Mercury drowns itself— commits mercurial suicide— in naphthalene; and the transformation is phthalic acid— quite a transformation. The chemist marries oxygen and carbon; and the re sult of this chemical matrimony is flame, fire! The chemist, with a genius that almost awakes in us a primeval faith in magic, takes turpentine, potatoes, saw dust, pitch, petroleum, coal, and lime. He mixes them. The transformation wrought is rubber— identical in every respect with natural rubber. Coal tar, taken from our coke ovens, is transformed into dyes with all the colors o f the rainbow. And nine * Pastor, Bellevue Baptist Church.
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