e dust in this bottle is only a sample of what all the earth
would soon become, if God did not send rain at frequent intervals
throughout the year. I suppose you could all tell me of a number of
instances in the Old Testament where we have accounts of drouths that
extended throughout a period of years, and of the hunger and famine and
death which followed.

When you are out of doors and look about you, you cannot but be
impressed with how dry and dusty the trees and grass and everything
about you is. If this dry weather were to continue long you could
understand that soon everything would wither and die, and if it were to
continue for a few years, men and beasts would not only die of thirst,
but even the air itself would suck out from our bodies the moisture that
is in our blood, and death would speedily follow. But if you were to
remove all the moisture from the air, the earth would not only become
barren, but it would become intensely cold. It is due to the moisture
which is in the atmosphere that the warmth which comes to the earth from
the sun is retained near the earth after the sun has gone down. If it
were not so, even in a summer's night after the sun has gone down, the
coldness which exists above the clouds would quickly come in contact
with the earth, and the cold would become so intense that every person
and every living thing would be in danger of being frozen to death in a
single night.

You will remember that the great Sahara Desert is a vast tract of
thousands of square miles where no rain falls, and where the heat is
intense. There is, however, much moisture in the air that floats over
the plains, but the reason that no rain falls is because there are no
mountains in that portion of the globe for thousands of miles.

Now suppose that there were to be no rain at all, and people should
undertake to water the earth by bringing the water from the rivers. On
an average of about thirty-three inches of rain fall upon the surface of
the entire earth each year, in some places more, in others less. The
weight of this water in one single square mile would be nearly two and
one-half millions of tons, and if this water which falls upon one single
square mile had to be drawn in cars, it would require 100,000 carloads
of water to keep this one single mile as wet as God usually keeps it
throughout the year by the rain from heaven. I think you will see, from
what I have said, that all the cars in the entire United Stat