Matthew 10:26

Secrets

There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. Matthew 10:26.

This is to be the story of a trash-heap, and what was found in it.

The trash-heap is not in this country, but in Egypt. Far away in Egypt, on the edge of the desert, you may see today a little Arab village. It is a poor little place, yet on its site there once stood a flourishing town. That was about two thousand years ago, and there is nothing to be seen of the town now but some mounds where the sand of the desert has blown over the ruins of the fallen houses and completely covered them. And it is among these mounds that our trash-heap is. Some years ago a number of explorers went to Egypt to examine the mounds and see what they could find out about the ancient town of Oxyrhynchus, and the people who once lived there.

Now wherever there are people living in a town they have utensils for cooking and for eating. If these are made of pottery they get broken from time to time, and the broken pieces do not decay but may be found centuries after. Thus people know the kind of pottery that was made in those days. But in this place the explorers found something better than broken pottery. They found a great number of books and writings which had been thrown out as useless. Very likely they were intended for burning, but unless you stir up a bonfire and let in air it will go out. Now a great part of these books and documents had not been touched. They had been covered over with sand, and had remained there ever since. Of course that could not happen in our country because the soil is moist, but in Egypt the climate is so dry that things do not decay, and the sand has preserved the writings perfectly.

These books are not like ours. They are not written on paper, which was not known in Egypt, but on papyrus, which was made from the papyrus plant. This is a tall plant which grows in marshy places and was very plentiful in ancient Egypt. The stem was opened and the pith cut into strips which were laid side by side close together. Then other strips were laid across them and they were pressed firmly together and dried. This made a kind of writing material so durable that it has lasted for thousands of years.

The writings, then, in this trash heap were on papyrus, and they were in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages. What were they about? Well, what kind of papers do we throw into our waste-paper baskets from time to time? There were old letters, accounts, receipts, tax-papers, diaries, and legal agreements, also schoolwork written by Egyptian schoolboys. You see that from these writings we can learn a great deal about the life people led in those days how they wrote, and thought, and did business. Among much that was of little value was found one leaf of a papyrus book containing eight “Sayings of Jesus Christ,” and a few more “Sayings” were found written on the back of a business paper. These sayings are very interesting because they are like some in our New Testament; and we know that Jesus must have said many things of which we have not a record. It is very odd that one of these sayings, so long buried in the sand and so strangely found, is, “There is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed, nor buried which shall not be raised.”

But of all the writings found that which will interest you most is a letter. It was written by a naughty boy, called Theon, to his father, who had gone to Alexandria without him. Theon had wished very much to go, and, as he was a spoiled boy, he gave a great deal of trouble. His father, in order to get away in peace, pretended he was only going to the town. When Theon found he had been cheated, and that his father had really started on his journey, he sat down and wrote this letter. The writing (which is Greek) is bad, the spelling is bad, the grammar is bad, but the contents are worst of all. For the naughty boy says that unless his father sends for him and takes him with him, he will never speak to him, or write to him, or shake hands with him again. He says he is behaving so badly that he is driving his mother out of her wits, and that she would be only too glad to pack him off. His father had sent him a present of locust beans to console him, but he despises them. Lastly, he says he will not eat or drink, but will starve himself to death, unless he is taken to Alexandria.

We do not know whether Theon got his way, but his letter was thrown out with the trash, and here it is. Perhaps there are still some children like him nearly two thousand years afterwards.

Naughty Theon little knew that his impudent letter would lie hidden for perhaps seventeen hundred years and would then be dug up. He never guessed that his bad conduct would be revealed to the world, his childish writing and his bad spelling photographed and printed in learned books. The things which he thought hid were revealed.

There are some things which you would like very well to be hidden, things which you would rather not remember, things which you would be glad to bury deep under some sand heap. There are little acts of selfishness and greediness and untruthfulness which you are ashamed of. But, like Theon, you are all writing letters every day, and you cannot destroy them. They are not written on paper or papyrus, but they are written all the same, and some day the sand will blow away and the writing will be seen. Every act, however small, makes a mark on your character. Each time it is repeated it makes a deeper mark. Then something happens the sand blows off and the character you have made for yourself is uncovered. When all the writing is seen it reads Truthfulness or Untruthfulness, Trustworthiness or Untrustworthiness, Selfishness or Unselfishness, Greed or Generosity.

Now is the time, when you are children, to take care what you write. It is now that you are making your characters. By the time you are grown up they will be nearly formed, and it will be very hard to change them. Remember that the bad habits you think so little about are becoming a part of you written on you so that you will find it almost impossible to take out the marks. And if you have made any ugly marks already, ask God now, before you are any older, to give you His big india-rubber of forgiveness and grace to erase them.