Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1892 — The Emerald Vase. [ARTICLE]

The Emerald Vase.

In the cathedral at Genoa there is an emerald vase which is said to have been one of the gifts of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. Its authentic history goes back 800 years. The tradition is that when King Solomon received it he filled it with an elixir which he alone knew how to distill, and of which a single drop would prolong human life to an indefinite extent A miserable criminal, dying of slow disease m prison, besought the king to give him a drop of this magic potion. Solomon refused. “Why should I prolong so useless a life?” he said. “I will give it to those whose lives will bless their fellow-men. ” But when good men begged for it the king was in an ill humor, or too indolent to open the vase ? or he promised and forgot So the years passed until he grew old, and many of the friends whom he loved were dead; and still the vase had never been opened. Then the king, to excuse himself, threw doubt upon the virtues of the elixir. At last he him.«elf fell ill. Then his servants brought the vase that he might save his own life. He opened it But it was empty. The elixir had evaporated to the last drop. Did not the rabbi or priest who invented this story intend to convey in it a great truth? Have we not all within us a vessel more precious than any emerald, into which God has put a portion of the water of life? It is for our own healing—for the healing of others. We hide it, we do not use it —from false shame, or idleness, or forgetful, ness. Presently we begin to doubt its efficacy. When death approaches we turn to it in desperate haste. But the ne. glected faith has left the soul. The vase is empty.—Youth’s Companion