Upon the work table in the laboratory I noticed beneath a glass a tiny cube of gleaming gold resting upon a cube of dull lead. When I asked my friend, the chemist, what experiment he was trying with his little metal cubes, he answered, “Come in again in a month, and I will show you.”

A month later I found the chemist working at his leaden cube with test tube, Bunsen burner, and chemical acids.

“What are you doing to the lead?” I asked.

“Oh,” he replied, “just making sure of what the lead has been doing,” mixing, as he spoke, two liquids, which, on coming together, took a pale, yellowish tinge.

“Sesquioxide of iron and protochloride of tin,” he said, dipping into the liquid a glass rod, which he then plunged into the vessel containing the lead in its latest state.

“Watch,” he said; and as he drew the rod through the liquid, I saw in its track a delicate purple tinge.

“It is pretty,” I said, “but what does it mean?”

“It surely means gold,” he answered.

“Gold!” said I, in surprise; “but it was the leaden, not the golden, cube which you had there.”

“Yes,” the chemist replied; “only the lead has been in good company, a month with gold, and it has gained some of the gold particles by being with the noble metal; that is what comes of keeping good company.”

I wondered that the lead cube resting in contact with the gold should be permeated by its tiny, precious particles; but I remembered that I had seen human creatures gain gold from good company, and reverently I thought of the One of humankind who was perfectly pure, with no alloy of sin, and of what it must mean to live in His presence in holy touch with Him; for even so may our lower natures be permeated by His glorious life, till, at last, forever with Him, we may be transformed, made in truth like Him. —Selected.