One day Queen
Victoria visited a paper mill owned by one of her subjects, and
the owner was happy to show her through the great plant,
explaining in detail the different processes of manufacture.
During the journey through the factory she was taken into a
large room filled with rags. They were in bins, in bales, and
in huge piles on the floor. Some of them had been brought in by
rag pickers and were filthy and dirty. These were being sorted
and processed by the workmen.
“Do you make
paper of these?” the queen inquired.
“Yes, our best
paper is made from rags,” the owner explained.
She seemed to
be in deep thought, and then revealed what had been going
through her mind. “But how can these dirty rags ever be made
into clean white paper?”
“We have
washes,” the guide explained, “which remove all the dirt and
grime. We have chemical processes too, Your Majesty, by which
every bit of color is removed from even these red rags.”
A few days
later the queen was surprised to find on her desk a
neatly-wrapped parcel, which on opening she found contained some
of the whitest, more beautiful paper she had ever seen. On each
sheet were her name and a watermark of her likeness. There was
also a note from the man who had shown her through the paper
mill.
“Will the
queen be pleased to accept a specimen of my paper, with the
assurance that every sheet was manufactured from the rags which
she saw in the warehouse on her recent visit to our plant, and I
trust the result is such as even the queen may admire. Will the
queen also allow me to say that I have had many a good sermon
preached to me in my Mill? I can understand how the Lord Jesus
can take the poor sinner, and the vilest of the vile, and make
them clean; and how though their sins be as scarlet, He can make
them white as snow. And I can see how He can put His own name
upon them; and just as these rags, transformed, may go into a
royal palace and be admired, so poor sinners can be received
into the palace of the Great King.”
Blessings for
the day!
CH Mike