Chapter 23

A cripple girl on a train was presented with a bunch of roses by another girl on board. She held them to her lips, and prest them to her bosom, and fell asleep. Later her father came in from the smoker, and took his little daughter in his arms. Waking up, she said: “Oh, father—I’ve—been—in—heaven—and—I’ve—got—some—roses.”

Deeds of love make a heaven.

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DEEDS, NOT APPEARANCES

The Orientals have a proverb which says: “Provided that beneficence have long fingers and rapid steps, what does it matter if its wry faces displease thee? Don’t look at its face.” (Text.)—Revue des Deux Mondes.

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DEEDS THAT TALK

At a laymen’s meeting of Southern Baptists held in Richmond, Mr. R. E. Breit, president of a Texas oil company, was called upon for an address. He said, “Brethren, I never made a speech in my life and I can’t make one now; but if Brother Willingham (secretary of the missionary society) will send ten men to China, he can send the bill to me.” (Text.)

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DEEDS VERSUS WORDS

A boy was pushing a heavily loaded barrow up a steep hill, using every ounce of energy. “Hi, boy,” called out a benevolent-looking old gentleman, “if you push that zigzag, you’ll find it go up more easily.” “That’s all right, sir,” responded the boy, rather crisply, “but if you’d give me less advice and more shoving, I’d like it better.”

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DEEP-DOWN THINGS

Sam Walter Foss, in “Songs of the Average Man,” is the author of this assuring verse:

The deep-down things are strong and great,Firm-fixt, unchangeable as fate,Inevitable, inviolate,The deep-down things.The deep-down things! All winds that blow,All seething tides that foam and flowMay smite but can not overflowThe deep-down things.The surge of years engulfs the landAnd crumbles mountains into sand,But yet the deep-down things withstandThe surge of years.Behind the years that waste and smite,And topple empires into night,God dwells unchanged in changeless lightBehind the years. (Text.)

The deep-down things are strong and great,Firm-fixt, unchangeable as fate,Inevitable, inviolate,The deep-down things.

The deep-down things are strong and great,

Firm-fixt, unchangeable as fate,

Inevitable, inviolate,

The deep-down things.

The deep-down things! All winds that blow,All seething tides that foam and flowMay smite but can not overflowThe deep-down things.

The deep-down things! All winds that blow,

All seething tides that foam and flow

May smite but can not overflow

The deep-down things.

The surge of years engulfs the landAnd crumbles mountains into sand,But yet the deep-down things withstandThe surge of years.

The surge of years engulfs the land

And crumbles mountains into sand,

But yet the deep-down things withstand

The surge of years.

Behind the years that waste and smite,And topple empires into night,God dwells unchanged in changeless lightBehind the years. (Text.)

Behind the years that waste and smite,

And topple empires into night,

God dwells unchanged in changeless light

Behind the years. (Text.)

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DEEP THINGS

It is folly to think that only those things are of value to us which we can intellectually understand. Is the vast deep of the ocean nothing to me, since I can not move about freely and closely examine its depths? And if I must confess that ’way down are untold mysteries which human eye has never seen, what matters it? Can not I rejoice in the roar of the waves, in the ebb and flow of the tides, and in the flight of the clouds? Why will men insist, with their poor, finite reasoning, on fathoming the deep things of God, instead of drinking to the full from the inexhaustible source of assurance and consolation? (Text.)—E. F. Stroter, “The Glory of the Body of Christ.”

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DEFACEMENT OF SOUL

If a drunkard knew that a certain number of drinks would make his face permanently black, how many men would drink? And shall we be less careful about the face of our soul?

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DEFEAT

This incident corroborates the truth of the poet’s thought, “We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.”

A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination on which he thought his future depended.“Never mind,” he said to himself. “What is the next thing to be done?” and he found that policy of “never minding,” and going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat and wrote:“It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”

A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination on which he thought his future depended.

“Never mind,” he said to himself. “What is the next thing to be done?” and he found that policy of “never minding,” and going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat and wrote:

“It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”

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SeeSuccess in Failure.

Defective Memory—SeeMemory and Disease.

DEFECTS OF THE GREAT

Handel, whose seraphic music lifts us to the gate of heaven, and whose faith was so clear that when he was dying, on Good Friday, said that his wish was fulfilled, and that he looked forward to meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Savior, on Easter day, was yet a man with a very earthly, irritable temper—so much so that he had a quarrel with a brother composer which ended in a duel.

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Defense—SeeResistance.

DEFORMITY

There died recently in Stockerau, Bavaria, at the age of twenty-eight years, a dwarf, Maria Schuman, who was at one time acelebrity, saysLa Nature. She passed her whole life in the cradle where she slept her first sleep, twenty-eight years ago. Up to the day of her death, this strange creature preserved the height and general appearance of an infant of a few months; but, wonderful to say, her intellect was normally developed and nothing could have been odder than to hear this tiny baby in the cradle talk like an adult, with much vivacity and intelligence! Maria was born in 1875, at Brigittenan, near Vienna. Her parents were of normal development, and so were her brothers and sisters. (Text.)

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DEGENERACY

Before Lord Shaftesbury began his work among the poor of England, he tells us that he witnessed this occurrence:

I must have been fourteen years old, or a little more, and I was walking down from the churchyard, just as we are to-day, when I was startled by hearing a sudden yell, a drunken voice singing, and a noisy sound of laughter coming up from the main road below; then they turned the corner, and I saw four men staggering along under a coffin, and jesting with song and horrible laughter as they drew near me. I looked at the coffin. I could see the rough boards were hastily nailed together; great cracks half revealed what was inside. Just as they passed me one of the men slipt, and the coffin fell from their shoulders and rolled over into the road. It was horrifying to me; and then they began to swear at one another, using foul language. I thought they would have fought over the poor dead creature’s corpse. I came away feeling that if God preserved my life I would do something to help the poor and him that had no friend.

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Perhaps too much attention is being paid to various theories concerning evolution and development. It might be well sometimes to devote at least a little consideration to the serious possibilities of devolution and degeneracy.

Dr. Carpenter, a London zoologist, speaks thus of certain organisms brought to light by the scientific Atlantic dredging expedition: “This little organism is clearly a dwarfed and deformed representative of the highly developedApiocrinusof the Bradford clay, which, as my friend Wyville Thomson said, seems to have been going to the bad for millions of years.” Thus we learn that a lowly creature living on the ocean floor is the degenerate result of that which has been going to the bad for millions of years.

But if such a vast course of degradation is possible in a sea-worm, what are the possibilities of degradation in a soul?

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SeeDegradation;Early Promise;Selfishness.

Degeneracy, a Figment—SeeScience Shattering Superstitions.

DEGENERACY THROUGH DISUSE

It is a recognized fact that the disuse of faculties inevitably leads to deterioration.

There is a curious little plant called the sundew which grows in marshes. A small fly alights on one of the leaves attracted by the crimson hairs, and by the sticky liquid called the “dew.” When the fly struggles to get free the hairs slowly curve round him and trap him, at the same time pouring out more of the dew. Presently the poor insect dies in that trap. Why does the plant do this? Simply because it wants to eat the fly. The dew is acid and dissolves the insect’s body, so that the plant can absorb the nitrogen which it contains. The sundew once lived in harmless plant fashion, for it belongs to the saxifrage family, of which the other members are quite respectable and hard-working plants, getting their living by honest root-work in extracting their nitrogen out of the ground. When we examine the sundew we find it has scarcely anything worthy the name of a root. Long ago it seemed to dislike the wear and tear of thrusting rootlets into the ground and seeking for food, so it settled into a bog, where it could get water at least without any trouble. There, as the roots had next to nothing to do, they slowly dwindled away, as all things will dwindle which are not used, whether they be plant-roots, or the limbs of animals, or the minds of men.—“A Mountain Path.”

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DEGRADATION

A doctor was once riding from Yezd to Kerman, in Persia, to make a visit. Arriving at a post-house, and finding no horse,he demanded a mule. On this beast he made the next stage, to be told on arrival that there was only a donkey available. Accepting this mount from necessity, he reached in time another stage, where he met the announcement that nothing in the shape of an animal was obtainable but a cow! The story stops there, drawing the veil of silence over the rest of the journey.

An evil life is successively degraded, declining in guilt and misery to depths lower than the brute. (Text.)

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The early Christians did not despise the dance; but as monkish asceticism drew away from the simple, natural teaching of Christ, the dance fell into disfavor and was frowned upon as a manifestation of the evil one. And just so it was with artistic perception and artistic appreciation. Where they were highest, in Hellenic antiquity, dancing had its place among the arts and was revered as the oldest of them all, that art upon which all the others were based. Dragged down to pander to luxury and profligacy, as were all the arts during the period of Roman triumph and Roman decadence, the dance fell under a cloud with the rest, and seemed to disappear during the dark ages, as did the others. (Text.)—Grace Isabel Colbron,The Cosmopolitan.

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Degradation Inciting Philanthropy—SeeDegeneracy.

Degradation versus Transformation—SeeMissionary Results.

Degrees, Honorary—SeeLabels, Misleading.

DEISM

Deism of any type is morally impotent; and deism of the eighteenth-century type is nothing but a little patch of uncertain quicksand set in a black sea of atheism. It does not deny God’s existence, but it cancels Him out as a force in human life. It breaks the golden ladder of revelation between heaven and earth. It leaves the Bible discredited, duty a guess, heaven a freak of the uncharted imagination, and God a vague and far-off shadow. Men were left by it to climb into a shadowy heaven on some frail ladder of human logic.—Rev.W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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DELAY

The limited express that spans the distance between New York and Chicago in twenty-four hours accomplishes the feat not so much by increasing the speed as by reducing the delays. In the main the train does not travel much faster than the other trains that take a third more time do at their maximum; but it makes fewer stops, it attends more strictly to its through business. Chicago is its objective point.

It is much so on the railroad of life. How young we would all be at sixty—ay, at eighty—if we would avoid the petty, useless, the unnecessary delays, the unprofitable business at the side-stations along the road. (Text.)—Vyrnwy Morgan, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”

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A newspaper item has the following:

At an annual dinner of the Architectural League of New York the venerable artist, John La Farge—who certainly belongs among the first half-score of painters that America has produced—was presented with a medal of honor.Then a singular thing happened.Mr. La Farge got upon his feet and, in a gentle tone of expostulation, protested that the honors now offered him were a little empty—and very much belated.He said he had “only three or four more years left to work in,” and that through all the years of his vigorous manhood the great city of New York, with all its vast enterprise of building, had offered little opportunity to his hand.

Then a singular thing happened.

Mr. La Farge got upon his feet and, in a gentle tone of expostulation, protested that the honors now offered him were a little empty—and very much belated.

He said he had “only three or four more years left to work in,” and that through all the years of his vigorous manhood the great city of New York, with all its vast enterprise of building, had offered little opportunity to his hand.

The kind word should be spoken to the friend and not engraved on his tombstone. The work that is thought of should be performed in the day of opportunity, for it may be so belated as to lose much of its meaning.

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Delay, Expensive—SeeNaturalization.

Delay in Religious Instruction—SeeReligious Instruction.

DELAY, THE TRAGEDY OF

Charles Biedinger, an inventor, was found dead in his room in a cheap lodging-house. He had been in extreme want, and had learned that the Superior Court at Cincinnatihad decided a patent-right claim in his favor, awarding him $93,000 and interest upon it for several years. His invention, a machine for making paper wrappers, was patented while he was in a sanatorium by his financial backer, who refused an accounting when the inventor was discharged from the sanatorium. The suit followed, with the verdict of a fortune which came too late. Biedinger was so reduced in circumstances that he was recently employed as a dish-washer in a restaurant. (Text.)

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Delaying Religious Instruction—SeeReligious Instruction.

Delaying the Gospel—SeeFather, Our.

Deliberation—SeePainstaking.

Deliverance—SeeTransformation.

DEMAGOGY

“Yes,” said the candidate, “I’m going out among the farmers to-day—to a pumpkin show, or jackass show, or something of that sort. Not that I care for pumpkins or jackasses, but I want to show the people that I am one of them.”

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DEMONOLOGY

St. Thomas Aquinas used to hold that angels and devils made the atmosphere their battle-ground—the angels that live in the calm upper spheres, the devils that fill the immensity of space; and thus he accounted for the injurious changes of weather to be experienced in certain countries. For the mortification and the rout of these demons bells were consecrated and hung in the church-spires, usually inscribed, “Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango” (I summon the living, I mourn the dead, I scatter the thunder-storm); and their ringing was thenceforth considered to be one of the potent means of dispelling evil influences and of abating tempests. These evil powers, according to medieval legend and belief, were able to produce hail, thunder, and storms at their will, and those among them called witches took aerial voyages exactly as the witches of much later days were held to do, altho more particular detail is given of their operations, as it is known that they smeared their broomsticks with witch-salve, after which mounting them, they could sail where they would through so much of this atmosphere as was within their jurisdiction. “The air,” says Rydberg, speaking of those days of the Dark Ages, “was saturated with demoniacal vapors,” and specters, ghosts, and vampires multitudinous added their horrors to the fertile imaginations of the people.—Harper’s Bazar.

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In the Kongo district insane people are treated by the native doctors in the following manner: The patient’s hands are secured by stout cords, and he is led to the doctor with a fowl and a lighted firebrand balanced on his head. The doctor takes five twigs from five different trees and strikes the patient with each in turn, bidding the evil spirit depart from him. The lighted stick is then plunged into some water, and as the fire is quenched the evil spirit is supposed to leave the man’s body. He may reenter it, however, so the fowl is killed and placed on a stick at a cross-roads for an offering to the deposited spirit. Then the man’s bands are loosened and he is free to go as he chooses; but if he shows signs of the demon appearing in him again, any one may kill him if his relatives do not object.

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DEMONSTRATION

John W. Gates, the “Wire King,” is described as “an extreme type of the American ‘hustler.’” The Texas cattlemen had never seen barbed wire before, and they ridiculed it.“That stuff wouldn’t hold a Texas steer a holy minute,” said they.Gates was put on his mettle. “I’ll show you whether it will or not,” said he.This was in the picturesque town of San Antonio, which is dotted liberally with small open spaces, or plazas. Gates hired the nearest plaza, and got together a drove of twenty-five of the wildest Texas steers that could be found. Then he fenced his plaza with barbed wire, put the steers inside, and gave the cattlemen a free show. The steers charged the wire, and were pricked by the barbs. They shook their heads and charged again, with the same result. After two or three of these defeats they huddled together on the inside and tried to think it over. Gates sold hundreds of miles of his wire that day at eighteen cents a pound.—Munsey’s.

John W. Gates, the “Wire King,” is described as “an extreme type of the American ‘hustler.’” The Texas cattlemen had never seen barbed wire before, and they ridiculed it.

“That stuff wouldn’t hold a Texas steer a holy minute,” said they.

Gates was put on his mettle. “I’ll show you whether it will or not,” said he.

This was in the picturesque town of San Antonio, which is dotted liberally with small open spaces, or plazas. Gates hired the nearest plaza, and got together a drove of twenty-five of the wildest Texas steers that could be found. Then he fenced his plaza with barbed wire, put the steers inside, and gave the cattlemen a free show. The steers charged the wire, and were pricked by the barbs. They shook their heads and charged again, with the same result. After two or three of these defeats they huddled together on the inside and tried to think it over. Gates sold hundreds of miles of his wire that day at eighteen cents a pound.—Munsey’s.

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Men are sometimes condemned on hearsay, who would be approved if their critics gave them an actual and fair hearing.

When Chief Justice Holt was on the bench, a society had sprung up called “The Society for the Suppression of Vice or the Reformation of manners” (and probably it still exists), and they resolved to prosecute for indecency one of the famous singers of the day named Leveridge. This artist used to sing Dryden’s ode, “The Praise of Love and Wine,” so as to excite great enthusiasm among the depraved votaries of the theater by his peculiar manner of execution. The judge saw the craze under which the prosecutor acted, and resolved to defeat them by the following course: He said to the jury that he had read carefully the words of the song, and he could see nothing very culpable in the words, and therefore he could only come to the conclusion that it must be the manner in which the ode was sung that had occasioned this prosecution. The fairest manner, therefore, to all parties would be for the defendant to sing the song in presence of the court and jury, when they could readily determine the matter in a satisfactory way. The performer took this hint, and, of course, sang with his very greatest power and good taste, so that not only the jury, without leaving the box, acquitted him, but the mob insisted on carrying him home on their shoulders. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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Tolstoy, in his “Coffee-house Parable,” tells of how some men of different faiths had met in a place of public resort and had, after a time, begun to argue about God, each claiming alone to possess a true knowledge of Him, to have alone received His revelation. One, wiser than the others, led them all forth at last till they stood in the sunlight. That sun is a great fact and manifests itself to every creature on earth. Man sees it, or does not see it, being blind, yet is ever cheered by it; the earth is kissed by its rays till it blossoms and brings forth its fruit; even the hard, inanimate things, like the rocks, are warmed by the sun’s rays. And God is the great central fact of life.

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SeeAppeal, A Living;Proof.

DEPENDENCE

There are many, like John Wesley, who fear to trust their Christian faith to guide them, but must lean on the faith and strength of others. But faith thus treated is certain to fail the soul in any great crisis.

Wesley’s first consideration, he declares, is “which way of life will conduce most to my own improvement?” He needs daily converse with his friends, and he knows “no other place under heaven, save Oxford, where I can have always at hand half-a-dozen persons of my own judgment and engaged in the same studies. To have such a number of such friends constantly watching over my soul” is a blessing which, in a word, Wesley can not bring himself to give up. “Half Christians,” he declares, would kill him. “They undermine insensibly all my resolutions and quite steal from me the little fervor I have. I never come from among these ‘saints of the world’ but faint, dissipated, and shorn of all my strength.” Except he can crouch beneath the shelter of a stronger faith than his own, John Wesley protests he must die; so he will not venture from Oxford.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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DEPENDENCE ON GOD

The will of God is like a rope thrown to us as we struggle among the untamed waves. To remain “independent” is to repulse all succor, all salvation; it is to wander without a compass and without a chart through the fury of the storm. To obey is to seize the rope, to face the blast, to brave the storm, to advance against the confederate waves, to let oneself be irresistibly drawn toward the invisible harbor where our heavenly Father awaits us.—Monroe.

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Depopulation—SeeBirth-rate in France.

DEPORTMENT

One effect of the high standard of deportment enforced by the railroads is seen in the extent to which women and children travel alone, without fear. An illustration of this is the experience of a Western woman who was coming to New York for the first time. With her husband, she left Buffalo for New York on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. When they reached Mauch Chunk, Pa., the husband got out to walk up and down the platform, and somehow the train pulled out without him. The woman, left alone, never having been east of Chicago before, was on the verge of panic. Her husband had all the money; the train was to reach New York in the night; she didn’t know what hotel to go to, and, if she had known, couldn’t have found her way there. So the conductor took her in charge, had her carried to a good hotel, and arranged to have the bill guaranteed. The husband,when he arrived, was so grateful that he hunted up the conductor and presented to him a handsome ring.—BuffaloEvening News.

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DEPRAVITY

That sin so easily besets and so dangerously deceives its subjects is accounted for by the declaration that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

The anemone, or “windflower,” as its Greek name means, is fascinating to botanists and to all lovers of flowers because of two highly contrasted characteristics. One of these is what gardeners call its “sporting” tendency in color. The other is a constant quantity, which never varies. As for the former, all who know the anemone are well aware that this flower is so variable that the cultivator never knows what will be the tint of the blossoms on any plant. But the constant quantity is the great black spot in the heart of the flower. No matter what may happen to be the color of the petals, the dense dark center is always there. So it is with this our human nature. Education, culture, refinement, high accomplishments, hereditary advantages, natural amiability, may and do contribute toward the charm of many a personality; but the black spot of the depravity which is innate is not expunged by any of these expedients. (Text.)

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SeeBible and Human Nature.

Depravity a Disease—SeeCharacter Conditioned by the Physical.

DEPRIVATION

We can best estimate the value of common blessings by imagining ourselves deprived of them.

What would it mean for you and meIf dawn should come no more;Think of its gold along the sea,Its rose above the shore!That rose of awful mystery,Our souls bow down before.Think what it means to see the dawn!The dawn, that comes each day!What if the East should ne’er grow wan,Should never more grow gray!That line of rose no more be drawnAbove the ocean’s spray! (Text.)—Madison Cawein,Ainslee’s Magazine.

What would it mean for you and meIf dawn should come no more;Think of its gold along the sea,Its rose above the shore!That rose of awful mystery,Our souls bow down before.

What would it mean for you and me

If dawn should come no more;

Think of its gold along the sea,

Its rose above the shore!

That rose of awful mystery,

Our souls bow down before.

Think what it means to see the dawn!The dawn, that comes each day!What if the East should ne’er grow wan,Should never more grow gray!That line of rose no more be drawnAbove the ocean’s spray! (Text.)—Madison Cawein,Ainslee’s Magazine.

Think what it means to see the dawn!

The dawn, that comes each day!

What if the East should ne’er grow wan,

Should never more grow gray!

That line of rose no more be drawn

Above the ocean’s spray! (Text.)

—Madison Cawein,Ainslee’s Magazine.

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DEPTH OF RESOURCES

Some splendid pines were found, after a heavy gale, lying prostrate, tho they were strong trees in their full prime. To a questioner an old woodman said: “They got their water far too near the surface. If they had had to strike their roots deeper for moisture no winds could ever have uprooted them.”

Many folks are easily upset because all life has been too easy with them. Their roots have never struck deep because there was no great compulsion to make them go deeper for the sources of life. Our very wants, if we do not succumb to them, but go deeper until we find the heart’s need, may become the means of our strength. (Text.)

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DEPTH, THE SECOND

As we drift along in a boat on the smooth surface of a river, we note many familiar appearances. Delicate winged creatures dart about, swallows flash to and fro, here and there fishes leap up, and zephyrs waft petals of flowers and seeds of plants over the placid mirror. In the shallow pool we note aquatic creatures and weeds growing among the pebbles, and thus we see the material depth. But suddenly there is a change. The bottom of the river vanishes, and there comes into view a second depth. The arched heavens are mirrored there, and we look down into measureless azure. When darkness comes the moon and stars are reflected in the depths.

It is so when we come under higher spiritual influences. These soon supersede the view of the things that are merely of the earth earthy. There is a second and heavenly depth of meaning below the whole superficies of this mundane sphere of experience.

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Derelicts—SeeConservation.

Descent to Evil—SeeEvil, Beginnings of.

Design—SeeVoice, The Human.

Design, A, Removed—SeeReminders, Unpleasant.

DESIGN IN MAN’S ACTIVITY

The fin of the fish does not more evidently convey the power and betoken the function of moving in the sea or the wing of the bird that of sailing on the air, than do these quickening and propellent forces, inherent in man’s being, proclaim him ordained for wide-reaching operation.—Richard S. Storrs.

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DESIGN IN NATURE

A student of the phenomena of vision, Professor Pritchard, speaks thus of the argument from the structure of the human eye:

From what I know, through my own specialty, both geometry and experiment, of the structure of lenses and the human eye, I do not believe that any amount of evolution, extending through any amount of time consistent with the requirements of our astronomical knowledge, could have issued in the production of that most beautiful and complicated instrument, the human eye. There are too many curved surfaces, too many distances, too many densities of the media, each essential to the other; too great a facility of ruin by slight disarrangement, to admit of anything short of the intervention of an intelligent Will at some stage of the evolutionary process. (Text.)

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Design in the Soul—SeeWork Divinely Intended.

DESIGN OF GOD

We are told that on one occasion Napoleon was shut up in an island of the Danube, hemmed in by the Archduke Charles. He was able to maintain himself there, but he sent word to Italy and Spain and France, and he ordered his marshal with such minuteness that every day’s march was perfect. All over the north of France, and from the extreme south of Spain and Portugal, the corps were, all of them, advancing, and day by day, coming nearer and nearer. Not one of them, on the march, had any idea what was the final purpose, and why they were being ordered to the central point. But on the day the master appointed the heads of the columns appeared in every direction. Then it was that he was able to break forth from his bondage and roll back the tide of war.

How like our life, as it moves on, to the command of the Master. Its forces seem confused to us, without cohesion, ofttimes antagonistic. Joy and sorrow, health and sickness, prosperity and adversity—all march in their appointed paths and to their appointed ends. But at last we shall see behind them all the one will and the one power, and we shall be able to say on the day of final emancipation and victory, as said Joseph of old, God meant it unto good, to bring it to pass.—John Coleman Adams.

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DESIRES INORDINATE

An adventurer waits upon you one of these days and offers you on terms absurdly easy some diamond-field in Africa, or silver-mine in Nevada, or ruby-mine in Burmah—a few shares at a trifling cost will make you a millionaire. You are smitten; your brain is filled with pleasant dreams; and without the least investigation, you invest your good money to find ere long that you have been cruelly deceived. Will the public greatly pity you? They will not. There was a personal moral fault at the bottom of your misfortune. You were willingly ignorant, you were easily blinded, because of your inordinate desires. So is it in all temptations of life to which we fall a prey. A certain morbid disposition of soul is the secret of our loss or ruin.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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Despair Relieved—SeeExtremity Not Final.

Desperate Remedy—SeeLast Resort of a Woman.

DESTINY

The tissue of the life to beWe weave with colors all our own,And in the fields of destinyWe reap as we have sown;Still shall the soul around it callThe shadows which it gathered here,And painted on the eternal wallThe past shall reappear.

The tissue of the life to be

We weave with colors all our own,

And in the fields of destiny

We reap as we have sown;

Still shall the soul around it call

The shadows which it gathered here,

And painted on the eternal wall

The past shall reappear.

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Rev. Frederick Lynch tells inChristian Workthe following story of Henry Ward Beecher:

In a public assembly a minister arose and said: “Mr. Beecher, my congregation hasdelegated me to ask this question of you: We have in our congregation one of the purest and most lovable men you ever saw. He is upright, honest, generous, the heartiest supporter of the church we have—the friend of the poor, the beloved of little children, a veritable saint—but he does not believe the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, where do you think he will go after death?” Mr. Beecher was equal to the occasion. Hesitating a moment, he said: “I never dare say where any man will go after death, but wherever this man goes, he certainly has my best wishes.”

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A polliwig swims about in a muddy pool and appears happy and contented. It is in its element. After a while it develops into a frog and climbs up on the bank. Altho it has attained to a higher state of existence, it has a tendency for the old life. It does not go very far away from the muddy pool. It stays near it, that it may take an occasional dip. A boy comes along and stones it, and it leaps back into the muddy pool. The boy looks about for some other moving object. He sees a lark not far away and hurls a stone at it. The skylark spreads its wings for flight. As it soars upward, it sings clearer and sweeter until it is far above the reach of its tormentor.

The contrasted tendencies of men resemble those of the polliwig and the lark. There is a world of meaning in the brief statement about Judas, “that he might go to his own place.” (Text.)

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DESTINY OF NATIONS

The destiny of nations! They arise,Have their heyday of triumph, and in turnSink upon silence, and the lidless eyesOf fate salute them from their final urn.How splendid-sad the story! How the gustAnd pain and bliss of living transient seem!Cities and pomps and glories shrunk to dust,And all that ancient opulence a dream.Must a majestic rhythm of rise and fallConquer the peoples once so proud on earth?Does man but march in circles, after all,Playing his curious game of death and birth?Or shall an ultimate nation, God’s own child,Arise and rule, nor ever conquered be;Untouched of time because, all undefiled,She makes His ways her ways eternally?—Richard Burton,The Century Magazine.

The destiny of nations! They arise,Have their heyday of triumph, and in turnSink upon silence, and the lidless eyesOf fate salute them from their final urn.

The destiny of nations! They arise,

Have their heyday of triumph, and in turn

Sink upon silence, and the lidless eyes

Of fate salute them from their final urn.

How splendid-sad the story! How the gustAnd pain and bliss of living transient seem!Cities and pomps and glories shrunk to dust,And all that ancient opulence a dream.

How splendid-sad the story! How the gust

And pain and bliss of living transient seem!

Cities and pomps and glories shrunk to dust,

And all that ancient opulence a dream.

Must a majestic rhythm of rise and fallConquer the peoples once so proud on earth?Does man but march in circles, after all,Playing his curious game of death and birth?

Must a majestic rhythm of rise and fall

Conquer the peoples once so proud on earth?

Does man but march in circles, after all,

Playing his curious game of death and birth?

Or shall an ultimate nation, God’s own child,Arise and rule, nor ever conquered be;Untouched of time because, all undefiled,She makes His ways her ways eternally?—Richard Burton,The Century Magazine.

Or shall an ultimate nation, God’s own child,

Arise and rule, nor ever conquered be;

Untouched of time because, all undefiled,

She makes His ways her ways eternally?

—Richard Burton,The Century Magazine.

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DESTRUCTION, GRADUAL

One morning visitors staying in Venice were told that an ominous report was in circulation concerning the Campanile, and that so certainly was a disaster expected that the old architect who had charge of the Palace of the Doges and of the tower of St. Mark’s Cathedral had stolen out of the city, unable to bear the thought of the approaching catastrophe. A guide took visitors to the tower and pointed out little piles of sand that had trickled down from between the bricks. It was dangerous to stand there and the party retreated. The next night news went all over the world that the Campanile had fallen. But the accident had not happened suddenly. The Campanile had been through centuries preparing for its fall. Slowly the moist air of the lagoon had slaked the lime, and the acid of the smoke had disintegrated the mortar. A thousand minute injuries were slowly inflicted, and gradually the foundations settled and cracked.

So it is with character in individuals and communities. Falsehood, insincerity, vanity, dishonesty, selfishness and infidelity pull down institutions and bring even empires crashing in ruins.

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DESTRUCTION NECESSARY

It has been calculated that, as fish produce so many eggs, if vast numbers of the latter and of the fish themselves were not continually destroyed and taken they would soon fill up every available space in the seas. For instance, from 60,000,000 to 70,000,000 codfish are annually caught on the shores of Newfoundland. But even that quantity seems small when it is considered that each cod yields about 4,500,000 eggs every season, and that even 8,000,000 have been found in the roe of a single cod. Were the 60,000,000 cod taken on the coast of Newfoundland left to breed, the 30,000,000 females producing 5,000,000 eggs every year, it would give a yearly addition of 150,000,000,000,000 young codfish.—Public Opinion.

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Destructive Criticism—SeeSatire.

DESTRUCTIVENESS

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