Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers

by Unknown

B

BABIES, NAMING

In Japan a curious custom is in vogue with respect to the naming of babies. The new-born is taken to the temple, when it has attained the age of two weeks, and to the priest who receives him the father of the little one suggests three names deemed to be appropriate. The priest writes these three names on slips of paper. He holds these slips of paper for a few minutes, and then throws them over his shoulder, sending them as high in the air as possible. The slip that reaches the ground last contains the name that is conferred on the waiting baby.

The next step in the process is for the priest to copy the name on a piece of silk or fine paper, which is handed to the proud parent, with these words:

“So shall the child be named.”—Harper’s Weekly.

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Baby, Captivated by a—See [Child, Saved by a].

Baby’s Thinking—See [Thinking, How Coordinated].

BACKBONE

Any good quality needs backbone to make it effective. The little boy who read aloud, “Now Daniel had an excellent spine in him,” when the letters spelled “spirit,” was not so far from the truth after all. All of God’s servants need spine.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”

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BACKGROUND OF LIGHT

There is often great advantage in a position of obscurity from which to look out on the world. The lace-weavers of Nottingham founded a great industry in caves, as described below:

This great (lace) industry here began in this way: There is, or was, originally, a long, high bank of very soft sandstone on the north bank of the river Trent, pointing to the sun. In this soft sandstone the early Britons dug caves. They dug them deep and wide and wonderful in construction. It is said that even now the city of caves under the ground is almost as large as the broad and populous city on top of the ground. In case of invasion or conquest these cave-dwellers would retreat underground and defy pursuit. It is the boast of the people of Nottingham that their ancestors were never really conquered by any one. The weaving of laces came about here in this way: The half or wholly savage women sitting at the mouths of these caves and holding their threads against the sun with the darkness behind them could see the fine threads better, and so could do finer and better work than any other women in western Europe. And their immunity from conquest and consequent interruption in their peculiar industry fastened it here and kept it well forward.—Joaquin Miller, The Independent.

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Backslider Regained—See [Warmth, Lost].

Bacteria—See [Cleansing, Difficulty of].

BADGES

Everywhere on the streets one meets men, from the gray-haired veteran to the half-developed beau, all parading on breast or coat lapel some distinctive mark of membership in some association. There are medals with ribbons, medals without ribbons, and ribbons without medals. There are buttons; big buttons and little buttons; silk buttons and metal buttons. There are pins, gold and silver and plated; every imaginable kind of pin. And these are worn by ladies and misses of all rank and quality, down to the little silver cross of the King’s Daughters, so familiar everywhere. Nobody seems ashamed to own membership in these various societies and alliances. Men parade the streets under banners and flags, with uniforms, and distinctive feathers in their caps, and are not ashamed to acknowledge their favorite organizations. And yet there are many persons who seem to be ashamed to own their Lord and to confess His cause. (Text.)—The Mid-Continent.

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Bad Company—See [Companions, Evil].

Bad to Worse—See [Down Grade, The].

BADNESS IN BOYS

“He is a bad boy” may mean so many things. In the eyes of some teachers a boy is “bad” if he talks repeatedly to his neighbor. The boy who has a fight with another boy is “bad.” The boy who does not study his lessons is “bad.” The boy who goes to a moving-picture show is “bad.” The boy who throws ink across the room is “bad.” The boy who “answers back” is “bad.” The boy who rifles the teacher’s desk is “bad.” The boy who disobeys school rules is “bad.” “Give a dog a bad name and hang him” should now read, “Give a boy a bad name and ruin him.”

All school types of “badness” need classification. Many of them under careful classification would no longer be considered “bad.” A boy’s wrong acts are often due not so much to deliberate choosing of wrong after he knows right, but to the lack of any sense of right or wrong. Children’s so-called “badness” is due to unmorality oftener than to immorality. Until a boy’s moral nature has been roused and developed, it is absurd to think that one can find the basis of appeal in theoretic ethics or right for right’s sake. Who is to blame when blind, unquestioning obedience to short-sighted, arbitrary school rules is made the basis of a child’s conduct and reputation?

When children go through school learning nothing except what can be given to hundreds simultaneously, in classes so large that undue emphasis is laid upon order and quiet, who is to blame if the majority leave school with morals that alarm those interested? Go through the list of “bad boys” in your school or your town. Classify their offenses. Is immorality or unmorality responsible? If the latter, what share of the blame for this condition belongs to the school? Why consider a boy hopeless or degenerate because he commits a moral offense? Do we consider him intellectually hopeless or defective because of his errors in spelling or arithmetic?—Julia Richman, “Proceedings of the National Education Association,” 1909.

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BALANCE, A LOOSE

Many men think they can rely in a general way upon fate or fortune to square their moral accounts, but in the long run a man must face his record.

Mr. Moody tells of a young couple who on commencing to keep house started to keep an account of their family expenses. After a few months the young husband said to his wife: “Darling, I’ll spend the evening at home to-night, and we will look over the account together.” The young husband found frequent entries like this: “G.K.W., one dollar and a half”; and a little later on, “G.K.W., two dollars”; and after a little, “G.K.W., three dollars.” Becoming a little suspicious, he demanded, “Who is this ‘G.K.W.’ you have spent so much on?” “Oh,” said she, “I never could make the accounts come out right, so I lumped all together that wouldn’t balance, and called it G.K.W.—Goodness Knows What!” (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.

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BALANCE OF JESUS’ MIND

In our earth, the two hemispheres are balanced to a hair and leaf! But what man save Jesus has balanced his radicalism that was sound by a conservatism that is true?—N. D. Hillis.

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BALANCE PRESERVED IN NATURE

Since times prehistoric, ever since the human species developed the sense of comparison and an eye for form, all spiders, with a resemblance to the big, hairy, ugly creatures reputed to be poisonous and now generally known by the name “tarantula,” have been the victims of the crushing heel.

I think it can be said that there never has been one absolutely authentic case of spider bite. The so-called spider bites received occasionally, and generally in early summer, often in bed, are inflicted by certain bloodsucking insects of several species, large and small. The mandibles of the average-sized spiders are hardly powerful enough to pierce the human skin, and all of the poison contained in an arachnid’s glands, injected into the flesh of a human being, will not make as much fuss as a respectable bee-sting. Moreover, spiders are not mammal blood-suckers, and wouldn’t bite if they could. So much for the negative qualities of spiders.

If it were not for the spiders we should all promptly starve to death. Perhaps this is a little startling; it is none the less true. To enlarge upon it, certain spiders prey upon certain caterpillars, regularly inhabit their abodes, and kill so many of them that often whole colonies of the insects are wiped out of existence. These caterpillars normally feed upon the leaves of trees, bushes, and shrubs, frequently denuding a plant entirely. If they were plentiful enough to exhaust their common food they would turn to the weeds and grasses. Without check of any kind they would overrun the earth and destroy every green and growing thing. The spiders beautifully preserve the balance of nature. Kill all the spiders and mankind is doomed.—Collier’s Weekly.

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BALLOT A DUTY

“Arrow,” in the Christian Endeavor World, reads this lesson to Christian voters:

“Well, I suppose it’s Alderman Smith to-day.”

“Alderman—nothing!”

“What? Do you mean to say Smith wasn’t elected?”

“Precisely. Lost it by forty-one votes.”

“Well, well, well! Why, I thought Smith was popular, such a nice, clean fellow; and smart, too.”

“He is popular.”

“And I thought his opponent was a scallawag.”

“He is. The rummies were all for him, and he celebrated his victory with a big free-for-all debauch. I guess our ward’ll be open enough now, all right.”

“But what was the matter? I suppose Smith lay back and took it easy.”

“No, sir! He got out and hustled for himself.”

“Then he probably had no machine to back him.”

“Ah, but he had; and some of the best politicians in the city worked for him. Why, nearly all the strongest men in the ward signed a paper in his interest, and every one got a copy a day before the election.”

“But they couldn’t have known the issue at stake—between decency and indecency, character and hoodlumism.”

“They did, if words could make it clear.”

“Then why, in the name of all that is reasonable, in that pious ward of yours, wasn’t Smith elected?”

“Just because about sixty of the pious men stayed at home or let their sons neglect to vote. We know the names of that many who didn’t vote. Tried to get them to come out, telephone and all that; but no good. Too busy. Or they ‘weren’t needed.’ And the other side got out every man.”

“Those pious men go to prayer-meeting?”

“Well, I don’t know what you think about it, but I’d rather have one X opposite Smith’s name on that ballot than ten years of prayer-meeting eloquence without it.”

“Yes, most of them; and my! but they shine when the topic is a patriotic one.”

“So’d I.” (Text.)

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Banks, Making, Useful—See [Saving Disapproved].

BAPTISM

Dr. R. F. Horton, in the Christian Endeavor World, tells the following story:

There is a scene in my earlier ministry that used to make the best woman I ever knew laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks whenever she recalled it.

A father, a tall and dignified man, with his wife, a gentle, quiet little lady, had brought the baby to the font that Sunday morning. As I read the opening words, the baby woke and began to scream. For my own part I was imperturbable, nor was the mother upset. But the tall, dignified man could not endure it; and just as I was approaching the actual rite, and required the baby, what the congregation saw was the father rapidly striding to a side door, with the white clothes of the screaming infant streaming behind in the haste of the flight. Happily parental authority worked miracles in the corridor, and the infant, vastly pacified, was brought back just in time to save the service from being a fiasco. And the humor turns into a deeper joy when now I see that child grown up into a beautiful girl, the joy of her parents and of all who behold her.

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BAPTISM INTERPRETED

At the Student Volunteer Convention in Toronto, Dr. Horace G. Underwood told the following incident:

A copy of the Book of the Acts fell into the hands of a Korean, whose heart was touched by the truths. He gathered his villagers together and taught them its contents and they sent for missionaries to come to them. It was impossible for them to go at once, but they sent copies of the Gospels. The eager Koreans read and studied as well as they could alone, and noticing that some “washing rite” was enjoined upon the believers in the Jesus doctrine, they met to discuss how they should follow it out and thus fulfil all righteousness. They prayed over it for a time, and at last decided that each should go to his own home and reverently should wash himself in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. (Text.)

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BARBARISM

The missionaries to the Dyaks of Borneo, in making their calls not infrequently are seated in a position of honor in a native hut underneath a huge cluster of skulls, the war trophy of the head-hunting Dyaks. Rev. H. L. E. Luering writes in the London Christian that the natives believe that the courage of the slain enemy enters his victor’s soul if the head of the dead man is in his possession. So the heads are cut off and placed in loose rattan receptacles and smoked over a slow fire, and polished and strung up like great bunches of grapes, and guarded with a jealousy greater than is accorded any other possession. They represent just so much of the owner’s self—his own soul—and to lose a head would deprive him of just so much strength and courage.

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The late Bishop Taylor, of Africa, narrated the following in the Missionary Review of the World:

I saw a woman who had been accused of witchcraft and condemned to death by exposure to ferocious ants. She was bound to a big ant-hill ten or fifteen feet high. The victim usually dies in two days, but this woman endured it for five days and was then driven away because “she was too hard to kill.” She crawled in a terrible condition to the mission station—the most pitiful sight the missionary had ever beheld. After months of careful nursing she recovered, and this woman, so terribly scarred and disfigured, was converted at one of my meetings.

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See [Cruel Greed].

BARGAIN DISCOUNTENANCED

It was proposed to the Duke of Wellington to purchase a certain farm in the neighborhood of his estate at Strathfieldsaye. He assented. When the transfer was completed, his steward, who had made the purchase, congratulated him upon having made a great bargain, as the seller was in difficulties, and forced to part with his farm. “What do you mean by a bargain?” asked the Duke. The steward replied, “It was valued at £5,500, and we got it for £4,000.” “In that case,” said the Duke, “you will please to carry the extra £1,500 to the late owner, and never talk to me of cheap land again.”

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BARGAIN-MAKING

A former queen of Spain once rode out in the country, when the driver of the royal carriage became lost and spent two hours vainly trying to find the way. The queen and the infanta were somewhat alarmed.

All at once they came upon an old wood-cutter, who, with a bunch of fagots upon his back, gathered laboriously from the stunted bushes to be found here and there, had sunk down to the ground, evidently for a moment’s rest.

“Ho, my good man!” the driver of the royal carriage called out. “Will you tell us the road to Madrid?”

“No,” said the wood-cutter, “I will not, except on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you take me in and carry me back to the city.”

The coachman declined to do this.

“Very well, then; find the road yourself,” said the wood-cutter.

The queen here intervened. She ordered the coachman to let the man tie his fagot at the back of the coach, and to take him upon the driver’s seat and drive him home.

The man tied his rough fagot at the back of the royal coach, mounted the box, and the road to Madrid was soon found.

When the royal carriage entered the city in this queer state, there was a great sensation, as the people readily recognized the equipage. The wood-cutter sat proudly on the box. When his quarter was reached, he got down and unfastened his fagot. The queen put her head out of the door.

“Go to the royal palace to-morrow,” she said, “and your service will be rewarded.”

The old man, suddenly perceiving whose passenger he had been, was overcome with humiliation. He stood bowing, rubbing his cap between his hands, and uttering exclamations of astonishment until the carriage was out of sight.—The Christian Register.

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BARRIERS

In the West, the farmer’s boy makes a trap for prairie-chickens and wild turkeys. Looking toward the corn, the bird pushes against the tiny wooden bar that yields for admittance. But having gotten in, the gate will not push out.

When it is too late, the youth who has played false, finds that the way into sin was easy, and the way out hard. Strange that there should not be a single barrier in the downward path, but that when the transgressor turns to retrace his steps that red-hot iron barriers are in the path!—N. D. Hillis.

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The water-hyacinth is a beautiful thing, so beautiful that some years ago an enterprising gentleman decided to introduce it in Florida. As it turned out, he not only introduced it, but he made it a part of the country. It has outgrown all bounds, formed impassible barriers in streams, caused the Government to spend thousands to get rid of it, and is still an impediment to navigation in many rivers all over the South.

The situation has become so serious in Louisiana that it is proposed to import hippopotami. At first thought, few will be able to see any relation between hippopotami and water-hyacinths, yet there is. In fact, the ordinary hippopotamus eats water-hyacinth from morning until night if he can get it. It is evident, therefore, that were there plenty of hippopotami in Louisiana there would soon be no water-hyacinth. It is for this reason that the Government will be asked to import the beasts, domesticate them, and turn them loose in Louisiana.

The hippopotamus is not a dangerous brute—altho Mr. Roosevelt has taken much credit to himself for having killed some of them—his flesh makes excellent steaks, particularly if he has fed on water-hyacinth, and he is altogether a desirable creature to have about, we are told. We trust that the Government will act quickly in this matter. Perhaps in addition to being fond of water-hyacinth the hippopotamus may also have an appetite for the boll-weevil. Let Louisiana have the beasts by all means.—Charleston News and Courier.

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The conquering races were compelled to follow river-beds, and could not penetrate the forests. It was not the warrior who finally conquered English soil, but the farmer. The half-dozen kingdoms, which were divided by vast forests, coalesced only when the ax cut away barriers. Earlier races could not inhabit any part of the earth except the coast lines. All their food came from the sea; and the refuse still remains as the great shell-heaps of the sea-coasts of Europe.

So to-day in the moral world one must cleave his way through barriers as with an ax to the open of a large place.

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See [Dishonesty].

BARRIERS, SUPERNATURAL

During some recent work in West Africa, a certain native chief was anxious to prevent my explorations of such creeks and rivers as led to trading districts which he desired to remain unknown. Finding verbal dissuasions unavailing, and not liking to have recourse to physical force, he tried as a last and somewhat despairing resort to place supernatural obstacles in my way; so he directed that at the entrance to these forbidden creeks a live white fowl (lowest and cheapest sacrifice) should be suspended from a palm-stake. Consequently, I was frequently surprized and pleased at what I thought was a graceful token of hospitality posted at different points of my journey, and never failed to turn the fowl to account in my bill of fare. After this manner of disposing of the fowl-fetish had occurred several times, and yet I remained unpunished for my temerity by the local gods, the natives gave up further opposition to my journey as futile and expensive. In talking this over on my return with one of the more advanced chiefs of the district, my native friend shook his head half humorously, half seriously over the decay of religious belief. A white fowl, he said, was “poor man’s juju”; a few years ago it would have been a white goat, and in his father’s time a white boy (albino negro), spitted on a stake to bar the way, and this last would have been a sacrifice that might well have moved the local gods of wold and stream to intervene.—H. H. Johnston, Fortnightly Review.

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Battle Against Frailty—See [Body, Mastering the].

Beating Process a Necessity—See [Discipline].

BEAUTIFUL, INFLUENCE OF THE

Every one is influenced to a greater or less degree by that which he sees about him, and those with whom he comes in contact.

A beautiful statue once stood in the market-place of an Italian city. It was the statue of a Greek slave-girl. It represented the slave as tidy and well drest. A ragged, uncombed little street child, coming across the statue in her play, stopt and gazed at it in admiration. She was captivated by it. She gazed long and lovingly. Moved by a sudden impulse, she went home and washed her face and combed her hair. Another day she stopt again before the statue and admired it, and she got a new idea. Next day her tattered clothes were washed and mended. Each time she looked at the statue she found something in its beauties until she was a transformed child.

This law of transformation through appreciation has its highest illustration in the changed life and character of men who have lived in communion with God.

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BEAUTIFUL LIFE, SECRET OF

In the legend of the “Great Stone Face” Hawthorne tells us how a great soul was formed by constantly looking at an ideal head formed by rocks on the side of a mountain. Ernest had been told by his mother that some day or other (so the people in the valley believed) a man would grow up from among them who would be the greatest man of his time, and that his face would resemble the face outlined on the rocks of the mountain. So Ernest waited, and finally a man who had become very rich came back to the valley and built a palace, and people thought for a time that the legend had been fulfilled in Mr. Grabgold, but the man was hard and selfish. Another came who was famous as a statesman, but ambition had killed his spiritual life. A poet came, whose verses had been an inspiration to Ernest, who often preached to the people of the valley, but the poet was a sensualist. He admitted to Ernest that he had not lived the beautiful life that he had depicted in his poetry, that he had even doubted at times whether the beautiful things he had taught to men were true. So at last, when Ernest had been almost in despair about the great man who should come to the valley, he went out one evening to preach to the people, and as the rays of the setting sun lighted up his face, and also the Great Stone Face of the mountain, the people shouted, “The legend has been fulfilled; the faces are alike.” It was true. The boy of the valley, by keeping his eyes on the noble face on the mountain, had accomplished more than they all. It is the secret of the development of the soul. A man must keep his eyes on the face of Jesus Christ to-day, because there is none else so noble.—C. F. J. Wrigley.

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BEAUTIFUL, UTILITY OF THE

In one of the earlier chapters of his “Les Miserables,” Victor Hugo tells how a good bishop answered his housekeeper once. She expostulated with his lordship for giving a full quarter of his garden to flowers, saying that it would be better and wiser to grow lettuce there than bouquets. “Ah, Madame Magloire,” replied the bishop, “the beautiful is as useful as it is beautiful.”

The ministry of beauty is one of the overflowings of the divine mind and heart, and serves God’s purpose in common with the utilities of His works.

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BEAUTY

The sense of the beautiful extends to the animal creation.

Land-birds show fondness for decoration. A robin in Pennsylvania made the whole nest of flowers and white stems of everlasting, and it may now be seen in the Philadelphia Academy of Science. Other birds have been known to build entirely of flowers. Miss Hayward, an invalid who studied birds from her window, saw one pair build a nest of the blossoms of the sycamore and sprays of forget-me-not, and another—an English sparrow—cover its nest with white sweet alyssum.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

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Beauty and Utility—See [Work and Art].

BEAUTY, DECEIVED BY

Bates found on the Amazon a brilliant spider that spread itself out as a flower, and the insects lighting upon it, seeking sweetness, found horror, torment, death. Such transformations are common in human life; things of poison and blood are everywhere displaying themselves in forms of innocence, in dyes of beauty. The perfection of mimicry is in the moral world, deceiving the very elect. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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BEAUTY FROM FRAGMENTS

May not God find ways to gather up the fragments of wasted lives and reconstitute them in His own image, as this great artist reconstructed the window:

In a certain old town was a great cathedral in which was a wondrous stained-glass window. Its fame had gone abroad over the land. From miles around people pilgrimaged to gaze upon the splendor of this masterpiece of art. One day there came a great storm. The violence of the tempest forced in the window, and it crashed to the marble floor, shattered into a hundred pieces. Great was the grief of the people at the catastrophe which had suddenly bereft the town of its proudest work of art. They gathered up the fragments, huddled them in a box, and carried them to the cellar of the church. One day there came along a stranger, and craved permission to see the beautiful window. They told him of its fate. He asked what they had done with the fragments. And they took him to the vault and showed him the broken morsels of glass. “Would you mind giving these to me?” said the stranger. “Take them along,” was the reply; “they are no longer of any use to us.” And the visitor carefully lifted the box and carried it away in his arms. Weeks passed by; then one day there came an invitation to the custodians of the cathedral. It was from a famous artist, noted for his master-skill in glass-craft. It summoned them to his study to inspect a stained-glass window, the work of his genius. Ushering them into his studio, he stood them before a great veil of canvas. At the touch of his hand upon a cord the canvas dropt. And there before their astonished gaze shone a stained-glass window surpassing in beauty all their eyes had ever beheld. As they gazed entranced upon its rich tints, wondrous pattern, and cunning workmanship, the artist turned and said: “This window I have wrought from the fragments of your shattered one, and it is now ready to be replaced.” Once more a great window shed its beauteous light into the dim aisles of the old cathedral. But the splendor of the new far surpassed the glory of the old, and the fame of its strange fashioning filled the land.—Grace and Truth.

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BEAUTY IN COMMON LIFE

I saw in an art gallery a group of well-drest people admiring a picture of some Spanish beggars. The beggars were unkempt, deformed, ugly, but the artist had seen beauty in the group, and his imagination made the scene appeal strongly to the passer-by. How many of those people, think you, would ever stop to look at a group of beggars, not in a picture, but in life? Would they have the imagination, apart from the artist, to feel the appeal of real men and women in real need and see beauty and grace of form beneath rags? And yet it is possible for all of us to be artists and see common life transfigured with a beauty and grace divine.—John H. Melish.

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Beauty, Insensitiveness to—See [Insensitiveness to Beauty].

BEAUTY PERVERTED

One of the most beautiful sights around Ispahan, in Persia, is a field of poppies—those pure white flowers—stretching away for miles. But the poppy is often the source of a curse and misery. Before the poppy is ripe the “head” is scratched at sunset with a kind of comb in three places; and from these gashes the opium oozes out. Next morning it is collected before sunrise, dried and rolled into cakes ready for use or market. Its growers are enriched by the traffic, but the ground is greatly impoverished. And the users of opium? Why, it is death to them.

Too often, as with the poppy, beauty becomes a curse, and blessing a bane. (Text.)

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Bed, Taking Up the—See [Bible Customs To-day].

BEER, EFFECT OF

I was at a hospital when an ambulance came tearing to the door, with a man whose leg was crusht from mid-thigh down. He was placed upon the operating table, restless and moaning. “Oh, doctor,” he said, “will it kill me?” and the good, blunt man of science answered, “No; not the leg, but the beer may do you up.” And it did. The limb was removed quickly and skilfully, but the clean aseptic cut had really no chance to heal, because the general physical degradation of beer no surgeon’s knife can amputate. When life and death grip one another, beer stabs life in the back.—John G. Woolley.

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Beggary—See [Giving].

BEGINNING, RIGHT

R. H. Haweis gives this opinion about learning to play the violin, which applies equally well to all training of youth:

Ought young children to begin upon small-sized violins? All makers say “Yes”; naturally, for they supply the new violins of all sizes. But I emphatically say “No.” The sooner the child is accustomed to the right violin intervals the better; the small violins merely present him with a series of wrong distances, which he has successively to unlearn.

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See [Timidity].

BEGINNINGS DETERMINE ENDINGS

When the toper lies dead over his cups there is an invisible line that runs back from his death to the first dram. When the aged saint lies triumphant in his last sleep that victory is related to his mother’s lullaby and to his own first prayer. The broad estuary where the fleets of a nation float may be traced back to its fountain among the green hills in which a little child may wade or a robin rustle its feathers without fear. The faith that overcomes the world is the consummation of the faith when, in fear and trembling, the young convert first placed his hand in the hand of God. The first step on the stair is a prophecy of the landing. When we start right we have only to keep on in that direction and the end will be more than we longed for.

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Beginnings of Great Men—See [Great Men’s Beginnings].

BEING BEFORE DOING

“He that would hope to write well hereafter in laudable things,” says Milton, “ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and most honorable things.” Here is a new proposition in art which suggests the lofty ideal of Fra Angelico, that before one can write literature, which is the expression of the ideal, he must first develop in himself the ideal man. Because Milton is human he must know the best in humanity; therefore he studies, giving his days to music, art, and literature; his nights to profound research and meditation. But because he knows that man is more than mortal he also prays, depending, as he tells us, on “devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge.”—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

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Belated Honors—See [Delay].

Belief not Destroyed by Mysteries—See [Mystery in Religion].

Belief Required—See [Mystery no Bar to Belief].

BELLS

We have given up announcing the miracle of transubstantiation or putting to flight storms and demons or managing exorcism by bell, book and candle, but bells as sweet as the Angelus still ring over our English fields and woodlands on Sunday. The passing-bell in a country churchyard is full of pathos and memory, breaking the stillness and arresting for a moment the busy hay-makers as they pause to listen, and remember some old comrade who will no more be seen in their ranks. The solemn bell at our midnight services, now so customary on the last evening in each year throughout the land, is also charged with hallowed thoughts; indeed, I know few things more thrilling than that watch-night bell, which seems as the crowd kneels within to beat away on its waves of sound the hopes and fears, and tumultuous passions of the dead year when its echoes have ceased those kneeling crowds feel that one more chapter in the book of life has been written, that ringing voice has sealed the troubled past and heralded in with its iron, inexorable, tho trembling lips the unknown future. What with the dinner-bell, safety yard bell, school, factory and jail bells, small cupola spring-bells, safety electric bells, not to forget baby’s coral and bells, bell-rattles, last reminiscence of the extinct fool’s cap and bells, and fool’s wand, with its crown of jingling baubles, we seem never to hear the last of bells. Bells are the landmarks of history as well as the daily ministers to our religious and secular life. The bell’s tongue is impartial and passionless as fate. It tolls for the king’s death “Le roi est mort.” It rings in his successor, “Vive le roi.” The cynical bells rang out as Henry VIII led wife after wife to the altar, the loyal bells rang out for the birth of Charles I, and the disloyal ones tolled again for his execution. The bells of Chester rang a peal for Trafalgar, alternated with a deep toll for the death of Nelson, and some of us can remember the tolling of St. Paul’s bell as the Iron Duke’s funeral passed up Ludgate Hill. The long green bell which announced to the Pisans that the wretched Ugolino, starved to death in the bottom dungeon, had at length ceased to breathe, still hangs in the famous leaning tower of Pisa.

At the ringing of the Sicilian Vespers in the Easter of 1282, 8,000 French were massacred in cold blood by John of Procida. The midnight bells of Paris gave the sign for the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, August 24, 1471, when 100,000 persons are said to have perished. The great towers of Christendom have all their eloquent bell tongues, and as we pass in imagination from one to the other we not only catch the mingled refrain of life and death as it floats upward from the fleeting generations of men, but we may literally from those lofty summits contemplate all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them.—H. R. Haweis, English Illustrated Magazine.

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Benefaction in Kind—See [Conditions Suggest Courses].

BENEFACTION OF ANESTHETICS

A fine sculpture in the Boston Public Garden is a marble group representing the Good Samaritan helping the man who had fallen among thieves. But more beautiful than the fine work of the sculptor is the inscription showing how the monument was erected to commemorate the earliest use of anesthetics in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, with these texts from Scripture appended:

“Neither shall there be any more pain.”

“This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.”—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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BENEFIT, COMPULSORY

The following paragraph appeared recently in The Medical Record (New York):

Because of the opposition of his parents to the operation, surgeons of the County Hospital of Chicago were compelled to obtain an order from the court directing the amputation of the arm of a fourteen-year-old boy recently. Gangrene following a fracture made the operation necessary, but neither the boy nor his parents would consent.

Sometimes it is legitimate to do a man good against his will.

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BENEVOLENCE

He is dead whose hand is not open wide

To help the need of a human brother;

He doubles the length of his lifelong ride

Who of his fortune gives to another;

And a thousand million lives are his

Who carries the world in his sympathies.

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Kosciusko, the famous Polish patriot and general, was very benevolent. Sending a messenger on a hurried errand, he bade him ride his own horse. But the man was long gone, and returning said that next time he must take another horse, for that one insisted on stopping at every poor hovel and with every beggar by the way, as if he had stopt to give alms at every wayside call. Even a horse can learn the way of giving.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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Benevolence, Christian—See [Unselfishness, Power of].

BENEVOLENCE, MODEST

One of Baron Rothschild’s peculiarities was to conceal his benevolence. He gave away a great deal of money, but if the one who received it ever mentioned the fact so that it came back to the baron’s ears, he never got any more. His contributions to general benevolence were always anonymous or passed through the hands of others. His name never appeared upon any benevolent list.

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Benevolence, Practical—See [Sentiment, Useless].

Best, Getting the—See [Buying, Good].

BEST, MAKING THE

Drudgery is the gray angel of success.... Look at the leaders in the professions, the solid men in business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by building a town to house their factory-hands; they are drudges of the single aim.... “One thing I do.”... Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker of central New York, was an artist. “Yes,” he said, “I have made hammers for twenty-eight years.” “Well, then, you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time.” “No, sir,” was the answer. “I never made a pretty good hammer; I make the best hammer made in the United States.”—William C. Gannett.

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Best, The, is Brief Here—See [Life, Uses of].

Betrayal—See [Displacement].

Betting—See [Gambling].

BIBLE

Charles A. Dana was a great editor and thinker. This is his fine tribute to a book that has influenced the life and destiny of more men than any other literature:

There is perhaps no book whose style is more suggestive and more instructive, from which you learn more directly that sublime simplicity which never exaggerates, which recounts the greatest event with solemnity, of course, but without sentimentality or affectation, none which you open with such confidence and lay down with such reverence: there is no book like the Bible. When you get into a controversy and want exactly the right answer, when you are looking for an expression, what is there that closes a dispute like a verse from the Bible? What is it that sets up the right principle for you, which pleads for a policy, for a cause, so much as the right passage of Holy Scripture?

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See [Directions]; [Letter of God]; [Way, Direction of]; [Word the, a Hammer].

Bible a Book of Directions—See [Directions].

Bible a Book of Life—See [Higher Criticism].

Bible Adaptation—See [Adapting the Bible].

BIBLE A HANDBOOK

Primarily the Bible is a handbook setting forth the way of God with individuals. When an inventor sells his sewing-machine, or car, he accompanies the mechanism with an illustrated handbook describing each wheel, each lever and hidden spring. Now the Bible is an illustrated handbook that accompanies the mechanism of the soul, with all its mental levers and moral springs. Having first stated the facts about life and duty and destiny, the Bible goes on to illustrate these facts. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

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BIBLE A LAMP

This book is a lamp, but lamps are not to be pulled in pieces; lamps are to be read by. When you go down into the valley and the shadow, you will need a light. In that long journey down into the darkness of death you will travel alone. And here is a lamp that will light your path and bring you out of the chill and the damp and the dark into the morning, and the dawn shall be followed by day and the day shall deepen into high noon, the noon of God’s heaven. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

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BIBLE AMONG HEATHEN

The eagerness of the Tahitians to have and read the Bible is indicated by the following account:

For years Mr. Nott had been translating the Gospel of Luke into Tahitian, assisted by Pomare and while the book was in press the natives often constrained Mr. Ellis to stop printing to explain to them what they read. The missionaries wished to bind the books before they were distributed, but the impatience of the people constrained them to give up waiting for proper binding materials. The natives, however, did not suffer these precious books to remain without proper protection; dogs and cats and goats were killed so that their skins might be prepared for covers, and the greatest anxiety was manifested to obtain these new copies of the Word of God.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

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Bible and Experience—See [Experience and Bible].

BIBLE AND HUMAN NATURE

Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, of India, went to a native city where the name of Jesus had never been heard. He began to explain to them the first chapter of Romans, that chapter which describes the heart of man wandering away from God and into sin, and conceiving evil conceptions of God, until at last, “Tho they know the judgment of God—that they which do such things are worthy of death—not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” The most intelligent man in the audience, a Brahman, stept forward and said to Dr. Chamberlain, “Sir, that chapter must have been written for us Hindus. It describes us exactly.”

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BIBLE AS A CHART

Dr. W. L. Watkinson, commending the Bible as the chart of life, gives this illustration:

A famous Swiss guide was once interviewed. He was a man who had never suffered an accident. Invariably he had brought his parties successfully through the most ambitious undertakings. The man who interviewed him spoke of the failures of other guides. His reply to that was, “There are guides and guides. One takes you up and trusts to luck. He is ready for anything, but he does not know what is coming. He guesses where he is when you ask him, ‘Where is the top?’ I never do that. Before I start on a new track, or one I have not made before, I study it thoroughly. I watch it through the glass until I know it. I make a map of it. When I say, ‘Go,’ then I can see what is before me. On the mountain I must always know where I am. If you come to me for science, it is no good; but I must carry my map with me and point, ‘We are here.’ I never start without my compass, my thermometer, and my aneroid; so that when you come to me at any moment and ask, ‘Where are we?’ I can say, ‘Here! and it is so many feet to the top.’”

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BIBLE AS A COMPASS

Every ship has a compass. No captain would dream of going to sea without a compass, for there are times when neither sun nor stars appear and steering must be done by the compass alone. So every man should have a compass. The Bible is the Christian mariner’s compass, and by it he must steer.

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Bible as a Mind-cure—See [Mind-healing].

BIBLE AS BREAD

A year ago in Austria a Bible was baked in a loaf of bread. Some wicked men came into the house to find the Bible and burn it, but the good woman of the home, who was just going to bake bread for her family, rolled up her Bible in a big loaf and put it in the oven. When the intruders went away she took out the loaf, and the Bible was uninjured.

The Bible is bread. A good loaf to hide the Bible in is a warm heart. The Bible is best baked in a good life. (Text.)

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BIBLE CUSTOMS TO-DAY

How far away the Bible seems to us when it tells of sack-cloth and ashes, and about Jacob and Mordecai and Isaiah, who marked their desolation by these signs! In Korea sack-cloth is still such a mark, and with hair unbound and their persons wrapt about with these coarse folds of bagging they sit like Job and cry, “Aigo, aigo.” “And the mourners go about the streets.” From the writer’s house we look out on one of the main thoroughfares of the city; and frequently, as the sun goes down, there comes a procession bearing lanterns and a long line of mourners in sack-cloth following the dead with mournful wailings. Is there not a thought and a providence underlying the oneness of these things with all the settings of the Scripture?

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“Take up thy bed and walk,” seemed to the writer in his boyhood days as a most extraordinary expression. He pictured a four-posted bed being tugged out of a bedroom by one poor man only just recovered of his sickness; but when he came to Korea, he understood it all. The bed was just a little mattress spread out on the floor of the living-room, and to roll it up and put it away was the common act of every morning when the sleeper awoke. Morning light and consciousness had come into the life of the poor invalid, so he would roll up his sleeping-mat and walk off to where it was put for the day. So, in many of the common acts of life in Korea we were in touch with the days of our Lord on earth.

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Then there is the footgear or sandals. Neither China nor Japan so markedly reflects Scripture in this respect as Korea. Here are the strings tied over the instep, here the humble servant is called to bow down and unloose them. As in Judea, they are never worn indoors, but are dropt off on the entrance-mat.

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The expression, “Girt about the breasts with a golden girdle,” is never quite clear to a young Bible reader at home, and China and Japan cast no special light upon it; but in Korea there was the long white robe down to the feet, and round the breast the embroidered girdle. It remained until after the missionary arrived, and then in the changes of the new century the girdle was swept away. The white robes, too, find their corresponding part in Scripture, and the expression, “So as no fuller on earth can whiten them,” often came to mind in the old days, when out of the little squalid huts came forth coats that shone like polished marble.—The above four illustrations from James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”

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BIBLE, EFFECT OF

The Rev. E. W. Burt, of the Baptist mission in Shantung, says that three men came from a distant village in the hills begging the missionary to visit them. He expected to find some lawsuit at the bottom of their eagerness, but instead found a chapel built and everything ready for a splendid work in their midst. Three years before a colporteur of the British and Foreign Bible Society had sold them Bibles, and without any human instruction they had come to believe in Christ.

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Bible for Missions—See [Gospel, Sending the].

BIBLE FROM GOD

At a large dinner given in New York, Mrs. Margaret Bottome, for a long time head of the King’s Daughters Circle, sat beside a German professor of science. In the course of conversation, Mrs. Bottome said quite naturally for her:

“The Bible says so and so.”

“The Bible,” remarked the professor. “You don’t believe the Bible!”

“Yes, indeed, I believe it,” replied Mrs. Bottome.

“Why, I didn’t suppose that any intelligent person to-day believed the Bible!”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Bottome said, “I believe it all. I know the Author.”

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BIBLE FROM HEATHEN VIEWPOINTS

Certain parts of the Bible appeal with unexpected force to various races, and to men in different stages of civilization, who read the Scriptures with other eyes than ours. We may illustrate this point by a few actual examples.

When Dr. Kilgour was translating the Old Testament into Nepali (India), he found it an arduous, not to say a tedious, task, to render the long chapters of ritual regulations in Leviticus; he was surprized, however, to discover that his Nepalese assistant considered these chapters to be among the most interesting and important in the whole Pentateuch.

So, again, the Chinese, who lay enormous stress on reverence for ancestors, are profoundly imprest by the first chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, because it begins with the genealogy of our Lord, which, as a colporteur wrote last year, “goes back to our Chinese Hsia dynasty.”

In Egypt, Moslems are attracted by the Book of Genesis, which they call “the history of the creation of the world.” In the south of Europe the Book of Proverbs is often purchased eagerly by Freemasons, who look back to King Solomon as the legendary founder of their craft.

In heathen countries it is by no means uncommon for the missionaries, who are translating the Old Testament, first to make a version of the Psalter and perhaps of Genesis, and then to translate the Book of Jonah before attempting any other of the prophets. They realize—what we sometimes forget—that Jonah is the one thoroughly missionary book in the Old Testament, and they find that its message comes home to their converts with peculiar power.—The Lutheran.

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BIBLE FRUIT

The following incident is related in an issue of the Illustrated Missionary News:

One day a Chinese scholar named Ch’u paid a visit to an old friend, Chang, who was priest of a Buddhist temple among the mountains of Shansi. As he looked over the library his eye fell upon a book of unusual appearance lying on a dusty shelf, and he inquired of the priest what book it was. “Ah,” replied his friend, “that is a strange book I picked up on a journey—a foreign classic. You will not think much of it.” It was a copy of the Gospel of Mark, and Ch’u became interested in some things he read in it. He had never heard of Christ before, and now that life so simple and sublime laid hold on him. He came again and again to the temple to read that little book until he knew it almost by heart. But no one else could tell him more, for no Christian had ever penetrated to that lonely mountain. Could all this story about Jesus be true? If so, when did it happen? Where were His followers whom He told to preach His gospel? Could Jesus help men now? At length, after long waiting and much inquiry, he learned that there were some Christians in a town three days’ journey away, and he set off to seek them. There he met Pastor Hsi, a Chinese evangelist, who was able to tell him that Jesus Christ was alive and he could trust Him. Once again he visited the Buddhist temple, this time to tell his old friend of the grace of Christ, and Chang also became a believer. When some years later a Christian missionary went to this place, there was a community of saved men and women, and a little church gathered together through the agency of the message of that one little book.

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BIBLE, GRIP OF THE

At one time I gave a Mohammedan a New Testament on condition that he would read it. He was a Turkish official, but he promised that he would do so. I saw him a year later, when he came to me like Nicodemus by night. I said to him, “Have you read the book I gave you?” He replied, “Yes, I have read it through four times, and it gets hold of me every time right here”—putting his hand upon his heart. “I believe that is the religion which must ultimately be accepted by the world as the true religion; it seems to me that it is the only religion.” He went out and away and he is to-day an official of the Turkish Government. He is a representative of a great class in the Mohammedan world who are beginning to have an intelligent knowledge of Christianity.—James L. Barton, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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BIBLE, INTEREST IN

A laboring man had come up from the country for a holiday in London. He seemed strong and active, tho his hair was gray; and standing in the Roman Gallery, he looked wonderingly at the long line of statues and busts of the Roman emperors. As I pointed out one and another to a friend with me, he stept forward and said, “Have they got Julius Cæsar here?” I at once told him that the bust stood at the end of the gallery and he walked toward it, but soon came back again, evidently not quite satisfied. I asked him if he had found it.

“No,” he said, “I couldn’t see him.” So I took the old man back to where it stood, and pointed it out.

“You are interested in these things?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he replied, “and now I can tell folks when I go home that I’ve seen him. Which is the one that was alive when Jesus Christ was crucified?” I soon showed him Tiberius Cæsar, and then Augustus, telling him how God had through his means set the whole Roman world in motion, in order that according to prophecy Christ might be born in Bethlehem. And then I asked him if he knew the Lord Jesus Christ. With a bright, satisfied look lighting up his fine old face, he said, “Ah, yes! one gets to know summat of Him in a lifetime.”

There were many things to be seen in London, but evidently the British Museum stood first and foremost in his estimation, because he could there see portraits of those about whom he read in the Bible.—Ada R. Habershon, “The Bible and the British Museum.”

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BIBLE, LIVING ON THE

We never fully realize the value of the Bible till it becomes our very life. The way to deal with the Bible is not merely to study it or to meditate upon it, but actually to live on it, as that squirrel lives on his beech-tree.

A preacher, one day, resting under a beech-tree, pondering on the divine wisdom that had created it, saw a squirrel running round the trunk and up the branches, and he said to himself, “Ah! little creature, this beech-tree is much more to you than it is to me, for it is your home, your living, and your all.” Its big branches were the main streets of his city and its little boughs were the lanes. Somewhere in that tree he had his house and the beechnuts were his daily food.

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BIBLE NOT OUT OF DATE

A trader passing a converted cannibal in Africa, asked him what he was doing. “Oh, I am reading the Bible,” was the reply. “That book is out of date in my country,” said the foreigner. “If it had been out of date here,” said the African to the European, “you’d have been eaten long ago.”

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BIBLE, OFFENSE OF THE

A New York City missionary, accustomed to speak in the lowest sections of the city, was going to hold an open-air meeting in Paradise Park. Before he began to preach he heard a man in the crowd say, “Damn the Bible, anyhow.” He mounted his barrel and announced, “My text to-day is ‘Damn the Bible, anyhow.’” That made that man and every other man eager to hear what he was going to say next. Then he told why the devil wanted the Bible damned: because it closed up all liquor stores and brothels, cleaned men’s lives and taught truth and salvation.

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BIBLE OUTWEARS ASSAULT

Dr. John Clifford puts into the following verse the vanity and failure of all assaults on the Bible:

Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith’s door,

And heard the anvil sing the vesper chime;

Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor

Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

“How many anvils have you had,” said I,

“To wear and batter all those hammers so?”

“Just one,” he said; then, with a twinkling eye,

“The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.”

And so, I thought, the anvil of God’s word

For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;

Yet, tho the noise of falling blows was heard,

The anvil is unharmed—the hammers gone.

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BIBLE, POPULARITY OF

The Bible continues to be the most popular of books, as shown by the report of the American Bible Society for 1909. The total number of issues amounted to 2,826,831, of which 1,427,247 came from the Bible House in New York, and 1,399,584 from the society’s agencies abroad, in Turkey, Syria, Siam, China, Japan, etc. These issues consisted of 327,636 Bibles, 545,743 New Testaments, and 1,953,452 Scripture portions. The number of volumes was 673,803 in excess of the issues of a year ago, and 590,076 in excess of any year in its history.

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BIBLE, REENFORCED

Recent dispatches from Denmark tell of remarkable experiments, carried on in the sound between Denmark and Sweden, for the purpose of testing the seaworthiness of a vessel built according to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark, as given in Gen. 6:15. According to the Copenhagen Daily Dannebrog, Naval Architect Vogt, who has experimented for a long time with the dimensions of Noah’s Ark as given in the Bible, has recently completed a model of that ancient craft. It measures 30 feet in length by 5 feet in width by 3 feet in height, the actual measurements of the ark of Noah being 300×50×30. The model is built in the shape of an old-fashioned saddle-roof, so that a cross-section represents an isosceles triangle. When this queer craft was released from the tugboat which had towed it outside the harbor and left to face the weather on its own account, it developed remarkable sea-going qualities. It drifted sideways with the tide, creating a belt of calm water to leeward, and the test proved conclusively that a vessel of this primitive make might be perfectly seaworthy for a long voyage. It is well known that the proportionate dimensions used by modern ship-builders are identical with those of the diluvian vessel. (Text.)

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BIBLE, REGARD FOR

Rev. Egerton R. Young says of the Canadian Indians among whom he worked:

Often I have been made ashamed of the littleness of my love by the devotion of these Indians and their love for the Bible. One of our Indians came with his son from the distant hunting-grounds to fish on the shores of our Great Lakes, gathering their supplies for the winter. “My son,” said the father, “we leave for home to-morrow morning early; put the Book of Heaven in your pack.” So the young man put it in, and after doing so, an uncle came and said, “Nephew, lend me the Book of Heaven that I may read a little. I have loaned mine.” So the pack was opened and the Bible taken out, and the uncle put it on the blankets after finishing with it, instead of into the pack. The next morning the father and son strapped on their snow-shoes and walked thirty-five miles toward home, dug a hole in the snow at night, cooked some rabbits, had their prayers and lay down and slept. The next morning after prayers they pushed on thirty-five miles more, and made their home. That night the father said, “We are home now in our wigwam. Son, give me the Book of Heaven, that the mother and the rest may read the word and have prayers.” They searched for the book, but it was not in the pack and the son told of his uncle’s request to borrow it. The father was disappointed, but said little. The next morning he arose early, put a few cooked rabbits in his pack and started off. That day he walked seventy-five miles, found his precious book and returned the whole distance the following day, having walked in snow-shoes one hundred and fifty miles through the wild forest of the north-west to regain his copy of the Word of God! (Text.)

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BIBLE REMEMBERED

Years ago when Bibles were scarce in Mexico, a man chanced upon one, and it seemed to him interesting and of good moral tone, so he told his son he might read it. The boy read and read and was delighted. He memorized large portions of it, and came to love it dearly. He thought it was the only book of its kind in the world, and when he was twelve or fourteen he carried his book as a proud possession to school to show it to his teacher. What was his consternation when the teacher threw up his hands in horror and cried, “Ave Maria, boy, where did you get that book? Don’t you know it is one of those accurst Protestant books? Give it to me this instant?”

He seized the volume and carried it to the priest. The boy went home inconsolable and wept most of the night. The next day he met the priest, who told him the book was a dangerous teacher of false doctrines and that he had burned it. From that day the boy lost interest in everything. He led a careless, dissolute life, wandering from place to place. At length he was working in El Paso, Texas, and was invited by a man to attend a gathering in a near-by hall. As he entered, a man was standing on a platform at a desk reading from a book. Instantly the boy recognized some of the words he had memorized from the Bible and in a trice he was down in front of the reader, demanding, “Sir, have the kindness to give me back my book. That is my book that you are reading from. They took it away from me years ago, but it is mine.” As he stretched out his hand toward the preacher to receive his treasure he said, “I can prove to you that it is mine—I will tell you what it says.” And he began and repeated passages that he had learned years before. They gave him “his book,” as he truly thought it was—and it changed his life. He became an honored doctor in the city of Mexico and a member of an evangelical church.

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BIBLES REQUIRED

By act of Parliament in 1579 every Scotch householder with $2,500 to his credit had to provide, under penalty of $50, “a Bible and Psalme buke in vulgare language in their houssis for the better instruction of thame selffis and their famelijes in the knowledge of God.” The condition of the times gave added value to such a regulation. Books were few and the Bible was a treat. Being compelled to buy it may have been a financial hardship, but having it and next to no other book at all made opportunity for good intellectual and spiritual delight.—Northwestern Christian Advocate.

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BIBLE STORIES, VALUE OF

Egerton Young tells how he interested the Indians of British Columbia through the Old Testament stories:

Some of the Indians are huge fellows, over six feet tall, and they pride themselves on their stature. As they talked about their height, I would say, “Listen, I have a book that tells about a man as tall as if one of you were seated on the shoulders of the tallest among you.” “Oh, what a story; what talk is that, missionary?” “Well, come and listen.” Then I talked to them about Goliath, and got them interested, and the gospel follows. In my work among these people I found one reason, at least, why those stories were in the Bible. Benjamin would not listen, but he became interested in the stories, and then he listened to the gospel.—Pierson, “Miracles of Missions.”

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BIBLE, TESTIMONY TO

In the district of Allahabad some conversions had taken place among the women and girls which had greatly stirred up the opposition of the men. The reading circles in the zenanas had to be stopt and the missionaries were prohibited from visiting the women. One old woman, explaining the situation, said: “Our men say you come and take us away. It is not you who take our women away and make them Christians; it is your Book. There are such wonderful words in it; when they sink into the heart nothing can take them out again.”

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BIBLE, TRANSLATING THE

When the armies of King Philip of Spain were seeking to crush liberty and life out of the people of the Netherlands, an evangelist named Philippe de Marnix was flung into prison by the Spaniards. The captive acted as did Luther in the castle of the Wartburg, and as did John Bunyan in Bedford jail, for he at once commenced the translation of the Bible into his native Dutch language. And just as Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible became the regenerating agency in Germany, so did the version of Marnix prove to be the corner-stone of the Dutch republic.

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Bible, Translation of, into Life—See [Version, His Mother’s].

Bible, Use of—See [Religion Diffused].

BIBLIOMANCY

Whitefield had to sail for Georgia, and he summoned Wesley to leave London and come to Bristol to take up the strange work begun there. In the little society in Fetter Lane that call was heard with dread. Some dim sense of great issues hanging upon the answer to it disquieted the minds of the little company. The Bible was consulted by lot, and repeatedly, in search of a text which might be accepted as a decision. But only the most alarming passages emerged. “Get thee up into this mountain and die on the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people,” ran one. When one chance-selected text proved disquieting in this fashion the lot was cast again and yet again, but always with the same result. There was a quaint mixture of superstition and simplicity in the Bibliomancy of the early Methodists. If the text which presented itself did not please, it was rejected, and the sacred pages were interrogated by chance afresh, in the hope of more welcome results.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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BIGNESS

The size of a gathering is not the important thing, it is the spirit and purpose of it.

Some years ago at a meeting of Congregationalist ministers in Windham County, Conn., one of their number arose and proposed that arrangements be made for a great convocation of all the ministers and churches in all that county and vicinity. He expatiated largely upon the importance of such an assembly, tho without giving any very definite evidence as to the value of the results that might be attained; and closed by recommending the project to the favorable consideration of the brotherhood.

An old and well-known and somewhat eccentric preacher, Thomas Williams, arose in his place and spoke in substance as follows:

“A man once said: ‘If all the iron in the world were made into one ax, what a great ax that would be! And if all the water in the world were poured into one pond, what a great pond that would be! And if all the wood in the world were made into one tree, what a great tree that would be! And if all the men in the world were made into one man, what a great man that would be!’ And then,” drawled out the speaker, “if that great man should take that great ax, and fell that great tree into that great pond, what a great splosh there would be!”

The old man sat down, and nothing more was heard of the “great splosh” or the great meeting.

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Bigness and Littleness Relative—See [Comparative, The].

Bigness Obscured by Littleness—See [Proportion].

BIGOTRY, RELIGIOUS

Thomas Jefferson was fiercely assailed by the Federal party, including nearly all of the clergy of the country, as not only depraved in heart and life, but as a blatant infidel, for whom the yawning abyss of wo, with its eternal torments, was none too severe a doom. Not long since a man died at Rhinebeck who, when an infant, was taken into the Reformed Dutch Church in that town to be baptized. After the clergyman had received the child in his arms the father gave the name to be applied as “Thomas Jefferson,” who was then President. “It would be blasphemy,” said the minister, “to call that name in the house of God; this child’s name is John,” and he finished the christening, the boy bearing the name thus given to the day of his death.—New York Journal of Commerce.

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BIRD NOTES

Most of our song-birds have three notes expressive of love, alarm, and fellowship. The last call seems to keep them in touch with one another. I might perhaps add to this list the scream of distress which most birds utter when caught by a cat or a hawk—the voice of uncontrolled terror and pain which is nearly the same in all species—dissonant and piercing. The other notes and calls are characteristic, but this last is the simple screech of common terrified nature. (Text.)—John Burroughs, Country Life in America.

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See [Darkness, Influence of].

Birds—See [Cruelty to Birds].

Birds, Resemblances of, to Men—See [Human Traits in Birds].

BIRDS, VALUE OF

The bird is not only our brother—he is far more. He is our benefactor, our preserver, for the simple reason that he alone is able to hold in check the most powerful race on earth—the insects. It is well known to scientific men that the insect tribes, unchecked, would control the earth. Innumerable, multiplying with a rapidity that defies figures and even comprehension, devouring everything that has, or has had, life, from the vegetable to the man, and living but to eat, these myriads would soon, if left to themselves, reduce our planet to a barren wilderness, uninhabitable by man or beast.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

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BIRTH CEREMONIES

On the birth of a Parsee child a magian and a fire-priest, who is always an astrologer, are called in to predict the future life of the babe. The magian, drest in a strange robe of many colors, a pointed cap with jingling bells, and armed with a long broom made of beresma twigs (which is thought to have the power of putting evil spirits to flight), enters the chamber of the Parsee mother and babe and setting the end of his broom on fire dances around, exorcising the evil spirits; finally he flourishes his firebrand over the mother and child and in all the corners of the room. This done, the fire-priest draws a number of squares on a blackboard; in one corner of each square he draws a curious figure of bird, beast, fish or insect, each of which stands for some mental, physical, or spiritual characteristic, together with its appropriate star or planet. The magian then proceeds by means of spells and incantations to exercise any evil spirit that may be lurking unseen in the blackboard. Next the fire-priest begins to count and recount the stars under whose influence the child is supposed to be born, and then with closed eyes and solemn voice he predicts the future life of the babe. Next he prepares a horoscope or birth-paper and hands it to the father. Then, placing the babe on his knees, he waves over it the sacred flame, sprinkles it with holy water, fills its ears and nostrils with seasalt to keep out the evil spirits, and finally returns the screaming infant to its mother’s arms.—Mrs. Leonowens, Wide Awake.

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BIRTH-RATE IN FRANCE

Will the French nation live to the twenty-first or twenty-second century or will they by that time have committed suicide? asks Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu, French deputy, professor in the Free School of Political Science, and assistant editor of the important Économiste Français (Paris), in which he writes with patriotic passion in the following strain, apropos of the recently published Government Census returns:

There is no doubt whatever that the French people are rushing to suicide. If they continue on this course, the French nation, those of French stock, will have lost a fifth of their number before the expiration of the present century and will absolutely have vanished from Europe by the end of the twenty-second century; that is, in two hundred years. It is now twenty years ago that we first stated this frightful fact. So far we have been a voice in the wilderness. While people are eternally discussing the advantages of secular education and the beauty of the income tax, and all the grand democratic reforms that are to come, amid all the fine speeches of sophistical cranks, the French people are gradually committing suicide. They are tightening the cord about the national neck; the breath of life is becoming feebler and now is but a gasp which must soon end in silence.

This writer says that marriage still exists in France, but it is no longer an institution “intended,” according to the language of the Book of Common Prayer, “for the procreation of children.” On this aspect of the question he remarks:

People still marry in France almost as frequently as in other countries. But this does not result in the multiplication of children. In 1909 marriages to the number of 307,954 were celebrated, which amounted to 7.85 for every thousand inhabitants, a slightly less proportion than during the years immediately preceding.

But divorce with all its consequences is on the increase in France, and we read:

If the marriage-rate remains normal in France, divorces are becoming more and more common. There were 12,847 divorces in 1909, against 11,515 in 1908; 10,938 in 1907; 10,573 in 1906, and 7,157 in 1900. Thus in eight years divorces have increased at the rate of 80 per cent. Taking into consideration the facility with which a divorce may be obtained from the courts, the number of those who ask for and gain this release is sure to increase rapidly. After a short time divorce will be common in rural districts, which so far have rebelled against it, and doubtless the number will grow to 20,000 or 30,000, if not more, per annum.

GROWTH OF DIVORCE IN FRANCE

Mr. Leroy-Beaulieu observes that divorces might lead to remarrying and so far be in the interest of a larger population. This, however, is not the case. The great sore of France is the dwindling birth-rate. He tells us:

When we come to the birth-rate of France here we find the hurt, the deadly hurt, from which our country suffers. The birth-rate in France has been declining for a century. This decline has become so accelerated during the past ten or fifteen years that, as I feel bound to repeat, we stand confronted by an impending suicide of the nation.

He gives the following figures to confirm his deduction:

During the first thirty years of the nineteenth century France recorded more than 30 births per thousand inhabitants; from 1835 to 1869 the birth-rate oscillated between 30 and 26 per thousand. Leaving out the depopulating years of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71, and years succeeding, which suffered from this scourge, we find that from 1876 to 1900 the birth-rate was on the decline and ranged from 26 to 22 per thousand. In 1900 it had sunk to 21, and by the latest statistics it is at present only 20 per thousand inhabitants.

This writer tells us that while in 1801 the birth-rate in France exceeded the death-rate by 5.1 per thousand inhabitants, the excess last year was merely 0.3 per thousand. He admits that hygienic improvements and decreasing deaths among children have lowered the death-rate, but this can not remedy the decrease of the birth-rate:

If ten homes do not contain among them more than fifteen children to take the place of twenty parents, there is no reduction in the death-rate which can prevent the final diminution of the national population.

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BLACK, TURNING

Character can be made black as easily, but not as easily restored, as the skin of the lady mentioned in the extract below:

A celebrated Parisian belle, says the Popular Science News, who had acquired the habit of whitewashing herself, so to speak, from the soles of her feet to the roots of her hair, with chemically-prepared cosmetics, one day took a medicated bath, and on emerging from it she was horrified to find herself as black as an Ethiopian. The transformation was complete; not a vestige of the “supreme Caucasian race” was left. Her physician was sent for in alarm and haste. On his arrival he laughed immoderately and said, “Madame, you are not ill, you are a chemical product. You are no longer a woman, but you are a ‘sulfid.’ It is not now a question of medical treatment, but a simple chemical reaction. I shall subject you to a bath of sulfuric acid diluted with water. The acid will have the honor of combining with you; it will take up the sulfur, the metal will produce a ‘sulfurate,’ and we shall find as a ‘precipitate’ a very pretty woman.” The good-natured physician went through with his reaction, and the belle was restored to her membership with the white race.

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Blasted Hopes—See [Disappointment].

Bleeding in Old Times—See [Surgery, Improvement in].

BLESSING THE ROPES

Every summer, at the beginning of the climbing season in the Swiss mountains, a solemn service is held among the guides, many of whom are godly men, who know they take their lives in their hands when they ascend the Alps. So they bring their ropes with them and lay them at the foot of one of the mountains. Old and new ropes are piled in a heap, and then they are “blessed” by the pastor. Prayer is offered that the old ropes may still bear the strain safely, and that the new ropes may prove equal to all the stress placed upon them. The guides are commended to the mercy of God that in their daily ascents they may be kept safely and that they may succor the travelers who trust in them. (Text.)

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BLESSINGS, CONQUERING

Goethe uttered a true word where he sings:

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;

The last result of wisdom stamps it true:

He only earns his freedom and existence

Who daily conquers them anew. (Text.)

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BLESSINGS COUNTED

When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed,

When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,

Count your many blessings, name them one by one,

And it will surprize you what the Lord hath done.

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?

Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?

Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly,

And you will be singing as the days go by.

When you look at others with their lands and gold,

Think that Christ has promised you His wealth untold,

Count your many blessings, money can not buy

Your reward in heaven, nor your home on high. (Text.)

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BLESSINGS FROM TRIAL

The naturalist reminds us how the furious eagerness of the winged insects, which seem to be the agents of death, is frequently a cause of life. By an incessant persecution of the sick flocks, enfeebled by hot, damp airs, they insure their safety. Otherwise they would remain stupidly resigned, and hour by hour become less capable of motion until they could rise no more. The inexorable spur of the furious insects knows, however, the secrets of putting the flocks on their legs; tho with trembling limbs, they take to flight; the insect never quits them, presses them, urges them, bleeding, to the wholesome regions of the dry lands and the living waters where their afflictions cease.

On life’s lower plains, living lives of ease and indulgence, the strength and dignity of the soul would perish; but the ills of life disturb us, sting us, incessantly attack and pursue us, until bleeding we find the higher planes of thought and life, until at last we reach the sweet table-lands of which God Himself is sun and moon. The fiery law is a chariot of fire, lifting true souls into heavenly places.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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Blessings Shared—See [Responsibility].

Blessings Unappreciated—See [Appreciation, Lack of].

“Blest Be the Tie that Binds”—See [Christian Unity].

Blind Children in India—See [India, Medical Opportunities in].

BLIND GUIDES

I have read of a blind lamp-lighter. This poor man had mastered the long street in his city, and obtained the position of lamp-lighter. He would go up and down the street, opening the gas key and lighting the flame. Tired men went home from work in the light that he had lit. The blind man found the street dark; he left it a blaze of light for the tired multitudes. And yet, when he had lighted all the lamps, he felt his own way back home. Oh, pathetic scene! telling us how science looks down at the clods, works over iron and ore, matter and force, and stumbles forward in the very moment when the whole world is a blaze of light.—N. D. Hillis.

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Blind, The, and Christ—See [Christ a Guide to the Father].

BLINDNESS

Edward Wilbur Mason in the following verses shows how men miss the best things because they are spiritually blind as to the things nearest to them.

We seek for beauty on the height afar;

But on the earth it glimmers all the while:

Tis in the garden where the roses are;

’Tis in the glory of a mother’s smile.

We seek for God in every distant place;

But lo, beside us He forever stands:

We meet Him guised as sunlight face to face;

We touch Him when we take a brother’s hands.

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See [Darkness]; [Genius Persecuted].

BLINDNESS A BLESSING

Moses endured, it is said, as “seeing Him who is invisible.” And “there are others,” thank God!

Fanny Crosby, in the eighties, has fulfilled the vow which she made at eight, and has never mourned over the fact that she is blind. What an impressive lesson of trust and resignation is her declaration that her blindness has proved not a deprivation, but a real blessing!

If the gift of sight were offered her now she has said that she would elect to remain as she is. For she says cheerfully:

“If I had not been deprived of sight, I should never have received so good an education, nor have cultivated so fine a memory, nor have been able to do good to so many people.” (Text.)

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BLINDNESS AND CONTACT

Mr. W. H. Levy, who is blind, says in his book, “Blindness and the Blind,” that he can tell when he is opposite an object, and can perceive whether it is tall or short, slender or bulky. He can also determine whether it be a solitary object or a continuous fence; whether a close fence or an open one, and sometimes whether a wooden fence, a stone wall, or a hedge. None of the five senses has anything to do with this perceptive power, but the impressions are made on the skin of his face, and by it transmitted to the brain. He therefore names this unrecognized sense facial perception. The presence of a fog interferes with facial perception, and makes the impressions faint and untrustworthy; but darkness is no impediment. A noise which distracts the attention interferes with the impressions. In passing along the street he can distinguish stores from private houses, and doors from windows, if the windows consist of a number of panes, and not of a single sheet of glass. A remarkable fact, bearing on the subject of an unrecognized sense is mentioned by Mr. Levy. A naturalist extracted the eyes of several bats and covered the empty sockets with leather. In this condition the bats flew about the room, avoiding the sides and flying out of the door without touching the door-case. In flying through a sewer which made a right angle, they turned at the proper point. They flew through threads suspended from the ceiling without touching them, tho they were only far enough apart to admit the passage of the bats’ extended wings.—Youth’s Companion.

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BLINDNESS CURED

The blind man whom Jesus cured said, “I see men as trees walking.” Christianity is a “convex” lens helping men to see, but it is too much to expect a newly enlightened convert to see accurately all at once.

Convex spectacles are made for the use of patients who have undergone the operation of removal of a cataract. A cataract is merely the crystalline lens of the eye become opaque. The convex lens of the spectacles supplies the place of the crystalline lens. But the patient is obliged to learn distances and dimensions after sight is thus restored, and during this experience he often suffers illusions.

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BLINDNESS, MORAL

There came a day when, in her solemn assembly, France voted to cast off the recognition of Almighty God. She lifted up instead the Goddess of Reason, and in her delirium the multitude placed a daughter of pleasure in a chariot, crowned her with flowers, and determined to worship the body, instead of the Angel of Duty. But smashing the telescope does not put out the stars. Voting not to have any sun does not annihilate the summer. The microscope may show the germs of death in the reservoir, but breaking the microscope will not cleanse the springs.—N. D. Hillis.

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BLOOD, CRY FOR

The Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a murdered man his spirit hovers in the form of a bird that cries, “Give me drink! Give me drink!” and only ceases to cry when the murder is avenged by the death of the murderer. (Text.)

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BLOOD, THE AVENGER OF

A Bedouin horseman riding along a desert track, seeing the sign of blood on the side of the road, will instantly dismount and cover it with earth “to lay the mâred” (the avenger of blood). The idea is that the spirit of him who died by an act of violence, the victim of man’s hate, the mâred, calls for vengeance on him who has taken the life of his fellow man.—“The Witness of the Wilderness.”

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BLOOD, THE TIE OF

Henry M. Stanley, in his work “Through the Dark Continent,” describes the warrior chief Mirambo, the Mars of Africa, whose genius for war Stanley likens to that of Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a formidable adversary, and Stanley was very anxious to convert him from a foe into an ally. By skilful management he did accomplish this, and to make the alliance an unbreakable one, the covenant of brotherhood was sealed by an interchange of blood between the African hero and the American hero, an incision being made in the right leg of each for this purpose. The same blood now flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo, and they thereafter vied with each other in proofs of their unselfish fidelity. Abraham and Abimelech made such a covenant and the literal translation is “they cut a covenant.” Jacob and Laban also “cut a covenant.” An Oriental could as soon commit suicide as slay a covenant brother, for it would be shedding his own blood.

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Blotting Out Errors—See [Effacement of Sins].

Blows, Repeated—See [Repetition, Force of].

Bluffer, The Human—See [Pretense].

BLUNDER, A

This incident is told by Dr. R. F. Horton in the Christian Endeavor World:

I had been addressing a large midday congregation in Leeds, and a deep seriousness pervaded the atmosphere. The closing hymn appointed began, “Sin-sick and Sorrow-laden”; and by some inconceivable oddity of my own mind I gave it out, quite deliberately and distinctly, “Seasick and Sorrow-laden.” I perceived what I had done in a second. I literally trembled, for it was impossible to recall the slip without calling attention to it. I feared that there would be an awful titter, or even an explosion of laughter. Wonderful to say, it was as if no one but myself noticed the blunder, and I was awed into gravity, not only by the occasion, but by my fear of what might happen.

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Body, Frailty of—See [House, The Mortal].

BODY, MASTERING THE

I think of the delicacy and perfection of much of R. L. Stevenson’s work—just the kind of writing which a man might plead could not be done except in moments of inspiration and in favorable conditions. Then I remember how that delicate style was attained by years of severe drill, and when the instrument had been perfected, it was used with conscientious diligence in face of every conceivable hindrance. When, after hemorrhage, his right hand is in a sling, he writes some of his “Child’s Garden of Verses” with his left hand; when the hemorrhage has been so bad that he may not even speak, he dictates a novel in the deaf and dumb alphabet. He writes to George Meredith: “For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real health. I have written in bed, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me, I have won my wager and recovered my glove. The battle goes on—ill or well is a trifle, so as it goes. I was made for contest, and the powers have so willed that my battle-field should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic-bottle.” No wonder that he could say: “I frankly believe (thanks to my dire industry) I have done more with smaller gifts than almost any man of letters in the world.” And yet this man declared that he labored only for art, and that the end of art was to give pleasure! If such a motive can command such devotion, what is not possible for us who serve the Savior, for us whose end is the salvation of men and the redemption of the world!—W. W. B. Emery, Christian World Pulpit.

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Body, The, as a House—See [House of the Soul].

BODY, THE HUMAN

The human body is a marvelous machine with a storage of power. It is estimated that if all the beats of the heart in a single day could be concentrated in one huge throb of vital power, it would be sufficient to throw a ton of iron 120 feet into the air. An electrical engineer has affirmed that this expended heart-energy is equal to a two-candle power of an incandescent electrical lamp; or, if converted into cold light, this amount of power would represent forty candles. If a man had some such organ as a firefly has he could surround himself with light enough to live by without artificial lighting.

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A scientific writer, speaking of the human body in its marvelous mechanism, calls it an epitome of all mechanics, of all hydraulics, of all machinery. It has all the bars, levers, pulleys, wheels, axles and buffers known to science. All the more than three hundred movements included in modern mechanics are simply modifications and variations of those found in the human body—adaptations of processes and first principles employed in the human organism.

In a true sense, man, in body, is a law unto himself, and possesses the potential means of fulfilling all the high purposes of physical life.

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Boldness—See [Faith].

Boldness in Asking—See [Asking, Boldness in].

Bondage—See [Greed].

BONDAGE TO SIN

The strength of some of the spiders which build their webs in trees and other places in Central America is astounding. One of them had in captivity, not long ago, a wild canary.

The ends of the wings, the tail and feet of the bird were bound together by some sticky substance, to which were attached the threads of the spider, which was slowly but surely drawing up the bird by an ingenious arrangement. The bird hung head downward, and was so securely bound with little threads that it could not struggle and would soon have been a prey to its great ugly captor if it had not been rescued.

All around us are men being bound by the arch enemy of souls, that he may devour them. At first, he tempts them with little sins that charm and fascinate, and as they yield, he binds them with threads of filmy texture. Temptations multiply. The reward of sin is greater sin. As they become more submissive, he binds them so fast that finally they are unable to make further resistance. (Text.)

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BOOK, INFLUENCE OF A

I can still remember plainly the circumstances under which I finished it. (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”) I had got well into the second volume. It was Thursday. Sunday was looming up before me, and at the rate at which I was going there would not be time to finish it before Sunday, and I could never preach till I had finished it. So I set myself to it and determined to finish it at once. I had got a considerable way into the second volume, and I recommended my wife to go to bed. I didn’t want anybody down there. I soon began to cry. Then I went and shut all the doors, for I did not want any one to see me. Then I sat down to it and finished it that night, for I knew that only in that way should I be able to preach on Sunday.—Henry Ward Beecher.

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BOOK-STUDY

It was always with a sigh of relief that Macaulay turned aside from public duties to the companionship of books, and he said that he could covet no higher joy than to be shut up in the seclusion of a great library, and never pass a moment without a book in his hand. And this confession declares the man. To acquire information was the real passion of his life. He was not interested in the study of human nature, and had no love or aptitude for meditation. A man with genial interest in his fellows, and in life as a whole, would not have walked the streets of London with a book in his hand; and a man with any faculty of meditative thought would scarcely have employed a long starlit night on the Irish Sea in a recitation of Milton.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”

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See [Surprizes in Books].

Book, The Most Popular—See [Bible, Popularity of].

BOOKS AND WORTH

Browning would never write for a magazine. He wrote: “I can not bring myself to write for periodicals. If I publish a book, and people choose to buy it, that proves they want to read my work. But to have them to turn over the pages of a magazine and find me—that is to be an uninvited guest.”

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Books, Influence of—See [Reformation].

Books Less Important than Things—See [Things not Books].

BOOKS, POISON IN

A gentleman in India went into his library and took down a book from the shelves. As he did so he felt a slight pain in his finger like the prick of a pin. He thought that a pin had been stuck by some careless person in the cover of the book. But soon his finger began to swell, then his arm, and then his whole body, and in a few days he died. It was not a pin among the books, but a small and deadly serpent.

There are many books that contain moral poison more deadly to character than this serpent. (Text.)

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BOOKS, THE SIZE OF

We are capable of believing, not only that we love books which we do not love, but that we have read books which we have not read. A lifelong intimacy with their titles, a partial acquaintance with modern criticism, a lively recollection of many familiar quotations—these things come in time to be mistaken for a knowledge of the books themselves. Perhaps in youth it was our ambitious purpose to storm certain bulwarks of literature; but we were deterred by their unpardonable length. It is a melancholy truth, which may as well be acknowledged at the start, that many of the books best worth reading are very, very long, and that they can not, without mortal hurt, be shortened. Nothing less than a shipwreck on a desert island in company with Froissart’s “Chronicles” would give us leisure to peruse this glorious narrative, and it is useless to hope for such a happy combination of chances. We might, indeed, be wrecked—that is always a possibility—but the volume saved dripping from the deep would be “Soldiers of Fortune,” or “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.”—Agnes Repplier, “Compromises.”

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BOORISHNESS

Boorishness is a product of selfishness far more than a product of ignorance; or at least a product of that ignorance which is in itself a product of selfishness. I was once at a wedding breakfast in a rural community in the West. The groom ate in silence the food that was set before him, dispatched his meal before the rest of us were more than half through, pushed back his plate, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and turning to his bride, said, “Well, Sally, you may as well get used to my way at the beginning, and I always leave the table when I have got through with my meal!” With these words he went out to pick his teeth on the door-steps, leaving his bride with a flushed face and a pained heart, the object of our commiseration. The man was a boor, you say. True! What made him a boor? The fact that he selfishly thought of his own comfort. It never entered his head to inquire whether his conduct would be agreeable or painful to his bride.—Lyman Abbott, The Chautauquan.

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Borrowed Trouble—See [Wait and See].

BORROWING HABIT ARRESTED

A wag has declared that there is one borrower set down in every neighborhood; that she either “leavens the whole lump” (being of the fomenting class) or speedily moves away. But he is mistaken; sometimes the borrower gets converted. Here is the way one woman managed it:

“Ma wants to know if you will loan her a cup of sugar?” asks Mrs. B.’s little girl.

“Why, certainly! But be sure to tell her not to return it,” was the cheerful response of Mrs. Neighbor.

The next day the child reappeared with the sugar, but she was promptly sent home with it. Mrs. N. was “glad to let her have it, and it was too small a matter to be repaid.”

This caused Mrs. Borrower to gasp and to wait a while before despatching the child for a cup of lard. This was given also, and when no return was allowed Mrs. B. realized the situation and was too proud to ask for further loans. She resented her neighbor’s attitude, but her mouth was shut, especially as Mrs. N. continued as friendly as ever when they met. The result was that she was simply forced to exercise a little more head-work thereafter in her household affairs, ordering supplies sufficiently in advance of her needs, and soon she had broken herself of the borrowing habit.—Lee McCrae, Zion’s Advocate.

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BOTTOM, BEGINNING AT THE

It was in the pursuit of a mission that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., went to Thompsonville. He might have found a more showy position, for he had name and influence. He might have found plenty of things to do that would at the start have brought him more money. For that matter, he had enough of his own so that he need not bother with work; and had he been like some young men, he would never have been seen in overalls or any other uniform of the toiler. But he went to the carpet mill, and he did what he was told. He began at the bottom. He has worked hard. And now we may understand what he did it for. Announcement is made that he is to go West as manager of one of the Hartford Carpet Company’s Western houses. It is for a purpose that he has been learning the business in all its details. He could not manage without that knowledge.

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It is an old lesson, but never was there an instance better showing it than does this of the son of the former President. If he could afford to begin at the bottom, others can. If he must, others must. If with his brains and education he needed to do that, nearly any young man does. If his prospective position is the reward of that sort of sacrifice, it is a sacrifice that any young man can afford to make.—New Haven Register.

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Boy, A Chance for the—See [Chance for the Boy].

Boy, a Dutiful—See [Preservation].

BOY AND KING

Mark Twain tells a story of how a bootblack saved a king. The king was sick; his trouble defied the skill of all his doctors, and it seemed as if he must die. The little bootblack knew a peculiar but a sure remedy for the disease; but how to get the king to take a prescription from a bootblack was a problem. He might have gone to the palace doors and pleaded till he was hoarse without any one listening. So he told his remedy to the ash-boy, who was older than himself, and the ash-boy told it to the butcher, and the butcher told it to his wife, and she told it to some one else, and so on it went, a little higher each time, until it reached the king’s doctors. The king would have nothing more to do with them, so they told it to the favorite page, and since the king was very fond of the page he tried the remedy just to please him. The king was cured by the bootblack’s remedy.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”

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Boy, A Noble—See [Love, Filial].

Boy, His Own—See [Fatherhood].

BOYS ADJUSTING THEIR TROUBLES

When Edward VII was a boy of ten, he was with his mother, Queen Victoria, at Balmoral Castle in the Highlands of Scotland. At that time the Queen was quite a skilful painter in water-colors and spent many days by the waterfalls and in the glens making pictures.

One day she was sitting at her easel on a sandy beach of the river beneath a waterfall. Young Edward was playing around her. The little Prince suddenly caught sight of a Highland lad in kilts. The lad was making a sand castle and adorning it with sprigs of heather and “chucky-stones.”

The Prince advanced to him with royal hauteur and asked for whom the sand castle was being built.

“For bonnie Prince Charlie,” was the playful reply of the boy, who stood with his hands on his hips to see the effect of a thistle on the top story. The lad had no idea that his interlocutor was any different from any other boy.

The young Prince, however, determined to make it clear that he—and not Prince Charlie—was to be King some day. He kicked over the sand castle.

The Highland boy glared at him and said:

“Ye’ll no dae that again!”

It was a challenge. The lad rebuilt his sand castle very deliberately. The Prince waited until the thistle was stuck on the top story, then kicked it over as deliberately as it had been built.

“Ye’ll no dae that a third time!” challenged the little Scot, beginning to rebuild with even more deliberation.

The Queen had been noticing the affair. She set aside her brush and palette, but said nothing; only watched with a firm, studious expression on her maternal face.

A third time Prince Edward kicked over the Highland lad’s sand castle. No sooner was it done than its kilted builder closed his fists and lowered his head. In another moment the two boys were hammering one another.

The Queen sat there and never interfered by word or act. The little Prince presently returned, weeping, bruised, and bloody-nosed, while the rebel Gael stood apart, himself considerably frayed, waiting to see if any further service were needed in the training of royal children.

To the little Prince’s plea for speedy justice and vengeance, the motherly Queen merely replied, as she wiped the blood from the future King’s nose with a pocket handkerchief:

“It served you right!”—New York Times.

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BOYS’ CHAMPION

Pages, messenger boys, newsboys and bootblacks have a champion in a member of Congress who never lets pass an opportunity to help them along. If a messenger boy should happen to drop into the office of Representative William J. Cary, of Milwaukee, in the House office building, he would get as much consideration as a member of the United States Senate.

Mr. Cary is the friend of the little chaps because he knows from experience what it means to get out and hustle for a living when some of your pals are off playing baseball in the back lots, and whenever he gets a chance to give a youngster a boost he boosts hard.

Mr. Cary was left an orphan when he was thirteen years old, together with five younger brothers and sisters who were placed in an orphan asylum.

In chasing around Milwaukee as a messenger boy he became acquainted with the political leaders of the city and by the time he was old enough to vote he was a full-fledged politician. Machine methods do not appeal to him and he would rather mix up in a fight with the Cannon organization than to take a cruise to Europe.—Boston Journal.

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Boys and Saloon—See [Chance for the Boy].

Boy’s Courage, A—See [Loyalty].

Boys, Influences Upon—See [Youthful Tendencies].

BOY’S CLUB, VALUE OF THE

I was talking once with an East Side boy, one of the keenest and quickest fellows I have ever met. He told me the story of his early years. There was no good reason why he should have been a newsboy; his father was a fairly prosperous tailor; but he loved the adventure of it, and used to play hookey from school and from home to sell papers. Union Square was his center, and from there down to Washington Square he ranged. He was the quickest and the most fearless of the newsboys in the neighborhood, and soon became a leader among them. His brightness and wit won him entrance into most of the saloons and restaurants thereabouts, when the other boys were excluded; and in many of these the waiters or the barkeeper would save the dregs of drinks for him. He stole when he could, just for the excitement of the thing; and with great glee he told me how he once had picked the pocket of Mr. Robert Graham, the general secretary of the Church Temperance Society, as that gentleman stood talking at the window of the society’s coffee-van in the square. At the time he told me this, he and I both belonged to a company of the Church Temperance Society which claimed Mr. Graham as its adjutant commander. His story was not all of such proud recollections, however. For after a pause he said, rather slowly, “The boys I used to go with around here, my gang, have all gone to the devil, and mighty fast.” “Well, John,” I asked, “how is it that you didn’t go to the devil, too, with them?” “Well, I’ll tell you. I belonged to a boy’s club down near my house. It wasn’t much of a club; we used to steal and have rough house all we pleased. But I was there every night.” And then he added, with a momentary seriousness I shall not soon forget: “Mr. Bartlett, if you want to save the boys, keep them off the streets at night.” It was expert testimony; he knew whereof he spoke. And what he said puts in a nutshell the whole philosophy of the boys’ club, secular or spiritual, on its negative, but a most important, side. If the club simply keeps the boys off the streets at night, it does much more than enough to pay for all it costs.—George G. Bartlett, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1904.

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Boys Contrasted—See [Early Habits Tell].

BOYS’ MISSIONARY EFFORTS

Eight boys in a Sunday-school class in one of our churches, following the suggestion of their teacher, decided to send Christmas remembrances to eight boys in a mission church in the far Northwest. They set aside five cents each week for seven weeks and purchased knives of much greater value than thirty-five cents each, through the kindness of the merchant who was informed of their purpose. Each boy wrote a personal letter to the boy who was to receive his gift. The eight knives went on their way before Christmas to the care of the minister of the mission, who wisely required his eight boys to write personal letters acknowledging their gifts and telling something about themselves, before they received the knives. So eight choir-boys, close up to the Canada line in the Northwest, received these Christmas gifts. The letters received here were said to have interfered for a Sunday or two with the regular lessons. With their accounts of hunting rabbits, etc., they made Newark boys feel that all the advantages of life are not found in New Jersey. The plan here described was suggested incidentally by the work of the Church Periodical Club, which has done a great deal to brighten the lives of our missionaries and their people.—The Newark (N. J.) Churchman.

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Boy’s Religion—See [Early Religion].

Boy’s Trust in Father—See [Confidence].

BOYCOTT, ORIGIN OF

Boycotting did originate in America, but it was started long before the slavery troubles became annoying. The boycott originated with Thomas Jefferson. It will be remembered that by the embargo we boycotted every species of English goods; we neither bought of that country nor sold to her. The ships of New England were suffered to lie rotting at the wharves, and American foreign trade was at a complete standstill. The Hartford Convention was the result of that boycott, and the lukewarmness of the East in the war of 1812 may be traced to it. It was not a highly successful boycott, but it occupied a pretty big place in history.—Detroit Evening Journal.

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Brag—See [Pretense].

BRAIN IN MAN

All, if not most animals, have brains. Man, in common with his kingdom, has a brain; but because of its greater weight and perfection, scientists see in it an illustration of man’s vast superiority over all below him.

Note has to be taken among the mammalia themselves, from the marsupials to man, of the presence or absence of one testing character, and that the chief—the perfect brain. This is found in one creature, occupying, as it were, the inner ring and core of the concentric circles of vitality, and in one alone. In the lowest variety of man it is present—present in the negro or the bushman as in the civilized European; and absent in all below man—absent in the ape or the elephant as truly as in the kangaroo or the duckmole. To all men the pleno-cerebral type is common: to man, as such, it is peculiar. And till we hear of some simian tribe which speculates on its own origin, or discusses its own place in the scale of being, we shall be safe in opposing the human brain, with its sign in language, culture, capacity of progress, as a barrier to Mr. Darwin’s scheme.

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Bravery—See [Loyalty].

BRAVERY OF WOMEN

Henry Savage Landor, one of the many passengers on the Baltic, added chapter after chapter to the good story of the bravery and coolness displayed by men and women when the Republic was struck, and throughout the hours of waiting and of rescue:

In all my travels through the countries of the two hemispheres, never have I seen displayed a spirit of womanhood that could be better in such an extreme than was that of the women of the Republic. When we of the Baltic met them, it was as they were being brought to our vessel in a tossing sea in small boats after nearly a score of hours spent on the crowded Italian emigrant vessel, to which they had been taken from another wreck. Yet not only was there no whimpering, but they actually came aboard with smiling faces. They forgot that all their traveling possessions were doomed, forgot all the ordeal they had encountered, and showed themselves happy and contented because they thought, most of them, that in the face of disaster, all that the hands of willing men could do to help them had been done.

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BREVITY OF LIFE

The May-fly, of which there are several varieties, lives at the longest but three or four days; some varieties but a few hours of one day. Yet they are delicately organized, and possess all the functions of insect lives.

Man’s few years of mortal existence may seem as brief compared with eternity.

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The life of a perfect butterfly or moth is short. A few days after emergence from the chrysalis case, the female deposits her eggs on the leaves or stems of the plant that is to sustain the larvæ. Her work is now accomplished, and the few days more allowed her are spent in frolicking among the flowers, and sucking the sweet juices they provide. They soon show symptoms of a fast approaching end. Their colors begin to fade, and the beauty-making scales of the wings gradually disappear through friction against the petals of hundreds of flowers visited and the merry dances with scores and scores of playful companions. At last, one bright afternoon, while the sun is still high in the heavens, a butterfly, more weary than usual, with heavy and laborious flight, seeks a place of rest for the approaching night. Here, on a waving stalk, it is soon lulled to sleep by a gentle breeze.

Next morning, a few hours before noon, the blazing sun calls it out for its usual frolics. But its body now seems too heavy to be supported by the feeble and ragged wings, and, after one or two weak attempts at play, it settles down in its final resting-place. On the following morning a dead butterfly is seen, still clinging by its claws to a swinging stem.—W. Furneaux, “Butterflies and Moths.”

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Life is too short for any vain regretting;

Let dead delight bury its dead, I say,

And let us go upon our way forgetting

The joys and sorrows of each yesterday.

Between the swift sun’s rising and its setting

We have no time for useless tears or fretting.

Life is too short.

Life is too short for any bitter feeling;

Time is the best avenger, if we wait.

The years speed by, and on their wings bear healing—

We have no room for anything like hate.

This solemn truth the low mounds seem revealing

That thick and fast about our feet are stealing.

Life is too short.

Life is too short for aught but high endeavor—

Too short for spite, but long enough for love.

And love lives on forever and forever,

It links the worlds that circle on above;

’Tis God’s first law, the universe’s lever,

In His vast realm the radiant souls sigh never.

Life is too short. (Text.)

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Bride-racing—See [Marriage-racing].

BRIGHT SIDE

There’s a bad side, ’tis the sad side—

Never mind it!

There’s a bright side, ’tis the right side—

Try to find it!

Pessimism’s but a screen.

Thrust the light and you between—

But the sun shines bright, I ween,

Just behind it!

—Jean Dwight Franklin, The Circle.

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Broad-mindedness in Civics—See [Civics].

BROTHERHOOD

Two men saw a piece of jewelry on the sidewalk, they reached for it simultaneously, struck their heads violently; each arose to censure the other, when they found they were brothers and had not seen each other for a dozen years. It must not be forgotten that all competitions and rivalries to-day are between brothers, and some day the vast brotherhood will be permanently organized.—Charles E. Locke.

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A man preaching to the inmates of a prison made the remark that the only difference between himself and them was owing to the grace of God. Afterward one of the prisoners approached him and asked: “Did you mean what you said about sympathizing with us, and that only the help of God made you differ from us?” Being answered in the affirmative, the prisoner said: “I am here for life, but I can stay here more contentedly now that I know I have a brother out in the world.”

How we might lighten the burden of others if we had and showed more feeling for them, if we followed more closely in the footsteps of our blessed Lord.—St. Clair Hester.

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The story is told, as an instance of Oriental humor, of a little Chinese girl who was carrying her brother on her back. “Is he heavy?” she was asked. “No,” she replied, “he is my brother.”

For some reason this seems funny to the Chinese; but it is better than humorous, it is sweet and winning. Love makes all burdens light. When one is carrying his brother, he feels little weight. Here is a good text for social workers. If they consider that they are working for mere aliens and strangers, their toil may seem irksome; but if the idea of brotherhood once enters in, the task becomes light. I am carrying my weaker brother, therefore I feel no weight.

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See [Weakness, Consideration for].

BUILDERS, ANCIENT

The old Egyptians were better builders than those of the present day. There are blocks of stone in the pyramids which weigh three or four times as much as the obelisk on the London embankment. There is one stone the weight of which is estimated at eight hundred and eighty tons. There are stones thirty feet in length which fit so closely together that a penknife may be run over the surface without discovering the break between them. They are not laid with mortar, either. We have no machinery so perfect that it will make two surfaces thirty feet in length which will meet together as these stones in the pyramids meet. It is supposed that they were rubbed backward and forward upon each other until the surfaces were assimilated, making them the world’s wonders in mechanical skill.—The London Budget.

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See [Daily Character Work].

Building Character—See [Imperfections Corrected].

Building, Cheap—See [Fire, Cost of].

BUILDING THE SOUL’S CITY

Prof. Felix Adler is the author of this poem:

Have you heard the golden city

Mentioned in the legends old?

Everlasting light shines o’er it,

Wondrous tales of it are told.

Only righteous men and women

Dwell within its gleaming wall;

Wrong is banished from its borders,

Justice reigns supreme o’er all.

We are builders of that city;

All our joys and all our groans

Help to rear its shining ramparts,

All our lives are building-stones.

But a few brief years we labor,

Soon our earthly day is o’er,

Other builders take our places,

And our place knows us no more.

But the work which we have builded,

Oft with bleeding hands and tears,

And in error and in anguish,

Will not perish with the years.

It will last, and shine transfigured

In the final reign of Right;

It will merge into the splendors

Of the City of the Light. (Text.)

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Burdens—See [Brotherhood].

BURDENS, BEARING ONE ANOTHER’S

On a railway train running on a branch road from a great city to the suburb, a little incident in complete contrast was noted by eyes quick to see what happened on the road. A woman, evidently a foreigner and very poor, was encumbered by a baby in her arms, while two older children tugged at her skirt. In addition she had several nondescript bundles. When the brakeman announced her station she was bewildered and greatly impeded in her efforts to leave the car. She was not quite sure of the place, and she could not easily manage the babies and the bundles.

A tall young fellow, conspicuously well drest, had been sitting near, apparently lost in a book which he was studying. He tossed the book aside, seized the heavy bundles and gave a hand to one little brown-faced child, assisted the whole party out of the car, first ascertaining that they were at the right point of their journey, lifted his hat to the mother as if she had been his own, and resumed his place and book as if he had done nothing uncommon. This incident was chronicled in the memory of one whom it made happier for a whole long day. (Text.)—Herald and Presbyter.

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Burdens for Others—See [Hardship Vicariously Borne].

Burglar Punished—See [Unloading the Useless].

BURIAL, A NOVEL PLAN OF

Gen. M. C. Meigs, U.S.A., discusses the burial of the dead as follows in Building:

I see that the question of disposing of the dead in towers of masonry, or by cementation, is being discust. It is not new. Asiatic conquerors have built the living, after capture of their cities, into towers of masonry, using their bodies as blocks, and generally the adobe mortars of the desert plains for cementing them together. One of them built a pyramid or tower containing thousands of heads.

The city of New York inters in its Potter’s Field about four thousand bodies annually. Europe rents a grave site for a term of years—a short term—and then disinters the bones and packs them in a catacomb or a vault. Would not New York save money and treat its dead with greater respect if it embedded each body in a mass of Hudson River cement and sand (Beton Coignet)? I find that one-half a cubic yard of Beton Coignet will completely enclose the body of a man of six feet stature, weighing two hundred pounds. The average human being would require even less than thirteen cubic feet. At ruling prices such a sarcophagus would cost only two or three dollars. The name and date, a perpetual record and memorial of the dead, could be inscribed with letter-punches or stamps on the head or foot of the block or sarcophagus. Ranged alongside each other in contact, and in two rows, i.e., two blocks deep, these would build on any suitable plan a fourteen-foot wall, massive enough and strong enough to be carried to the height of one hundred and fifty feet.

Thus would be erected, at the rate of nearly two thousand cubic yards per year, a great temple of silence, a grand and everlasting monument to those who pass away. The designs for such a monument seem worthy of the study of our best architects. It might be a pyramid, a cone, a tower, or a temple, or a long gallery like those of the Italian city of Bologna, the most beautiful cemetery in the world.

Many years ago the London Architect published the proposal of an architect to erect by slow degrees and in successive courses a solid pyramid in which, in cells, the dead of London would be enclosed. But this made no provision for memorial inscriptions or visible records. The fourteen-foot wall does this.—Building.

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Burial too Expensive—See [Poverty].

Buried Cities—See [Earth Increasing].

BUSINESS A TEST OF CHARACTER

Beethoven, when he had completed one of his grand musical compositions, was accustomed to test it on an old harpsichord, lest a more perfect instrument might flatter it or hide its defects.

The old harpsichord on which to test our religious life, our new song, is the market-place. A man, like muddy water, may be very peaceful when he is quietly “settled”—not shaken up by temptation. That proves nothing about his religious life. But if a man’s patience and peace and principles can stand the test of business, his religion is genuine.

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Business Absorption—See [Engrossment in Business].

Business Acumen—See [Oversight].

Business Brevity—See [Success Inspires Confidence].

BUSINESS CHANCES

In 1840 Worcester had thirty leading manufacturers of whom twenty-eight began as journeymen and two as sons of manufacturers. Of seventy-five manufacturers in 1850, six only were sons of manufacturers, only six of the one hundred and seven in 1860, and of one hundred and seventy-six manufacturers in 1878, only fifteen. The chance that the head of a manufacturing business will be reached by the son of an owner in Worcester for forty years has been pretty steadily about one in ten of the total chances of going to the head. As the sons of manufacturers in Worcester in 1840 could not have been, taking thirty manufacturers as the number, one per cent of the population, the chances of success for them was above the average, but not so far above as to discourage young men without this good fortune. The chance that property will stay two generations in one family seems also to be about one in ten in Worcester. Of the thirty manufacturers in 1840, fourteen of whom died or retired with property, only three in 1888 had left sons with money; of the seventy-five in 1850, the sons of only six survive now; and of one hundred and seven in 1860, eight only were represented by sons in the business world of Worcester twenty-eight years later. The business field at any given year is apt to look to young men as if all the leading places were filled by men whose sons were certain to enjoy the advantages of wealth and likely to take the places of their fathers. But there is not over one chance in ten that this will take place, and scarcely this that wealth will be left by those who inherit it. While of those in business on any date, one-fourth drop out in five years, one-half in ten, and two-thirds in fifteen years.

Nine places out of ten thirty years hence are therefore open to those who to-day have nothing.—Philadelphia Press.

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BUSINESS CHEATING

Your prize-fighter has some honor in him yet; and so have the men in the ring round him: they will judge him to lose the match by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, and no one cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of the gambling-room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business who loads scales! For observe, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. What difference does it make whether I get short weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric?—unless that flaw in the substance or fabric is the worse evil of the two. Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food and I die by you.—John Ruskin.

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BUSINESS MEN IN CHURCH

Dr. Crafts asked a prominent business man of Chicago, who has been active in the very heart of its commercial life for sixteen years, to make a careful list of its one hundred richest men, and then tell him how many of them were church-members. His report was, “Seventy church-members, twenty-four attend church, and I think are not members; three I consider dissipated, and three are Jews, who are good citizens.”

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BUSINESS, RELIGION IN

Altho Mrs. J. Alden Gaylord conducts a bond-investment business in Wall Street, she firmly believes that financial success can be gained in that “frenzied” business center by godly spiritual guidance. Mrs. Gaylord has achieved the distinction of taking over the management of the affairs of her late husband and running them on original lines. Says the New York Herald:

Seated in a spacious office, this plucky little woman spends her time discussing with her clients the flotation of security issues and the financing of railway lines. Religious mottoes are posted on the walls, and a Testament and prayer-books occupy a conspicuous place on the desk.

“Yes, every morning after I arrive in this city,” said Mrs. Gaylord, “I spend a few minutes in Old Trinity to pray. That was a custom of my husband’s, who was one of the most godly men that lived. Before we begin business here we have a prayer-meeting in the office. I have a good many young men here to whom I am teaching the business. I conduct the services, assisted by my partner, Mr. Fletcher.

“We carry on our work here according to the teaching of the Scriptures. Even if I make only one-quarter of one per cent, that is enough. And business is coming in from every part of the country. It is perfectly wonderful. Only yesterday two loans came in—one for $3,000,000 and another for $2,000,000.

“The deals will be closed to-morrow. I believe the Lord has educated me in all this. I know He is helping me, and the money I make will all go to the Lord. I only want to provide for my grandchildren. All the rest will go to charity and missions.” (Text.)

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BUYING, GOOD

Not very long ago a lawyer accompanied his wife to a Harlem market in New York, and while she made some purchases, he watched a woman beside him select meats for an unusually large order. So extensive were her purchases that he grew interested. Later he found himself forgetting quantity in admiration for the judgment and care she was exercising in her buying. After she left, his curiosity got the better of him. “Do you mind telling me,” said he to the clerk, “who that woman was? I think I never saw one who bought so well.”

“Not at all,” was the answer. “She’s Mrs. X, and she keeps a boarding-house on Y Street,” naming a number almost opposite the man’s home. “She personally inspects every piece of meat she serves on her table, and I tell you her boarders get the best. You can’t fool her.”

“I’ve found a place to take our meals in the next domestic crisis,” was the thought that flashed into the man’s mind. This kind of boarding-house keeper was not the sort he had known in the days of his bachelor wanderings.—The Evening Post.

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By-products—See [Utilizing Seed].

By-products of Seaweed—See [Utilizing Seaweed].