E
Early Conditions in America—See [Poverty, Early, of United States].
EARLY HABITS TELL
The tree will not only lie as it falls, but it will also fall as it leans; that is, we shall go after what we are inclined to—is not that so?—which makes it all in all to us what the bent of our mind is.
Twenty years ago there were two boys in my Sabbath-school class, bright, lively fellows, who interested me very much; only one of them made me sometimes feel anxious. I often found him out evenings in company with young rowdies. When I asked him how it happened, he used to say he was only out on an errand; the boys spoke to him, and he could not help speaking, he was sure. Perhaps that was so, still it made me uneasy. I once said to his mother: “Is not Willie out of nights too much?” “Willie out nights! Oh, no; Willie does not go out nights.”
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The other boy, whose name was Arthur, I never met among the rowdies. His evenings, I am sure, were spent at home. I always found him studying his lessons, or reading with his sisters, or amusing himself at home.
That was twenty years ago. Both boys had begun to show which way they were leaning, and how their tastes inclined them. Twenty years will show it plainer.
The other day I heard of Willie. Somebody met him in Chicago.
“What is he?” I asked.
“A good-for-nothing, certainly, if not worse,” was the answer; “a shabby, idle, drinking fellow, whom nobody wants to employ.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it—sorry, but not surprized. I wonder where Arthur is!”
“Arthur! Why, didn’t you know, he has just been taken into partnership with that old firm with which he served his time? They could not spare him, so they had to take him in.”
“Good!” I said. “It is just what I should have expected. He learned right.”—Young Folks.
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EARLY PROMISE
Two of the most celebrated historic rivers are the Abana and Pharpar. These streams begin their course under the most promising auspices. Their source is in Lebanon. The Abana, now called the Barada, is the pride and joy of the plain below. It forces its way from the declivity where it has its cradle through a rocky barrier and spreads out fan-like in seven streams over the plain. “Everything lives whither the river cometh.” A meadow, in which the whole Oriental world exults, holds in its lap Damascus, the most beautiful garden city in the world. Its many minarets and domes tower up above the countless bowers in the courts of the old houses. Abana still as ever sustains this fruitfulness and splendor. But only a few miles from its source its waters are exhausted, for the desert swallows it, and the Pharpar also. Both die, forming great swamps and evaporating.
So it is with many human beings whose lives are for a few years efficient and full of promise and even performance, only very soon to flag and fade and to fall into utter desuetude. (Text.)
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EARLY RELIGION
The Bible was once compared to a great tree, with its books as branches, its chapters as twigs, and the verses as leaves. A minister, addressing a Sunday-school gathering, announced his text as “on the 39th branch, the 3d twig, and the 17th leaf.” He said to his great audience, “Try to find my text.” A little lad who was in the pulpit, owing to the crowded state of the church, answered “Malachi, third chapter, and seventeenth verse.” The minister said, “Right, my boy; take my place and read it out.” It so happened the boy’s brother had died recently, and the sight of the little curly-headed lad, only eleven years old, with his little black gloves reading in silvery tones, “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels,” brought tears to many eyes. The minister laid his hand on the boy and said, “Well done; I hope one day you will be a minister.” The lad was Henry Drummond, afterward the loved teacher of thousands in America and Great Britain. (Text.)
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See [Religion, Early].
EARNESTNESS
Professor Ticknor, speaking in one of his letters of the intense excitement with which he listened to Webster’s Plymouth address, says:
Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the gush of blood; for, after all, you must know that I am aware it is no connected and compacted whole, but a collection of wonderful fragments of burning eloquence, to which his manner gave tenfold force. When I came out, I was almost afraid to come near him. It seemed to me that he was like the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with fire.
The lips of the prophet of old were touched by the live coal. No great thing is ever done without earnestness. (Text.)
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When Patrick Henry concluded his well-known speech in March, 1775, in behalf of American independence, “no murmur of applause followed,” says his biographer. “The effect was too deep.” After the trance of a moment, several members of the assembly started from their seats. The cry, “To arms!” seemed to quiver on every lip, and glance from every eye. What was the secret of his power? The spirit of freedom so completely filled him that it overflowed into all other lives with which he came in contact.
Every Christian is given a message that makes for eternal freedom. With what earnestness ought we to advocate this much greater cause. (Text.)
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EARTH, CRY OF
M. Guyau, in his “Sketch of Morality,” relates a dream that he had. He felt himself soaring in heaven, far above the earth, and heard a weary sound ascending as of torrents amid mountain silence and solitude. He could distinguish human voices—sobs mingled with thanksgiving, and groans interrupted by benedictions; all melting into one heartrending symphony. The sky seemed darkened. To one with him he asked, “Do you hear that?” The angel answered, “These are the prayers of men, ascending from the earth to God.” Beginning to cry like a child, the dreamer exclaimed, “What tears I should shed were I that God!” Guyau adds: “I loosened the hand of the angel, and let myself fall down again to the earth, thinking there remained in me too much humanity to make it possible for me to live in heaven.”
It is that earth-cry that brings God down to help the needy.
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EARTH INCREASING
Accumulations of surface-matter are astonishingly rapid. Professor Newton estimates that 400,000,000 meteors fall to the earth annually. These add enormous quantities of matter to the earth, but do not, of course, account for all surface growth and changes. Modern London is built on the site of Roman London, but the ancient city is seventeen feet lower than the modern. The Jerusalem streets that Jesus walked through are twenty feet lower down than the streets of Jerusalem of to-day. One of the most interesting resorts in that city, in the time of Christ, was the pool of Bethsaida. Recently work being done by the Algerian monks has laid bare a large tank cut in the solid rock thirty feet deep.—Public Opinion.
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EARTH SOIL FOR HEAVENLY FLOWERS
The poor women in the tenements of the Whitechapel road in London had a contest, and the flowers that took the prizes were grown in pots that hung out in the alleys of the worst section in London; all the roses and the jonquils being victorious over soot and grime. And heaven is an exhibition where souls will receive recognition and reward for their victories, the flowers of faith and prayer and hope that bloom resplendent midst unfriendly conditions. For time’s sweetest flowers are rooted in earth, even while they borrow their bloom from heaven.—N. D. Hillis.
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EARTHEN VESSEL, THE
The author of this poem is unidentified:
The Master stood in His garden
Among the lilies fair,
Which His own right hand had planted
And trained with tenderest care.
He looked at their snowy blossoms,
And marked with observant eye
That His flowers were sadly drooping,
For their leaves were parched and dry.
“My lilies need to be watered,”
The heavenly Master said.
“Wherein shall I draw it for them,
And raise each drooping head?”
Close to His feet on the pathway,
Empty and frail and small,
An earthen vessel was lying,
Which seemed of no use at all.
But the Master saw and raised it
From the dust in which it lay,
And smiled as He gently whispered,
“This shall do my work to-day.
“It is but an earthen vessel,
But it lay so close to Me.
It is small, but it is empty,
Which is all it needs to be.”
So to the fountain He took it,
And filled it to the brim,
How glad was the earthen vessel
To be of some use to Him!
He poured forth the living water
Over the lilies fair,
Until the vessel was empty,
And again He filled it there.
He watered the drooping lilies
Until they revived again,
And the Master saw with pleasure
That His labor had not been vain.
His own hand had drawn the water
That refreshed the thirsty flowers,
But He used the earthen vessel
To carry the living showers.
And to itself it whispered
As He laid it aside once more,
“Still will I lie in His pathway
Just where I did before.
“Close would I keep to the Master,
Empty would I remain,
And perhaps some day He may use me
To water His flowers again.”
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Earthly Treasures—See [Treasures Laid Up].
EARTHQUAKES, SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT
Some Chinese attribute the latest earthquake shocks to the water-dragon of Canton, whose anger has been raised by the reclamation works. Coolies are dumping daily boatloads of sand and stone on the poor dragon’s back, and the beast naturally feels hurt.
It appears, however, that the real causes of the earthquakes were the Macao crabs! Here is the story:
Close by the hot springs in the neighborhood of Macao stands a small village wherein lives an old woman who has the misfortune to be the mother of an unworthy young man whose sole occupation is fishing. A few days previous to the first earthquake shock experienced in Macao the young man returned home with a couple of crabs and a few small fish.
Nothing extraordinary was noticed at first, but when the crabs had been boiled, one of them presented a peculiar appearance, as on the red background of its shell stood in bold relief a design in white which resembled a Chinese character.
Neighbors were called, and the wise man of the village soon explained that it was the king of the crabs that had found its way into the old woman’s kettle.
Thereupon the village prophet predicted that some great calamity would visit the unfortunate village.
Meanwhile the crabs of Macao and the neighborhood, having learned the fate of their king, assembled in great numbers, filling up every available hole, and started to shake the earth. Thus was their displeasure at the death of the king crab clearly shown.
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East, The, Amazed at Western Achievements—See [Incredulity].
EASTER
The Lord is risen indeed,
He is here for your love, for your need—
Not in the grave, nor the sky,
But here where men live and die;
And true the word that was said:
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”
Wherever are tears and sighs,
Wherever are children’s eyes,
Where man calls man his brother,
And loves as himself another,
Christ lives! The angels said:
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”
—Richard Watson Gilder.
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That Jesus lived, that Jesus died,
The ancient stories tell;
With words of wisdom, love, and truth,
That he could speak so well;
And all so great his work for man,
I hail him, brave and free,
The highest of heroic souls
Who lived and died for me.
That Jesus rose, that Jesus reigns,
The hearts that love him know;
They feel Him guide and strengthen them,
As on through life they go.
Rejoicing in His leadership,
The heavenward way I see,
And shall not stray if I can say,
He rose and reigns in me.
—A. Irvine Innes, The Christian Register.
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Eastern Customs—See [Expectorating]; [Gestures and Uses of the Hands in the East]; [Tabooed Topics in the East].
Eating, a Guide in—See [Affluence, The Principle of].
EATING AND CHARACTER
Gluttony tends to cynicism. Coarseness and extravagance of speech and manners go hand in hand with dietetic excesses, as, for cognate reasons, the repulsiveness of voracious animals is generally aggravated by a want of cleanliness. Among the natives of the arctic regions, where climatic causes make gluttony a pandemic vice, personal cleanliness is an almost unknown virtue, and Kane’s anecdotes of polar household habits depict a degree of squalor that would appal a gorilla.
Habitual abstemiousness, on the other hand, is the concomitant of modesty, thrift, self-control, and evenness of temper, and is compatible with heroic perseverance, tho hardly with great energy of vital vigor. The dietetic self-denials of Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman of the sixteenth century, enabled him to outlive the third generation of his epicurean relatives. During the latter decades of his long life he boasts of having enjoyed a peace of mind unattainable by other means. Within the bounds of reason, occasional fasts are by no means incompatible with intellectual vigor, tho they are chiefly apt to stimulate the activity of abstruse speculations. There are intellectual voluptuaries whose enjoyment of mental triumphs in controversy or cogitation seem, for the time being, actually to deaden their craving for material food. Isaac Newton, on the track of a cosmic secret, would send back plate after plate of untasted meals. Percy Shelley, in the words of his sprightly biographer, indignantly refused to alloy the nectar of poetic inspiration with a “boarding-house soup,” and in his creative moods rarely answered a dinner call without a sigh of regret. Benedict Spinoza, amid the parchment piles of his bachelor den, would fast for days in the ecstacy of his “Gott trunken”—“God-intoxicated”—meditations. Intermittent denutrition undoubtedly tends to clear off the cobwebs of the brain. (Text.)—Felix Oswald, Open Court.
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ECCENTRICITY
The Youth’s Companion tells this incident about the peculiar moods of Turner, the artist, in the matter of selling his pictures:
At times nothing could induce him to part with one of them, and at other times he would receive a customer with the greatest affability of voice and manner, and readily settle upon the sum to be paid for one of his treasures.
On one occasion, when he was offered one thousand pounds apiece for some old sketchbooks, he turned them over leaf by leaf before the eyes of the would-be purchaser, saying, “Well, would you really like to have them?”
Then, just as the man proceeded to take possession of the books, Turner, with a tantalizing “I dare say you would!” suddenly thrust them into a drawer and turned the key in the lock, leaving the customer dumb with indignation.
On another occasion a rich manufacturer of Birmingham managed to secure an entrance into the artist’s house, after considerable parley with the disagreeable janitress whom Turner employed. He hurried up-stairs to the gallery. In a moment Turner dashed out upon him with anything but a hospitable air. The visitor bowed politely and introduced himself, saying he had come to buy some pictures.
“Don’t want to sell,” said the artist gruffly.
“Have you ever seen our Birmingham pictures, Mr. Turner?” inquired the visitor blandly.
“Never heard of ’em,” returned the artist.
The manufacturer now took an attractive package of crisp Birmingham bank-notes from his wallet.
“Mere paper,” said Turner contemptuously.
“To be bartered for mere canvas,” retorted the visitor calmly, waving his hand in the direction of some paintings.
This ready wit and tone of cool depreciation had the effect of putting the erratic artist in a good humor at once. He changed his manner immediately, and not long after his visitor departed, having bought several fine paintings, and leaving the comfortable sum of five thousand pounds behind him.
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See [Odd Behavior].
ECHOES
The explanations provided by the method of fairy tales are based upon the evidence of things that can not be perceived and upon assumptions that can not be tested. Take, for instance, the explanation of an echo; to the primitive mind, hearing the repetition of its shout, and conscious of only speaking once, is it not inevitable one should suppose that the shout came from another person? A futile search in the wood or under the cliff would lead to the thought that the person was hiding, and the more naturally, as on coming to the cliff whence the shout seemed to come one’s call would receive no answer. As at other times such mocking answers would always come from the same place, what more natural than to think that some person or spirit dwelt there? Hence such a story as Lander tells of his voyage down the Niger: “As they came to a creek the captain shouted, and where an echo was returned half a glass of rum and a piece of yam and fish were thrown into the water. On asking the reason why he was throwing away the provisions thus, he was answered: ‘Did you not hear the fetish?’ And so, in South Pacific myth, echo is the first and parent fairy to whom divine honors are paid as the giver of food, and as she ‘who speaks to the worshipers out of the rocks.’”—William Schooling, Westminster Review.
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Economic Injustice—See [Injustice].
ECONOMIC MOTIVES
We know that an extremely severe medical examination is imposed upon immigrants to the United States, and that entrance into this country is pitilessly denied to those who seem even merely puny and sickly. The result of this examination is that the ocean transportation companies must return to their countries, at their own cost, rejected immigrants. To avoid this expense, the companies of the various countries have decided to take all the precautions necessary for protecting the health of their passengers. Thus, at Hamburg a company has had great halls built to shelter emigrants during their stay in the port before their embarkation; and, the results having been favorably recognized, they are going to build booths, capable of containing each 120 beds, arranged in accordance with the rules of up-to-date hygiene, each group of four booths to be provided with a special booth fitted up as a laundry, with vapor-baths, etc. We know, on the other hand, that the establishment of sanatoriums for consumptives had its origin in Germany in similar anxieties on the part of the insurance companies. Thus it is that the care of the pocketbook is still the surest motive power of social progress. (Text.)
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ECONOMY
We are enjoined to “lay aside every weight” in our Christian career. One way to do this is to study the art of reducing our necessities to the lowest terms, like this umbrella:
A twenty-six-inch umbrella that will fold up and go in an inside pocket without crowding has been invented and constructed by a Minneapolis man, we are told in The American Inventor. Says this paper: “This seems almost incredible until the secret is told. The handle and all the ribs consist of fine and very strong steel tubes, in sections, which telescope one inside the other. The covering is of very fine silk, which takes up but little room. The wooden handle of the umbrella is hollow and receives all the rest of the telescoping umbrella-rod when shut up. A small and light case is provided to contain the whole, which, as stated, goes easily into the pocket. If such a device can be made and sold for a reasonable price there is little to prevent the owner from making a fortune; there are few men who would not welcome an umbrella which could be always carried without inconvenience, and which could be put out of the way of the borrower-who-never-returns, when entering a public place, such as a restaurant.” (Text.)
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In the packing business nothing is lost but “the squeal of the pig.” Every part of an animal is now valuable. Much of the profit of a packing-house now comes from byproducts, like hair, entrails and the like, that once were thrown away.
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You do not see to-day as many of the old peach or pea or salmon or tomato cans emptied of their contents and thrown about in the vacant lot or in the rubbish heap of the private family or the general garbagepile of the community. It was a real nuisance to have so many of these useless “cast-offs” accumulating under eye and foot. And with the increased use of canned goods this was becoming more and more so. Loads of these refuse cans are now gathered every year and are made into shining sheets which are used as a covering and decoration of traveling trunks. Enough tin refuse is taken from the ash-heaps to keep several mills employed in turning this waste into products for the markets. Even the solder which is saved from these cast-away cans brings twelve cents per pound, and yields an income that pays well for the pains of gathering this rubbish. Window-sash weights are made out of the tops and bottoms of these old cans, while the body of the can is cleaned and rolled anew, and made serviceable for trunk covering.—G. P. Perry, “Wealth from Waste.”
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Have you ever, in hours of illness or of great preoccupation, performed some piece of work; undertaken, for example, some long-drawn piece of needlework, and woven your thoughts into the leaves and flowers? Through force of association, your inner experience and your work were henceforth completely identified, and after many years you could still say to yourself: This flower recalls the day when I was expecting news of my sick and absent son. I wavered between fear and hope and my hand trembled. Something of his fever has remained in this frail stem.... Here is a swallow that I embroidered after I had received happy tidings that reassured me and announced his near return. Never shall I be able to look at it without thinking of all the joy of which a mother’s heart is capable!
The labor involved in economy is like these patient toils. The little pennies also have their story. This story is made up of watchfulness, of cares, of tenderness, of sublime sacrifice. Never will the large sums of nameless money attain to the power of signification possest by these little pennies amassed one by one, put carefully away, to which one has said: Little penny, I keep you to-day in order that you may keep me to-morrow; I give you a post of honor; the day when misery approaches my sill and threatens to cross it, you will cry out: you may not pass!—Charles Wagner, “The Gospel of Life.”
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Economy by Inventions—See [Labor-saving Inventions].
ECONOMY, DIVINE
The autographs of musicians who in life could not write a check for a crust of bread have in death been sold for fabulous sums. Not long ago at a sale in Berlin two of Beethoven’s letters sold for $187 and $200 each. A letter of Chopin brought $250, a visiting-card of Haydn $20 and a letter $427, two letters of Schubert $777, four letters of Wagner $322, a scrap of writing of Mozart sold for $276, while a Gluck manuscript changed hands at $1,000. Some of these men in life hardly received enough for their services to keep their musical souls connected with their emaciated bodies; but they wasted themselves in pouring out their immortal melodies, and this generation is putting down its gold for mere scraps of paper that had felt the touch of their dead hands! Of course, their service and music are not lost; but look! God does not even allow the screeds of paper, which were once crumpled by their perished fingers, to be lost, either! While their music is filling the world with its sweetness God is even picking up the tattered, torn, broken fragments blown by cruel winds up and down the desert of their lives, that nothing be lost!—F. F. Shannon.
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ECONOMY, ENGLISH VERSUS AMERICAN
When Thomas Hughes, author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” who had experience in American concerns in his endeavor to plant an English colony in Tennessee, was in Boston a few years ago, he was asked, according to the Boston Post, why it was that cooperative distribution which had proved so successful in England, had never succeeded in America. “Simply,” he said, “because you Americans do not know what economy is in the sense in which people practise it in England. Many a workingman at home will walk two miles to the cooperative store with his basket on his arm, and do it in his bare feet at that, to save a shilling on his weekly purchase. No American mechanic would do that.”
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Economy in Metal—See [Magnetism].
ECONOMY IN WORK
The editor of the Louisville Christian Observer is the author of the following:
Coming down to the office one frosty morning we saw a workman kneeling on the pavement trying to hammer straight a bent rusty nail. The pavement was slippery, the nail was obdurate, the man’s gloved hands were clumsy, the only tool he had was a stone. Consequently, he had lost much time and quite all of his temper and was using language that is never heard in polite society. Economy is a good thing, but now and again is it not better to leave the bent nail to itself, at least until a moment of leisure comes, and take a straight, new nail from the box? In our church work are there not old, bent, rusty methods that should be abandoned? Always is it not wisdom to seek formation of character rather than reformation—to endeavor to keep the nail straight instead of pounding it so later? And in conducting the financial affairs of our churches is there not often an economy that really is wastefulness? A spiritual new nail is a good thing to be put into the hand of the master of assemblies that he may drive it into a sure place. (Text.)
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ECONOMY OF ENERGY
In a shoe factory I was once shown an attachment to the sewing and other machines which caused the machine to stop whenever its work was done. When one button-hole was made the mechanism paused until it was given another task to do, so that no power was wasted, and no useless wear permitted. And the superintendent said: “That little iron ‘trick’ cost us two hundred dollars, but it saves us thousands of dollars every year in wear and tear of machinery and in attendance. It enables one operator to take care of two, three, and sometimes more machines.” Here, at least, is a hint that is intelligible and available to us all. How much longer would our youth stay by us if we had this life-saving attachment affixt; if we could only stop when a given task is done; if we did but apply ourselves but once to the one thing. (Text.)—Vyrnwy Morgan, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”
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We—at least persons who have passed middle age—have only a certain amount of reserve force, and all that we draw upon in hurries is abstracted from that which should be distributed through the remainder of life. The secret of longevity is probably skill in so economizing the reserve of vital energy as to make it last out an unusual period. Persons who begin unusual exercises in youth may adapt their constitutions to the habit, and may thereby hold on to their full term of life; but this can not be done safely if one waits till mature age before beginning.—Public Opinion.
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Economy of Healthful Foods—See [Health, Economics of].
ECONOMY OF NATURAL RESOURCES
It is hardly conceivable that the economic waste represented by the neglect of the marine forests and gardens will be much longer continued. The only vegetation that exists upon two-thirds of the superficial area of the earth is seaweed. This vegetation ought to contribute to the support of the population of the land surface of the globe to such an extent that the question of food supply—the nightmare of scientific inquirers into the probable future of civilization and of the human race—need worry no one. (Text.)—The Technical World Magazine.
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EDUCATION
A scientific man recently said, “You can not manufacture diamonds.” To a certain extent this has been disputed, for another famous scientist claims that he has produced genuine diamonds, tho too minute to be of commercial value. In the pastoral epistles of Paul minute descriptions are given by the apostles concerning the true furnishing of the minister of Christ.
The members of a congregation said of their new minister that they had got hold of “a gem of a pastor.” No college had made him a gem, but it was equally true that the excellent curriculum through which he had passed in a theological institution had polished him. He was not mere ministerial paste, but being a rough diamond when he went in, those who trained him sent him out cut and polished.
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I discovered on a leafless sapling near my window two birds, an adult phœbe and a young one apparently lately out of the nest. The elder kept up a running talk, occasionally darting out after a passing insect, which—I was surprized and amused to see—she carried to the little tree, and, after the youngster had seen it and opened its mouth to receive it, she swallowed herself! upon which the youth uttered a wailing cry. Then would come another long talk, and at every pause a complaining note from the infant. Several times these performances were repeated. Then the elder flew away, when at once the little one began to look out for himself, actually flying out, and once or twice while I looked succeeding in securing his prey.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”
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To what shall I liken education? I would liken education to a voyage: A great ship rides in dock near a flat shore covered with small, low houses, and troops of little people go on board. The ship swings away from the wharf and makes out for the open sea. Captain, mates, and most of the crew know the course and the haven; but the passengers never crossed before. It is a long, long, voyage through storm and calm, through cold and heat; a voyage of years; a voyage that tests faith. The years pass and the little people grow and grow. During the voyage most of the passengers go overboard into the open sea; but some make the voyage to arrive at a coast with mountains and valleys, cities and castles, a world of powers and of activities unseen by the dwellers upon the low coast on the other side of the sea of life.
Such is education. And the question is how to keep the passengers on board until the ship makes harbor.—William Estabrook Chancellor, “Proceedings of the National Education Association,” 1909.
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John Stuart Mill, in his autobiography, says concerning his education:
The children of educated parents frequently grow up unenergetic because they lean on their parents, and the parents are energetic for them. The education which my father gave me was in itself much more fitted for training me to know than to do.
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See [Prodigy, A]; [Things, Not Books].
EDUCATION ADAPTED TO CAPACITY
Everybody has been trying to cut his garments by a measure which was good for somebody else at some other place and time. The strenuous pressure of life’s struggle for preservation has differentiated men into soldiers, merchants, advocates, poets, priests, laborers, and farmers, but it is not yet admitted generally that it would be well to study the child’s qualities and train him for his best future. Owners of cattle and horses can not and do not afford to do anything else; man alone is wasted in efforts to make every boy an attorney-at-law and every girl a piano-player. One boy in a thousand can become a good lawyer, and not much more than one in a thousand is needed. One girl in five hundred may learn to play a piano fairly well, and one in a thousand may have the genius which will give her piano-playing the touch of life. Health and joy in labor are the best education. Work is best done when it is the natural exercise of faculty. The boy learns if he does nothing but play until he is mature. It is not a good education, but sometimes it is better than a wrong education.—Kansas City Times.
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Education, All-round—See [Comprehensiveness in Education].
Education, Complexity in—See [Masterhand, Lacking the].
Education Due to Missionaries—See [Missionary Accomplishments].
EDUCATION BY TRAVEL
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted the educational results of the cruise of the American fleet around the world in 1908:
“The most gigantic correspondence school in the history of education, with free courses in foreign travel, geography and natural history, is,” says the St. Louis Post-Despatch, “now in operation throughout the entire United States, and particularly in the West and Southwest. The instructors are the 15,000 sailors on Uncle Sam’s peace cruise around the world and the students are their relatives and friends, totaling 200,000 to a quarter of a million souls. The text-books are the shoals of entertaining and instructive letters from the fleet which are flooding the whole country with every mail, with throngs of picture post-cards as graphic illustrations. From Honolulu, Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia, tons of letters are now on their way to the loved ones at home, bearing vivid lessons in the civilization of the Pacific islands and the antipodes. All over the country forgotten text-books on geography are being resurrected from dusty chests, so that mothers, sisters and sweethearts may chart each day the course pursued by the fleet. Book-stores report a largely increased sale of maps, globes and charts, due to an awakened interest in the remote sections of the earth. To the hundred or so families in St. Louis which have relatives with the fleet have come voluminous and thrilling letters, making them more familiar with Trinidad than they are with Porto Rico, and better acquainted with Magdalena Bay than they are with Charleston harbor. Such letters as these, spreading information broadcast in the land, are proving a vast engine against provincialism, ignorance and narrowness, and affording a cosmopolitan education to multitudes.”
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EDUCATION, HIGHER
A good illustration of the monetary value of higher education in chemistry and mining is seen when one compares Germany and England. Both countries have the same kind of iron ore and the same coal supply. England has the advantage of having her coal nearer the iron fields. In 1880 England mined and produced 8,000,000 tons of pig-iron per year, while Germany’s product was only 3,000,000. Since that time Germany has supported handsomely her great technical universities and sent out each year into her industries a stream of highly-trained experts, with the result that in 1907, while England’s production had risen from 8,000,000 to only 9,000,000 tons per year, Germany’s had risen from 3,000,000 to 13,000,000. It is more significant still that from 1900 to 1908 German iron brought on the average nearly $19 per ton, while English iron brought only $13 per ton, a difference of nearly 50 per cent in favor of the iron made by the better-educated German producer. This one result of these great German technical institutions would alone add $190,000,000 per year to German wealth if the iron were sold as raw pig-iron. As a matter of fact, a large part of this iron is made up into all sorts of manufactured products, made possible by their high technical education, and these products are exported and sold at many times the price of the raw pig-iron—New York Evening Post.
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EDUCATION NOT VICARIOUS
William has been to school for over a year, and his teacher says to him one day: “Now, William, I am afraid your father will think that I am not doing well by you; you must write a composition—you must send your father a good composition to show what you are doing.” Well, William never did write a composition, and he does not know how. “Oh, write about something that you do know about—write about your father’s farm,” and so, being goaded to his task, William says: “A cow is a useful animal. A cow has four legs and two horns. A cow gives good milk. I love good milk.—William Bradshaw.” The master looks over his shoulder and says: “Pooh! your father will think you are a cow. Here, give me that composition, I’ll fix it.” So he takes it home and fixes it. Here it reads: “When the sun casts off the dusky garments of the night, and appearing o’er the orient hills, sips the dew-drops pendant from every leaf, the milkmaid goes a-field, chanting her matin song,” and so on, and so on. Now, I say that, rhetorically, the master’s composition was unspeakably better than William’s; but as a part of William’s education, his poor, scrawly lines are unspeakably better than the one that has been “fixt” for him.—Henry Ward Beecher.
(880)
Education of Indians—See [Indians, American].
Education, Self—See [Reading by Schedule].
EDUCATION TO BE PRIZED
Wesley himself, however, had a scholar’s hate of ignorance, and he toiled with almost amusing diligence to educate his helpers. He insisted that they should be readers, and scourged them with a very sharp whip if he found them neglecting their books. Thus he writes to one:
“Your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep. There is little variety; there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with daily meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian.”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(881)
Educational Growth—See [Need, Meeting Children’s].
EFFACEMENT OF SINS
We are reminded of the promise that God will “blot out” our transgressions by the following incident:
John Maynard was in an old-time country schoolhouse. Most of the year he had drifted carelessly along, but in midwinter some kind words from his teacher roused him to take a new start, and he became distinctly a different boy, and made up for the earlier faults. At the closing examination he passed well, to the great joy of his father and mother, who were present. But the copy-books used through the year were all laid on a table for the visitors to look at; and John remembered that his copy-book, fair enough in its latter pages, had been a dreary mass of blots and bad work before. He watched his mother looking over those books, and his heart was sick. But she seemed, to his surprize, quite pleased with what she saw, and called his father to look with her; and afterward John found that his kind teacher had thoughtfully torn out all those bad, blotted leaves, and made his copy-book begin where he started to do better. (Text.)—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”
(882)
Effects from Other’s Deeds—See [Vicariousness].
Effort, Progress by—See [Want Brings Progress].
Effort Renewed—See [Extremity Not Final].
EGOISM
It is Nietzsche’s philosophy that each man should care only for himself. This philosophy is applied in the following incident. Many still apply it in their social conduct:
It was no very unusual sight in China, to see a thief running for all he was worth, pursued by two or three vociferating men or lads. But the crowd always made way for the thief, and never a foot nor a hand was put out to stop him, “He did not rob me; why should I stop him?” (Text.)
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EGOTISM
Miss Gordon Cumming tells how she heard in Japan a bird which seemed to have for its sole note, “Me! Me! Me!” She and her party called it “the me-bird.”
There are numerous “me birds” that belong to the human family. They might also be called “ay, ay birds.”
(884)
In Delhi once stood a temple whose ceiling was set with diamonds, and beneath which stood the throne of the divine peacock. The jewels in this temple were worth $30,000,000. On the marble pedestal of the throne, in Arabic, were these words, “If ever there were paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” But the facts are that this temple was built by poor slaves, many of whom died of starvation and cruelty while in the act of building it. This temple represents intensity without breadth. Treasures and education have been concentrated to produce an awful kind of egotism. Men and women have been known to be sublimely beautiful within themselves, but in relation to others ugly, hollow, and deformed, their narrowness grating rudely on the finer sensibilities. (Text.)—Vyrnwy Morgan, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”
(885)
See [Self-measurement].
Egyptian Builders—See [Builders, Ancient].
ELECT, THE
Two modern statements of the doctrine of “election,” neither of which would quite satisfy John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards, are given in The Congregationalist.
One was Henry Ward Beecher’s epigrammatic and convincing phrase: “The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won’t.”
Good as this is, there is another explanation that is a star of equal magnitude. It was made by a colored divine, who said:
“Brethren, it is this way. The Lord, He is always voting for a man; and the devil, he is always voting against him. Then the man himself votes, and that breaks the tie.” (Text.)
(886)
Electricity and Tree-cutting—See [Improvement].
ELECTRICITY, WONDERS OF
In 1856 Dr. R. S. Storrs said:
Not a century has passed since Franklin first drew the lightning from the skies; and yet already man prints with it, paints with it, writes with it, engraves with it, talks with it, cures with it, and is ever finding out new uses for its strength. The cunning Hermes has himself come to earth, to run on errands for men, and no more for the gods. His traveling-rod, enwreathed with serpents, is now a wire, transmitting thoughts. His golden sandals are sparks of lightning; and he forwards our commerce, as he never could the ancient.
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ELECTRIFICATION, SPIRITUAL
From the following illustration of electrical contact, Rev. William Arthur draws the moral that if we would be spiritually electrified we must draw nigh to God.
When a lecturer on electricity wants to show an example of a human body surcharged with his fire, he places a person on a stool with glass legs. The glass serves to isolate him from the earth, because it will not conduct the fire—the electric fluid. Were it not for this, however much might be poured into his frame, it would be carried away by the earth; but, when thus isolated from it, he retains all that enters him. You see no fire, you hear no fire; but you are told that it is pouring into him. Presently, you are challenged to the proof, asked to come near, and hold your hand close to his person; when you do so, a spark of fire shoots out toward you.
(888)
Elements and Structures—See [Destruction, Gradual].
ELEVATION
Many of life’s hidden mysteries would be clear to us, if we could see them as God does—from above.
Many times aeronauts, carried out to sea, have made this curious observation: the higher they are, the more pellucid the water seems, enabling them to see, more and more clearly, the bottom, with its rocks and seaweed. In crossing the English Channel, which is not very deep, especially near Calais, the bottom may be easily seen, and a submarine could be followed there in all its evolutions. (Text.)—Ernest Constet, Revue Scientifique.
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I remember an old woodsman in the Adirondack forest who used to say that he wanted to go to the top of a certain mountain as often as his legs would carry him because it gave him such a feeling of “heaven-up-histedness.” That is an uncouth, humble, eloquent phrase to describe the function of a great literature.
Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!
I want the books that help me out of the vacancy and despair of a frivolous mind, out of the tangle and confusion of a society that is busied in bric-a-brac, out of the meanness of unfeeling mockery and the heaviness of incessant mirth, into a higher and serener region, where through the clear air of serious thoughts I can learn to look soberly and bravely upon the mingled misery and splendor of human existence, and then go down with a cheerful courage to play a man’s part in the life which Christ has forever ennobled by His divine presence. (Text.)—Henry Van Dyke, The British Weekly.
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ELEVATION AND VISION
A man once brought a young eagle home for his boys to play with. They were delighted and took it out to the barnyard to see it fly. But the eaglet would rather walk about among the hens and pick up wheat. The boys tossed it up in the air, but all their efforts were only in vain, for it flapped its great wings awkwardly, as if not knowing what to do with them and dropt back to the earth. The boys told their father of their inability to make the bird fly. Taking the eaglet under his arm, he called the boys with him to the mountain. As they were ascending the summit the bird began to open its eyes wider and wider. When they reached the peak, the eaglet began to expand its wings, and as it caught a vision of the unfettered blue bathed in the light of the rising sun, it soared away out of sight.
So it is in human life. It requires a vision of the heights to inspire a soul to its best flight. (Text.)
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Climbing the stairs into the helmet of the Statue of Liberty gives one a splendid view of the harbor and lower section of New York. It is a toilsome, knee-straining business. But the vision is worth the effort.
One must reach the high places if he would get a vision of the King in His beauty and an outlook over the kingdom that is to be.—C. J. Greenwood.
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ELOQUENCE
The storm that whirls among the mountains, the stoop of the whirlwind that wrenches the tree from its bed in the soil, the utmost rage of oceanic commotions—they have not that dominant power upon them to start our spirits, and carry our sympathies to an equal agitation, which eloquence has when it utters the force of one aroused soul.—Richard S. Storrs.
(893)
See [Age and Oratory]; [Earnestness]; [Lord’s Prayer Interpreted].
Eloquence of Deeds—See [Deeds That Talk].
EMANCIPATION
Every artist who works upon his canvas or upon the stone, or rears up stately fabrics, expressing something nobler to men, giving some form to their ideals and aspirations—every such man also is working for the largeness and so for the liberty of men. And every mother who sits by the cradle, singing to her babe the song which the angels sing all the way up to the very throne, she, too, is God’s priestess, and is working for the largeness of men, and so for their liberty. Whoever teaches men to be truthful, to be virtuous, to be enterprising; in short, whoever teaches manhood, emancipates men.—Henry Ward Beecher.
(894)
Embarrassment—See [Fear of Man].
EMBELLISHMENT OF PREACHING
The Telugus often embellish their sermons to an extent inconceivably funny. A smart young preacher, a graduate of Ramapatam Seminary, in telling of the resurrection of Lazarus, said that he arose from the dead when called, tied his clothing about him (the Hindu’s idea of dressing), put on a beautiful head-cloth, raised an umbrella, and came walking out of the tomb. The force of the climax would appeal to any one who lived in India. An umbrella is such a sign of distinction that people who own one often carry it open in the night even tho there has been no rain for six months.
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EMBLEMS
An apple is the emblem of the fall; held in the hand of Jesus Christ it signifies redemption. A cluster of grapes is the emblem of “Christ’s blood shed for us.” It is also the emblem of abundance and prosperity. The vine is a symbol of Christ. It is also an emblem of abundance. Wheat is an emblem of Christ as the “Bread of Life”; also of abundance and rejoicing. The olive is the emblem of peace and concord. The palm is the symbol of martyrdom. The pomegranate is the emblem of the future life and of immortality.—The Decorator and Furnisher.
(896)
See [Colors as Emblems].
EMERGENCY
Men who had been with Mr. Hearst in San Francisco were reminded of the night he came into The Examiner office and heard of a man that had been seen on a half-submerged rock in the bay, with the tide rising and certain to overwhelm him. In the office they were wondering how he got there.
“What difference does it make how he got there?” Mr. Hearst cut in. “Get him off first and find out afterward. Charter tugs, call for volunteers, and save his life—that’s the main thing.” They went out with the tugs (it was a wild night), and rescued the man just before the seas rose over the rock. (Text.)—Charles R. Russell, Harper’s Weekly.
(897)
Emergency Devices—See [Deception Justified].
EMIGRATION, CONQUEST BY
The martial resources of China are not yet developed, but that astute people have hit upon another plan to conquer and hold that which they regard as their own. A current news item from that country says:
China’s chief method of recovering Manchuria is to overrun it with emigrants from the congested mother country, and this plan has worked so well that already Japanese newspapers complain that the Japanese are losing both trade and ground there. Soon after the peace of Portsmouth the Chinese government contributed two million taels for emigration; free transportation began, at the beginning of the year, and in the spring months following as many as three thousand to four thousand coolies got off the train at Harbin daily. The Russians, who, before the war, considered themselves masters of the northern regions, are realizing that they are being crowded out altogether.
This is a suggestion of the peaceful but powerful forces that are at work in changing the map of the world.
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EMOTION
What made Paganini so exceptionally great was the portentous development, the strength and independence, of the emotional fountain within. The whole of life was to him nothing but so many successions of psychological heat and cold. Incidents immediately became clothed with a psychic atmosphere—perhaps the life of emotion was never so completely realized in itself, and for itself, as in the soul-isolation of Paganini. What the tempest had told him his violin would proclaim; what the summer night had whispered was stereotyped in his soul, and the midnight song of birds came forth from the Cremona depths at his bidding.—H. R. Haweis, “My Musical Memories.”
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Employe, Devoted—See [Service, Interested].
EMPLOYER, A GOOD
By his employees Mr. Geo. W. Childs was fairly idolized; yet he demanded of every man the full measure of his duty, but he paid the best of wages. His rule was that every man should receive more than enough for a living—receive a compensation enabling him to lay something by for a rainy day. He encouraged thrift and providence among all in his employ. He surrounded them with every comfort, introduced for their benefit every appliance conducive to health, and annually, at Christmas-time, every person in his employ was substantially remembered.—Washington Craftsman.
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ENCOURAGEMENT
Thirty years ago, in a poor schoolhouse in a back district, a boy at the foot of the class unexpectedly spelled a word that had passed down the entire class.
“Go up ahead,” said the master, “and see that you stay there. You can if you work hard.”
The boy hung his head. But the next day he did not miss a word in spelling. The brighter scholars knew every word in the lesson, hoping there might be a chance to get ahead. But there was not a single one. Dave stayed at the head. He had been an indifferent speller before, but now he knew every word.
“Dave, how do you get your lessons so well now?” said the master.
“I learn every word in the lesson, and get my mother to hear me at night; then I go over them in the morning before I come to school. And I go over them at my seat before the class is called up.”
“Good boy, Dave!” said the master. “That’s the way to have success. Always work that way and you’ll do.”
Dave is to-day the manager of a big lumber company, and he attributes his start to the words:
“Go up head, and see that you stay there. You can, if you work hard.” (Text.)—Genesee Courier.
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The old should not dampen the high aspirations of the young. This is Cale Young Rice’s thought in the following verse:
You who are old,
And have fought the fight,
And have won or lost or left the field,
Weigh us not down
With fears of the world, as we run!
With the wisdom that is too right,
The warning to which we can not yield—
The shadow that follows the sun
Follows forever—
And with all that desire must leave undone,
Tho as a god it endeavor,
Weigh, weigh us not down!
But gird our hope to believe
That all that is done
Is done by dream and daring—
Bid us dream on!
That earth was not born
Or heaven built of bewaring—
Yield us the dawn,
You dreamt your hour—and dared, but we
Would dream till all you despaired of be.
Would dare, till the world,
Won to a new wayfaring,
Be thence forever easier upward drawn!(Text.)
—The American Magazine.
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When the Duke of Wellington was arranging his forces at the fateful battle of Waterloo his raw recruits outnumbered his veteran troops, and so to encourage them by the example of those skilled in war and tried in bravery, he put a veteran between every two of the recent recruits. Thus strengthened, they all withstood the fierce charges of the French cavalry and helped win the day for the allies. So when the Christian hosts go forth to battle it is well to have the tried and experienced Christians intermingled with those yet young in the spiritual life. It gives them courage and helps them to withstand temptations and trials by which they would otherwise be swept away.—S. Parkes Cadman.
(903)
An old minister, the Rev. Richard Knill, once placed his hands on the head of a little boy and lovingly predicted that he, too, would become a preacher. That boy was C. H. Spurgeon. A boy was standing on the steps leading to a platform on which a minister wished to ascend. He patted the lad’s head and hoped he would become a preacher of the gospel. That youth afterward went to the university and there became the means of the conversion of a young student. That student was J. Wilbur Chapman, the evangelist.
(904)
See [Improvement]; [Money, Earning].
END OF THE WORLD
At some future time the sun will pass from the gaseous, or semigaseous, into the liquid stage, and from that moment it will begin to lose temperature rapidly. There is, therefore, a definite end in sight, a time beyond which the sun will cease to shine and the world, as it now exists, will come to an end.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”
(905)
End, Unknown—See [Happiness as a God].
ENDEAVOR
When the dust of the workshop is still,
The dust of the workman at rest,
May some generous heart find a will
To seek and to treasure his best!
From the splendor of hopes that deceived;
From the wonders he meant to do;
From the glories nearly achieved;
From the dreams that nearly came true.
From his struggle to rise above earth
On the pinions that would not fly;
From his sorrows; oh, seek for some worth
To remember the workman by.
If in vain; if time sweeps all away,
And no laurel from that dust springs;
’Tis enough that a loyal heart say,
“He tried to make beautiful things.”(Text.)
—Eden Phillpotts, The Pall Mall Magazine (London).
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ENDEAVOR, CONSTANT
Parsifal emphasizes the fact that “heaven is not gained with a single bound.” After Parsifal had won the great victory and gained the Sacred Spear, still he had not grown enough to be worthy to rule in the council-chambers of Monsalvat. He had to grow to new heights. Thus, many years yet of struggle, temptation, and trial awaited him. Self-mastery and spiritual supremacy are attained, not by one victory, but by many. They come only as the rich fruition of a life of strenuous endeavor, a life of loyalty to duty and to love. (Text.)—B. O. Flower, The Arena.
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ENDURANCE
Look at things as they are, and you will see that the clever unjust are in the place of runners, who run well from the starting-place to the goal, but not back again from the goal; they go off at a great pace, but in the end only look foolish, slinking away with their ears down on their shoulders, and without a crown; but the true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize and is crowned. And this is the way with the just; he who endures to the end of every action and occasion of his entire life has a good report and carries off the prize which men bestow. (Text.)—Plato.
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ENDURANCE OF PAIN
The incident below, printed in the New York Times, illustrates how pride and resolution will fortify a man to endure pain:
“Whom do you s’pose I’ve got inside here? Old one-eyed Ben Tillman! And if I don’t make him squeal nobody can. I won’t do a thing to him—oh, my!” And the dentist-surgeon brandished his forceps gleefully and returned to the pleasure of torturing the senator.
Next day the same young man came again. “Well, did you succeed in making Tillman yell?” he asked. The dentist shook his head sadly. “No,” he replied in a disappointed tone. “I couldn’t make him flinch. He didn’t make a sound, and, d’ye know, when he got out of the chair he turned to me with a smile and said: ‘Say, doctor, I didn’t know before that you ran a painless dental shop.’” (Text.)
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ENDURING ART
You can go down into the narrow vault which Nero built as a retreat from the great heat, and you will find the walls painted all over with fanciful designs in arabesque, which have been buried beneath the earth fifteen hundred years; but when the peasants light it up with their torches, the colors flash out before you as fresh as they were in the days of St. Paul.—Wendell Phillips.
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ENEMIES
Mr. Vernon L. Kellogg, with a child friend, were watching an ant-dragon as he caught an ant in a sandpit-trap.
“But, see,” cried Mary, “the ant has stopt sliding. It is going to get out!”
Ah, Mary, you are not making allowance for all the resources of this dreadful dragon of the pit. Not only is the pit a nearly perfect trap, and the eager jaws at the bottom more deadly than any array of spikes or spears at the bottom of an elephant pit, but there is another most effective thing about this fatal dragon’s trap, and that is this: it is not merely a passive trap, but an active one. Already it is in action. And Mary sees now how hopeless it is with the ant. For a shower of sand is being thrown up from the bottom of the pit against the ant and it is again sliding down. The dragon has a flat, broad head and powerful neck muscles, and has wit enough to shovel up and hurl masses of dry sand-grains against the victim on the loose slopes. And this starts the avalanche again, and so down slides the frantic ant.—Vernon L. Kellogg, “Insect Stories.”
(911)
Enemies Among Animals—See [Subtlety Among Animals].
ENEMIES, AVOIDING
It would often be well for men to avoid enemies as did these sagacious rooks:
A curious incident in the recent history of the Gray’s Inn settlement of rooks is mentioned by a London correspondent in the Manchester Guardian. It appears that a couple of carrion crows settled in the gardens, and one day it was discovered that the rookery was deserted. The benchers, who are particularly proud of their rooks, gave orders for the carrion crows to be destroyed, and the gardener prepared pigeon’s eggs with good doses of arsenic. The crows swallowed them and seemed to grow fatter and healthier. At last strychnine was used, and the pair were poisoned. Then a curious thing happened. Not a rook had been seen for weeks at Gray’s Inn, but the next day they were all back as tho advised by telegram.
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ENEMIES CONVERTED
Count Witte, Russian Prime Minister, summoned his secretary one day and gave him this order:
“Make out a full list of the authors of the articles that are directly against me in the daily press.”
The secretary went to work, and with the aid of his office force in a week prepared a list of about a thousand articles, with the writer’s names appended. The clippings were properly classified, put in an album, and dutifully handed to the Premier.
“In how many instances,” he asked, “have I been commended?”
“In three, your excellency.”
“Very well; now select the most abusive and personal of the unfavorable articles, and let me know the names of the writers.”
This list, too, was duly prepared and presented.
“Shall I bring this to the attention of the public prosecutor?” queried the secretary.
“For what purpose?”
“Why, to institute proceedings under the statutes regulating the press.”
“No, I do not wish it,” said the Premier. “I wish to select from these journalists my most aggressive critic and make him my advocate and spokesman. I shall offer him the editorship of my organ. Experience has taught me that the best champion and most faithful defender is the man who has been your bitterest assailant.” (Text.)
(913)
Enemies of Character—See [Self-conflict].
Enemy of the World, An—See [Mystery, Value of].
ENERGY
What unused energy still awaits utilization by man is indicated in the following calculation:
The tremendous amount of energy received from the sun may be illustrated in another way. Ordinary steam-engines, whether for railroad or factory use, are rated by their horse-power; a hundred-horse-power engine will drive a small steamer or operate a mill of some two hundred and fifty looms. Now, thirty calories of heat per minute, if completely utilized, would produce 2.8 horse-power. Neglecting atmospheric absorption, therefore, each square meter of the earth’s surface receives from the sun, when directly overhead, sufficient energy to run a 2.8 horse-power engine; or one horse-power is received for every four square feet of surface. The absorption of the air cuts this down about forty per cent, so that on a clear day at sea-level, with the sun directly overhead, sufficient energy to produce one horse-power is received on each six and a half square feet of surface.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”
(914)
See [Momentum].
Energy, Economy of—See [Economy of Energy].
ENERGY, INDOMITABLE
Seldom has there been seen a more inspiring example of indomitable energy triumphing over fate than that which the Engraver Florian is now giving to the world, says the New York World.
Six years ago, while at work upon the designs for the new French bank-notes, he was suddenly stricken by paralysis. His right side became as if dead; he was bereft of speech; the hand whose skill had made him famous was useless forever. Did he complain? Did he resign himself to the inevitable? Did he sit down in despair and allow his young wife and daughters to support him? Not for a moment. He let the women work, it is true, but only while he learned to engrave with the left hand.
Hour after hour, day after day, month after month he passed, struggling with that awkward, untrained left hand, drawing at first crudely like a little child, then with ever-increasing precision. Gradually he educated the refractory member to obey his will. Drawing, water-color painting, designing for typographers succeeded one another, until to-day he has again attained absolute mastery over the engraver’s tools. Arsene Alexandre, the famous art critic, saw him at work recently, his wooden block screwed to a table, his left hand plying the tools with all the deftness his now dead right hand formerly possest, his speechless lips smiling and his face radiant with happiness.
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ENGLISH, ERRORS IN
The following specimens of false syntax are given by the Printers’ Register:
A man who was suddenly taken sick “hastened home while every means for his recovery was resorted to. In spite of all his efforts he died in the triumphs of the Christian religion.” “A man was killed by a railroad car running into Boston supposed to be deaf.” A man writes, “We have decided to erect a schoolhouse large enough to accommodate five hundred scholars five stories high.” On a certain railway the following luminous direction was printed: “Hereafter when trains in an opposite direction are approaching each other on separate lines, conductors and engineers will be requested to bring their respective trains to a dead halt before the point of meeting, and be careful not to proceed till each train has passed the other.” A steamboat captain, advertising an excursion, says: “Tickets, twenty-five cents; children half-price to be had at the office.” An Iowa editor says: “We have received a basket of fine grapes from our friend W., for which he will please accept our compliments, some of which are nearly two inches in diameter.”—Printers’ Register.
(916)
English Passage, Superb—See [Solace of the Sea].
ENGROSSMENT IN BUSINESS
The character is shaped by that which engrosses the attention most. Rev. W. F. Crafts, Ph.D., says:
A profane sea-captain came to a mission station on the Pacific, and the missionary talked with him upon religious subjects. The captain said, “I came away from Nantucket after whales; I have sailed round Cape Horn for whales; I am now up in the Northern Pacific Ocean after whales. I think of nothing but whales. I fear your labor would be entirely lost upon me, and I ought to be very frank with you. I care for nothing by day but whales, and I dream of them at night. If you should open my heart I think you would find the shape of a sperm-whale there.”
(917)
Enlarging Objects—See [Science, Improvements by].
ENLIGHTENMENT
The difference between the savage and the enlightened man is often due to Christian civilization.
John Williams tells how the Raratongans were excited and overawed when, for the first time, they saw him send a written message to his wife. He requested a chief, who was helping, to take the chip to Mrs. Williams; but, thinking the missionary to be playing a joke on him, he asked, “What must I say?” “Nothing,” said Mr. Williams; “the chip will say all that I wish.” “But can a chip talk? Has it a mouth?” He got what he went for, and, still more perplexed, could only exclaim: “See the wisdom of these English! They can even make chips talk!”—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”
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ENTHUSIASM
The most terrific heat known to science is a torch operated by oxygen and acetylene, radiating a heat of 6,300 degrees, by means of which it is possible to weld aluminum, heretofore regarded as an impossibility. The torch makes a flame that will cut through two inches of solid steel in less than a minute and pierce a twelve-inch piece of the hardest steel in less than ten minutes—a task that would take a saw almost twenty hours to accomplish.
When the soul burns with the heat of great enthusiasm, it will burn through obstacles that are entirely insuperable to ordinary efforts.
(919)
Enthusiasm for One’s Work—See [Art, Devotion to].
ENTICEMENT
In the legend, the Duchess Isabella, wishing earnestly to obtain some object, was instructed by the crafty court astrologer to kiss day by day for a hundred days a certain beautiful picture, and she would receive the fulfilment of her wish. It was a sinister trick, for the picture contained a subtle poison which stained the lips with every salutation. Little by little the golden tresses of the queenly woman turned white, her eyes became dim, her color faded, her lips became black; but, infatuated, the suicidal kiss was continued until before the hundred days were complete the royal dupe lay dead.
So we yield ourselves to the sorcery of sin; despite many warnings, we persist in our fellowship with what seems truth, beauty, liberty, pleasure, until our whole soul is poisoned and destroyed. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(920)
See [Allurement, Fatal].
ENVIRONMENT
The Seminole Indians have a tradition regarding the white man’s origin and superiority. The Great Spirit made three men of fair complexion and then led them to a lake and bade them leap in. One immediately obeyed, and came out of the water whiter than before; the second did not leap in until the water became slightly muddy, and when he bathed he came out copper-colored; the third leaped in when the water was black with mud and he came out black.
Every man has some choice as to the kind of environment into which he will plunge, and the color of his character will ultimately show his choice.
(921)
The gardener bird of New Guinea builds its nest, and lays out a garden-plot in front, of grass and mosses; and when the female bird is sitting on her eggs the mate flies about in search of the brightest-colored leaves and flowers, which are placed upon this plateau of garden.
Many men have been reclaimed and encouraged by surrounding them with a beautiful environment.
(922)
Surely, it is not environment that makes temperament. Bittern and blackbird both frequent bogs, yet the bittern is a lonely misanthrope, whom I more than half suspect of being melancholy-mad, while the blackbird is as cheery and as fond of his fellows as a candidate.—Winthrop Packard, “Wild Pastures.”
(923)
You may take a piece of wax, and a piece of meat, and some sand, and some clay, and some shavings, and put them in the fire, and see how they act. One goes to melting, and one to frying, and one to drying up, and one to hardening, and one to blazing; and every one acted on by the same agent.
So, under identical moral influences and in the same environment, one man goes wrong, another repents, and another remains indifferent. Not what is done to us but what we do is the thing that determines character and destiny.
(924)
ENVIRONMENT, ADAPTATION TO
Joseph Cook taught that character tends to assume a fixt type, as marked as in the case of mice, cited below:
Mice were originally natives of southern Asia. From there they have accompanied man in his wanderings to all parts of the world, traveling, as he has traveled, in ox-teams and on the backs of donkeys, by steamship and railway; taking up their quarters wherever he does, first in log-cabins with thatched roofs; and finally, in some instances, on the nineteenth floor of a steel building where generation after generation may live and die in turn without having so much as touched foot to the earth.
Strangely enough, the race seems to be proof against the changes wrought upon most animals by difference in environment. Specimens from the opposite sides of the globe, or from widely separated latitudes, are said to be practically indistinguishable, as if at last the species had hit upon a style of form and coloring perfectly suited to all conditions of life.—Witmer Stone and William Everett Cram, “American Animals.”
(925)
Environment and Man—See [Mean, The Golden].
Environment Controlled—See [Control of Circumstances].
ENVIRONMENT, CREATING OUR OWN
Often the individual bemoans the depression of environment. A converse fact may be referred to, namely, that man produces his own environment. It is in his power largely to make his own world, by paying attention to the things of himself. An illustration of this is found by an English writer who insists that we can make our own climates, as he says:
Effective sanitary ventilation should supply gentle and uniformly diffused currents of air of moderate and equal temperature throughout the house. We talk a great deal about the climate here and the climate there; and when we grow old, and can afford it, we move to Bournemouth, Torquay, Menton, Nice, Algiers, etc., for better climates, forgetting all the while that the climate in which we practically live is not that out-of-doors, but the indoor climate of our dwellings, the which, in a properly constructed house, may be regulated to correspond to that of any latitude we may choose.
(926)
ENVIRONMENT, DESTRUCTIVE
An English writer, with some novel ideas of how the smoke-laden atmosphere of London might be purified, writes:
At one time I thought of proposing the establishment of horticultural home-missions for promoting the dissemination of flowerpot shrubs in the metropolis, and of showing how much the atmosphere of London would be improved if every London family had one little sweetbrier-bush, a lavender-plant, or a hardy heliotrope to each of its members; so that a couple of millions of such ozone generators should breathe their sweetness into the dank and dead atmosphere of the denser central regions of London.
A little practical experience of the difficulty of growing a clean cabbage, or maintaining alive any sort of shrub in the midst of our soot-drizzle, satisfied me that the mission would fail, even tho the sweetbriers were given away by the district visitors; for these simple hardy plants perish in a mid-London atmosphere unless their leaves are periodically sponged and syringed, to wash away the soot particles that otherwise close their stomata and suffocate the plant.
The ingenious scheme would fail because the plants themselves would become foul and need to be cleansed. Failing this, they would die. So in life character is easily incrusted with the spirit of worldliness. (Text.)
(927)
ENVIRONMENT INADEQUATE
Shortly after Chief Justice Chase had gone for the first time to Washington, he was returning to the West. The train stopt at a little station in Virginia, and he was informed that it was the birthplace of Patrick Henry. He immediately left the car and stood upon the platform, admiring the magnificence of the scenery that opens before the traveler. He said, “What an atmosphere! What a view! What glorious mountains! No wonder that Patrick Henry grew here.” One of the natives, who was standing by his side, quietly replied, “Yes, sir; but as far as I have heard, that landscape and those mountains have always been here; but we haven’t seen any more Patrick Henrys.”
(928)
ENVIRONMENT, SPIRITUAL
A Dutch scientist has just completed five years’ study in South America. He took some insects from Holland into the rich tropic atmosphere, changed their environment, put them in a friendly environment, and gave them the best food. He expected to modify their coloring, having exchanged the damp, foggy sky of Holland for the brilliant hues of the tropics. And lo! these insects doubled their size; the dim subdued tints became gay and brilliant. At last he discovered that insects that in Holland crawled, in the South spread their wings to fly and meet God’s sun. He began with potato-bugs in Holland; he ended with brilliant creatures that lived on the nectar of flowers, and only five summers and winters stood between the marvel. Oh, marvelous transformation, through environment and food! More marvelous still the way the soul can grow. Last year you lived in the damp, foggy miasmatic levels of selfishness; sordidness, like a cloud, wrapt you about. Suppose you take down your tent, and move into the tropic realm of love and faith and hope. Open the soul’s wings to the light, the sun and dew of God’s spirit. Live in the atmosphere of purity and prayer. Expel hate and fear, like poisonous winds. Imitate Christ’s life. Love the master spirits. Read the great poets. Insist upon leisure to grow ripe. Guard your hours of solitude; practice the presence of God.—N. D. Hillis.
(929)
ENVIRONMENT THAT TRANSFORMS
The Japanese have an ingenious way of changing the color and appearance of birds and animals. For example, white sparrows are produced by selecting a pair of grayish birds and keeping them in a white cage, in a white room, where they are attended by a person drest in white. The mental effect on a series of generations of birds results in completely white birds. (Text.)
(930)
ENVY
The Duchess of Argyll is reported to have written to various European monarchs asking them whom they envied. Among the answers was one from the Czar of Russia, as follows: “I sincerely envy every man who is not loaded down with the cares of a great empire, and who has not to weep for the woes of a people.”
Not infrequently the envied are the envying, because each one is apt to think his own lot the hardest.
(931)
Good men are often hated for their goodness by bad men, who can not endure the contrast with themselves. An unidentified writer points out this kind of envy in the following verse:
A glowworm sat in the grass;
As I passed through the wood I found it;
Bright as a diamond it shone,
With a halo of light around it.
A toad came up from the fen;
It was ugly in every feature;
Like a thief it crept to the worm,
And spat on the shining creature.
“What have I done,” said the worm,
“As I sat here in silence nightly?”
“Nothing,” replied the toad;
“But why did you shine so brightly?” (Text.)
(932)
ENVY GRATIFIED
Persons accustomed to gaze in awe upon suit-cases and steamer-trunks covered with labels of every size and color, thinking the while enviously of the fortunate owners of such baggage, who have such an advantage over the poor stay-at-homes, may perhaps be surprized to learn that there are shops where such labels may be had.
It is quite feasible, therefore, for any one to have his case or trunk covered with nicely worn labels, indicating that the owner thereof has roamed from Sydney to San Francisco; from Copenhagen to Colombo, to say nothing of all the capitals of Europe and Asia, with divers famous water-places thrown in for good measure.—Harper’s Weekly.
(933)
Ephemera—See [Brevity of Life]; [Happiness a Good].
Epidemic from Neglect—See [Neglect, Consequences of].
Epitaph, Curious—See [Man a Timekeeper].
EPITAPHS
The following epitaphs, with the comment on them, are taken from the London Daily News:
There is an interesting epitaph on a gravestone in Poling churchyard, Sussex. It runs:
Here
Lieth ye Body
of Alice, ye wife, of Bobt
Woolbridge, who Died
the 27th of May, 1740.
Aged 44 years.
The World is a round thing,
And full of crooked streets.
Death is a market place,
Where all men meets.
If Life was a thing
That money could buy,
The Rich would live,
And the poor would die.
Here is another:
Poor Martha Snell has gone away,
Her would if she could, but her couldn’t stay,
She had two sore legs and a badish cough,
But it were her legs as carried her off.
Less comic, but more witty, is the epitaph found at Kingsbridge, S. Devon.
Here lieth the body of Robert (commonly called “Bone”) Phillips, who died July 27th, 1793, aged 65 years, and at whose request the following lines are here inscribed:
Here lie I at the Chancel door;
Here lie I because I am poor;
The further in the more you’ll pay,
Yet here lie I as warm as they.
Here is an epitaph on a last-maker, who is said to be buried at Llanflantwythyl:
Stop, stranger, stop, and wipe a tear
For the Last man at last lies here,
Tho ever-last-ing he has been,
He has at last passed life’s last scene.
Famed for good works, much time he passed,
In doing good—He has done his last.
The following, more philosophic and general in its application, is on an eighteenth-century tombstone in Saint Mary’s Parish Churchyard, Mold, North Wales.
Life’s like an Inn where Travelers stay.
Some only Breakfast, and away.
Others to dinner stay, and are well fed.
The oldest only sup and go to Bed.
Long is the Bill who lingers out the day.
He that goes the soonest Has the Least to Pay.
The correspondent also sends us an epitaph which has pithiness and force. It runs:
Here lies W. W.
Who will nevermore trouble you.
It was an epitaph which called forth the following topical epigram from Dr. Samuel Clarke, who had just seen the inscription, “Domus Ultima,” on the vault belonging to the Dukes of Richmond in the Cathedral of Chichester. In a mood of satire he wrote:
Did he who thus inscribed the wall
Not read, or not believe, St. Paul,
Who says there is, where’er it stands,
Another house, not made with hands.
Or may we gather from these words
That house is not a House of Lords.
(934)
Equality, The Spirit of—See [Respect, No, of Persons].
EQUALIZATION
The practise of some physicians is practically the philosophy of Christian socialism: “From every man according to his ability, to every man according to his need.”
“A Philadelphia judge,” says American Medicine, “has given expression to the opinion that ‘the life of a rich man is worth more than the life of a poor man, and the physician has a right to charge the millionaire more for his services than he does the laborer.’ He went on further to say that ‘the physician is unlike the merchant, who has goods of different quality to sell at various prices. He must give his best service in every case. Human life has a pecuniary value of variable quality, greater in the millionaire than in the laborer. Thus, the practitioner of common sense has a maximum and a minimum charge, and makes out his bills to suit the pecuniary circumstances of his patients.’” The writer thinks that “there will be no dissent on the part of right-thinking people” from this view. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would appear to justify a sliding-scale of prices for all the necessities of life, carefully adjusted to the varying incomes of the users. (Text.)
(935)
The conclusion reached in this extract leaves out of account the presence in the cosmos of a living God:
The quantity of energy existing in the universe remains constant, but transforms itself little by little into heat uniformly distributed at a temperature everywhere identical. In the end, therefore, there will be neither chemical phenomena nor manifestation of life; the world will still exist, but without motion; and, so to speak, dead.—Lucien Poincaré, “The New Physics and its Evolution.”
(936)
Equilibrium in Nature—See [Complexity in Organs].
Equipment and Results—See [Medical Missions].
Error as a Benefactor—See [Discovery, Accidental].
ERROR CORRECTED
Human nature must be perfected by long processes of improvement analogous to that employed in getting a perfect chronometer.
From the practical point of view, chronometry has made in these last few years very sensible progress. The errors in the movements of chronometers are corrected in a much more systematic way than formerly, and certain inventions have enabled important improvements to be effected in the construction of these instruments. Thus, the curious properties which steel combined with nickel—so admirably studied by M. Guillaume—exhibits in the matter of dilatation are now utilized so as to almost completely annihilate the influence of variations of temperature.—Lucien Poincaré, “The New Physics and its Evolution.”
(937)
Error Exposed—See [Dogmatism, Mistaken].
ERROR IN REASONING
It frequently happens that men are perfectly correct in their premises and in observing the facts, while their conclusions may be wholly wrong.
Ptolemy clearly saw that, if the alternation from day to night is caused by a rotation of the earth, then points on the equator must move with a speed of nearly one thousand miles an hour, a velocity exceeding more than tenfold that of the wind in the severest storm. A terrible gale would thus always blow from the east; birds in flight and objects thrown into the air would be left behind and carried with frightful rapidity toward the west. As these things do not happen, the earth, Ptolemy concludes, must be at rest.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”
(938)
Error Leading to Success—See [Experiment].
Eruption of Evil—See [Evil Eruptive].
Escape—See [Ingenuity]; [Rescue].
ESSENTIALS
Immediately after one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War a chaplain of one of the Federal regiments passed over the field of conflict in the performance of his duty. He noticed among the prostrate bodies one which moved, and quickly was at the side of a dying soldier. Recognizing that the man had not long to live, he at once proceeded to administer, but in rather a formal manner, the consolations of religion. Kneeling at the man’s side, he asked him to what church he belonged, and the surprizing answer came, “The Church which God hath purchased with His own blood.” “Oh, but that is not what I mean,” said the minister, “what is your belief?” The mortally wounded disciple replied, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” “Oh,” said the chaplain, “but you do not understand me—what is your persuasion?” The answer came from lips which were quivering in the agonies of death, “I am persuaded that neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and with these words the soldier passed into the presence of Him who is the Savior of all them that believe in Him.
(939)
Estimating One’s Self—See [Self-depreciation].
ETERNAL LIFE, MAKING ROOM FOR
Have you ever noticed what happens when from one cause or another the water-mains in any street have become choked or polluted by the intrusion of some foreign body? You will see some one come along with an iron instrument and turn on the stopcock at some point in the roadway. Immediately there comes an up-rush, a mighty volume of water—swirling, heaving, rolling, hurtling out of the pipes beneath. And you will observe, too, that for a time it seems to be charged with filth; whatever it is that has been blocking the flow of the life-giving element is being stirred up and flung out with immense force. But after a time the jet clears, the evil is gone, the water becomes sweet and pure, and the flow full and steady. Then the covering is replaced; the cleansing process is at an end. And so it is with you and me. God has to get rid of our selfishness somehow that the life eternal may possess us through and through. The cleansing may seem to be a stern matter, but it is best to let Him have his way to the uttermost. We must be crucified with Christ in order to live with Him, but no man would ever repine at what it costs if he could foresee what is to be gained.—R. J. Campbell, The Christian Commonwealth.
(940)
ETERNAL, THE, AT HAND
A lady recently related in one of the journals how she went through a veritable blizzard to view a flower-show. With one step she passed out of the wild night, the deep snow, the bitter wind, into a brilliant hall filled with hyacinths, tulips, jonquils, cyclamens, azaleas, roses and orchids.
It is the privilege of godly men, at any time, to pass at a step from the savage conflicts of life right into the sweet fellowship of God, finding grace to help in the time of need.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(941)
ETERNITY
Walter Samuel Swisher is the author of these lines:
Unquiet sea, that endlessly doth stretch
Beyond the straining, finite sight of man:
Why dost thou toss in infinite unrest,
Oh, why no far, faint shore-line can we scan?
Full many a bark thy serried billows crossed,
Full many a sail hath spread before the wind,
But none hath e’er returned; the tempest-tost
And anxious mariner doth haven find
In fairer clime, in sunny land afar,
Where no storms rudely break or winds contend.
There nothing enters in their joy to mar,
Who have the peace of God, which knows no end.
Oh, may we, too, that stand with straining eye—
Looking far out, where wind and wave contend—
Set sail with hope to those fair lands that lie
Beneath the peace of God, that knows no end.
(942)
ETERNITY AS A SPUR
Once, when tempted to linger in a lovely landscape, Wesley cried, “I believe there is an eternity; I must arise and go hence”; and those words express the temper of his life. He lived in the spirit of Andrew Marvel’s strong lines:
Ever at my back I hear
Time’s winged chariots hurrying near.
“And this,” Johnson complained, “is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(943)
Ether, Doctrine of—See [Mystery in Religion].
Ethical Judgments—See [Judging from Facts].
ETHICAL PRINCIPLE
Horace Bushnell, the great preacher, when he was a young man, was troubled with religious doubts. He was an instructor in Yale College when a gracious revival prevailed in that institution. Fearing lest he should stand in the way of younger men who might follow his example, he became troubled in mind exceedingly. He walked the floor of his room in deep study. At last he reached this conclusion: “There is one thing of which I have no doubt: there is a difference between right and wrong. Am I willing to throw myself on the side of right as far as I can see the right?” That ethical principle dissolved his doubts. (Text.)
(944)
Etiquette—See [Absurd Notions].
Etiquette, Breaches of—See [Missionaries’ Mistakes].
Etiquette in the East—See [Calls and Conveyances in the East]; [Propriety].
Etiquette Superseded—See [Courage versus Etiquette].
EVANESCENT LITERATURE
We may be sure that any piece of literature which attracts only by some trick of style, however it may blaze up for a day and startle the world with its flash, lacks the element of endurance. We do not need much experience to tell us the difference between a lamp and a Roman candle. Even in our day we have seen many reputations flare up, illuminate the sky, and then go out in utter darkness. When we take a proper historical perspective, we see that it is the universal, the simple, that lasts.—Charles Dudley Warner, Atlantic Monthly.
(945)
EVANGELISM, APOSTOLIC
As the fairy god Ceres in the old Greek mythologies went forth from Mount Olympus moving over the desert land, touching the miry bog and widening it into a river; touching the thorn-tree and causing it to be laden with olives, and the brier and it bears its luscious figs; touching the desert plain and it becomes a garden, so these disciples, filled with the light and love of Jesus Christ, go forth into the mortal darkness and spiritual destitution of the heathen world until under their influence pagan Rome casts all her idol gods into the sea and crowns Jesus King of kings and Lord of lords.—J. H. Jowett.
(946)
EVANGELISM, UNHERALDED
In my mail the other evening I received this unsigned letter:
“I won’t let this incident pass without writing to you of it. My little daughter is a member of your Sunday-school. I do not have any religious faith. All my life I have been an unbeliever. The children of our neighborhood went to Sunday-school, and my little girl wanted to go with them. I consented. She came home one Sunday with certain verses to commit to memory, and said that when she learned them perfectly and recited them to her teacher, she would get a Bible as a reward. Last Sunday she did not return at the usual time. I waited for her for a while, and then went to the Sunday-school to see if she was there. I went into a room, and at once saw my little one standing and reciting the verses which she had studied. The young lady who was hearing her had her arm around her. Oh, sir! I can not describe the feeling that went through my whole being. I thought, If some one had done that to me when I was a child, what a different life I might have had! As I stood looking upon the scene, I made up my mind that I would start next Sunday and go to church, and try and get into touch with the spirit which the Sunday-school teacher showed.”—J. F. Carson, Sunday-school Times.
(947)
EVANGELISM, UNUSUAL
Rev. W. E. Bentley, who is rector of an Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, has induced nearly twenty young actors to quit the stage and become Episcopal ministers. He maintains what is almost a theological seminary.
(948)
EVANGELIZATION
In regard to the divine method for the evangelization of the world, the following bit of imagery is not without its deeper meaning. Mr. S. D. Gordon imagines that after Jesus went back to heaven, He and Gabriel had a conversation something like this:
Gabriel is saying: “Master, you died for the whole world down there, did you not?” “Yes.” “You must have suffered much.” “Yes.” “And do they all know about it?” “Oh, no; only a few in Palestine know about it so far.” “Well, Master, what have you done about telling the world that you have died for them? What is your plan?”
“Well,” the Master is supposed to answer, “I asked Peter and James and John and Andrew, and some more of them down there, just to make it the business of their lives to tell others, and others, and yet others, and still others, until the last man in the farthest circle has heard the story.”
And Gabriel is supposed to answer: “Yes—but—suppose Peter fails. Suppose after a while John simply does not tell others. Suppose their descendants, their successors away off in the first edge of the twentieth century, get so busy that they do not tell others, what then?”
And back comes the voice of Jesus, “Gabriel, I haven’t made any other plans—I’m counting on them.” (Text.)
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EVAPORATION
Said Moody: “We are leaky vessels and need constant replenishing. If we cut a leafy branch from a growing plant and put it in a warm oven, the leaves and stem will soon become smaller and lighter and more brittle, because the water in the branch has been evaporated by the heat. Often more than four-fifths of the weight of a growing plant is water. Hay is dried grass. The farmer cuts his grass and lets it lie exposed to the heat of the sun until most of the water it contained has evaporated.” (Text.)
(950)
Ever-living, The—See [Future Reunion].
Evidence—See [Proof].
EVIDENCE, CHRISTIAN
Mr. A. J. Cassatt, the late president of the Pennsylvania Railway, was once making a quiet tour over one of the branches of the system, and wandered into an out-of-the-way switch-yard, where something one of the yardmen was doing did not meet with his approbation. He made some suggestion to the man, who asked: “Who are you that’s trying to teach me my business.” “I am an officer of the road,” replied Mr. Cassatt. “Let’s see your switch-key, then,” said the man suspiciously. Mr. Cassatt pulled from his hip pocket his key-ring, to which was attached the switch-key, which no railroad man in service is ever without. It was sufficient proof for the switchman, who then did as he was told.
If we are going to have any real leadership in dealing with the souls of men they must see in our conversation, in the tone of our character, in the spirit of our life, that we possess the “switch-key,” the evident presence of Christ. (Text.)
(951)
Evidence, Conclusive—See [Testimony, A Sheep’s].
EVIDENCE, LIVING
The advocates of moderate drinking of intoxicants are among the most persistent and audacious of advisers of their own various deleterious decoctions, but they constantly supply, involuntarily enough, the most appalling contradiction of their own commendations.
A gentleman riding on a car noticed on the advertising spaces, placarded in immense type, the words: “Pure Rye Whisky—Tones up the Body, Brightens the Intellect, Invigorates the Soul.” This kind of “puffing” advertisement is common enough and the gentleman might have paid very little attention to it but his eyes happened to drop to a seat underneath the advertisement on which was lounging a drunken man. The eyes of this wretched being were bleared, his face bloated, with the lines of dissipation deeply engraven in it, and his body slouched down in the collapsing style characteristic of the habitual inebriate. That drunken man was a lurid illustration of the absolute falsehood of the advertisement. He as a ruined victim constituted the true advertisement of the effects of alcoholic indulgence.
(952)
EVIDENCE, PROVIDENTIAL
In the year 1799, Lieutenant Michael Fitton, of H. M. S. Ferret, was cruising off Port Royal, when his crew caught a big shark. Inside it was found a bundle of ship’s papers belonging to an American brig, the Nancy. On his return to Port Royal, Lieutenant Fitton found that the Nancy had been brought in for carrying contraband of war. Her skipper produced other papers to the authorities, which apparently cleared the ship—false papers which had been prepared in the event of the vessel being stopt. Her true papers, which proved that the Nancy was deeply implicated in the contraband traffic, had been thrown overboard just before she was overhauled, and the shark had swallowed them. The case was tried in the court-house at Kingston, where, at the critical moment, Lieutenant Fitton appeared on the scene and produced his find, to the consternation of the other side. The Nancy was forthwith condemned as a lawful prize, and her skipper was fined and sent to jail.
The head of the shark is in London, at the United Service Institution. It was for some time set up on show at Port Royal, Jamaica, with this label attached: “Lieutenant Fitton recommends these jaws for a collar for neutrals to swear through.”
(953)
EVIL, BEGINNINGS OF
A while ago the omnibus on its way from Gray’s Inn Road to Islington (England) had to traverse a narrow and dangerous piece of roadway—a sharp, slippery declivity called “The Devil’s Slide.” How terrible, indeed, is the devil’s slide! How tempting it is!—a short cut, a very short cut, to fame, wealth, power, pleasure. How graduated and smooth it is! What a specious name it often has! Strangely enough, that declivity in London was called “Mount Pleasant”; and the downward roads of life often are known by charming names. But enter on that slide, and you soon attain a startling velocity; sooner or later you arrive at an ignominious doom. Let no man think himself safe. The circles of crime dipping to very murky depths of hell are not far from any one of us. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(954)
EVIL BY DEGREES
Many a man grows so accustomed to his evil environment that he fails to realize how he is being spiritually ruined.
In a certain laboratory experiment a live frog was placed in water heated at the rate of .0036 of a degree Fahrenheit per second. The frog never moved or showed any sign of distress, but was found at the end of two hours and a half to be dead. The explanation was that at any point of time the temperature of the water showed such little contrast with that of a moment before that the attention of the frog was never attracted by it. It was boiled to death without noticing it.
(955)
EVIL DEFLECTED
Surmounting the tower of the City Hall, Philadelphia, is a colossal statue of William Penn. During a thunder-storm sometimes the lightning plays about its surface of bronze, like oil on water. Electricians say that it can not be damaged because a two-inch copper cable runs down into a well beneath the foundation-walls, conducting the dangerous current harmlessly away.
Still more immune from evil is the man whom God protects. (Text.)
(956)
EVIL DEVELOPMENT RAPID
Evil grows of itself, grows vigorously. With infinite care we rear the rare roses, but how spontaneously and luxuriantly spring the weeds! By costly culture we ripen the golden sheaf, but how the noxious poppies bloom! Very tenderly must we nourish things of beauty, but how the vermin breed and swarm! And so, while the germs of good in our heart come to fruition only after long years of vigilance and devotion, the tares are ever springing up in a night, dashing the beauty with their blackness, and bearing the hundredfold of bitterness and blasting.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(957)
EVIL, DISGUISED
If destructive moral evils were shown in their real hideousness, no one would be drawn toward them! Vernon L. Kellogg describes the disguise of a certain insect:
The whole front of his (958) EVIL, ERUPTIVE Solfatara, a semi-extinct volcano near Pozzuoli, has opened a new crater two hundred and fifty feet from the ancient one. It is emitting a voluminous column of sulfurous gases. The activity of Solfatara always is supposed to coincide with the inactivity of Vesuvius. To stop one bad habit is not to transform the nature. The wicked are like a troubled sea that can not rest. If there are evil fires in the heart when you choke off one evil course the evil breaks out in some other way. (959) EVIL, ESCAPE FROM The saying which Rev. W. H. Fitchett attributes to John Wesley’s sister reminds one of Christ’s petition, “I pray not that thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou wouldst keep them from its evil.” Patty Wesley kept her intellect bright, wore a serene face amid all troubles, and by the sheer charm of her mental qualities became one of Dr. Johnson’s most intimate and valued companions. “Evil,” she once said, “was not kept from me, but evil has been kept from harming me.”—“Wesley and His Century.” (960) EVIL GERMINAL One evil contains within itself the possibilities of all evil. Medical writers have now much to tell touching the convertibility of disease. They have come to the conclusion that the constitutional defect appearing in a family in one generation is not necessarily transmitted in that exact form to succeeding generations. What appears at one time as insanity will reveal itself at another as epilepsy or paralysis; convulsions will reassert themselves as hysteria or insanity; insanity is converted into a tendency to suicide; the suicidal tendency will become a mania for drinking; what is neuralgia in the father may be melancholia in the son; what is deformity in one generation may be apoplexy in the next. In an afflicted family the constitutional defect has curious ramifications, and undergoes strange metamorphoses. It is much the same with evil. Men will indulge in one vice, while they express the utmost abhorrence of other vices of which they could never think themselves susceptible. But this is a mistake. All evils are one in root and essence; and surrendering ourselves to one form of iniquity, we surrender ourselves to all; changing circumstances and temptations will involve the lawbreaker in other sins, and in aggravated guilt.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.” (961) When the father of William the Conqueror was departing for the Holy Land, he called together the peers of Normandy and required them to swear allegiance to his young son, who was a mere infant; when the barons smiled at the feeble babe, the king promptly replied, “He is little, but he will grow.” He did grow, and the babyhand ere long ruled the nations as with a rod of iron. The same may be said of evil in its slenderest beginning, in its most inocuous form: “It is little, but it will grow.” In its beginning it is a fancy, a flash of thought, a look, a word, a touch, a gesture, a tone, an accent, an embryo that no microscope could detect; but at last it is a Cain, a Judas, a Nero. The acorn-cup yields the upas-tree; out of a spark flashes hell.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.” (962) EVIL, IGNORING How many things men permit to trouble them that they could just as easily pass by and forget! Has it been a weary day? Let it pass; Lots of others on the way— They will pass. Soon the skies will start to lighten, All around begin to brighten— And misfortune cease to frighten— Let it pass. Does the world the wrong way rub you? Let it pass. Does your best friend seem to snub you? Let it pass. Chances are you were mistaken, None are ever quite forsaken. All for naught your faith was shaken— Let it pass. (963) Evil Multiplies—See [Weeds, Warfare Against]. EVIL, PROTECTION FROM Should not character be saturated with preservative principles that will repel evil influences as the piling mentioned below resists the teredo: What will ultimately be the largest plant in the world for treating timber with preservatives, is now operated at Somerville, Tex., by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, says The Railway World. While every form of timber treatment is used, the creosote system has proved the most successful. Creosote is shipped to Galveston in shiploads and transported thence to Somerville, where it is used to preserve timber of every variety. This is very expensive, as may be seen when it is known that piling in its natural state costs about forty cents a foot, while a treated pile costs between ninety cents and one dollar. But it pays to go to the extra expense. Creosoted piling that has been in the Galveston bridge for nearly fifteen years is still sound and in a good state of preservation; while the average life of an untreated pile is less than one year, many of them being unfit for service after being in the water thirty days. This quick destruction is caused by the attacks of the teredo, a salt-water mollusk that honeycombs the wood to such an extent that in a short time it will not bear its own weight. (964) EVIL, PURGING FROM What would not the patient give to have the last fiber of the dreadful cancer removed, for while that fiber is there every possibility of the malady is there! Air, sunshine, fragrance, are all said to be fatal to destroying germs; let us saturate our soul day by day in the atmosphere and light and sweetness of the upper worlds, so shall all evil things die in us, and all good things live and grow in us.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.” (965) EVIL, REPELLENCE OF There was a white plant growing by the entrance to a coal-mine. One of the miners took a handful of the coal-dust and threw it on the leaves, but not a particle adhered. The plant was covered with a wonderful enamel on which nothing could leave a stain. It is not the Master’s plan for us that we should be taken out of the sinful world, to live our life where no evil can touch us. But God, who can make a little plant so that no dust can stain it, can by His grace also make our lives impervious to sin’s defiling. (966) EVIL SELF-DESTRUCTIVE Dr. Walter Kempster, of Milwaukee, Wis., suggests that as all the nations will probably soon agree to exclude anarchists from their territory, an island should be purchased in some healthy climate, to which they should all be exiled. Vessels should patrol the coast to prevent any leaving, but no attempt should be made to govern the colony. The anarchists would then have precisely what they demand—a colony free from government. They could then practise their heartless methods on one another and throw bombs with impunity. A better scheme to disgust them with anarchy could not be devised. It is on the same principle that the Bible tells us God will act, to extirpate evil from His universe by giving the evildoer opportunity to act out his nature. (Text.) (967) Evils, Small—See [Small Evils Hardest to Bear]. EVIL TURNED TO GOOD The Mauruans told the missionaries that they formerly attributed every evil that befell them to the anger of their “evil spirits,” but now they worshiped the living and true God, and they pointed to the demolished Maraes and mutilated idols as the proof of the great change. The change in the name of the gods, whom they now called “evil spirits,” was an indication of the radical change in their religious beliefs. In some cases the spears which had been used in warfare were found converted into staves to support the balustrades of the pulpit stairs, and not a vestige of idolatry was to be seen.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.” (968) EVIL, VIRULENCY OF In the history of the great calamity of Asiatic cholera in this country in 1832, mention is made of the emigrant steamer that brought the disease to these shores. The steamer touched at Quebec and at Montreal, and landed passengers infected with the disease at both points. Over this intervening distance of two hundred miles, the disease traveled in thirty hours. Pursuing the succeeding events of this history, the writer says: Over this long distance, thickly inhabited on both shores of the St. Lawrence, cholera made a single leap, without infecting a single village or a single house between the two cities, with the following exceptions. A man picked up a mattress thrown from the Voyageur, and he and his wife died of cholera; another man, fishing on the St. Lawrence, was requested to bury a body from the Voyageur, and he and his wife and nephew died. But more than 4,000 persons died of cholera in Montreal, and more than an equal number in Quebec. An emigrant ship conveying the disease had meanwhile touched at New York, and the mortality soon reached 3,500. These figures will at least indicate the virulence of the disease, when once originated, and the rapidity with which it spreads. In this account we see that every place touched by the plague-ship or any object from it became a new center from which the disease spread. So moral evil contaminates. Its virulency spans the centuries and affects every son of man. (Text.) (969) EVOLUTION Is the chimpanzee the coming man? The thought of Superintendent Conklin, of the Central Park Museum at New York, had a cast of that hue. He was deeply interested in the possibilities of the development of intelligence and culture in the chimpanzee race, and doubtless his dreams went far beyond the daring of his spoken hope. “Mr. Crowley,” a somewhat noted and remarkably intelligent specimen of this exalted race of monkeys, long adorned the museum, and at the time a helpmeet for him was imported. Dr. Conklin believed that their offspring would inherit their sagacity, and with two or three generations of careful training the least he expected was “a chimpanzee accustomed to wearing clothes, able to stand erect, capable of being taught the meaning of simple commands, and docile enough to obey them.” In the fifth or sixth generation, the doctor thought he should have chimpanzees able to perform to a limited extent the duties of servants. Following out the idea, the doctor predicted a gradual improvement in their features and eventually a possibility that they might grasp the meaning of words and phrases. This is surely a very practical experiment in Darwinian evolution, and tho it may seem funny, it is by no means ridiculous. If horses and dogs may be trained and taught, why not monkeys? And how much more useful would an intelligent trained monkey be by reason of his capacity to grasp and handle things? The story came a few years ago from South America that chimpanzees are already employed there in picking cotton in place of the emancipated slaves.—Springfield Union. (970) Evolution, Objection to—See [Brain in Man]. Exaction—See [Ideal, The]. Exactness of Nature—See [Individuality of Germs]. Exaggeration—See [Diminutives]. EXAMPLE During one of the hill campaigns in India some years ago, a British general was disgusted with the unsoldierlike attitude of a young Indian rajah who accompanied the forces. He would only condescend to ride, and never attempted to share the toils and labors of the march. One day the general decided to give him a much-needed lesson. Riding with him on a very hot day, he pointed out some soldiers on ahead pushing a gun up a long white road. “Do you see those men?” he asked the Indian rajah. “Yes, I see them.” “Well, one of them is the grandson of your Empress!” It was gallant Prince Christian Victor who delighted to share the burden, and who laid down his life later on in the South African War. The young rajah took the lesson to heart. Queen Victoria’s grandson thought it not undignified to help his brother soldiers in the weary labors of the march; henceforward, he, too, would help to “bear one another’s burdens.” (Text.) (971) The ancient Romans were accustomed to place in the vestibules of their houses the busts of their great men, that the young might be reminded of their noble deeds and illustrious virtues. The deeds and virtues of living men are still better examples. (Text.) (972) People are just as prone now as in the days when Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians to insist on their “right” to do whatever they think there is “no harm” in. “An idol does not affect meat one way or the other,” said Paul. “Very well,” replies the Corinthian Christian. “Mr. A. invites me to dine with him to-night, and I am going. He will have on his table parts of an animal which he has just been sacrificing in the temple of Venus, but what of that? He might have sold it to the butcher, and then if I had bought it, no harm would have come of eating it.” “Not so fast,” says the apostle. “If that supper is part of the worship even of an idol, you may dishonor Christ, of whose body you have partaken, by even seeming to worship other spirits. And even if you could afford it, others would stumble.” “But shall my liberty be circumscribed by the narrow-mindedness of another?” “Certainly,” says the apostle. “That is what we live for—to help others, not to eat and drink.” (973) It counts for much when men in high station have the moral courage to condemn unworthy things. President Taft walked out of a local theater in the first year he was President because he disapproved of the character of the play that was being produced. Friends of the President said that he was disgusted with the performance. The first act was too much for Mr. Taft and his sister-in-law. They saw nothing amusing, interesting or instructive in the depiction of typical scenes in a house of bad character. In order to avoid attracting attention and exciting comment by going out while the players were on the stage, they waited until the curtain fell on the first act and then left the theater. (974) See [Courage]; [Living the Gospel]; [Precept and Practise]. EXAMPLE, ATTENTION TO It is related of William E. Gladstone that at one time, when he was a mere boy, he was invited to dine at the home of a distinguished nobleman in England, who was also an official of high rank. His father, fearing that the child might in some way make himself appear ridiculous in the eyes of the prominent gentry who were to assemble at the same dining-table, gave him the parting injunction, “Watch your host and do just as he does.” Many men would get on in life more smoothly and attain success more rapidly and surely if they were attentive to the examples of their superiors. (Text.) (975) EXAMPLE, FORCE OF Oberlin tried to persuade the peasants of his parish to abandon some of their old methods of agriculture; but the wiseacres smiled and shook their heads. What should a mere pastor know of such matters? Oberlin therefore resolved to appeal to their eyes instead of their ears. There were two public paths through his gardens, so he and his servant carefully brought the soil into a high state of cultivation; and when the neighbors walked along and marked how the pastor’s crops were twice as large as their own, and saw the many strange vegetables growing, they condescended to make inquiries as to how he did it. “No, it was not done by angels in the night! God intended men to live by the sweat of the brow, to use the reason which He had given them, and so improve themselves and others.”—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.” (976) Example, Living—See [Religious Education]. Example Nullifying Precept—See [Inconsistency]. EXAMPLE OF PARENTS Carlyle, like Burns, came of peasant stock—strong, simple, Godfearing folk, whose influence in Carlyle’s later life is beyond calculation. Of his mother he says, “She was too mild and peaceful for the planet she lived in”; and of his father, a stone-mason, he writes, “Could I write my books as he built his houses, walk my way so manfully through this shadow world, and leave it with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes.”—William J. Long, “English Literature.” (977) EXAMPLE, POWER OF A footman stole a casket containing ten thousand francs’ worth of jewels and concealed it in a hole in the ground in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. When finally forced to confess, he declared that he had been so much imprest by the cunning of Sherlock Holmes and the skill of Moriarty as a criminal that he wished to imitate them. (978) Some laborers were working in a lime-kiln in the Pyrenees. One of them, descending into the kiln to look after something which had gone wrong, fell down suffocated. A second man, hurrying to his assistance, also fell. A third, fourth and fifth man followed, meeting the same fate. Only one remained. When he was about to jump, a woman who stood watching the tragedy, clutched him by the clothes and held him back. Later, to a magistrate who was holding an inquest, when asked why he attempted to make the self-sacrifice, the lone survivor replied: “My comrades were dying; I felt driven to go.” (979) Excellence—See [Character]. EXCELLENCE IS COMPARATIVE “What a world this would be,” says Christopher North, “were all its inhabitants to fiddle like Paganini, ride like Ducrow, discourse like Coleridge, and do everything else in a style of equal perfection!” Nay, good Christopher, the world would remain the same old dull commonplace world. Our standard would be raised, that is all. If every one rode like Ducrow, no one would stop a moment to look at Ducrow; if every one fiddled like Paganini, Paganini’s fiddle would be complained of by the neighbors as a nuisance; if every one discoursed like Coleridge, Coleridge would be voted an intolerable bore. We give our admiration to intellectual performances that are rare and difficult. The moment the rarity and the difficulty disappear our admiration also disappears, we seek fresh idols to worship,—Lippincott’s Magazine. (980) Excelling—See [Best, Making the]; [Encouragement]. Exceptional Men—See [Crowd, and the Exception]. Excess—See [Study Overdone]. Excess of Duty—See [Overplus of Duty]. EXCLUSION FROM HEAVEN A new story of Col. Robert J. Ingersoll is told by the Chicago Record-Herald: Bishop Potter once lay sick, so sick that his life was despaired of, and even his most intimate friends were denied admittance to his bedside. One day, however, Colonel Ingersoll called. Bishop Potter, learning that Ingersoll was in the house, demanded, despite the protest of his physicians and nurses, that the distinguished agnostic be asked into the sick-room. “How is it, Bishop,” said Ingersoll after he had offered his condolences to the invalid, “that I am so highly favored when your other friends are not allowed to see you?” “Well, you see, Colonel,” answered the Bishop weakly, “I may not recover from this illness, and if I do not I have every assurance of seeing the others in the next world. I realized that if I wished to see you again, I must do it here.” (Text.) (981) Exclusion of Evils—See [Fencing Out Enemies]. Exclusion versus Expulsion—See [Resistance]. EXCUSES The biographer of “Father Morris,” an American preacher of some local celebrity, tells of him this incident: He had noticed a falling off in his little village meeting for prayer. The first time he collected a tolerable audience, he took occasion to tell them something concerning the conference meeting of the disciples, after the resurrection. “But Thomas was not with them! Thomas not with them!” said the old man in a sorrowful voice. “Why, what could keep Thomas away? Perhaps,” said he, glancing at some of his auditors, “Thomas had got cold-hearted, and was afraid they would ask him to make the first prayer. Perhaps,” he continued, looking at some of the farmers, “he was afraid the roads were bad; or perhaps,” he added after a pause, “he thought a shower was coming on.” He went on, significantly summing up common excuses, and then with great simplicity and emotion he added: “But only think what Thomas lost, for in the middle of the meeting the Lord Jesus came and stood among them! Thomas was not with them when Jesus came.” (Text.) (982) See [Laziness, Excuses for]; [Reasons versus Excuses]. Exercise and Food—See [Food and Exercise]. EXERCISE PROLONGING LIFE William Cullen Bryant kept himself in a healthy bodily condition up to an extreme old age by taking long daily walks, and by swinging a chair, instead of Indian clubs, around his head each morning and evening. Bancroft, the historian, kept mind and body in tune by daily horseback exercise, while Mr. Gladstone was able at an advanced age to perform enormous mental work by the physical stamina which he maintained by cutting down trees in his park. These are only a few out of a large number of instances that might be cited, all going to show that health and life may be maintained and the mental powers continued unimpaired through old age if the obvious needs of the body are not neglected.—Boston Herald. EXERCISE, SPIRITUAL A new pastor was met by one of his parishioners who was fat and of many years, who said to the pastor: “You must feed the sheep.” Whereupon the pastor replied: “My dear old man, you do not need food, you need exercise.” (984) EXERCISE VERSUS MEDICINE Boerhaave, the famous physician, declared that a man was more likely to get well by climbing a tree than by drinking a decoction made of its leaves! That is, he thought exercise better than medicine.—London Hospital. (985) Exertion—See [Difficulties, Overcoming]. Exhaustion by Swallowing—See [Early Promise]. EXORCISM Mr. Sconten, writing from Kambui, East Central Africa, was an eye-witness of the following treatment for malarial fever of a lad and a girl, by a native medicine doctor: A hole in the ground was lined with banana-leaves and some water brought. Part of the water was poured on the ground beside the patients, and the rest was poured into the hole. The intestines of a sheep were emptied of their filth and the foreheads and palms of the sufferers and their relations smeared with it. The lad and girl were tied together by the feet with a vine, while the man mixed some colored powders in the water. The stomach of the sheep was then brought, and through a hole in the side the patients were made to suck in the fluid contents, and cast the rest into the colored water. Then, taking a bunch of herbs, the doctor lifted a good portion of the concoction and placed it in the mouth of each patient with a singsong monotone, saying: “By this I take away all the evil effects of whatever is troubling you, the attacks of evil spirits, whatever poison you may have eaten, whatever harm has been inflicted upon you by blacksmiths, whatever evil has come to you in the path, whatever disease has been brought upon you through your friends, whatever has been inflicted upon you by your enemies, and all disease with which God has afflicted you.” This was not all that he said, and he repeated it three times, all the while dipping from the nauseating mixture and putting it into the patients’ mouths. A foot of the sheep was then dipt into the remaining fluid and the ground sprinkled all around them, and their bodies sprinkled. Lastly, noses, thumbs and great toes were painted with white paint and they were untied, and told to go and get well. Both patients were in a dying condition the next day, while the medicine-man was feasting upon the good flesh of the slaughtered sheep. (986) When the first missionaries visited Marsovan, Turkey, the old Armenian church-members were Christians in little more than name. Their beliefs were a mixture of superstitions with a suggestion of a Christian origin. They feared the evil eye, and wore charms to break its power. They put branches of a thorny plant over their chimneys in the form of a cross to prevent witches from coming down and strangling their little children. They visited the graves of saints and offered prayers for relief from sickness, tying a rag on a near-by bush with the hope of returning home leaving their disease tied to the holy spot. (987) See [Birth Ceremonies]; [Demonology]. EXPECTORATING The father of President Hadley, of Yale, is reported to have said to certain members of one of his Greek classes who were guilty of a filthy habit: Gentlemen, those of you who expect to rate high in my esteem must not expectorate on the floor. This matter of expectoration is a very serious problem. If you do it in China, you should not do so toward the north. In certain sections of Africa, you may, if you like, expectorate upon a person, because in that particular language, the Benga, the word for bless and spit are precisely the same. It is the way in which you bless a person. But one must know the customs; for there are few places where men deem themselves blest when spit upon, no matter how sincere may be the missionary’s desire to bless everybody.—H. P. Beach, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906. (988) Expense Account—See [Balance, A Loose]. EXPERIENCE “I guess my father must have been a pretty bad boy,” said one youngster. “Why?” inquired the other. “Because he knows exactly what questions to ask when he wants to know what I have been doing.” (Text.) (989) I once met a veteran sailor, one of the old Hull and Decatur breed, who had been to sea forty years, and he told me he had never known a mutiny on board ship where the captain had risen from before the mast, implying that such an officer had acquired experience, and knew how to manage men as well as vessels.—James T. Fields. (990) It is better to be singed by the flame and suffer than not to know the experiences of living deeply. This seems to be the lesson in Helen A. Saxon’s verse below: Hast singed thy pretty wings, poor moth? Fret not; some moths there be That wander all the weary night Longing in vain to see The light. Hast touched the scorching flame, poor heart? Grieve not; some hearts exist That know not, grow not to be strong, And weep not, having missed The song. —The Reader. (991) See [Confidence]; [Familiarity]; [Life, The Winged]. EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER Everything in the Eskimo dress has a reason for its existence. The members of Captain Amundsen’s expeditions had become accustomed to the Eskimo dress and had adopted it, but many of them thought it ridiculous for grown-up men to go about wearing fringe to their clothes, so they cut it off. The captain had his scruples about this, as he had already learned that most things in the Eskimo’s clothing and other arrangements had their distinct meaning and purpose, so he allowed the fringe to remain on his garments in the face of ridicule. One bright, sunny day the anovaks, a variety of tunic reaching below the knee, made of deerskin, from which the fringe had been cut off, began to curl up, and if the fringe had not been put on again quickly, they would soon have looked like mere shreds. There is a purpose in every ordinance and ceremony of the Church. Observance of established forms is for the upbuilding of faith in the believer. (Text.) (992) EXPERIENCE AND BIBLE As the finger feels the smart when it touches the flame that stands airily quivering in its golden invitation, so the will which first touches a lie or a lust is conscious of a pang. Not outward in the Word, but inward in its life, is this warning against vice. When afterward it reads and meditates the Word, it finds symbols interpreted, precepts enforced, admonitions illumined, by this its prior inward experience.—Richard S. Storrs. (993) Experience as Proof—See [Tests, Personal]. EXPERIENCE DECISIVE A physician once remarked to S. H. Hadley, after having listened to his earnest appeals to drunkards to come to Jesus, “You would not talk to those men like that if you had ever seen inside a drunkard’s stomach.” “But I had a drunkard’s stomach,” quickly responded Mr. Hadley, “and Jesus saved me.” (994) Experience, Spiritual—See [Spiritual Perturbation]. EXPERIENCE TESTING THEOLOGY As for Wesley, an unrelenting thoroughness marked at every stage his temper in religion. He would have no uncertainties, no easy and soft illusions. Religion as a divine gift, as a human experience, was something definite. No intermediate stage was thinkable. And with a wise—but almost unconscious—instinct he put his theology to the one final test. He cast it into the alembic of experience. He tried it by the challenge of life; of its power to color and shape life. He spent the next thirteen years in that process, trying his creed with infinite courage, with transparent sincerity, and often with toil and suffering, by the rough acid of life, till at last he reached that conception of Christ and His gospel which lifted his spirit up to dazzling heights of gladness and power.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.” (995) See [Theology Shaped by Experience]. EXPERIENCE THE BEST ARGUMENT William Duncan, who later became “The Apostle of Alaska,” when a young man newly converted, encountered an aged commercial traveler, a well-known agnostic, but a stranger to young Duncan, and a battle royal of argument on religion ensued. The disciple of Taine and Voltaire was getting the better of the discussion with the young novice, when, leaping to his feet and looking his adversary squarely in the eye, Duncan said: “Sir, you are twice my age. I will ask you on your honor as a gentleman to answer me honestly this question: Here I am a young man. I have grown up in the Christian faith, and am happy in it. Would you advise me to give it all up and come over to where you stand, without God, without faith, and without hope?” “No, young man,” said the old agnostic; “when you put it that way, I can not advise you to drop your religion and faith. Keep them and be happy.” Duncan retorted: “Don’t you see you are standing on a rotten bridge that will break down, while I am standing on a solid bridge? Your heart belies your head, and you admit that your arguments are empty words.” (Text.) (996) Experience, The Test of—See [Proof by Experience]. EXPERIENCE, VALUE OF The president of the London Alpine Club said no man was ever lost on the Alps who had properly prepared himself and knew how to ascend them, and when I quoted to him the list of guides who had fallen into crevices and been killed, he quoted back to me a certain passage of Scripture wherein the fate of blind guides and those they lead is set forth in unmistakable terms. “Choose for your guides,” said he, “the hardy men who have learned their business thoroughly; who have been chamois-hunters from their youth; who have lived on these mountains from their birth, and to whom these snows and these rocks and the clouds speak a language which they can understand, and then accidents are impossible.” (Text.)—James T. Fields. (997) Experience versus Theory—See [Criticism]. EXPERIMENT Our most valuable successes usually are achieved on the principle followed by this dog: In his “Introduction to Comparative Psychology” (1894), Dr. Lloyd Morgan told the story of his dog’s attempts to bring a hooked walking-stick through a narrow gap in a fence. The dog “tried” all possible methods of pulling the stick through the fence. Most of the attempts showed themselves to be “errors.” But the dog tried again and again, until he finally succeeded. He worked by the method of trial and error. (Text.) (998) We doubt many theories that are recorded by others, but when we see them proved for ourselves we doubt no longer. A writer, after describing Franklin’s first disappointment in investigating the action of oil on water, records his later experiments: Franklin investigated the subject, and the results of his experiments, made upon a pond on Clapham Common, were communicated to the Royal Society. He states that, after dropping a little oil on the water, “I saw it spread itself with surprizing swiftness upon the surface, but the effect of smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first upon the leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side, where they began to form; and there the oil, tho not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond (perhaps half an acre) as smooth as a looking-glass.” (999) About all of the great enterprises of mankind are built on earlier experiments that seemed to fail. Hiram Maxim and S. P. Langley each spent laborious years constructing flying-machines that would not fly. Yet those who later succeeded made use of all the important devices that these earlier experimenters had invented. Some years since it was seen that by damming, controlling, and releasing the waters of the Colorado River in southern California and Mexico a vast tract of land, which was hot, arid, and uninhabitable, might become a fertile valley, giving homes and sustenance to millions. The opportunity was great, the power to be controlled and regulated was as great as the opportunity, but a failure came in the mind and executive ability of the men who were drawn to this great task. The waters escaped their control, and, where they intended to irrigate flowering gardens and fruitful plantations, they let loose a devastating flood, which burst all barriers, and threatened to establish in place of the desert an inland sea. In time the intellect of man solved the problem, met the opportunity with due achievement, and now the original promise is in the way of fulfilment. (Text.) (1000) The insect (a butterfly) flutters its wings as if to test their power before committing itself to the air; and frequently, after only a few seconds spent in this preparatory exercise, off it darts with astonishing rapidity. But others seem far more cautious. They vibrate their wings, sometimes with such rapidity that they are lost in a kind of mist, and with such power that their bodies would be carried suddenly into the air were they not firmly anchored by three pairs of hooked claws. Then, continuing the rapid vibration, they move slowly along, always holding on firmly by one or more legs, as if to still further satisfy themselves concerning the efficiency of their wings. Then they venture on a few short trial trips from one neighboring object to another, and at last gain sufficient confidence for a long voyage.—W. Furneaux, “Butterflies and Moths.” (1001) Experiment as Proof—See [Compromises in Gravities]. Experimentation—See [Success by Experimentation]. EXPERT ASSISTANCE It is usually better to take advantage of the assistance of some one who knows than to waste effort on that which is out of our province of activity. A lady missionary was about to leave London for India. She had been provided with trunks considered ample for the accommodation of all her belongings, but even with the kind help of all the members of her family, she could not get them into the space. Many were left over. Repeated trials were made in vain. The thought occurred to send for a professional packer. The expert, in a short time, had everything neatly deposited in the trunks. (1002) Experts, Value of—See [Education, Higher]. Explanation, The Easy—See [Simplicity and Truth]. EXPOSURE The ways in which evil deeds are brought to light often startle the culprit who thought he could cunningly hide his guilt. At a dinner-party a young lady, noticing a beautiful silver spoon lying near her, yielded to the temptation to secrete it at an opportune moment when no one observed her. Once securely hidden in the folds of one of her garments, she felt herself very clever, and had no fear of the possibility of detection. After dinner an exhibition of the remarkable properties of X-rays was given, and the lady was asked to subject herself to their influence. In an unguarded moment she consented, forgetting that those searching rays could reveal her shame. They were focused upon her, and there, in sight of all the party, was revealed the stolen spoon. (Text.) (1003) Expression of Grief Approved—See [Grief, Expressing]. Expulsion of Sin—See [Redemption from Evil]. EXTERMINATION Texas and other Southern States suffered for years losses of millions in the cattle industry from a type of splenic fever, commonly called Texas fever. Finally, this fever began to be carried into the North by Southern cattle shipped there, with the result that rigid quarantines were established against the South, which practically put the Southern cattle men out of business for a large part of each year, and caused still further enormous losses. Furthermore, this fever prevented the importation into the far Southern States of fine breeds of cattle with which to breed up the poor-grade herds. In Texas practically every fine bull or cow imported from the North contracted this fever, and seventy-five per cent of them died. The experts of the Department of Agriculture, working with the professors of the University of Missouri and of the Agricultural College of Texas, discovered that this fever was transmitted solely through the cattle-tick, which carried the germs from sick cattle and implanted them in well cattle when sucking their blood. An economical method of ridding cattle of ticks before shipping, by a process of dipping, removed all danger to Northern cattle from Southern shipments, and the costly quarantine handicap was removed or greatly mitigated. In the past three years a practical and economical method of entirely exterminating these ticks has been worked out and tested by our scientists, and the ticks have already been exterminated over nearly 64,000 square miles, an area larger than the State of Georgia, and it is only a matter of a few years and wider diffusion of education when the cattle-tick will be entirely exterminated. When we consider that the losses of all kinds from cattle-ticks in the South and Southwest were estimated at $40,000,000 per year, we can see what these scientific discoveries mean for us.—New York Evening Post. (1004) EXTRAVAGANCE, CENSURABLE A newspaper writer gives this picture of an occurrence in New York: On what proved to be the coldest night of the year, a man, said to represent a brand of wine he is anxious to export, engaged the largest stage in the world from midnight until the next noon and gave an entertainment in honor of an elephant, to which were bidden the men and women whose lights shine mostly on the Great White Way. These people were requested to come drest as “rubes,” in the hope of making themselves as ridiculous as possible. But that was unnecessary, as the report of their antics while the wine, represented by their host, flowed with increasing freedom, did for them what no amount of caricature in dress could accomplish. Out in the cold of this same freezing night there is a bread-line. Stationed at various places in this city are municipal free lodging-houses. To these flocked the army of the hungry and homeless, seeking for food and shelter from the bitter cold. On the one hand, wanton extravagance; on the other, biting poverty. It ought to be the province of Christianity to abolish both of these for their mutual good. (Text.) (1005) EXTRAVAGANCE, MODERN Two hundred and sixty dollars were paid this season for a hat! I know this to be true, because I saw the hat and the woman who bought it, and I was told the price. What was it? A handful of straw, a wisp of tulle, and a spray of feather. Two hundred and sixty dollars! Of course, this is not to be taken as an average price, even among the very rich. But the averages, as well as the single, instances of modern extravagance are startling. Fifteen years ago twenty-five dollars—thirty at the outside—would have bought the most elaborate bonnet in the most expensive shopping center of the world, New York. To-day the Fifth Avenue shops are asking thirty dollars for the plainest domestic toque or shade hat, and have shelves full of French importations at prices ranging from $100 to $175. The ten-dollar “trimmed” sailor hat used to be worn with serge dresses; the mull hats costing five dollars; the big rough garden hats at about the same price; the leghorns that used to run as high as fifteen, even twenty dollars, to-day have been replaced by thirty-dollar round hats, fifty-dollar picture hats, fifty-dollar lingerie hats, and hand-made straws running into the three numerals.—Emily Post, Everybody’s Magazine. (1006) EXTREMITY, GOD IN In the far, forgotten lands, By the world’s last gulf of night, Gasps a naked human soul, Writhing up and falling back, Screaming for a God who cares. In the far, forgotten lands, By the world’s last gulf of night, Batlike creatures vex the gloom And whimper as they shudder by: “Is there any God who cares?” In the far, forgotten lands, By the world’s last gulf of night, Walks the cross-stained Nazarene, Searching ever for his own On the crumbling edge of hell. In the far, forgotten lands, By the world’s last gulf of night, There He wanders, all alone, Dragging bleeding hearts from hell With the whisper: “God does care!” —The Independent. (1007) EXTREMITY NOT FINAL Sidney Lanier once, at least, in dire extremity, while stricken with a mortal malady, and almost lacking subsistence for his family in this wealthy city (Baltimore), sent forth a cry of agony that came perilously near to surrender of faith. He rose from his abysmal despair to make another valiant effort at the last, and never afterward questioned the goodness of God even in hours of awful discouragement. And so he died, feeling that all would be well with him and those he loved stronger than death. Ye who are about to abandon the tumultuous and uneven contest, think of this example, look to heaven and make another honest, prayerful effort for relief!—Baltimore American. (1008) Eye Measuring—See [Training]. EYE, THE EVIL The power exerted by the human eye over man and animals is well known, and the evil use of such influence is widely recognized. This maleficent power is called the “evil eye,” and the belief in its operation seems never to have been absent in any land. This does not mean the undoubted influence exerted by the eye, as in mesmerism, but a sort of noxious influence proceeding from the eye, with or without the connivance of the owner of the organ. Intelligence of a belief in this strange power comes to us from the cradle lands of the East, at an unknown period of history. Chaldean cylinders of clay dug up on the banks of the Euphrates contain magical formula against it. In Assyria, eight centuries before Christ, men appealed to their gods in long formulated prayers against possessors of the evil eye, who are declared the worst of men. Egyptian incantations against the sorcerer, of an early date, have come down to us. In one of these the sun is addrest thus: “O, thou whose soul is in the pupil of the eye.” An ancient Vedaic hymn to Agni invokes Indra against the evil eye. The eye of the Brahman was thought so powerful that he was forbidden, when satisfying the wants of nature, to look at the sun, the moon, the stars, water, or trees, lest he should bewitch them. The Persian Vendidad contains prayers and rites to ward off the effects of the evil eye. Ahriman subdued evil spirits by the power of his glance.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat. (1009) Eye, The Human—See [Design in Nature]. EYE, THE SEARCHING In a poem by Victor Hugo, Cain is represented as walking thirty days and nights after the murder of his brother Abel until he reaches the shores of the sea. “Let us stop here,” he says; but as he sits down his face turns pale. He has seen in the mournful sky the searching eye. His sons, filled with awe, try to erect barriers between him and the Eye—a tent, then a wall of iron, then a tower and a city—but all is in vain. “I see the Eye,” still cries the unhappy man. At last they dig a tomb and the father is put into it. But “Tho overhead they closed the awful vault, The Eye was in the tomb and looked on Cain.” (Text.) (1010) Eye, The Trained—See [Training]. EYES, THE There are men who are like the eye pupils—larger in the shadow. Bring them out into the bright light and they shrink to their real proportions. Hang a small looking-glass on the wall immediately below a gas-bracket. Carefully examine the colored portion of either of your eyes by looking at the image formed in the glass, and note particularly the extent of the pupil’s opening. Now, turning the light down to the smallest amount that will still permit you to see the pupil, note the wonderful manner in which the pupil dilates or increases in diameter. Then turn the light up and observe how the pupil contracts; and then remember the wonderful optical instruments you possess and be careful you do not abuse them, for they are the only eyes you will ever get.—Edwin J. Houston, “The Wonder Book of Light.” (1011) Eyesores, Relieved of—See [Unloading the Useless].