Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers

by Unknown

R

Race Improvement—See [Improvement].

RACE LOYALTY

Lieut. David J. Gilmer, of the Forty-ninth Volunteer Infantry (colored), commanding a detachment at Linao, was crediting his men for some good work they had done.

When he concluded, one of his men asked the lieutenant if he thought the Forty-ninth would be sent to China. The lieutenant said: “I don’t know, but I hope so.” Then some other soldier said: “Why, lieutenant, don’t you think we are doing enough?” The lieutenant said: “No! I wish that we could take part in all wars for our country; for the more good work we do the more benefit our race derives from it. If to sacrifice my life would cause our race to receive the same consideration in public affairs in the United States as other races, I would gladly walk out to any selected place and accept the death penalty.” (Text.)

(2606)

Race Prejudice Overcome—See [Civics].

Race-track, The—See [Gambling].

RACE TRAITS

All the white race have teeth vertical, the jaw short; and the manner in which the teeth fit one upon the other is perpendicularly, so that when we close the mouth we bring the lower teeth against the upper teeth in such a juxtaposition that the two sets stand vertical, one above the other. The races of men which have that kind of dentition are called orthognate; that is, straight-jawed races; while there are other races—and, among others, all the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands and all the inhabitants of Africa south of the Atlas—that have their front teeth inclined, so that the upper teeth and the lower teeth, when brought against one another, form an angle and the mouth is more prominent; these men are called prognate. And that difference is a constant one. All the races of men with prognate jaws have also thicker and more prominent lips. They have also flat noses, which I have already described, with broad partitions between the nostrils, and the nostrils opening sideways.—Prof. Louis Agassiz.

(2607)

RADIANCE, REFLECTED

The human soul may see God as veiled in the incarnation, tho we are told that none can look on Him (in His full glory) and live:

Lighting by “glow,” or by the reflection of rays from a dull white surface, is becoming more and more common. According to the writer of an article in The American Magazine, this was first done on a large scale at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, where it was adopted by Luther Stieringer. The cafe of the Adams House in Boston is lighted by a domed ceiling that glows gently and evenly with the reflected light of hundreds of invisible incandescent bulbs hidden around its base. In the great blue dome of the great pillared reading-room of Columbia University Library—the noblest educational building in the country—hangs what is locally known as “the mothball,” a huge globe of ground glass. It is perhaps a hundred feet above the floor, yet at night, when four calcium lights are turned on it, its subdued, reflected radiance fills the whole hall.

(2608)

RADIATION

God is eternally radiating His life into the universe as the sun from its glowing center rays forth heat:

The most recent estimates place the effective temperature of the sun’s radiating surface at about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

This vast globe of gases and vapors is radiating heat into space, is cooling off. The intensely heated particles of the interior rise to the surface, give off their heat, and sink back again, just as do the bubbles of steam in a kettle of boiling water. This circulation from within outward takes place over the whole of the sun and, as a rule, it proceeds steadily and quietly, without any marked disturbance.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”

(2609)

RANK, OBSEQUIOUSNESS TO

“In Europe, and especially in France, people have the greatest regard for any one who has received a medal or other decoration of honor,” said Dr. Helms, of Buffalo, in the course of a sermon on “France and the French.” And to prove this he related a little anecdote. “A friend of mine,” said Dr. Helms, “visiting a popular summer resort in southern France, became annoyed at the manner in which he was neglected in the dining-room. Men who came in long after he did would be served, while he sat unnoticed. Finally he became curious to know the reason for this, and slipping a coin into the hand of a friendly-looking waiter, he asked him why it was.

“‘Because,’ replied the waiter, ‘Mr. So-and-So belongs to the Legion of Honor, and Mr. Blank has received the Order of St. Michael, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones and all the others have some decoration.’

“My friend was equal to the occasion,” added Mr. Helms. “In his trunk up-stairs was the badge he had worn at the Republican convention which nominated President Taft, and he wore it prominently displaced on his coat lapel when he came down to dine again. Thereafter he had no occasion to complain about the service and nothing in the dining-room was too good for him.”—Buffalo Evening News.

(2610)

Rapidity in Nature—See [Growth in Nature].

RAPPORT

In missionary work, first and foremost, confidence must be established and the heart won. The missionary may be learned, may be hard-working and godly, may be earnest as John Knox, and indefatigable as Mr. Moody, but if the people do not love him, they will not listen to his doctrine. It is a terrible fact that there are some missionaries on the field who are not loved by the people. While unlovely and unloved, all they do is as wood, hay, and stubble. As in wireless telegraphy, there must be harmony of note between despatcher and receiver, so, ere messages to the soul pass, despatcher missionary and receiver Oriental must be in tune. What wonders you can do when the heart is won! The multitude may hold you in its grip, from dawn till sunset, still next day you are full of hope again. It is the missionary in tune with God and with the heart of the East who does the work. Let much emphasis be put on the right key as to the heart, for therein lies the secret.—James S. Gale, “Korea in Transition.”

(2611)

Rated High, Brought Low by Drink—See [Drink, Peril of].

Reaction, The Law of—See [Confidence, Inspiring].

READINESS IN RETORT

Jedediah Burchard, the brilliant evangelist of the middle years of the nineteenth century, who swept like a flame over New York and New England, was holding great prayer-meetings at Danbury, Conn., before his preaching services. At one of these crowded prayer services, when many were asking prayers for unsaved relatives and friends, and a young man had earnestly besought prayer for an aged father, a blatant infidel who haunted the meetings simply to interrupt, jumped up and said, “Mr. Burchard! I want to ask prayers for—the Devil!” “Go right on praying, brethren,” said Mr. Burchard, “this man also wants his father prayed for!” That interrupter never again was heard of at a meeting.

(2612)

READING BY SCHEDULE

Rev. W. H. Fitchett writes about a great Methodist pioneer a paragraph that shows how an education may be acquired by regular and persistent toil.

The Staffordshire peasant, Francis Asbury, traveling five thousand miles a year, preaching incessantly, spending three hours a day in prayer, and without a settled home, yet had it as a fixt rule to read a hundred pages daily. He made himself a scholar, and mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.—“Wesley and His Century.”

(2613)

Reading Current Literature—See [Literature, Current].

Reading, Eloquent—See [Lord’s Prayer Interpreted].

Reading Indispensable—See [Education to be Prized].

Reading the Gospel in Faces—See [Face, The, Revealing the Gospel].

REALISM

The art of painting pictures so near to life as to deceive the naked eye is very old. Pliny relates that Zeuxis once painted some grapes so naturally that birds used to come and peck at them, and that Parrhasius once painted a curtain so artfully that Zeuxis desired to draw it aside so that he could see the picture it hid. Discovering his error, he confest himself outdone, as he had only imposed on birds, whereas Parrhasius had deceived the human intellect. Another time Zeuxis painted a boy with some grapes, and when the birds again flew at the grapes he was very angry, saying that he was certainly at fault with the picture. He reasoned that had it been perfect the birds would have been frightened away by the boy.

Caius Valerius Flaccus says that Zeuxis’ death was occasioned by an immoderate fit of laughter on looking at the comic picture he had drawn of an old woman.—Philadelphia Ledger.

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REALISM, REFRAINING FROM

He came unto the door of heaven,

Free as of old and gay;

“What hast thou done,” the porter cried,

“That thou should’st pass this way?”

“Hast fed the hungry, clothed the poor?”

The vagrant shook his head.

“I drank my wine and I was glad,

But I did not give them bread.”

“Hast prayed upon the altar steps?”

“Nay, but I loved the sun.”

“Hast wept?” “The blossoms of the spring

I gathered every one.”

“But what fair deed can’st thou present?

Like light, one radiant beam?”

“I robbed no child of his fairy-tale,

No dreamer of his dream.”

—Anna McClure Sholl, Appleton’s.

(2615)

REALITIES INVISIBLE

The schoolboy writes these figures on his slate: 2+2=4, and says two and two make four. But the two and the two which he has written on the slate do not make the four which he has written on the slate. For both the twos are there unchanged, and the four also. The two and two that make four are in his head—invisible. The figures on the slate are not the realities, they are only symbols which interpret the realities, and the realities are invisible—Lyman Abbott, The Outlook.

(2616)

REALITY

It takes actual experience to bring realization of many things that we thought we knew before. This is the way one of the passengers of the illfated steamship Republic (January 23, 1909) speaks of her experience:

“I have read sea stories,” she said, “and have read time and again of the command, ‘to the boats; women first,’ but, let me tell you, I knew what it meant last Saturday morning for the first time. Out of the fog-hidden night it came; I could not trace the speaker at first, as we all huddled on the deck. Out of the dark it came, straight and true and strong, and with all the chivalry of man at his highest behind it. ‘Women and children will enter the boat first.’ I think more of bravery now that I know what it means; I think more of manhood. I am glad I heard that command, as Captain Sealby hurled it at us through his megaphone.”

(2617)

Reality Exprest in a Dream—See [Christ in the Congregation].

REALITY VERSUS ILLUSION

We should steer clear of a credulity that accepts ghosts and visions because some good people testify about them.

A whole ship’s company was thrown into the utmost consternation by the apparition of the cook who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen walking ahead of the ship, with a peculiar gait by which he was distinguished when alive, through having one of his legs shorter than the other. On steering the ship toward the object, it was found to be a piece of floating wreck.

It is not surprizing, therefore, that there are apparently well-authenticated stories of ghosts who have been seen under different circumstances by people, and, moreover, by people of unquestioned mental ability, people of strong mentality concerning whose integrity and reliability there can be no question.—Edwin J. Houston, “The Wonder Book of Light.”

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Reason, The Real—See [Confidence, Lack of].

REASON VERSUS INSTINCT

A boy was asked to explain the difference between animal instinct and human intelligence. “If we had instinct,” he said, “we should know everything we needed to know without learning it; but we’ve got reason, and so we have to study ourselves ’most blind or be a fool.”

(2619)

REASONABLE RELIGION

Mr. Robert E. Speer tells of going to the house of a friend in Japan to meet a number of old Biblewomen who were being trained for Christian service, some of whom were fifty or sixty years of age before they found Christ. Mr. Speer asked them what they found dearest in Christianity. He supposed they would say that what they valued most was the moral peace and joy that it brought them. Instead, these old women, some of whom had not been able to read before they became Christians, said instantly that what they prized most in Christianity was the intellectual solution of their difficulties that it had brought. They had come into contact with a Savior who had set their minds free. Moral rest and peace were sweet, but it was sweeter still to realize that they were at last serving a reasonable Master. (Text.)

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REASONING POWER IN ANIMALS

As throwing light upon the question of the intelligence of the animal creation, in the exhibition of memory and reasoning power, beyond the mere pale of recognized instinct, I wish to give a brief account of an interesting incident of which I was the witness. On a very warm day in early summer I happened to be standing near a chicken-coop in a back yard when I noticed the head of a very gray and grizzled rat thrust from a neighboring rat-hole, and concluded to watch the movements of the veteran. After a careful survey of the surroundings, our old rodent seemed to be satisfied that all was right, and made a cautious exit from the home retreat. A fresh pan of water had been recently placed before the chicken-coop for the use of Mother “Chick” and her interesting brood. These all seemed to have satisfied their thirst, and the water looked a friendly invitation to the thirsty old rat, which immediately started toward it. The rat had not reached the pan before five half-grown young ones rushed ahead and tried to be first at the water. The old rat thereupon immediately made a leap like a kangaroo, and was at the edge of the dish in advance of the foremost of her litter. Then ensued a most remarkable occurrence. The mother rat raised herself on her haunches and bit and scratched her offspring so severely, whenever they attempted to reach the water, that they all finally scudded away, evidently very much astonished and also frightened at the strange and unaccountable behavior of their mother. I was as much astonished as they, and waited with renewed interest the outcome of this remarkable performance. When the little ones were at a safe distance, the reason for her extraordinary behavior began to be revealed at once in the intelligent actions of the old mother rat. She first wet her whiskers in the water, looked suspiciously about her, then very cautiously and carefully took a dainty little sip of the liquid. She tasted it as tentatively and critically as a professional tea-taster, and when she was satisfied that it contained no poisonous or other deleterious matter, she gave a couple of squeaks, which quickly brought her young and thirsty brood to her side, and all fearlessly drank to their fill. Now, this old mother rat was experienced, had evidently learned her lesson in that school thoroughly, and so she would not allow her young and untaught litter to taste water which might have contained rat-poison, or what not, until she had satisfied herself that the liquid was harmless. As I witnessed this little scene in lowly animal life the thought would keep coming, does not this look very like reason?—F. Croll Baum, American Naturalist.

(2621)

Reasoning Successful—See [Tact].

REASONS

Lord Mansfield, when a friend of his own was appointed governor of a West India island, and complained that he would have also to sit as a judge and decide cases, which he dreaded, advised him to decide according to his notions of common sense, but never to give his reasons; for, said he, “your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.” Many years afterward, Lord Mansfield, while sitting on Privy Council appeals, had a judgment of this governor brought before the court, which seemed so absurd in its reasons that there was a serious clamor for a recall of the governor as incompetent. It was found, however, that the decision itself was perfectly right. It appeared that at first the governor acted on Lord Mansfield’s advice by deciding without giving reasons; and finding that he acquired great reputation by these decisions, began to think himself a great lawyer, and then gave his reasons at length, which had the result above mentioned.

(Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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Reasons, Clear—See [Good for Evil].

REASONS VERSUS EXCUSES

“What is the difference between a poor excuse for being late at school and a real reason for being late? Give an example.” Out come examples of oversleeping or dilly-dallying as contrasted with the unavoidable fact that the cars were blocked. “An excuse is hollow; a real reason is stout and whole.” “An excuse is a method of concealment; a good reason is its own justification.” So write my girls. One delightful girl of twelve explained, “This morning I was late but I had a real reason. When I went up-stairs after breakfast to feed my animals, my favorite guinea-pig, Christopher Columbus, was so sick that he could hardly stand up. I had to stay and make him comfortable, and so I was late to school. But the teacher said it was a good reason.” Echoes of the difference between poor excuses and good reasons resound for several weeks. “To-day I have no reason for being late, only an excuse. I didn’t know what time it was, but then I ought to have found out.”

With older pupils I take up more complicated cases illustrating the tendency of any selfish person to deceive himself or herself. “I am traveling from New Hampshire to Boston with a large number of bundles and am delighted to secure an extra seat on which to deposit them. Gradually the car fills up and all who pass by look wistfully at my seat. If I continue to keep my parcels on it by what arguments can I pretend that it is right?” We bring out together all the half-conscious sophistry that clings like a burr to selfishness. “There may be seats farther on; if they want the seat they can ask for it; it would only crowd any one to sit with me; it is really more comfortable for her to stand.” Every one in the class realizes that these excuses are weak subterfuges; for as one girl said, “Such sputtering people deceive themselves.”—Ella Lyman Cabot, “Proceedings of the National Education Association,” 1909.

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REBUFFS A STIMULANT

I knew a student paying his way through college who was so poor that the wealthier students made fun of him. They were always guying him about his short trousers, seedy clothes, and general out-at-elbow condition. He was so stung by their jibes that he made a vow not only to redeem himself from ridicule, but to make himself a power in the world.

This young man has had most remarkable success, and he says that the rebuffs he met with and the ridicule that was heaped upon him in his student days have been a perpetual stimulus to his ambition to get on in the world.

A successful business man tells me that every victory he has gained in a long career has been the result of hard fighting, so that now he is actually afraid of an easily won success. He feels that there must be something wrong when anything worth while can be obtained without a struggle. Fighting his way to triumph, overcoming obstacles, gives this man pleasure. Difficulties are a tonic to him. He likes to do hard things because it tests his strength, his overcoming ability, his power. He does not like to do easy things because it does not give one the exhilaration, the joy that is felt after a victorious struggle.—Success.

(2624)

Rebuke, Appropriate—See [Selfishness Rebuked].

Rebuke, Results of—See [Testimony, Fruit of].

RECALL, THE POWER OF

Many persons are under the impression that a letter once mailed is no longer the property of the sender, but belongs to the person to whom it is addrest. This is an error. Under the postal regulations of the United States and the rulings of the highest courts in the land, a letter does not belong to the addressee until it is delivered to him.

The writer has a right to reclaim and regain possession of it provided he can prove to the satisfaction of the postmaster at the office from which it was sent that he was the writer of it.

Even after the letter has arrived in the office which is its destination and before it has been delivered to the addrest it may be recalled by the writer by telegraph through the mailing office.

It would be a great boon to all of us who speak in haste and repent at leisure if we could as easily recall our spoken messages.

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RECEPTIVENESS

The British Weekly gives a good rule in rime to those who need more openness to good influences and blessings:

Open the door, let in the air;

The winds are sweet and the flowers are fair.

Joy is abroad in the world to-day;

If our door is wide, it may come this way.

Open the door!

Open the door, let in the sun;

He hath a smile for every one;

He hath made of the rain-drops gold and gems;

He may change our tears to diadems

Open the door!

Open the door of the soul; let in

Strong, pure thoughts which shall banish sin.

They will grow and bloom with a grace divine,

And their fruit shall be sweeter than that of the vine.

Open the door!

Open the door to the heart; let in

Sympathy sweet for stranger and kin;

It will make the halls of the heart so fair

That angels may enter unaware.

Open the door!

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Art thou a beggar at God’s door? Be sure thou gettest a great bowl, for as thy bowl is, so will be thy mess. “According to thy faith,” saith He, “be it unto thee.”—Unidentified.

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RECLAMATION

“There are no useless American acres,” Secretary Wilson is reported to have said. “The Government is seeking in all parts of the world for crops that have become acclimated to dry conditions, and it has been so successful that many places that were once accounted desert land are to-day supporting productive farms.” Says Guy Elliott Mitchell, secretary of the National Irrigation Association, in an article on “Resources of the American Desert,” contributed to The Technical World (Chicago):

“It has been estimated that in the neighborhood of 100,000,000 acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to most intensive agriculture through irrigation; yet Frederick V. Coville, the chief botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say that in the strictly arid region are many millions of acres, now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois; and this without irrigation. This applies particularly to the great plateaus in the northern Rocky Mountain region. ‘I would confidently predict,’ said Mr. Coville, ‘that the transformation of these barren-looking lands into farms, through the introduction of desert plants, will be as extensive a work as the enormous reclamation through irrigation.’”

Moral wastes should be and can be reclaimed, as surely as the American deserts. There is no such thing as a wholly useless life. (Text.)

(2628)

See [Irrigation].

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Doctor John Clifford, of London, tells this story about Gladstone. It relates to two young men who had got into drinking habits:

Gladstone knew of them, heard of the downward road they were traveling, and felt necessity laid upon him to try and reclaim them. He invited them to Hawarden, impressively appealed to them to mend their ways, and then knelt and fervently asked God to sustain and strengthen them in their resolve to abstain from that which had done them so much harm. “Never,” says one of the men in question, “can I forget the scene, and as long as I have memory the incidents of the meeting will be indelibly imprest upon my mind. The Grand Old Man was profoundly moved by the intensity of his solicitation. Neither of us from that day to this has touched a drop of intoxicating drink, nor are we ever likely to violate an undertaking so impressively ratified in Mr. Gladstone’s library.” (Text.)

(2629)

Recluse Ignorance—See [Money, Ignorance of].

RECOGNITION BY ONE’S WORK

Sir Antony Vandyck, the artist, once visited the studio of Frans Hals, a fellow craftsman, disguised as a stranger, and sat for his portrait. Professing surprize at the work, he said: “Painting is doubtless an easier thing than I thought. Let us change places and see what I can do.” When his work was finished, so skilful was it that Hals rushed at his guest, and clasped him round the neck in a fraternal hug. “The man who can do that,” he cried, “must be either Vandyck or the devil.” (Text.)

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RECOMPENSE

Lizzie L. Baker, in The Watchman, voices a common hope that the life to come will make the suffering of this life seem of no moment to us:

As they who cross with only sails

The wave-lashed ocean wide and deep;

Slow journey, baffled by the winds,

At last strike sail, safe harbor reached,

Forget the hardships of the way.

So when we reach yon heavenly shore,

The toil and suffering undergone

Will not find place in memory’s crypt,

So fair the port for which we sailed.

(2631)

RECOMPENSE FOR KINDNESS

Ariosto tells us of a gentle fairy, who, by a mysterious law of her nature, was at certain periods compelled to assume the form of a serpent and to crawl upon the ground. Those who in the days of her disguise spurned her and trod upon her were forever debarred from a participation in those gifts that it was her privilege to bestow, but to those who, despite her unsightly aspect, comforted her and encouraged her and aided her, she appeared in the beautiful and celestial form of her true nature, followed them ever after with outstretched arms, lavished upon them her gifts, and filled their homes with happiness and wealth.—Horace Porter.

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RECORD, KEEPING THE

In “Famous Stories of Sam P. Jones,” appears the following:

Start an engine from New York to San Francisco, and there is attached to its side a little piece of mechanism which indicates the number of miles it has traveled, the stoppages it has made, and how long it stopt at each station; and if you want to know the record of the journey you need not ask the engineer a word. The little piece of mechanism on the side of the engine tells you its record.

In the same way the thoughts, deeds, and progress of a soul are self-registering. (Text.)

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RECORD, LIVING

The tympanum of the ear will vibrate no longer when the music or the clamor that arrested and aroused it has subsided into silence. But that invisible yet living spirit, which watches through the eye, and harkens through the ear, and which takes instant note of whatever surrounds it, has caught the sight and the sound now vanished, and it will keep them forever. It writes its records, not as the Roman laws were written, first on wood, then on brass, and afterward on ivory; but at once on a tablet more impressible than wood, more vivid than brass, more precious than ivory, and more imperishable than either.—Richard S. Storrs.

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We are all writing our lives’ histories here, as if with one of these “manifold writers,” a black blank page beneath the flimsy sheet on which we write; but presently the black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand out plain on the page behind that we did not see. Life is the filmy unsubstantial page on which our pen rests; the black page is death; and the page beneath is that indelible transcript of our earthly actions, which we shall find waiting for us to read, with shame and confusion of face, or with humble joy, in another world—Alexander McLaren.

(2635)

Recovery, Difficulty of—See [Maturity, Sins of].

Recovery, Instant—See [Diabolical Possession].

Recuperation—See [Nature’s Recuperative Powers].

Redeemed by Song—See [Wanderer’s Return].

REDEMPTION FROM EVIL

Our forefathers sat in despair before yellow fevers, black deaths, sweating-sicknesses, cholera, and similar pestilences, but science is now gradually feeling its way to the minute and obscure causes of epidemic diseases, and year by year we draw closer to the time when it may probably put into our hands the means not only of arresting these epidemics, but of stamping them out altogether. The physician has become familiar with the bacteria; and with ceaseless patience he tracks down the mischief to its origin and birth. The scientist anticipates the time when the whole range of zymotic disease will be conquered. Will any call this foolish dreaming, and argue that because these sad scourges have always been they always will be? Such a pessimist is unworthy of the privilege of living in this glorious age. It is a delightful and legitimate hope that the race may yet master all its physical foes.

But if these physical evils are to be subdued, is not that moral evil, which is the root of all other evils, to be subdued also? Christ came to assure us of this, and the absolute casting out of the demon is the sign of the glorious truth.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(2636)

Reductio ad Absurdum—See [Art Unappreciated].

REENFORCEMENT FROM WITHOUT

Many a man who, standing alone, fails in fruitfulness, might reenforce his powers by availing himself of the help of others, much as this pear-tree was reenforced:

An ingenious plan to save a dying pear-tree was adopted in the gardens of L. M. Chase, of Boston. The mice had girded the tree so that it seemed bound to die. Mr. Chase planted four small trees around it, and close to it, cut off the tops, pointed the ends, and, making incisions in the bark of the pear, bent the small trees, and grafted them upon the dying trunk. They all lived, and that tree draws its nourishment from the small ones. A bushel of handsome pears were taken from it.—Public Opinion.

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REFLECTION, DISTURBED

If the sea does not throw up in beautiful reflection the hills and foliage that are along its shore, it is not because they are not mirrored there, it is not because there are not there still reflective depths, but because the tremulousness of its furrowed surface has shattered the reflection and made it indiscernible and unintelligible, and those quiet depths are only waiting for the opportunity.

That is the only reason why the beauty that is in the world does not stir in us our sense of beauty and make us beautiful; why the grandeur of God’s created universe does not move in us mightily and broaden our thoughts to something of the scope of the universe; why the mystery of things does not quicken us into impassioned inquiry and send our thoughts ranging fascinatedly along the aisles of the unknown.—Charles H. Parkhurst.

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REFLECTION, IMPERFECT

Rector W. B. Salmon gave an apt tho homely illustration of the harm done by the low level on which some Christians live, by saying: “I was traveling by night in a London train, trying to read some small books, and a man opposite leaned across to me. It is not good for the eyes,’ he said, ‘to read by such a bad light,’ and to that I assented. But when I looked up the light was not a bad one at all. There was a good lamp, well trimmed, giving a good light, only the reflector was wrong—broken and dull. We were blaming the light when the fault lay with the reflector.” (Text.)

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REFLECTION OF GOD

The beauty of character is to reflect God; and just so far as we color this reflection of God with anything of self, so far do we fail of that clarification of inward thought and outward life which makes us like Him. The diamond is the perfect type of character. Every other precious stone reflects the light colored by its own texture. Only the diamond reflects light in its essential purity. This is the secret of its superiority among gems. Other gems may be beautiful, but the diamond is transcendently beautiful.—Zion’s Herald.

(2640)

Reflex Values—See [Prayers].

REFORMATION

John E. Gunckel, a very desirable citizen of Toledo, has accomplished a good work through the Newsboys’ Association of Toledo, which he organized. At present (1909) he has 6,267 members on the roll. “Just as you are” is the appeal made to the boy of the street.

Five years ago a prominent business man called Mr. Gunckel on the telephone and inquired what he could say for W—— K——, a young man who had applied for a position. Mr. Gunckel consulted the book of errors and said, “He stole a package of papers thrown from a train, and sold them. Stole twenty-five cents that a man gave him in payment for a paper—”

“That’s enough; this is a position of trust. We must have an honest young man.”

“Hold on, hold on,” said Gunckel, “that record is ten years old; let me give you something up-to-date. Last Christmas eve, just as I was retiring, I was called to the door and there was W—— K—— with a horse and pung. He had twenty-one baskets of turkeys, vegetables, fruit, and all conceivable goodies that he was taking to as many families in the slums of his district. He had raised the money himself, had investigated each case, and was distributing the baskets. He has been an officer for about nine years. Hasn’t stolen, lied, or gambled, used liquor or tobacco for more than nine years. Has brought in scores of valuable articles found that he might have stolen—”

“There, hold up, that’ll do; he is just the fellow I want.” He has made good. (Text.)—The World To-day.

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With Bunyan’s marriage to a good woman the real reformation in his life began. While still in his teens he married a girl as poor as himself. “We came together,” he says, “as poor as might be, having not so much household stuff as a dish or spoon between us both.” The only dowry which the girl brought to her new home was two old, threadbare books, “The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven,” and “The Practise of Piety.” Bunyan read these books, which instantly gave fire to his imagination. He saw new visions and dreamed terrible new dreams of lost souls; his attendance at church grew exemplary; he began slowly and painfully to read the Bible for himself, but because of his own ignorance and the contradictory interpretations of Scripture which he heard on every side, he was tossed about like a feather by all the winds of doctrine.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

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REFORMERS, ERRATIC

On the farm there grows a weed called the tumble-weed. When October comes, the wind breaks the stalk. As round as a dandelion puff-ball, the tumble-weed is as large as a bushel basket. When the wind blows from the north the tumble-weeds start across the field, toward the fence-corners. That evening, when the wind changes, the tumble-weed starts rolling across the meadow toward the same fence from which it started in the morning. With the new day, the tumble-weed takes up fresh journeys. At night the wind rises, and tho the farmer and his flocks sleep, not the tumble-weeds. They are still traveling. We all are familiar, alas, with the career of Mr. Tumble Weed, the false radical, tumbling into every public meeting, Sunday-afternoon-gathering reform club. The moment the meeting opens he unrolls his fad and reform, and away he goes—now toward this extreme, now toward that, driven every whither by the new wind, issuing from the puffed-out cheek of any new faddist in reform. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

(2643)

Reforms not Sudden—See [Impatience of Reformers].

REFRESHING SPRINGS

Prof. C. D. Hitchcock writes interestingly about fresh-water springs that rise under the sea, and near the sea-shore in Hawaii:

Powerful streams discharge millions of gallons of water through the artificial openings very near the sea-shore. If not intercepted, they must continue a considerable distance out to sea, and hence must well up to the surface amid saline billows.

Inquiry about these springs during the past summer in the territory of Hawaii has resulted in the discovery of several upon Oahu; there is one off Diamond Head, a second off Waialae. At the east of Maui, in Hana, there was a fortress named Kaimuke, occupied by soldiers in the ancient times. As it was almost an island, communication with the mainland was not feasible in the time of a siege, and for the lack of water it could not have been held except for the presence of submarine springs. The natives would dive down to collect water in their calabashes, which supplied all the wants of the garrison. (Text.)—The Popular Science Monthly.

(2644)

Refreshment—See [Oases].

REFUGE

The old sanctuary of the abbey and palace of Holyrood House was an interesting institution. The debtor was free from arrest during the week. On entering the sanctuary he enrolled himself in a formal manner and obtained a room—that is, if he could pay for it. There was a public house within the boundaries, and it was not uncommon to see the debtor in the inn playing dominoes and his creditors standing looking in at the window with wistful eyes. The debtor was safe, and he knew it, and the face of the creditor told the same tale. Sunday being a dies non, the debtor could leave his sanctuary and visit his family, but he had to be careful to get back to Holyrood on Sunday night. Sometimes a debtor had the temerity to leave on a week day, but he did so at his peril.

Once in the ark, God himself having shut in the occupant, the latter could not be safer. A city of refuge, indeed!

(2645)

REFUGES OF SIN

Caves are found along the sides of the banks of the Jordan that are at first one story high, then two stories and, as the river increases in depth, three-story caves are found.

At certain periods of the year the river overflows its banks. The wild animals native to that country seek a refuge in the one-story caves for a time. As the river swells and grows more turbid, the wild creatures seek shelter in the two-story caves. When the river attains to high-water mark, the animals run for their life to the third-story caves. When these overflow, then these beasts at bay are caught and killed.

How many men are hiding away from God in the caves and strongholds of their transgressions. But when the high tides of misfortune come, their sin will find them out.

(2646)

Refused in Need—See [Need, Refused in the Hour of].

REGENERATION

When the first experiments upon the tulips and wild asters were undertaken, some said that it was a sin, because if God had wanted tulips to be double and have different colors, God would have made them that way. But scientists in Holland, and Burbank in California, and a thousand others, are standing over the grains and whispering, “Ye must be born again.” The scientist has touched the wild aster, and it has become the chrysanthemum. He has touched the black tulip, and it has become a flower of many hues and quadruple size. He has whispered to the little field-daisy, and it has become the Shasta daisy, that waves in the fields like a bunch of women’s hats. He has touched the wild sloe, and it has become a luscious plum. He has touched a bitter orange, and, lo! it has lost its seed, doubled its sweetness and quadrupled its size. And to-day the whole world is on tiptoe of expectancy.

There is no new fruit or flower that is not possible, for the horizons have been pulled down. A great, wide vista of possibility opens up. The berries, the vegetables, the fruits, the grains, must all be born again. Now all this is only a revelation of what is possible for the soul.—N. D. Hillis.

(2647)

REGISTER OF LIFE

“An apparatus called a ‘pulse register’ has been devised by a Viennese physician, Dr. Gartner. It is intended,” says The Medical Times, “to watch and register the action of the heart and pulse while the patient is under the influence of chloroform, ether, or cocain. The apparatus consists of a watch-like box, to be attached to the patient’s forearm. The box has a graduated dial and hands, working according to pulse and blood-pressure vibrations, which are registered by an elastic spring in the most precise manner imaginable. The physician in attendance, or operator, is all the time kept informed of the exact degree of the unconscious person’s pulse and heart action. The controller, furthermore, shows the action of pulses which the physician’s fingers can not feel nor find.”

(2648)

REGRET

Mrs. Marion M. Hutson writes a lesson as to appreciating the troubles of friends while they live:

Somewhere in the future, soon or late,

My weary feet will reach the outer gate,

Where rest begins, and earth’s long highway ends,

And then, perhaps, through misty eyes my friends

Will see how rough the path has been, and say,

“Would we had tried to smooth the rugged way.”

Oh, friends and loved ones! do not wait, but give

A little help and comfort while I live.

(2649)

See [Lost Chords].

Regular Inspection—See [Cleanliness].

REGULARITY, ECCLESIASTICAL

Butler, the famous author of Butler’s “Analogy,” himself, with all his high gifts, supplies, in his own person, an expressive proof of the spiritual blindness and death which lay on the churches of Wesley’s day. He forbade Whitefield and the Wesleys to preach in his diocese, tho all around his cathedral city lay the most degraded and hopeless class in England—the coal-miners of Kingswood, as untouched by any of the forces of Christianity as if they had been savages in Central Africa. That the best, the wisest, the most powerful, the most earnestly convinced of the bishops of that day should take this attitude toward Wesley and his work shows what was the general temper of the clergy of that time. Butler’s conscience was not disquieted by the lapse into mere heathenism of a whole class within sound of the bells of his cathedral; but he grows piously indignant at the spectacle of an ecclesiastical irregularity.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2650)

Regulation, Timepiece—See [Synchronism].

REJECTION OF CHRIST

George Frederick Watts, the great symbolical artist of “Love and Death,” “Hope,” “Time, Death, and Judgment,” and other famous pictures, painted “The Ruler.” Speaking of the picture afterward he said, “Now I am doing a man’s back—little else but his back, to explain ‘he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.’ Fancy a man turning his back on Christ rather than give away his goods! They say his back looks sorry; I don’t know. It is what I meant his back to express.” (Text.)

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RELATIVITY

If we were to note that, suddenly and in the same proportions, the distance between two points on this earth had increased, that all the planets had moved farther from each other, that all objects around us had become larger, that we ourselves had become taller, and that the distance traveled by light in the duration of a vibration had become greater, we should not hesitate to think ourselves the victims of an illusion, that in reality all these distances had remained fixt, and that all these appearances were due to a shortening of the rule which we had used as the standard for measuring the lengths.—Lucian Poincare, “The New Physics and Its Evolution.”

(2652)

Releasing the Word of Life—See [Word of God Freed].

RELIC VALUED

Byron’s remains rest in an old leaden coffin, side by side with those of his mother, and close by lies his daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, who died in 1852. When the vault was opened to permit of the interment of Lady Lovelace many persons visited the church in order to catch a glimpse of the coffin. Upon one occasion a little girl was prevailed upon to descend by the stone staircase into the vault and she returned carrying a narrow strip of faded velvet in her hand, torn from the poet’s coffin. Among the group around the mouth of the graves was a tall, dark foreigner, who eagerly questioned the child as to her possession, and finally, in exchange for a piece of gold, received the strip of cloth. That man was Kossuth.—Frank Leslie’s.

(2653)

Relief by Crying—See [Crying Beneficial].

Religion—See [Altar, The]; [Character].

RELIGION A GROWTH

Time goes to the making of the oak, and the man and the Christian. Moral development is slow. We must not be surprized nor disappointed to find it so. As one says:

The sunrise is gradual, as we have seen—there are many tremulous gleams before the wheels of his chariot are moving over the sea. And so we should beware in a measure of momentary impulsive religion: the idea that we can pass in a moment from deadness, darkness, worldliness, to the full assurance of the favor of God. There are such cases, but they are rare, and the religion of sudden emotion is apt with many to prove not lasting.

If religion is a growth, let us be patient in the process.

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RELIGION, A TEST OF

Addressing a big Methodist camp-meeting, Bishop Quayle informed his audience how to discern a Christian by street-car manners. “If you are hanging on a strap in a crowded street-car, and the conductor calls out ‘Step forward, please,’ and there is no place in front where you can step forward, the way you act will be a test of your religion. If you are a woman, and a man gives you his seat, and you act as if you thought it was your right and not his kindness that gave you the seat, the way you act will test you more than answering questions in theology. It is not how you treat some big body, but how you treat a little urchin, dirty in tears, that tests your religion. What you do when you are off duty—that’s what counts. What if the people who see us at church and at weddings should see us in the betweens? What we Christians do ofttimes kills faith in the Church. Anybody can see a rose-garden in the daytime, but we can also smell it in the dark. What we do when nobody sees us ought to be as beautiful as what we do in the open.”

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RELIGION ALLAYING FEAR

Athens had two cities—down in the plain was the city of work, with shops, ox carts, plows and hoes, on the hillside were the shops where men bought and sold. But the crags above were crowned with temples, where beauty and worship had their home. Oft in the hours of tumult and strife, when the workers feared the coming of enemies, they turned their thoughts upward toward the Parthenon, and drank in the beauty of Athena’s face, and her calm, white hand seemed to fall upon the brow, to allay the fear, and breathe peace to the frightened working men. Greek culture and character represented the interplay of the upper and the lower city. So it is that man’s life of work, and his invisible life of faith and worship are knitted together. The inventor, the statesman, not less than the saint and the martyr, endure, as seeing God. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

(2656)

Religion Among Immigrants—See [Immigration].

Religion and Dying—See [Death, The Christian’s].

Religion and Parents—See [Parents as Teachers of Religion].

RELIGION AND POETRY

When will the true prophet, priest, poet, preacher come to us? For we are continually reminded that it is by the voice of the poet only that a nation is permitted to survive. Jerusalem has been permitted to come down to us forever glorified; she cherished the poets; but where is Babylon, who cast the prophets in the lion’s den? Nineveh was a city of three days’ journey; Nineveh would not hear; and where is Nineveh now? But, Jerusalem, city of poetry and song! A little place; you can cover it with a pin’s head on the maps of the world; and yet she covers more space in history, sacred and profane, than all the other cities of the world together. And this is simply because she had faith and hope; and so had her poets, and did not despise them, and her poets made her immortal. The cloven foot of the golden calf is stamping out every page of this great, neglected book. So great is the wealth of the leading families of our cities that almost every hearthstone might be paved with gold. Yet Socrates died for want of money enough to pay a fine. True or false, the Greeks had gods, even the unknown God of which Paul spoke, and they believed. They had faith and hope. And so their poets sang, sang in marble. Song is music, song is the eternal melody of beauty, and their country lives.—Joaquin Miller, Belford’s Magazine.

(2657)

Religion Demanded—See [Influence, Personal].

RELIGION DIFFUSED

Three hundred years ago there was but one Bible in a parish in England, and that was chained to a column in the church; and there was but one man to read it—the priest. And the people did not understand it then, and it was a part of official duty to go from house to house on the theory that the average parent did not know enough to teach the children the first principles of morality and of religion. Go to-day over the same community, and on the Sabbath morning you shall see the girls and the young men with Bibles under their arms, themselves teachers, going down to mission-schools, going down to instruct their inferiors. The profession has distributed its functions among the common people. Has it destroyed the profession? It never was stronger, never was as strong as it is to-day.—Henry Ward Beecher.

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RELIGION, EARLY

The following letter was written by the late Prof. Borden P. Bowne, of Boston University, when he was a boy in Pennington Seminary. It foreshadows his long life of Christian service:

Pennington, October 10.

Dear ——:

His name is still Jesus, for He saves His people from their sins. By His grace I have kept the faith, and have not denied His name. On Sunday night we had service in the chapel of the institution. I told of the power of Jesus’ blood to cleanse from all sin. There seemed to be none that believed my report; at least none gave in such a testimony. I felt rather deprest in spirit; but after service was over, as I was talking to some other brother, I heard a noise in one of the rooms; proceeding thither, we found that a young man had just been blest. We rejoiced with him and we held an impromptu prayer-meeting, and then God was pleased to make Himself known in power to four or five more; and together we glorified the God of Israel. Glory to Jesus! I was comforted and blest. The tempter whispered to me sweetly that I had best not mention the matter of sanctification any more. But by God’s grace I shall hold up the standard of holiness to the Lord. There are one or two who profess it here, but they don’t seem to say much about it. ——, it is my ambition to be one of the best of men. I want to be able to look at the promise alone; and because God has said it I believe it. I have instituted family worship with my room-mate; morning and evening I endeavor to call upon God with him. He is not religious; he is a young boy fifteen or sixteen years old, a very nice young fellow. May the Lord lead him to Himself. Amen and amen.

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RELIGION, FAMILY

In a sermon on “The Debt Parents Owe to their Children,” Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D., of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, told of a parent who had said to him: “For twenty years neither myself nor my family have paid attention to Christianity. And now I have learned to my sorrow that the Christian Church is the only place in which to bring up a family. If I had ten sons I would compel them to marry wives reared in the Christian Church and the Christian home, who have the Christian method and Christian spirit of rearing children. (Text.)

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RELIGION, IMPORTANCE OF

Lecky says that the humble meeting in Aldersgate Street where John Wesley was converted forms an epoch in English history; and he adds that the religious revolution begun in England by the preaching of the Wesleys is of greater historic importance than all the splendid victories by land and sea won under Pitt.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2661)

Religion in Work—See [Work Proving Religion].

Religion of Great Men—See [Prayer by Great Leaders].

Religion, Practical—See [Witness of Service].

RELIGION, SHADES OF

It has been well said that as the prism exhibits the various colors contained in light, so mankind displays the various forms and shades of religion.

(2662)

RELIGION, SHALLOW

Religion has not done much for a man if it has not moderated the savage passions of his nature. Prof. Fred. M. Davenport says:

I once spent an evening listening, with a couple of friends, to an old darky’s account of his conversion. He had reached the climax of the recital, was in a considerable state of ecstasy, and was very anxiously seeking to impress us all with his spiritual experience, when suddenly his dog began barking furiously just behind him and utterly broke the continuity of his thought and of his speech. I think no one of us will ever forget the dash of savagery that came into his face as he turned with flashing eye and foaming lip upon that canine intruder. It was a startling transition, revealing the crater of primitive passion just underneath the crust of religious culture and nurture.—The Contemporary Review.

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RELIGION THAT WEARS

The Persian carpet may be meant for the feet, but few things are so full of lessons for head and heart and life. When choosing one the first thing to do is to make sure that the colors are fast, which is done by moistening a handkerchief and rubbing the carpet to see if the color comes off. Next, count the stitches. A good carpet contains 10,000 stitches to the square foot, while the better ones have as many as 40,000. The weaver does not see the pattern as he works, as the reverse side of the web is toward him. When a native buys a new carpet he immediately puts it down in the bazaars for all the traffic to pass over it; and the more muddy the shoes of the passers-by the greater will be the beauty of the carpet afterward, provided the colors are fast, as it acquires that beautiful silky gloss, so dear to the heart of the carpet-lover.

A man needs a character that will wear, whose colors are fast, and that will grow more beautiful when exposed for the world’s use.

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RELIGION TO DIE BY

Wesley always insisted on judging religion by the most severely practical tests. Life was one test, and he mistrusted profoundly a religion which did not fill life or its possessor with gladness and strength. But he knew that death, with its mystery and loneliness, was the last and sorest test of religion. Did the religion he preached make that last darkness luminous? Did it put songs on dying lips and gladness in dying hearts? “The world,” wrote Wesley, “may not like our Methodists, but the world can not deny that they die well,” and the religion which teaches men to die well may surely find in that fact its best credentials.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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RELIGION UNCHANGEABLE

Farmers once plowed with a forked stick, and now with the steel gang-plow. But Julius Cæsar said, nearly twenty centuries ago, that a soldier should have a pound of wheat per day, and the German Government allows the same pound of wheat per day to its soldiers, for their day’s march. Gone Julius Cæsar’s forked stick for raising the pound of wheat. The Italian plows with a steel mole-board, but he still wants his pound of flour for his hunger. Gone also the old offerings in the temples, and the old creeds, and the old views of the Sabbath. But man still sings, and prays, and struggles with temptation, and weeps, smiting upon his breast, and is forgiven, and dies. This religious nature of man abides unshaken; the credal leaves fall off; but the tree grows on. That vital growth is called religion—the life of God in the soul of man.—N. D. Hillis.

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RELIGION VERSUS BUSINESS

The improvement of Egypt in the control of inundation by the great Assouan dam of the Nile has unfortunately drowned and is destroying the magnificent temple ruins on the island of Philæ. That only hurts a sentiment of antiquarian reverence and makes bread for many poor. But if our rush of business drowns out our family worship, and tires us too much for a second Sabbath service, it may cost us more than its gains are worth. We need to remember that our life is sacred, for we are the temple of God. (Text.)—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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RELIGIONS CONTRASTED

Seventeen hundred years ago a Christian teacher gave a description of an Egyptian temple, with its porticoes and vestibules and groves and sacred fields adjoining, the walls gleaming with precious stones and artistic paintings, and its shrines veiled with gold-embroidered hangings. “But,” he says, “if you enter the penetralia of the enclosure and ask the officiating priest to unveil the god of this sanctuary, you will find a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent—a beast—rolling on a purple couch.” And a modern writer asks us to contrast this with the temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem. Here, too, you would find a gorgeous building, a priesthood, altars, and a shrine hidden by a veil. Within the veil stands the Ark of the Covenant, covered by the mercy seat, sprinkled with the blood of atonement, and shadowed by the golden cherubim. Let that covering be lifted, and within that ark, in the very core and center of Israel’s religion, in its most sacred place, you find, what? The two tables of the moral law. There, in a word, you have the contrast of the two religions. The moral law, enforced by the belief in the one true God—that is the religion of Israel—and that religion was interpreted, fulfilled, and consummated by the revelation of the Christ.—Thomas F. Gailor, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS OF THE WORLD

This chart indicates the magnitude of the task before the Christian forces of the world in bringing humanity up to Christian standards. The significance of Christian missionary and evangelizing work may be represented as an attempt of one-third of mankind constituting the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Greek Christian countries through a small band of picked workers, to change the religious habits, opinions and faith of the other two-thirds. But God has provided that this great task shall be accomplished.

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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

A friend tells me that one of her earliest childhood memories is of being awakened by her mother before daybreak on a June morning. “Come, child,” she said, “come with me over to the pines, to hear the thrushes sing.” Across the dew-wet meadows they went, in the early flush of morning, and the child, her hand clasped in her mother’s, listened with her to the exquisite music of the thrush in the holy hour and place.

What need of words? It is the spirit that giveth life. The flame was kindled in the heart of the child because it burned undimmed in the mother’s heart. Not by preaching, nor even by much speaking, will our teachers teach religion. But they will surely teach whose lives abide in the shadow of the Almighty. We can not but speak the things we have seen and heard. Striving to do His will in the school-room, we slowly learn of the doctrine, and the truth we have made our own we are enabled to share.—Sarah Louise Arnold, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1905.

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RELIGIOUS INFRACTIONS OF PROPRIETY

There are religious infractions of propriety, and they are serious. The Chinese word for propriety is an ideograph made up of two parts; one means to proclaim, or to reveal; the other means a sacrificial vessel. That is, propriety in the group of countries dominated by Chinese etiquette is a matter of religion and so is not to be lightly regarded. But what does one witness at the temples? Not infrequently one sees a missionary stalk boldly into a temple. He may not take off his shoes in Japan before walking over the polished temple floors. Very possibly he walks up to the idol and familiarly pats him with his ever-present cane. It is to the believer in those faiths like taking hold of the Ark of the Covenant in ancient Jewish times. We should remember that ridiculing the beliefs of people is poor missionary policy. They are usually the best that that country, or people, know. Let us not profane those things which are held most sacred. We may argue against them and reason about the unwisdom of holding them, but let us never laugh at the religious views and practises of the non-Christian world.—H. P. Beach, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

“Let the child wait till he has grown and then choose his own religion,” said an English statesman in the hearing of Coleridge. Coleridge, leading his friend into the garden, said: “I have decided not to put out any vegetables this spring, but to wait till August and let the garden decide for itself whether it prefers weeds or strawberries.” This is the logic of the delayed instruction theory.—A. B. Bunn Van Ormer, “Studies in Religious Nurture.”

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RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION DENIED

In the psychological confession of a writer (Sentenis), a German philosopher whom his father had submitted to the experiment advised by the author of “Émile,” he tells us that, left alone by the death of a tenderly loved wife, this father, a learned and thoughtful man, had taken his infant son to a retired place in the country; and not allowing him communication with any one, he had cultivated the child’s intelligence through the sight of natural objects placed near him, and by the beauty of language, almost without books, and in carefully concealing from him all idea of God. The child reached his tenth year without having either read or heard that great name. But then his mind formed what had been denied it. The sun which he saw rise each morning seemed the all-powerful benefactor of whom he felt the need. He soon formed the habit of going at dawn to the garden to pay homage to that god that he himself had made. His father surprized him one day, and showed him his error by teaching him that all fixt stars are so many suns distributed in space. But such was the keen disappointment and the grief of the child deprived of his worship, that the father, overcome, acknowledged to him that there is a God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.—A. B. Bunn Van Ormer, “Studies in Religious Nurture.”

(2673)

Religious Narrowness—See [Regularity, Ecclesiastical].

RELIGIOUS TRAINING

Suppose a sculptor should take a piece of marble and stand it in front of his studio on the sidewalk, and should invite every passer-by to have a stroke at it with mallet and chisel, shaping it according to the fancy or the caprice of the moment, and then at the end of the year have it suddenly endowed with life, and ask it to choose what it would be—the shape of a god or of a satyr, of beauty or ugliness, pure and white or stained and soiled—this man would be rational as compared with the one who believes that you can let a child grow up until he is twenty unbiased, without absorbing any religious ideas or convictions, and then freely choose what he will be. If you do not bias the child, the first that he meets on the street, or in his school, or among his companions, will begin the work of biasing, of impression, of education, of training; for this is a continuous process. Whether you will or not, it is something over which you have no choice. It is something that will be done either wisely and well, or unwisely and ill.—Minot J. Savage.

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Remainders Saved—See [Conservation of Remainders].

Remains of Insects—See [Insects of Remote Times].

REMEDIES, STRANGE

There are many remedies, real or reputed for physical ills, but there is but one sovereign remedy for body, soul and spirit, namely, the life of God fully received into the human soul. In an article on “Strange Medicines,” in the Nineteenth Century, Miss Cumming quotes a few of the healing spells which to this day are practised by the peasantry of various districts in Great Britain, and which are considered certain remedies:

The Northumbrian cure for warts is to take a large snail, rub the wart well with it, and then impale the snail on a thorn-hedge. As the creature wastes away the warts will surely disappear. In the west of England eel’s blood serves the same purpose. For goiter or wen, the hand of a dead child must be rubbed nine times across the lump, or, still better, the hand of a suicide may be substituted. In the vicinity of Stamfordham, in Northumberland, whooping-cough is cured by putting the head of a live trout into the patient’s mouth, and letting the trout breathe into the latter. Or else a hairy caterpillar is put into a small bag and tied around the child’s neck. The cough ceases as the insect dies. Another cure for whooping-cough is offerings of hair. In Sunderland the crown of the head is shaved and the hair hung upon a bush or tree, with the full faith that as the birds carry away the hair, so will the cough vanish. In Lincolnshire a girl suffering from the ague cuts a lock of her hair and binds it around an aspen-tree, praying the latter to shake in her sted. The remedy for a toothache at Tavistock, in Devonshire, is to bite a tooth from a skull in the churchyard and keep it always in the pocket. At Loch Carron, in Ross-shire, an occasional cure for erysipelas is to cut off half the ear of a cat and let the blood drip on the inflamed surface. In Cornwall the treatment for the removal of whelks or small pimples from the eyelids of children is to pass the tail of a black cat nine times over the part affected. Toads are made to do service in divers manners in Cornwall and Northampton for the cure of nose-bleeding and quinsy, while “toad powder,” or even a live toad or spider shut up in a box, is still in some places accounted as useful a charm against contagion as it was in the days of Sir Kenelm Digby. The old smallpox and dropsy remedy known as pulvis Ethiopicus, was nothing more nor less than powdered toad. In Devonshire any person bitten by a viper is advised to kill the creature at once and rub the wound with its fat. It is said that this practise has survived in some portions of the United States, where the flesh of the rattlesnake is accounted the best cure for its own bite. Black, in his “Folk Medicine,” states that the belief in the power of snake-skin as a cure for rheumatism still exists in New England. Such a belief is probably a direct heritage from Britain.

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The following is the belief of Eastern Jews in very queer remedies:

For hoarseness and complaints of the throat and air-passages an approved prescription is to take a new plate, write on it with ink the three mystic names compounded of the Hebrew letters, “Ain, Yod, Aelph,” “Vau, Teth,” and “Teth, Yod, Koph”; then wash them out with wine, and after adding three grains of a citron used at the tabernacle festival, drink the beverage. Fits, epileptic, and ordinary, are treated after the following fashion: The patient’s head is covered and a pious neighbor stands by the bedside while the “practitioner” called in recites this invocation: “In the name of the Lord of Israel, in the name of the angel Raphael, and in the name of the hosts of heaven, and in the name of the One hidden and concealed, I adjure you to quit the body of So-and-So, the son of So-and-So, to quit him at once and without doing him hurt; and if you do not go, I curse you with the curse of the tribunal above and of the tribunal below, and with the curse of Joshua, the son of Nun.” In cases of severe prostration and debility, pounded mummy and human bones are administered, but this is considered a very dangerous medicine and great precautions are taken to prevent evil spirits interfering with the patient or hindering his recovery.—Public Opinion.

(2676)

REMEDY FOR PESTS

Is not the remedy for many evils to be found by allowing one destructive force to overcome another? God so makes “the wrath of man to praise him.”

One day a very small orange-tree was taken out of the ground in Australia and sent with many others across the ocean to California. On this small tree there were a few white insects. The little tree was planted again in California and soon put out many fresh, fragrant leaves. The white insects were astonished and rejoiced that day after day went by without the appearance of any red beetles. The white insects increased in numbers; there were thousands of fragrant-leaved orange-trees in California, and in a few years there were millions of white insects in them. One morning a man stood among the trees and said, “Confound these bugs; they’ll ruin me; what shall I do?” and a man who knew said, “Get some red beetles from Australia.” So this orange-grower, with some others, paid a man to go to Australia and collect some live red beetles. The collector went across the ocean, three weeks’ steady steaming, and sent back a few of the voracious little beetles in a pill-box. They were put into a tree in a California orange-orchard in which there were many cottony-cushion scale insects. The red insects promptly began eating the white ones; and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren have kept up this eating ever since. And so the orange-growers never tire of telling how the red beetles (whose name is Vedalia) were brought from Australia to save them from ruin by the white insects (whose name is Icerya).—Vernon L. Kellogg, “Insect Stories.”

(2677)

Remembering—See [Forgetting and Remembering].

Remembering the Good—See [Old Year Memories].

REMINDER, SEVERE

The Burgundians in France, in a statute now eleven hundred years old, attributed valor to the east of France because it had a law that the children should be taken to the limits of the district, and there soundly whipt, in order that they might forever remember the boundary-line.—Wendell Phillips.

(2678)

REMINDERS

A little boy had lost both parents by death. There were no relatives to care for him, and a place had therefore been found for him with a family in the country.

It was a ride of several miles to the strange home, and the farmer, who had agreed to transport him thither noticed that the little fellow sitting so shyly beside him in the great wagon often thrust his hand into his worn blouse as if to make sure of some treasure. Curiosity at last prompted the man to ask what it was. He had been kind during the journey, and so the child hesitatingly confided his secret.

“It’s just a piece of mother’s dress. When I get kind—kind o’ lonesome—I like to feel it. Most seems ’s if she—wasn’t so far off.”

(2679)

REMINDERS, UNPLEASANT

The man in the following incident underwent a painful operation to remove marks that reminded him of unpleasant things. There is a promise of greater blessing from one who said, “Tho your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow.”

Dr. Berchon was consulted by a rich man who asked him to remove a tattooed design that had been made in his youth and doubtless reminded him constantly of his humble beginnings. Berchon, a well-read man, used the ancient method of Crito, described by Paul of Ægina. Crito washed the tattooed part with niter and then enveloped it in resin, which was allowed to remain several days to soften the skin. The design was then scraped with a sharp instrument, the wound was washed and rubbed with salt, after which a sort of plaster was applied, consisting of frankincense, nitrate of potash, lye, lime, wax, and honey. Several days later the marks disappeared. (Text.)—La Nature.

(2680)

REMORSE

Haime was a Dorsetshire lad, violent in temper, gross in speech, utterly lawless in conduct. He was visited with what is to-day an almost unthinkable spiritual experience—a very violent temptation to blaspheme God. He yielded at last, in the silence of his heart framed the dreadful words, and was then told by the tempter, “Thou art inevitably damned.” The unhappy youth was broken-hearted. He swung for a time betwixt plans of suicide and wild rushes into vicious pleasure. The terrors of sin haunted him. He had experiences which can hardly be paralleled out of monkish literature.

“One night, as I was going to bed, I durst not lie down without prayer. So, falling upon my knees, I began to consider, ‘What can I pray for? I have neither the will nor the power to do anything good.’ Then it darted into my mind, ‘I will not pray, neither will I be beholden to God for mercy.’ I arose from my knees without prayer, and laid me down; but not in peace. I never had such a night before. I was as if my very body had been in a fire, and I had a hell in my conscience. I was thoroughly persuaded the devil was in the room.”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2681)

RENEWAL

M. E. Hume-Griffith, in her “Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia,” tells of a little Persian boy badly disfigured from a “hare-lip,” who was brought by his father to the medical mission at Julfa to be operated upon for the trouble.

The Persians believe that this congenital malformation is the mark left by the Evil One, so this afflicted boy was known in his village by the unenviable title “little devil,” and had been a good deal tormented by his playfellows. The operation was a complete success. After ten days’ careful treatment the dressing was finally removed, and the boy was handed a mirror that he might look for the first time upon his “new” face. Tears of joy rolled down his face as he kissed the hand that had wrought the change, and he murmured brokenly: “I am no longer a little devil, I am no longer a little devil!” And he went back to his comrades to be a hero and an idol.

(2682)

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The difference between men who are taking in and giving out life and knowledge and men who are living in their own selfish circle is like the difference in lakes stated below:

Fresh-water lakes are always only expansions of rivers, due to the particular topographical configuration of a valley. They are all characterized by the fact that the water that they receive runs out, either continuously or intermittently, and that the chemical constitution of their water remains constantly the same as that of the streams and rivers of the same region.

Salt lakes, on the other hand, are always closed basins, without outlet, and their water is removed only by surface evaporation. These facts being well understood, we see at once why the former lakes contain fresh water and the others salt water.(Text.)—Paul Combes, Cosmos.

(2683)

See [Inner Life].

RENEWAL NECESSARY

If I have a certain sum of money, I can calculate what necessities it will meet, and how far it will go; but it will go only so far; beyond that is exhaustion. But if I have a bed of strawberries in my garden, after it has borne the crop of the season, and there is no more to be got from it, I can weed and cultivate and fertilize it, and next year it will bear again. And tho the whole bed shows exhaustion, I can set its runners in new rows and nurture them into new life, tho the old plants are only fit to be dug under; and I can renew the life of my bed and after a season it will be as young and fresh and fertile as ever. I have completely renewed its life. So I can renew the life of a note, or lease, or partnership. So bodily strength, tho exhausted every day, is renewed every night; and even if impaired by disease, it may be recovered. There is nothing necessarily hopeless in the exhaustion of anything that has life in it; but all living things need renewal.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2684)

RENEWAL, SPIRITUAL

A lady calling upon a friend one day, exprest surprize that she had both windows open while the thermometer was at zero, saying that she never opened her windows in winter, adding that even then she was unable to keep warm.

“I open my windows,” was the explanation, “to warm the rooms by filling them with fresh air. It is impossible to heat dead air. To inhale the same air over and over again is to breathe in poison.”

As “it is impossible to heat dead air,” so it is impossible to incite zeal in a dead church. The breath of the Spirit is first needed to change the spiritual climate. (Text.)

(2685)

Renewing the Faith—See [Extremity not Final].

RENOVATION

The verses below by Sam Walter Foss, from a poem on “The Soul Spring Cleaning,” have in them a suggestion that every man may now and then utilize:

Yes, clean yer house, an’ clean yer shed,

An’ clean yer barn in ev’ry part;

But brush the cobwebs from yer head,

An’ sweep the snow-banks from yer heart.

Yes, w’en spring cleanin’ comes aroun’

Bring forth the duster an’ the broom,

But rake yer fogy notions down,

An’ sweep yer dusty soul of gloom.

Plant flowers in the soul’s front yard,

Set out new shade an’ blossom trees,

An’ let the soul once froze an’ hard

Sprout crocuses of new idees.

Yes, clean yer house, an’ clean yer shed,

An’ clean yer barn in ev’ry part;

But brush the cobwebs from yer head,

An’ sweep the snow-banks from yer heart!(Text.)

(2686)

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Each great European cathedral has its regular corps of repairers—architects, engineers, masons, carpenters, every man a master of his craft. The work of renovation goes on at all seasons; crumbling stones must be replaced, fresh cement supplied, broken parts mended; there is always something needing to be done. The inexperienced traveler is at first much annoyed by the sight of the stagings and scaffoldings from which cathedral walls seem never wholly free. “When,” he exclaims, “shall I at last find a façade which is not in the process of repair?” But with larger knowledge and more careful thought his feelings change.

The flimsy, unsightly framework clinging to the ancient gray stone no longer seems a blemish, but a true adornment, since it eloquently tells of the reverent, affectionate care which faithfully preserves for the future these “poems in stone” handed down from the mighty past.—“Monday Club, Sermons on the International Sunday-school Lessons for 1904.”

(2687)

RENUNCIATION

Dr. R. F. Horton, in the Christian Endeavor World, tells this incident concerning a wedding where he officiated:

A very little man had brought to the altar a very big bride, who, moreover, was attired in purple, and certainly bore a formidable aspect.

Whether the situation affected the bridegroom, or in a dreamy reminiscence his mind wandered back to childhood and the catechism when, on the mention of the world and the flesh and the devil, he promised to have nothing to do with them, I can not say. But sure enough, when I put to him the crucial question, “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?” the answer came, low but clear, “I renounce them all!” It was with some compunction that I said to him, “You must say, ‘I will.’”

(2688)

RENUNCIATION, COMPLETE

There is an ancient legend of a devout man who had, among many other virtues, the gift of healing, unto whom divers made resort for cure; among the rest one Chromatius, being sick, sent for him. Being come, he told of his sickness, and desired that he might have the benefit of cure as others had before him. “I can not do it,” said the devout person, “till thou hast beaten all the idols and images in thy house to pieces.” “That shall be done,” said Chromatius. “Here, take my keys, and where you find any images let them be defaced,” which was done accordingly. To prayer went the holy man, but no cure was wrought. “Oh!” saith Chromatius, “I am as sick as ever. I am very sick and weak!” “It can not be otherwise,” replied the holy man; “nor can I help it, for certainly there is one idol more in your house undiscovered, and that must be defaced, too.” “True,” said Chromatius. “There is so, indeed; there is one all of beaten gold. It cost two hundred pounds. I would fain have saved it, but here, take my keys again. You shall find it locked up fast in my chest. Take it and break it in pieces.” Which done, the holy man prayed and Chromatius was healed. (Text.)

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REPAIR OF CHARACTER

After every trip a locomotive goes into the round-house, where it is overhauled, cleaned, and every bolt and nut is tightened. About every four years it goes into the shop, is taken to pieces and made over anew. The criteria in every case are: Can she haul the load? and can she make schedule time?

It would be a good thing for men thus to overhaul their habits and tendencies, in order to maintain the integrity and efficiency of character. (Text.)

(2690)

Reparation—See [Duty, Sense of].

REPARTEE

We rejoice more than all in the constant progress of those liberal ideas to which such an impulse was given by the victory of Yorktown. You remember that Fox is said to have heard of it “with a wild delight”; and even he may not have anticipated its full future outcome. You remember the hissing hate with which he was often assailed, as when the tradesmen of Westminster whose vote he had solicited flung back at him the answer: “I have nothing for you, sir, but a halter,” to which Fox, by the way, with instant wit and imperturbable good nature, smilingly responded: “I could not think, my dear sir, of depriving you of such an interesting family relic.”—Richard S. Storrs.

(2691)

REPAYMENT

The baronet in the following story followed nature’s favorite method of repaying in kind:

James McNeil Whistler, the famous artist, was extravagantly fond of a French poodle that he owned, says the New York Tribune, and once, when the little dog had some trouble with his throat, he sent for Sir Morell Mackenzie, the great throat specialist. Mackenzie was not a bit pleased by being called in to treat a dog, but he prescribed, nevertheless, and had a partial revenge by charging a big fee. The next day he “got even” most effectually by sending for Mr. Whistler in great haste, and the artist, thinking that he had been summoned on some matter connected with his beloved poodle, dropt his work and rushed to Mackenzie’s house. On his arrival, Sir Morell said very gravely: “How do you do, Mr. Whistler? I wished to see you about painting my front door.” (Text.)

(2692)

REPEATED EFFORT

Persuasion is constantly tried, often with no success whatever. The reason of failure is frequently found in the neglect of perseverance.

In a very small Bible class of young men the fall of Jericho was the subject of discussion on a certain Sunday. One of the members suggested that more members might be brought in if some of the faith of the besiegers of old were used. Another member at once suggested that a list of those advisable should be made, and that each should be “encompassed” by calls on seven days, each day by a different man. The suggestion was adopted. Next day a young business man received a visit and an invitation to attend the class next Sunday. He was indifferent and did not promise. On Tuesday the second called and was treated coldly. But on Wednesday when a third man called the effect showed. “Two men have called already; I am considering,” said he. On Thursday when the fourth visitor called, down came the walls. He promised to attend and attended regularly. Others were won. Among them was a musician, who organized a fine orchestra. (Text.)

(2693)

REPENTANCE

When I’ve a quarrel in my mind

With one who’s far away

To scorching letters I’m inclined,

In which I say my say.

And then I take those scorching screeds

So full of ink and ire,

In which I threaten awful deeds,

And mail them—in the fire.

—Success Magazine.

(2694)

REPENTANCE, LATE

The following striking illustration of the effect of delay in serving God is by James Drummond, in “Parables and Pictures”:

There was once a horse that ran away in the morning and did not return till evening. When the master upbraided him, the horse replied, “But here am I, returned safe and sound. You have your horse.” “True,” answered the master, “but my field is unplowed.” If a man turns to God in old age, God has the man, but He has been defrauded of the man’s work.

(2695)

REPENTANCE, NATURE OF

No more vivid illustration of what evangelical repentance is can be framed than that which is found in the Greek original, “straphate,” rendered “convert,” which means to face about, or turn around, in allusion to the movement of a ship when it is put about on an opposite course; or to the action of a flower when it turns its face toward the sun. The change of mind becomes a change of life.

(2696)

REPENTANCE, PRACTICAL

When Thomas Olivers, the Welsh cobbler who became noted as a Methodist, itinerant and a hymnist, turned from a reckless life, carousing and incurring many debts, to a profession of a change of heart, he deliberately set about settling his financial obligations, nor ceased until the last penny was paid.

He brought forth fruit meet for repentance. (Text.)

(2697)

REPENTANCE THE GIFT OF GOD

John Wesley, that preacher of repentance, sings:

“Lord, I despair myself to heal,

I see my sin but can not feel;

I can not till thy Spirit blow,

And make the obedient waters flow.

Speak, gracious Lord, my sickness cure,

Make my infected nature pure;

Peace, righteousness and joy impart,

And pour thyself into my heart.”

(2698)

REPETITION, FORCE OF

Continuous repeated acts of kindness breaking down the pride of an enemy, repeated annoyances that shape the temper; these or similar experiences may be illustrated by this extract:

A stalwart young man at Leavenworth, Kan., recently accepted a wager that he could stand a quart of water dropt into his open hand, drop by drop, from a height of three feet. Before 500 drops had fallen into his hand he almost cried with pain and said he had enough. After a little water had fallen each drop seemed to crush his hand, and a blister in the center of it was the result.—Boston Journal.

(2699)

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A minister in his walk saw a stone-mason who was trying to break a large stone with what seemed a very small hammer. “You never can do it,” the minister prophesied. “Sure, sir, that’s all you know about breaking stones,” replied Pat, as he hammered away industriously. After hundreds of these peckings there came a slight crack. A few more, and the great stone fell apart.

“Now,” asked the Irishman, “would your honor tell me which one of these blows it was that broke the stone?” “Why, the last one, to be sure,” said the minister. “There you’re wrong, sir,” was the reply. “It was the first blow, and the last blow, and all the middle ones, sir.”

(2700)

REPLENISHMENT

The moral life of man would soon be exhausted if God by His Spirit did not continually renew it.

Water plunging over the rocks at Niagara is intercepted and made to turn the giant turbines of electric power plants before it is allowed to hurry on its way to the sea. If the waters of the Great Lakes were not replenished Niagara would soon run dry and our mill-wheels stop. But year by year, and day by day, the sun’s rays evaporate the waters of the ocean and lift them back again to the mountain tops, whence they flow downward into the lakes and rivers.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”

(2701)

REPORTS TO ORDER

It was my pleasure, some years ago, to report a religious meeting for three papers in New York. A discussion of vital importance to the Presbyterian Church was promised. The lines were closely drawn and the feeling was intense. The day before the meeting I went to the editorial offices for instruction. Mr. A. said: “We want a fair report, but you know we publish a conservative paper, and our space is limited. Give us all that is said by the conservative leaders. Of course, the others must be treated fairly, but we shall not have space enough for any of the addresses on that side; give us a fair report, however.” Mr. B. said: “We want a fair report, but you know we publish a liberal paper, and our space is limited. Give us all that is said by the liberal leaders. Of course, the others must be treated fairly, but we shall not have space for any of the addresses on that side; give us a fair report, however.” Mr. C. said: “We want an absolutely impartial report. Give the leading speeches on both sides as fully as possible, and mention every speaker who takes part in the discussion. We want a true picture of the debate in your report. On the editorial pages we shall express our opinion of the arguments advanced, but your report should be absolutely colorless.”—John Bancroft Devins, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

(2702)

Repose—See [Sounds].

REPRESENTATIVE DIGNITY

There was great wisdom sententiously exprest in the exclamation of a little constable I heard of once who went to arrest a burly offender against the statutes, and was threatened with a shaking if he did not “clear out.” If it had been a matter of fists and muscle, the majesty of the law would have been miserably bruised. But the intrepid officer responded: “Do it if you please; only remember, if you shake me you shake the whole State of Massachusetts.”—Thomas Starr King.

(2703)

Repression—See [Power in Self-repression].

REPRISAL

The story of an intelligent dog given below may suggest that the deceits we practise on others will, sooner or later, be repaid against ourselves:

An old lady rented a furnished villa for the summer, and with the villa a large dog also went. In the sitting-room of the villa there was a very comfortable armchair. The old lady liked this chair better than any other in the house. She always made for it the first thing. But, alas! she nearly always found the chair occupied by the large dog. Being afraid of the dog, she never dared bid it harshly to get out of the chair, as she feared it might bite her; but instead she would go to the window and call “Cats!” Then the dog would rush to the window and bark, and the old lady would slip into the vacant chair quietly. One day the dog entered the room and found the old lady in possession of the chair. He strolled over to the window, and, looking out, appeared very much excited, and set up a tremendous barking. The old lady rose and hastened to the window to see what was the matter, and the dog quietly climbed into the chair.

(2704)

REPUTATION

After the Civil War many offers of places of honor and fame came to Gen. Robert E. Lee. He refused them all, says Thomas Nelson Page, in his biography of the soldier. The only position which he finally did accept was the presidency of Washington College, with a small salary.

On one of these occasions Lee was approached with the tender of the presidency of an insurance company at a salary of $50,000 a year. He declined it, saying that it was work with which he was not familiar.

“But, general,” said the representative of the insurance company, “you will not be expected to do any work. What we wish is the use of your name.”

“Don’t you think,” said General Lee, “that if my name is worth $50,000 a year, I ought to be very careful about taking care of it?” (Text.)—The Youth’s Companion.

(2705)

REPUTATION AND CHARACTER

Into a certain London establishment some burglars one night made their way, expecting a big haul of valuables. They commenced operations on an immense and very strong iron safe, feeling sure that tho it would be very difficult to force it open, their strenuous efforts would be rewarded at last. For several hours they used their drills and other implements. When the safe was opened they perceived another safe inside the first one, just as strong and fully as difficult to open. They at once realized that their night’s toil had been all in vain, for it would be impossible to open the inner safe before the world would be resuming work.

So long as the inner life is strong and unbroken, attacks on a man’s reputation can not rob him of his real treasure of a good character.

(2706)

REPUTATION, VALUE OF

The following is related of “Stonewall” Jackson:

He was never an ornamental soldier, being roughly clad and so plain as to be frequently taken for far less than he was. He and his staff were once compelled to ride through

a field of uncut oats. The owner rushed out in great indignation, demanding the name of the leader that he might report him.

“My name is Jackson,” replied the general. “What Jackson?” asked the irate farmer. “General Jackson.” “You don’t mean to tell me that you are the famous Stonewall Jackson?” the farmer stammered. “That’s what they call me.” The farmer took off his hat with great reverence and said: “General Jackson, ride over my whole field. Do what you like with it, sir.”—The Sunday Magazine.

(2707)

Requital—See Grace; Repayment.

RESCUE

Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, the pioneer missionary to Turkey, was one day crossing the Galata Bridge in Constantinople when his attention was attracted to a crowd. He prest into it to see its object of interest and found a cursing American sailor dying of cholera. The missionary asked him a few questions and was answered by oaths. He had the man removed to a house, and after a few months’ nursing by the Christians of the mission he was able to ship for America. On the morning he left, he called on Dr. Hamlin and said, “I have been a very wicked man, and have done all the evil I could in the world, and now I am going to do all the good I can.”

Three years later, the mission received this letter from him:

“Dear Mr. Hamlin: Thank God, I will survive the dead! I am here workin’ and blowin’ the gospel trumpet on the Eri Kanal.

Yours Brown.”

Twenty-five years later Dr. Hamlin met a gentleman in Paris who had just returned from Honolulu. Said he, “I met a man named Brown who has done a great deal of good among the sailors in the Pacific. He can go everywhere and anywhere with the Bible. He told me that once he was dying, a blasphemous dog, in the streets of Constantinople, and you picked him up and saved him soul and body.”

(2708)

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The worth of man is independent of conditions of life or color of skin. An exemplification of that fact is recorded in the history of a rescue in Hongkong harbor:

While the cyclone was at its highest and it was still a question whether the largest steamers in the port would survive the storm, the officers of the Schuylkill noticed a vague pencil of light through the sheets of rain, lighting up a confusion of loose and drifting shipping. For the first two or three flashes they thought they were menaced with the new peril of lightning, but no detonation followed the flash. A lull in the rain showed that the search-light of the second-class British cruiser Azelia was following one of her boats while it made a desperate struggle to reach the crew of a foundering Chinese junk. The pencil of light, now bright, now dim, followed the boat as it was pulled by a crew of stout British tars and managed with almost incredible cleverness by its officer. They saw it alongside the junk, saw the Chinese tumble into it half dead with fright and fatigue, and disappear beyond the rays of the search-light. Next morning they learned that the Chinese were landed safely farther down the harbor, but that the boat was crusht like an eggshell against the sea-wall, tho the sailors were saved to a man.

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Many straying souls who have lost the way may be but fallen angels, whom love and kindness might restore.

George MacDonald tells of a young woman who had been led astray. A minister found her one night on his doorstep, and brought her into his house. His little daughter, who was up-stairs with her mother, asked, “Mama, who is it papa has in the library?” Her mother replied, “It is an angel, dear, who has lost her way, and papa is telling her the way back.”

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This incident has been related of the eminent divine, Edward Irving:

When a boy in Scotland with his little sister he went down on the sands of Solway Firth to meet his uncle, who was coming to visit their home. When the tide comes in there, it flows in with a rush. It sweeps on like a flood. All the people there know this danger of the onrushing sea and guard against it, but these little children forgot the time and tide. They were playing in a little pool of water. Suddenly a horseman dashed down from the mountain side. Without a word he came up on a run, secured the two children to the saddle and started for the hills. Faster and faster followed the rising tide, but at last the horseman and his precious load were saved.

The Christian must waste no time if he would save imperilled men. (Text.)

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A policeman shouted to a boy in the Lancaster Canal at Preston, England, “Hullo! Why are you bathing there?” “Please, sir, I’m not; I’m drowning,” was the boy’s answer, and he promptly sank. The policeman dived and rescued him.

Many persons who are supposed to be having a good time in the world are really losing their lives.

(2712)

See [Kongo Missionary]; [Listening for Signals].

RESENTMENT, FREE FROM

A writer in the Saturday Evening Post speaks thus concerning Lincoln and Lee:

On several occasions I heard him speak most feelingly of the defamation heaped upon him by the South, but never did he exhibit the semblance of resentment. More than once I have heard him say: “If these people only knew us better it would be well for both of us.” He always spoke of them as “these people,” as did General Robert E. Lee, who in personal intercourse usually referred to the Union army when in front of him as “these people.” His last order to Longstreet before Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg was: “These people are there and they must be driven away.” Both of these great characters of our Civil War are now remembered, and will be remembered for all time, as having never uttered a sentence of resentment relating to their opponents in the war.

(2713)

RESERVATION

An old Indian in northwestern Canada, who for many years had hated Christians, was at last brought to the Savior and wished to be baptized. The examining missionary, the Rev. E. D. Thomas, was convinced that the old man was keeping back something from him, and was clinging to some form of his old belief. It proved to be a charm which he had purchased years before from a very great medicine-man. After a long talk he was persuaded to give it up. It was a small, round tin box wrapt in pieces of dirty calico and sealed with grease and clay. Inside were half a dozen little pieces of stone, each wrapt in brown paper and embedded in down. (Text.)

(2714)

RESERVE POWER

No life can be vigorous if it is not kept fresh, responsive, by great physical and mental reserves. As hibernating animals, like the bear, in cold climates sustain life through the winter wholly upon the reserve fat and nutriment stored up in the tissues, so patients who have splendid physical reserves and resisting power are carried through severe sicknesses and sustained through severe illnesses by this reserve surplus, stored-up vital power, while those who lack it, those who have dissipated it in abnormal living and excesses, often lose their lives, even in much less severe illnesses.

Great business men accomplish marvels with their reserves. Many of them work but a few hours a day, but they have such tremendous physical reserves and so much stored-up mental energy that they are able to accomplish wonders in a short time, because of their ability to work with great intensity and powerful concentration.

People who keep their physical and mental surplus drawn down very low by working a great many hours and almost never taking vacations, who do not fill their reserve reservoir by frequent vacations and by a lot of recreation and play, do not work with anything like the freshness and mental vigor of those who work less hours and constantly accumulate great reserve power.

There comes into every life worth while a time when success will turn upon the reserve power. It is then a question of how long your stored-up energy will enable you to hold out. There will often arise emergencies when your success will depend upon how much fight there is in you.—Denver Republican.

(2715)

Reserved Merit—See [Books and Worth].

RESIGNATION

This note of resignation is written by F. C. Browning:

I can not feel

That all is well when darkening clouds conceal

The shining sun;

But then, I know

God lives and loves; and say, since it is so,

Thy will be done.

I do not see

Why God should e’en permit some things to be,

When He is love.

But I can see

Tho often dimly through the mystery,

His hand above!

I do not know

Where falls the seed that I have tried to sow

With greatest care,

But I shall know

The meaning of each waiting hour below,

Sometime, somewhere!

I do not look

Upon the present, nor in nature’s book,

To read my fate;

But I do look

For promised blessings in God’s holy Book,

And I can wait. (Text.)

(2716)

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Paul Laurence Dunbar, the negro poet, occupied a unique position in the literary world. W. D. Howells called him the only man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life esthetically and express it lyrically. While he was dying of consumption, he contributed to Lippincott’s this verse-sermon of resignation:

Because I had loved so deeply,

Because I had loved so long,

God in his great compassion

Gave me the gift of song.

Because I had loved so vainly

And sung with such faltering breath,

The Master in infinite mercy

Offers the boon of death. (Text.)

(2717)

RESISTANCE

Sit upon the shore close to the water’s edge, and let the sand teach you how to resist. It runs out underneath the water, and just lies there; and when the wave hurls its tons upon it, the sand gives way, but makes the water move it. When the water rushes furiously landward, the sand goes with it, but not quite so fast; and when the wave retreats, the sand runs back, but not quite so far. It always stands close to its enemy, and a little in front of him, never lets him strike from a distance, and never allows him to make any permanent mark. It never runs away, and never melts, and it always separates itself from its antagonist and lies ready for another attack. Always prepared for a blow, it never gives one.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”

(2718)

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The modern treatment of moral germs should be similar to that used in modern surgery:

The new era, which is to succeed the present or “pathologic” era in surgery, is the “physiologic,” and in it we are to take less care about the entrance of possible germs into our surgical wounds and more about keeping the patient in such condition that he can resist them if they do get in.—Literary Digest.

(2719)

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It is said that Napoleon once ordered a coat of mail. When the artizan completed and delivered it, the emperor ordered him to put it on himself. Then Napoleon, taking a pistol, fired shot after shot at the man in armor. It stood this severe test, and was accepted.

(2720)

RESISTANCE AS A LEVERAGE

I know not how the stork, “leaning upon the sirocco,” makes a leverage of the opposing element for her swift flight. I leave the naturalist to explain that. But I do know that the sirocco is a challenge to her unerring instinct and strength of wing. God manipulates the wind. The stork manipulates her wings. And the working of the combination results advantageously to the stork. She does not lean upon the sirocco wind as you would lean upon a couch. That would result in a fall and the bird would be dashed in pieces. The leaning is accompanied by action. While the buoyancy of the air bears her up, the balancing of the wings bears her on. That air-cushion is no “downy bed of ease.” It is a thing to be encountered and overcome. She makes the adversary contribute to her progress. The thing from which men shrink is the thing the bird dares.—C. J. Greenwood.

(2721)

Resistance by Softness—See [Substances, Penetrating].

RESOLUTENESS

The famous antarctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackelton, has astonished his friends by his persistency of purpose. He was long ill during the progress of the “discovery” expedition. His lungs bled for months, but his indomitable purpose prevailed. He struggled heroically against a malady that threatened his life hour by hour. Before he set out he had looked at the map and said at a banquet, “Thanks, here’s to our success. I must not touch wine again until I return. I think we shall do it; at least we will try.” And he reached within ninety-seven miles of the South Pole, and returned to England sound and well.

(2722)

RESOLUTION

Robert Louis Stevenson, in “Virginibus Puerisque,” writes an account of a sea-fight in which he relates this:

Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the Venerable, and only one other vessel, heard that the whole Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the channel and fight his vessel till she sank. “I have taken the depth of the water,” added he, “and when the Venerable goes down, my flag will still fly.” (Text.)

(2723)

See [Convictions, Strong].

RESOLUTIONS, GOOD

When Admiral Farragut’s son was ten years old the father said in his hearing that when he was old enough to make a contract and keep it, he had a bargain to offer him. The son rose up and asked the father what the contract was. The admiral said, “The proposal I intend to make is this: If you will not smoke or chew tobacco, drink intoxicating or strong wines, till you are twenty-one years of age, I will then give you one thousand dollars.” “I am old enough to make that bargain now,” said young Farragut. “I will accept the offer.” The bargain was closed, and when young Farragut was twenty-one the cash was handed over to him. A smoking boy can save a thousand dollars in a few years in the same way, besides saving physical energy and moral power.

(2724)

RESOURCEFULNESS

“Where there is a will there is a way.”

“According to a Pittsburg telephone manager,” says Telephony, “the telephone was put to a novel and unusual use in Washington County recently, enabling two boys, sons of farmers, to hold their positions in their classes in the public schools from which they will graduate in another year. Incidentally, the patience and long-suffering of the country school-teacher was put to an admirable test. Smallpox broke out in the neighborhood in question, and the two scholars were among the early victims. The home was quarantined, and there was every indication that the instruction which they had been receiving would be cut off for an indefinite period. But the teacher was resourceful and willing. He called up the stricken home one evening and proposed that the boys study their lessons as usual, and he would hear them over the telephone. The idea was eagerly received. Each evening they took down the receiver, and the teacher, located several farms away, heard them recite. Neither suffered to an appreciable degree through their absence from school, and their chances for graduation are just as bright as before the disease entered their home.” (Text.)

(2725)

See [Medical Missions].

Resources, American—See [Waste].

RESOURCES, EXHAUSTED

No life is self-sustained. For the individual and the nation, isolation means death. If the resources by which life is sustained were not furnished by others we should soon be at the end of our career.

Charles Francis Adams, the historian and publicist, of Boston, Mass., in his address at Lexington, Va., on January 19, 1907, at the centennial celebration of General Lee’s birth, told the throng of Southerners, there in the shadow of Lee’s old home, that the Confederacy was beaten in the markets of the world, that the economic laws held it in an iron grip, that if 100,000 men could have been sent to reenforce Lee, in the last days of the war, his condition would have been worse than before, as even their meager food-supply would only the sooner have been exhausted. With the South depleted of food by the four years’ of conflict, with the markets of the world closed to her, and no source of subsistence open to her armies, valor and devotion could count for only little.

This consideration enters largely into England’s determination to keep her navy stronger than those of any other two powers. So much of her food-supply comes from abroad that she must maintain control of the ocean routes of trade.

(2726)

RESOURCES, GOD’S

Disposed somewhat to gloomy thoughts, especially at such times as her husband was maligned or persecuted by his enemies, Luther’s wife was on one occasion given a lesson by the great reformer in this wise: “Indeed, you torment yourself as if God were not Almighty and could not produce new Doctor Martins by the score if the old doctor should happen to drown himself in the Saal.”

(2727)

Resources, Inner—See [Water of Life].

RESOURCES, MAKING THE BEST OF

In the Tate Gallery in London there is a picture entitled “Hope.” Seated on a globe representing the earth is a woman blindfolded. The water which encloses the globe reaches to her feet. In her hands is a lyre with all the strings broken excepting one. She does not mend the broken chords, she does not wring her hands in helpless remorse over opportunities that are gone forever, but continues playing on the single string that is left unbroken.

It is the part of a brave man to do his best with what material is still at his disposal, instead of wasting time in vainly regretting what might have been. (Text.)

(2728)

RESOURCES, SMALL

A general who rose from the ranks in our army told me, not boastingly, that all he inherited from his father, in Vermont, was a pair of second-hand trousers, a sealskin cap, and a tendency to rheumatism. The Spartans gave their cooks only vinegar and salt and commanded them to look for the rest of their sauce in the meats they were to serve.—James T. Fields.

(2729)

RESPECT FOR TEACHER

In Morley’s “Gladstone” there is a passage from the pen of the great premier, telling how, years after his Eton career, he sat down to a dinner in honor of the severe old head-master who had flogged every boy in the school, most of them many times. They had all hated him, they said. But when he rose to speak at that dinner, such a storm of applause never greeted a triumphant parliamentarian; and tears of affection actually overflowed all eyes.—Burris A. Jenkins, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1904.

(2730)

Respect for the Dead—See [Sympathy by Pleasure-goers].

RESPECT, NO, OF PERSONS

When King George the V was in the navy, he associated on terms of perfect equality with his messmates, among whom he was known. As an illustration of the indifference of his messmates to his royal birth, and of the spirit of equality with which he was treated by them while at sea, an incident may be related.

One night he declined to turn out, as he should have done, to go on watch. His fellow middy, whom he was designated to relieve, and who wanted to turn in, endeavored to arouse the prince. The latter, on receiving two or three shakings, opened his eyes, swore picturesquely, but refused to turn out. He hit the man who had called him one blow on the eye and went to sleep again.

The young fellow made no response, but returned to his post, resumed his watch, and thus did duty for the prince. Now, if there is one offense that is heinous, according to midshipman ethics, it is the shirking of a watch.

On the following day, the lad who had done double duty, reported the case to his comrades. It was immediately decided to hold a drumhead court-martial in the gun-room. Prince George was brought before it, found guilty by unanimous count, and sentenced to be spanked by the middy who had done his work.

The royal culprit was seized by four of the seniors and held face downward, while the middy with the disfigured eye, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, carried out the sentence of the gun-room court. When the prince was released he was furious with rage and mortification, and threatened all sorts of things. But a few hours after he thought better of it, came to his messmate who had spanked him, and apologized for the blow he had given him, as well as for making him do double duty.

(2731)

RESPONDING TO THE CALL

I went a few weeks ago out to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, to attend the dedication of the gymnasium there built in memory of Hugh McAllister Beaver; and as I came away, his father gave me the history of his regiment in the Civil War, the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers. One of the first chapters of all is entitled “The Sister’s Story.” It is the story of how some of the lads of the regiment came to be enrolled. It was in the year of 1862. President Lincoln had issued a call for 300,000 men and then a call for 300,000 more, and the War Department had drawn up provisions for a draft in case the men were not voluntarily offered; and this one county in Pennsylvania did not wish to stand under the ignominy of a draft, but desired that the men who were to go from that county should offer themselves freely in response to that call. This sister tells of how the appeal came to the little village in which she and her brother lived, in Center County, Pennsylvania. There was a small country academy there, and the summer vacation was just over, and the boys and girls had come back from the farms for the first day of the academy year again. She said that she came walking up the village street with a friend of hers, another little child, and as they came up the pathway through the yard of the school, arm in arm, with a little bunch of flowers held in both their hands and their heads bowed down very close together, as little girls would talk with one another confidentially, they were suddenly imprest with the silence of the school-yard. Instead of the noise of play and the chatter of an opening day at school, all the boys and the little girls were sitting quietly on the school stoop, and when they came they asked the older boys what the trouble was. Was there any specially dark tidings from the war? And they said: “No, it was not that;” but Professor Patterson had decided to enlist and he wanted to know how many of the boys of the school would go with him, and a meeting was to be held in the village church that evening, in which they were all to be given an opportunity to say what they would do. She said that at once she left her little companion and sought out her brother, and she said to him, “Harry, are you going to enlist?” and he said, “Yes, he thought he would.” “Well, but,” the mother argued after they reached home, “you are only sixteen years old; you can not enlist without father’s allowing you to go, and you know how we have all built on you, on your brightness, and are making sacrifices at home in order that you might go to college. You must not go away now to the war.” He insisted that when the opportunity came he was afraid he would have to respond. And the sister tells how that night, in the little village church, when Mr. McAllister, of Bellefonte, made his appeal for volunteers and had finished, the principal of the academy rose with a long paper in his hand; and her girlish heart almost stopt beating when she realized what it was that he was going to do, and then when he had made his careful, simple statement as to the purpose that led him and the motives that constrained him, he said he was going to call the school roll, and every boy who wanted to could respond “Ready” to his name; and in a silence like the silence of death he began at the top of the line: “Andrews,” “Ready”; “Baker,” “Ready”; and when he came down to K the little girl said her breath just absolutely stopt, and when the name Keller was called, she heard a clear, boyish voice answer without a tremor, “Ready” to his name.—R. E. Speer, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

(2732)

Response—See [Character].

Response of God—See [Fatherhood].

RESPONSIBILITY

God has crammed both thy palms with living seed;

Let not a miser’s clutch keep both hands tight,

But scatter on the desert’s barren need,

That fragrant blossoms may reward God’s sight.

God has dipt deep thy cup into his spring,

Which drippeth over, it is so well filled;

Lend it to some parched life, and let it bring

Laughter and song to voices drought has stilled.

God gave to thee His only well-loved Christ,

Whose steps have smoothed the road that leads thee home;

Tell those whose road is rough, whose way is missed,

That He has called all weary men to come.

So shall thy giving set for thee God’s smile,

And thine own soul drink deep draughts of His love;

Earth’s shadows shall grow bright as heaven, the while

A web of glory round thy life is wove.

—The British Congregationalist.

(2733)

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Dignity sometimes goes down before a solemn responsibility. Susannah Wesley started some prayer-meetings in her house. When her husband, the rector, heard of it, it seemed to him to infringe on the dignity of the Anglican order and he wrote to her in disapproval of the meetings. Her reply is quoted in part by Rev. W. H. Fitchett:

If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do this; for that will not satisfy my conscience. But send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity for doing good when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That terrible sentence was too much for the little rector, and the meetings were continued until he returned from London.—“Wesley and His Century.”

(2734)

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Men are often exalted in their best moral attitudes by being entrusted with great responsibilities. Thus Lamar Fontaine writes:

I received from Major Livingston Mimms, the chief quartermaster of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, and also of Johnston’s army, a carte blanche on the Confederate treasurer, in these words:

“The Confederate States treasurer will honor any draft presented to him signed by Lamar Fontaine.”

As I realized the immensity of the trust that this paper conveyed to me, and imposed upon my integrity, I trembled and could hardly sit on my steed, but there arose in my heart a something, a feeling beyond my powers to describe. I was transported to a higher, better plane than I had ever before trod, and a determination that all the gold of earth could not have purchased.—“My Life and My Lectures.”

(2735)

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We may often accomplish more by putting responsibility on others rather than exercising it ourselves:

Daniel O’Connell had to defend a prisoner for a capital crime, and the defense was said by the attorney to be hopeless. Sergeant Lefroy happened to be acting for the judge, who had been suddenly indisposed, and being then young and his character known to O’Connell, the latter purposely put several inadmissible questions to the witness, which, of course, were objected to by the opposite counsel. The sergeant at last rather peremptorily stopt further questions of the same kind. O’Connell then, with great warmth, said, “As you refuse me permission to defend my client, I leave his fate in your hands—his blood be on your head if he be condemned.” He left the court at once with majestic stride, in a huff, and paced up and down outside the court for half an hour. At the end of that time his attorney rushed out of court, exclaiming, “He’s acquitted! he’s acquitted!” This stratagem was successful, and O’Connell with complacency told his friends that he had intended to throw the responsibility of the conviction on the judge. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2736)

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One of the particulars in which we are drawn away from our traditions is in respect to the make-up and government of society, and it is in that respect we should retrace our steps and preserve our traditions; because we are suffering ourselves to drift away from the old standards, and we say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that we are not responsible for it; that we have not changed the age, tho the age has changed us. We feel very much as the Scotchman did who entered the fish-market. His dog, being inquisitive, investigated a basket of lobsters, and while he was nosing about incautiously one of the lobsters got hold of his tail, whereupon he went down the street with the lobster as a pendant. Says the man, “Whustle to your dog, mon.” “Nay, nay, mon,” quoth the Scotchman, “you whustle for your lobster.”—Woodrow Wilson.

(2737)

See [Desires, Inordinate].

RESPONSIBILITY AFFECTS JUDGMENT

Judge Collamore, who for many years was a distinguished United States Senator from Vermont, used to illustrate his troubles by this story:

He was sitting on the porch of his law office during a recess of Congress, when a farmer drove by and said, “Judge, my conscience troubles me so I can not sleep, about keeping four millions of fellow human beings with the same souls and the same Creator as ourselves in slavery. With all this wealth, I am sure that we, as a nation and as a people individually, will be curst unless slavery is abolished. Now, it is hardly fair to destroy the property of the South, who are not directly responsible, and so I think we ought to all bear our share and buy them out.”

Senator Collamore replied: “Well, in part I think you are right. Now, let’s see practically how it works out. The estimated price is four thousand millions of dollars. It would have to be raised by a direct tax proportioned among the States. Vermont’s share would be so many millions. This county, so many hundreds of thousands, this town so many tens of thousands.” Sitting in the same place the next afternoon, and greeting friends as they passed to and from the market, the old Puritan farmer reappeared. Reining up his horses, he shouted: “Judge, I have been thinking over that question. Crops are poor, taxes are high; I don’t think we need bother just at present about them infernal niggers.”

(2738)

RESPONSIBILITY EVADED

When the Massachusetts Sixth was there in Baltimore and being mobbed, and stood for a long time perfectly patient till their officers commanded them to fire, a long Yankee—who had stood watching this crowd and saw that the poor ruffians round about were merely the tools of the respectable scoundrels standing away across the square on boxes and barrels—stept out from the ranks and drew his bead and sent a bullet through one scoundrel’s heart, and knocked him like a pigeon off a branch. In Baltimore I heard the other side of that story, when a clergyman of that city told me, “We lost a good deal out of our church that day.” “Ah?” said I, “how was that?” “Well, one of the class-leaders of our church was down there looking-on. He stood on a box on the other side of the square; he was not among the crowd at all, but a stray bullet came across the end of the square and shot him!” He was one of those broadclothed scoundrels, with a gold-headed cane, surrounding those poor fellows, and ought to have been shot.—Henry Ward Beecher.

(2739)

Responsibility for Others—See [Mutualism].

RESPONSIBILITY OF GREATNESS

Does some Napoleon “wade through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind,” and break the hearts of a million peasant women, and handicap the careers of ten millions of orphan children? Recently when I used Napoleon in an address as an illustration of unbridled and selfish ambition, and spoke of him as a man raised up to correct the abuses of the French Revolution, who ought to have imitated Washington and Jefferson, and as a man of patriotism all compact concluded his career without a mixture of meanness and sin, a score of people wrote protesting against judging Napoleon by the ordinary standards of morality. Does Goethe forget the law of marriage? For thirty years cast the reins loose on the neck of passion? Use a score of women as material and dynamic for literary work? It is said Goethe was too great to be held down to the ordinary petty rules that control the limited career of peasant souls. Does Byron forget the law of sobriety, and fling himself into wild excesses and lift the cup of flame to his lips? It is said that Byron is a child of genius, quite beyond the pale of convention. Does some Crœsus with the money-making gift get his hands on the reins of power use his secret knowledge to secure exemption from taxes and enjoy special privileges, freeing himself from economic duties that his competitors must bear, not only for themselves alone but for him? The excuse is that the moral laws that hold for those that buy and sell a few pounds of groceries are to be laid on the table and abrogated in the presence of the merchant princes owning uncounted millions.

The biographies of great men are filled with excuses for great generals who have been selfish, of poets who have been wild and lawless, apologies for statesmen who have been drunken, merchants who have been false. And the whole world has suffered through this misconception. As men go toward greatness they go toward responsibility and obligation. It is true that the great man with his gifts must not be judged by ordinary rules—he must be held to extraordinary rules and standards doubly severe. Selfishness can be pardoned in a peasant soldier, not in a great general.—N. D. Hillis.

(2740)

Responsibility of Privilege—See [Privilege Involves Responsibility].

Responsibility, Personal—See [Place, Filling One’s].

Responsibility, Sense of—See [Personal Preaching].

RESPONSIBILITY, UNDESIRABLE

The following Lincoln anecdote is quoted in the Literary Digest:

One evening, just before the close of the Civil War, he had some visitors at the White House, among them some Senators and members of Congress. One of the guests asked the President what he would do with Jefferson Davis if he were captured. Crossing his legs and looking at his friends with that peculiar twinkle in his eyes, he said: “Gentlemen, that reminds me of an incident of my home in Illinois. One morning, when I was on my way to the office, I saw a small boy standing on a street corner crying as if his heart would break. I asked him what was the cause of his sorrow. He said, ‘Mister, don’t you see that coon?’ pointing to a poor little beast that he had tied to a string. ‘Well, that animal has given me a heap of trouble all the way along, and now he has nearly gnawed the string in two. I wish to goodness he would gnaw it in two and get away, so I could go home and tell my folks he had escaped from me.’”

(2741)

RESPONSIVENESS

One of the wonders of China is the Bell Temple near Peking. Its great curiosity is the great bell. It was cast five centuries ago and weighs fifty-three and a half tons—the largest hanging bell in the world. It is covered all over with extracts from the Buddhist canon, in Chinese characters. It is rung by means of a huge hanging timber swung against it, calling forth tones the sweetest, most melodious, and resounding, as if echoing the chords of eternity. But the striking thing about this great bell is that its tones vary in proportion to the quality of the sounding-board receiving them.

Does not a ringing truth or a loving deed depend upon the response it gets?

(2742)

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We are told that if one were to suspend a bell weighing a hundred tons, and a little child were to stand beneath it and play upon a flute, the vibrations of the air produced by the playing of the flute would cause the bell to tremble like a living thing and resound through all its mass.

As bell responds to flute, so the heart of the Christian responds to the music of the message that issues from that manger cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem. The time will come when the music from that manger shall melt into itself all earth’s Babel sounds and fill the world with harmony.—J. D. Freeman, “Concerning the Christ.”

(2743)

REST

There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. In our whole life-melody the music is broken off here and there by “rests,” and we foolishly think that we have come to the end of the time. God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the rest? See him beat the time with unvarying counts and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come between. Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time, and not be dismayed at the “rests.” They are not to be slurred over, not to be omitted, not to destroy the melody, not to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear. If we say sadly to ourselves, “There is no music in a rest,” let us not forget “there is making of music in it.”

(2744)

Rest-day, Weekly—See [Sunday Work Discontinued].

RESTITUTION

One of the strangest wills ever made was that of George Brown, Jr., the noted gambler and race-horse man, which was filed in the Probate Court at Kansas City, Mo., recently. “It is my desire, as far as possible,” a clause of the will reads, “to repay every person, man, woman and child, any money which I may have won from him by gambling during my lifetime; and I direct my executor to make efforts to learn their names and reimburse them to the full amount, with interest from the day the money was won.” This penitent gambler has set an example here which it would be well for those to follow who make larger pretensions to integrity. There are some wrongs to fellow men which never can be repaired, but there are others that can and should be made right. (Text.)

(2745)

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General John Gibson, of Ohio, in old age was asked what he was doing. Said he: “Well, I am a very old man, and I suppose that most people would think I am not doing much of anything. But, to tell the truth, I am trying to hunt up every person whom I have wronged in life, and if I can find them, to ask their forgiveness and make atonement for all the wrongs I have done. And I am trying to be as good and kind and loving to all my neighbors as I know how. And I am becoming one of the biggest beggars for mercy at the Bank of Grace you ever saw. In short, during the little time that is left me on earth, I am fixing up for a mighty big funeral.”

It is no small duty to make amends for all the wrong-doing of a life whether long or short.

(2746)

RESTORATION

The following illustration is from a sermon by Dr. Henry Van Dyke;

The portrait of Dante is painted on the walls of the Bargello, at Florence. For many years it was supposed that the picture had utterly perished. Men had heard of it but no one living had ever seen it. But presently came an artist who was determined to find it again. He went into the place where tradition said that it had been painted. The room was used as a storeroom for lumber and straw. The walls were covered with dirty whitewash. He had the heaps of rubbish carried away, and patiently and carefully removed the whitewash from the wall. Lines and colors long hidden began to appear, and at last the grave, lofty, noble face of the great poet looked out again upon the world of light.

“That was wonderful,” you say; “that was beautiful!” Not half so wonderful as the work which Christ came to do in the heart of man—to restore the forgotten image of God and bring the divine image to the light.

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The blood of Christ is a symbol under which is often described the vitality of divine life restoring the image of God in the soul of the sinner. An illustration from nature of this process may be found in this extract:

A valuable discovery has been made whereby the faded ink on old parchments may be so restored as to render the writing perfectly legible. The process consists in moistening the paper with water, and then passing over the lines in writing a brush which has been wet in a solution of ammonia. The writing will immediately appear quite dark in color; and this color, in the case of parchment, it will preserve. On paper, however, the color gradually fades again; but it may be restored at pleasure by the application of the sulfid. The explanation of the action of this substance is very simple. The iron which enters into the composition of the ink is transformed by the reaction into black sulfid.—Electrical Review.

(2748)

See [Nature’s Recuperative Powers].

RESTORATION IN NATURE

“It is a libel on Nature,” says Dr. Ambrose Shepherd, “to declare that it never forgives. On the contrary, Nature is ever seeking to repair injuries and to forgive errors.”

Every surgeon knows that but for nature’s restoring tendencies his skill would be applied in vain. Illustrative demonstrations of these beneficent proclivities multiply daily. When an accident happens in which a limb is broken, what follows? With surgical assistance the fracture is set and the limb is bound up and left to rest for a time. Nature instantly, delicately, but powerfully and unerringly begins the beautiful and wonderful process of reparation. The cementing of the broken parts is mysteriously inaugurated. But, of course, much depends on a man’s previous life. If he has been a wise man, nature works rapidly; if a fool, more slowly; but nature always seeks to work in the direction of restoration. (Text.)

(2749)

RESTORING GOD’S IMAGE

Not long ago, a lady living in Hartford, Conn., bought at an auction in New York a painting begrimed with smoke and dirt. Her friends laughed at her for buying such a “worthless daub,” but she took the picture to a restorer of old paintings, who, after hours of patient labor in removing the dirt, brought to view a beautiful sixteenth century painting, representing a mother with her children. The painting is of almost priceless value. The penny they brought the Master was coined from base metal, but the image on it gave it value.

We are made in the image of God, and that makes us precious in His sight. The skin may be black or yellow, or brown or white—it matters not. Sin may have obscured the image, but we are Christ’s coins; He paid a great price for us, and seeks in every possible way to restore in us the image of Himself. (Text.)

(2750)

RESTRAINT

A traveler among the Alpine heights says:

We were at the foot of Mt. Blanc, in the village of Chamouni. A sad thing had happened the day before we reached the village. A young physician, of Boston, had determined to reach the heights of Mt. Blanc. He accomplished the feat, and the little village was illuminated in his honor; the flag was flying from the little hut on the mountain side—that all who have visited Chamouni well remember—that told of his victory. But after he had ascended and descended in safety, as far as the hut, he wanted then to be relieved from his guide; he wanted to be free from the rope, and he insisted that he could go alone. The guide remonstrated with him, told him it was not safe, but he was tired of the rope and declared he would be free of it. The guide had to yield. The young man had only gone a short distance when his foot slipt on the ice and he could not stop himself from sliding down the inclined icy steeps. The rope was gone so the guide could not hold him or pull him back. And out on a shelving piece of ice lay the dead body of the young physician, as it was pointed out to me. The bells had been rung, the village illuminated in honor of his success, but, alas, in a fatal moment he refused to be guided; he was tired of the rope.

The restraints of life are usually salutary. Those of the gospel always so. (Text.)

(2751)

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Wild forces may be sublime and majestic, but it is when force submits to authority that it becomes power for usefulness, for service, for benefit.

Venice lies in a lovely and gentle series of lagoons. The sea, which is terrible in storms when it is uncircumscribed, has here built barriers of sand in which it becomes self-restrained. In the lagoons the Adriatic is tamed to rest, and even in furious weather it remains tranquil. It has lost its recklessness and terror but has gained in beauty, reflecting everything in pictures of incomparable loveliness. The sea at Venice by sacrifice enters into service and ministers both utility and charm to humanity. Over the quiet lagoons are built scores of bridges, and along their borders stand lines of stately edifices, and here stands in its matchless beauty a city unique in the world. (Text.)

(2752)

See [Prohibition].

RESULTS AS EVIDENCE

I get into what were once the Black Lands, of Arizona, known as the great American desert, and I find it blossoming with fertility, and I say, “How is this?” The reply is that irrigation has been established. How can you prove it? Look about you. It is interesting to know what engineers built the reservoirs on the mountain tops and how much they cost, but the evidence that they have been built are the rills of water running through the land and the crops growing there. Now I look upon the world that nineteen centuries ago was desert and I see flowers of hope and fruits of love and visions of faith springing up. That is the evidence.—Lyman Abbott.

(2753)

RESULTS ENLARGED BY GOD

When David Livingstone went to Africa there was a Scottish woman by the name of Mrs. MacRobert who was quite advanced in years. As she was unable to go herself she gave Livingstone thirty pounds which she had saved and said, “When you go into Africa I want you to spare yourself unnecessary exposure and bodily toil by hiring some competent servant, who shall go with you wherever you go and share your sacrifices and your exposures.” With that money he hired the faithful Sebalwe, who saved him from death by a lion, and this added those last thirty years of wonderful service to the world.

(2754)

Results not Processes—See [Silent Processes].

RESULTS OF GOOD DEEDS

Charles Mackay writes of the good that is done by apparently insignificant services:

A little stream had lost its way

Amid the grass and fern;

A passing stranger scooped a well,

Where weary men might turn;

He walled it in and hung with care

A ladle at the brink;

He thought not of the deed he did,

But judged that all might drink.

He passed again, and lo! the well,

By summer never dried,

Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues,

And saved a life beside.

A nameless man, amid a crowd

That thronged the daily mart

Let fall a word of hope and love,

Unstudied from the heart;

A whisper on the tumult thrown,

A transitory breath—

It raised a brother from the dust,

It saved a soul from death.

O germ! O fount! O word of love!

O thought at random cast!

Ye were but little at the first,

But mighty at the last.

(2755)

Results Unforeseen—See [One, Winning].

RESULTS VERSUS DISPLAY

It is not by the number of discourses that you can test the effect of the ministry of any preacher, but has it brought those who heard him nearer to the divine life, nearer to the life in God? Sir Astley Cooper, when in Paris once, met the chief surgeon in France, who told him about a difficult operation he had performed. He said: “I have performed this operation 160 times; how often have you performed it?” Sir Astley replied: “I have performed it thirteen times.” “And how many of your operations were successful?” “Eleven of my cases have lived.” said Sir Astley; “how many of yours?” The great French surgeon replied: “All my 160 cases have died, but the operation was most brilliant.”

(2756)

RESURRECTION

The following gives an idea of the strong faith of D. L. Moody; it is the law of the resurrection in operation:

“Some day,” he said, “you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. That which is born of the spirit will live forever.” (Text.)

(2757)

See [Judgment Day].

RESUSCITATION

Lamar Fontaine describes his sensations when he was about to be buried alive after being desperately wounded on the battle-field:

Some time in the night I heard the approach of voices and the tramp of men. Soon I heard the sound of picks and spades and caught the gleam of lanterns, and knew a burial-party was on the field, and that surgeons, with their attendants, had come to pick up and care for the wounded. Again and again I tried to speak, but no sound came. Presently I felt the jar of the picks and spades as they dug a grave by my side, and then I felt a strong hand grasp my head and another my feet, and lift me clear of the ground. There was a sharp click, and then a loud buzzing sound in my ears, and my whole body was in an agony of pain. A fearful thirst tortured me. I spoke, and my friends let me drop suddenly to the ground. The jar awoke every faculty to life. I asked for water, and at once a strong light was flashed in my face, a rubber canteen applied to my lips, and I felt a life-giving stream of cold, refreshing water flow down my swollen throat, and seemingly into every part of my frame.—“My Life and My Lectures.”

(2758)

RETALIATION

During the South African War, when that country was under martial law, every letter which was sent home had to pass through the hands of the press censor.

A private in the Yorkshire Volunteers had sent four or five letters home, telling his parents about the doings of the regiment, which portions had been obliterated by the censor, and were therefore unreadable on their arrival at the destination.

He decided to get square with the censor, and at the foot of the next letter he wrote the following words:

“Please look under the stamp.”

“At the censor’s office the letter was opened and read as usual. The officer in charge spent some time in steaming the stamp from the envelop so that he could read the message which he was certain he would find there.

At last his patience was rewarded; but his feelings can be better imagined than described when he read these words:

“Was it hard to get off?”—Tid-Bits.

(2759)

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We never can tell when rudeness and ill-manners may return upon our own heads:

George Ade, in the early days of his career, before his “Fables in Slang” had brought him fame, says the New York Tribune, called one morning in Chicago upon a Sunday editor, on a mission from a theatrical manager.

“I have brought you this manuscript,” he began, but the editor, looking up at the tall, timid youth, interrupted:

“Just throw the manuscript in the waste-basket, please,” he said. “I’m very busy just now, and haven’t time to do it myself.”

Mr. Ade obeyed calmly. He resumed:

“I have come from the —— Theater, and the manuscript I have just thrown in the waste-basket is your comic farce of ‘The Erring Son,’ which the manager asks me to return to you with thanks. He suggests that you sell it to an undertaker, to be read at funerals.”

Then Mr. Ade smiled gently and withdrew.

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RETARDATION

Many Christians converted years ago show no more progress than the subject of this sketch:

“There is a young man in England,” says The Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, “who at the age of twenty-four is developing at the rate of only one-sixth of that of the average human being. At present he is learning his alphabet and can count up to ten only. During the last nineteen years he has eaten but three meals a week, has slept twenty-four hours and played twenty-four hours, without the slightest variation. In spite of his twenty-four years he looks no older than a boy of four or five and is only thirty-six inches in height. For the same period his development physically and mentally has been at only one-sixth the ordinary rate, while absolutely regular and perfect in every other way. At his birth this child weighed ten pounds and in no way differed from any other child. He grew and thrived in the usual way until he attained the age of five. Then his progress was suddenly and mysteriously arrested, and since then six years have been the same to him as one year to the normal person. He has attracted the attention of many medical and scientific men, more than one of whom has exprest the conviction that this remarkable man will live to be no less than three centuries old.” (Text.)

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RETICENCE

There are times and circumstances in which one may well refuse to be pumped of what he knows.

A Scotch laddie was summoned to give evidence against his father. “Come, my wee mon, tell us what ye ken aboot this affair.” “Weel, ye ken Inverness Street?” “I do, laddie,” said his worship. “Weel, ye gang along and turn into the square.” “Yes, yes.” “Turn to the right up into High Street till ye come to a pump.” “I know the old pump well,” said his honor. “Weel,” added the laddie, “ye may gang and pump it, for ye’ll no pump me.”

(2762)

RETORT, A

President Taft was hissed by a number of women when he was courageous enough to confess at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association that he was not altogether in favor of women having the right to vote. President Taft was welcoming the delegates to Washington, but told them frankly that he was not altogether in sympathy with the suffrage movement. He said he thought one of the dangers in granting suffrage to women is that women as a whole are not interested in it, and that the power of the ballot, so far as women are concerned, would be controlled “by the least desirable citizens.” When these words fell from the President’s lips the walls of the convention hall echoed a chorus of feminine hisses. It was no feeble demonstration of protest. The combined hisses sounded as if a valve on a steam-engine had broken, according to one correspondent. President Taft stood unmoved during the demonstration of hostilities, for the hisses lasted only a moment, and then smiling as he spoke he answered the unfavorable greeting with this retort: “Now, my dear ladies, you must show yourself capable of suffrage by exercising that degree of restraint which is necessary in the conduct of government affairs, by not hissing.” The women who had made the demonstration were duly rebuked. The suffrage cause was undoubtedly hurt by the demonstration, as the President, regardless of his personal views, is entitled to consideration and respectful attention.—Wisconsin Farmer.

(2763)

Retort Effecting a Change—See [Eccentricity].

RETORT, PERSONAL

Victor Hugo did not love the brilliant son of Alexander Dumas, and when the latter was a boy the poet was very fond of snubbing him. It is on record that one day young Dumas asked Victor Hugo why he did not allow his children to take walks and have talks with him. “It is,” answered the poet, “because Mme. Hugo is alarmed about your morals. She is afraid you will lead away the boys; in short, you pass for having violent passions.” “Monsieur,” said the young Dumas, looking the poet in the eye, “if one has no passions at twenty he is likely to have vices at forty.” A day or two afterward the elder Dumas, meeting with Hugo, said: “How do you like my son? Do you not think he is witty?” “Yes,” said Hugo, “but he makes very bad use of his wit.”—Philadelphia Press.

(2764)

Retracing Steps—See [Barriers].

RETREAT DISCOURAGED

The battle of the Cowpens, altho hardly more than a skirmish when tried by modern standards, was in its day, according to the British historian Stedman, “a very principal link in the chain of circumstances which led to the independence of America.” To draw up an inferior force for a pitched battle directly in front of a broad river has always seemed to the military critics very imprudent. But this very act showed the daring and the foresight of Morgan. When blamed he afterward answered: “I would not have had a swamp in view of my militia on any consideration; they would have made for it, and nothing could have detained them from it.... As to retreat, it was the very thing I wished to cut off all hope of. I would have thanked Tarleton had he surrounded me with his cavalry.” Braver and shrewder words never were spoken by a military commander.—Thomas W. Higginson.

(2765)

RETRIBUTION IN THE INDIVIDUAL

What is true of the mass is first true of the atom; what is true of the ocean is first true of the drop. It is easy to see the law of retribution when it is exemplified in the broad effects of national calamity, but not so easy to apprehend its action in the individual fortune. We stand in awe over the shattered greatness and buried splendor of Egypt, Babylon, Judea, Phoenicia, Greece; but the ruin that sin works in the individual destiny is just as certain, and infinitely more awful. If we could once see a soul in ruins, we should never speak again of Nineveh, Memphis, Jerusalem, Tyre, Athens. “Deceive not yourselves.” (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(2766)

RETRIBUTION INEVITABLE

With great injustice and cruelty the French drove out the Huguenots, but in expelling these sons of faith, genius, industry, virtue, the French fatally impoverished their national life, and they are suffering to-day from these missing elements which none may restore. It is impossible for a people to increase in material wealth and political consideration while its true grandeur, its greatness of soul, is gradually passing away. Very strange and subtle are the causes of the decay of nations, and little by little, quite unconsciously, does a people lose the great qualities which made it. Poets lose their fire, artists their imagination, merchants their enterprise, statesmen their sagacity, soldiers their heroism, the people their self-control; literature becomes commonplace, art lifeless, great men dwindle into mediocrities, good men perish from the land, and the glory of a nation departs, leaving only a shell, a shadow, a memory. Retribution may not come suddenly, but it will come.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(2767)

Retribution, Just—See [Responsibility Evaded].

RETRIBUTION, THE LAW OF

For centuries did the kings and nobles of France oppress the peasantry. It is impossible for us to think adequately of the vast, hopeless wretchedness of the people from the cradle to the grave. When Louis XVI came to the throne it seemed incredible that the long-suffering people would ever avenge themselves upon the powerful classes by whom they were ground to the dust, and yet by a marvelous series of events the “wounded men” arose in awful wrath, burning palaces with fire and trampling greatness under foot. “Pierced through” were those hungry, hopeless millions; but the day of doom came, and every bleeding wretch arose invincible with torch and sword.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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RETRIEVED SITUATION, A

When Senator Hanna was walking through his factory in Cleveland some years ago, says The National Magazine, on the lookout for new ideas, or anything which would aid the progress of business, he overheard a little red-headed lad remark:

“Wish I had old Hanna’s money, and he was in the poorhouse.”

The Senator returned to his office and rang to have the boy sent to him. The boy came to the office timidly, just a bit conscience-stricken, wondering if his remark had been overheard and ready for the penalty. As the lad twisted his hands and nervously stood on one foot before the gaze of those twinkling dark eyes fixt on him by the man at the desk, he felt the hand of Uncle Mark on his shoulder.

“So you wish you had old Hanna’s money, and he was in the poorhouse, eh? Suppose your wish should be granted, what would you do?”

“Why,” stammered the lad, “the first thing I would do, sir, would be to get you out of the poorhouse.”

The Senator laughed and sent the boy back to his work. To-day he is one of the managers of a large factory, but he never tires of telling the story that held his first job.

(2769)

Retrogression—See Down Grade, The.

RETROSPECT

We all know what distance does. Standing on the floor of a cathedral in St. Petersburg, the loud conversation of the multitudes surging in and out seems to roar in the ear. But standing in the tiny dome, three hundred feet above, all the harshness is strained out and the sounds become song. Those who dwell inland know how the trees strain out the roughness, and the surge and the roar of the waves turn to music, falling on the fluted tree-tops. Near at hand the frescoes in the cathedral dome are blotches of blue and red; from the floor beneath they melt into the most exquisite tints, and shaded lines proclaim the genius of an artist. For the architect planned that dome to be seen from afar, and God plans the events of childhood and youth to be surveyed from the summit of maturity.—N. D. Hillis.

(2770)

Reunion—See [Future Reunion].

Revealing Stolen Property—See [Exposure].

Revelation—See [Utterance].

Revenge—See [Anger, Futile].

REVENGE, A CHRISTIAN’S

A bed in the Bannu mission hospital in India is known as “The Christian’s Revenge.” It is supported by a sister of Captain Conolly, who was cruelly murdered by order of the Ameer of Bokhara after long incarceration and many tortures, because he refused to become a Mussulman. She endowed this bed twenty-one years after the captain’s death, when a full account of his sufferings, written by his own hand in prison, came unexpectedly to light, a little prayer-book containing the record coming into the hands of his relatives.

That bed is an object-lesson to the inmates and visitors of the hospital, teaching the gentle and forgiving spirit that the gospel of Jesus ever breathes and inculcates.

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REVERENCE FOR PARENTS

The family of Jonathan Edwards consisted of three sons and eight daughters. It is said that when Mr. Edwards and his wife entered the room the children rose and remained standing until father and mother were seated. (Text.)

(2772)

REVERSED ATTITUDE

The moral health of some could be restored only by turning their thoughts and inclinations upside down, as patients are treated according to this description:

In France, when a patient is under chloroform, on the slightest symptom appearing of failure of the heart, they turn him nearly upside down—that is, with his head downward and his heels in the air. This, they say, always restores him; and such is their faith in the efficacy of this method that the operating tables in the Paris hospitals are made so that in an instant they can be elevated with one end in the air, so as to bring the patient into a position resembling that of standing on the head.—Scientific American.

(2773)

Reversion of Nature—See [Circulation Impeded].

REVIVAL

In some neglected church-yards there are old inscriptions so moss-grown and weather-beaten that they can no longer be easily deciphered. So there are men who in early life were marked by high and noble principles, which the wear of the world has almost destroyed in them. They need a thorough regeneration to revive the old lines and ideals of duty and character.

(2774)

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Like pneumatic tires, the Church needs to be “pumped up” by special efforts from time to time. The same is true of the individual.

Pneumatic tires, whether on a bicycle or an automobile, always become more or less deflated in the course of time, even when there is no puncture and the valves are perfectly tight. All cyclists and chauffeurs know that a tire needs pumping up, from time to time, to keep it hard and rigid. This is because the enclosed air constantly tends to escape through the envelop; the phenomenon, which is due to what chemists call osmose, is quite complex and is worth attention. (Text.)—Cosmos.

(2775)

Reviving the Forgotten—See [Memory Renewed].

REVOLUTION, CAUSES OF

It becomes us to watch carefully against crowding society to that point of compression where the mass of men have nothing to lose and little to live for, with the balance rather in favor of dying. Then the last argument, the bayonet, fails against a people whom it is of no use to kill. They are the innumerable majority. A citizen soldiery sickens at the work of slaughter, and like the soldiers of France in the Revolution, will walk over to the mob, guns and all. Then, what are you going to do? How far are our great cities from that condition? Go through the “slums” and see. Look at the wan faces leaning from high windows for a breath of what is not the air of heaven. See the pallid little children in broken rocking-chairs sitting out on the balconies of the fire-escapes, or the five-year-old holding the two-year-old from falling out as they lean over the window-sill. Coming on the elevated road through such a scene one sultry evening lately, the writer saw a woman sitting near a window with a look of unutterable sadness; and, while we looked, a stout man in shirt sleeves came across the room, stooped down and kissed her. She looked up at him pitifully but despairingly, shook her head, and began wiping away the tears. Then the swift train whirled us from where hearts were breaking. It is ill for such men to reach the point where they know that no toil, no frugality, no self-denial can make things any better to-morrow, or next year, or ten years hence—that no work of arm or brain can lift his face from the grindstone, and that this—or worse—is all the inheritance he can leave his children. Then the sight of a carriage with gold-caparisoned horses, a flash of a diamond, or the sweep of a silk dress will make that man clench his fist. Thousands of such will pull down a Bastile with their bare hands. And in the midst of all this, social leaders withdraw into a little clique and parade and proclaim their fewness—they are “the Four Hundred.”—J. C. Fernald, The Statesman.

(2776)

Reward for Service—See [Courage, Moral].

REWARD, RIDICULOUS

During the heavy rains and floods in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud at the end of January (1910), a Swiss railway gatekeeper at level crossing named Allaman, hearing an unusual hissing sound, walked along the lines, having a presentiment that there was something wrong. He found that a stream flowing from the Jura mountains into Lake Geneva had become a torrent, and overflowing its banks had swept away about thirty yards of the permanent way, leaving the rails suspended in the air.

As the Geneva-Lausanne express traveling at sixty miles an hour was due in a few minutes and would be precipitated into the torrent with its sixty passengers, Allaman ran to his little house for a red flag and stopt the express fifty yards from the suspended rails, and then returned home pleased with the fact that he had prevented a terrible accident. Some days ago the news of the affair arrived at the Bern headquarters of the Federal Railway Company, and the Swiss managers thought that such an act on the part of a gatekeeper should be rewarded.

Allaman received his reward this morning for saving the express and its sixty travelers from destruction. The reward was 8s., which works out at 1½d. a life.

If the accident had occurred the Federal Railway Company would have been obliged to pay between £8,000 and £10,000 damages.—Pittsburg Sun.

(2777)

REWARD, THOUSANDFOLD

In India a number of years ago there lived a good Christian English judge who was a warm supporter of missions. It came to his ears that a certain rich native, possessor of an indigo farm, had been cast out of his home and had lost everything because of acknowledging Christ as Lord. “Let him come to me,” said the judge, “I will employ him as a household servant.” So Norbuder came and was child’s attendant in the judge’s family. Every evening after dinner the judge assembled the household for family prayers, and read the Scripture from the native version. One day he came to the verse, “There is no man that hath left home or parents or brethren or wife or children for the kingdom of God’s sake who shall not receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life.” The judge paused and looked at the dark eyes fixt on him, and said, “None of us have left houses or lands or wife or children for Christ’s sake but you, Norbuder. Will you tell us, is it true what this verse says?” Quietly Norbuder took up the Mahratti Testament and read the verse through. Then he raised his hand and said, “He says He gives a hundredfold; I know He gives a thousandfold.”

(2778)

Rewards, Pecuniary—See [Motive, Mercenary].

REWARDS, SPIRITUAL

Here is a boy, who, in sweeping out the shop to-morrow morning, finds sixpence lying among the orange-boxes. Well, nobody has missed it. He puts it in his pocket, and it begins to burn a hole there. By breakfast-time he wishes that sixpence were in his master’s pocket. And by and by he goes to his master. He says (to himself, and not to his master), “I was at the Boys’ Brigade yesterday, and I was to seek first that which was right.” Then he says to his master, “Please, sir, here is sixpence that I found upon the floor.” The master puts it in the till. What has the boy got in his pocket? Nothing; but he has got the kingdom of God in his heart. He has laid up treasure in heaven, which is of infinitely more worth than sixpence. Now, that boy does not find a shilling on his way home. I have known that to happen, but that is not what is meant by “adding.” It does not mean that God is going to pay him in his own coin, for He pays in better coin. (Text.)—Henry Drummond.

(2779)

Rhythm—See [Music, Good Cheer in].

Riches—See [Wealth, Comparative].

RICHES, IMAGINARY

A Russian folk-story tells of a man who entered a diamond-mine in quest of riches. He filled his pockets with precious stones, and forthwith flung them all away to make room for larger ones. Thirst coming on, he was dismayed to find that there was no water. In his delirium he imagined he could hear the flow of water, which proved, however, to be the flow of gems and jewels running in rivers and falling in cascades.

Only one thing could meet his need in his dire distress, and that was, not imaginary wealth, but real water. So it is with the soul. (Text.)

(2780)

RICHES UNREALIZED

George MacDonald, in one of his stories, tells of a father and his daughter who lived in an old Scotch castle in poverty, while all the time in a secret cupboard were masses of jewels which had been put there by an ancestor long years before.

Many a soul is living in poverty of life and experience equally ignorant of the wealth of joy and service that has been laid up for him in the purpose of God. (Text.)

(2781)

Riddles of Life—See [Sphinx, The].

RIDICULE, APT

A very self-respecting and self-asserting bon vivant showed his desire to cut down the fees of waiters to a minimum and at the same time to ridicule the whole system. As the waiter held out his itching palm for the gratuity the epicure dropt a cent into it. “Oh, sir, you’ve made a mistake!” blurted out the waiter. “No,” replied the donor, with an air of dignified benevolence; “I never give less.”—Taverner, Boston Post.

(2782)

Ridicule Rebuked—See [Kindness].

Right and Wrong—See [Ethical Principle].

RIGHT LIVING

What is right living? Just to do your best

When worst seems easiest. To bear the ills

Of daily life with patient cheerfulness,

Nor waste dear time recounting them. To talk

Of hopeful things when doubt is in the air.

To count your blessings often, giving thanks,

And to accept your sorrows silently,

Nor question why you suffer. To accept

The whole of life as one perfected plan,

And welcome each event as part of it.

To work, and love your work; to trust, to pray

For larger usefulness and clearer sight,

This is right living, pleasing in God’s eyes.

—Anonymous.

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RIGHT, TRIUMPH OF

Too apt are we to forget the need of patience and to lose sight of the promise of a sure reward to those who are not weary in well-doing.

For two generations in the Turkish Empire, during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, the world at large took little notice of the obscure party known as the Young Turks, seeing that its representatives for a long period consisted mainly of exiles whose lot seemed to be hopeless. But one day it was reported to the amazement of the whole world that six hundred young officers of the Turkish army had gone up to the mountains at Monastir, and had startled the Sultan by sending a telegram to Constantinople demanding the convocation of the Parliament which he had supprest long before. Rigid orders were immediately sent from the capital to shoot them to the very last man. Now these officers formed the flower and hope of the country. They were brave, cultured, and patriotic, and the rest of the army well-knew their quality. The regiment from Anatolia sent to shoot them not only refused to raise arms against their brethren, but immediately joined them, and regiment after regiment followed suit. Then came the revolution and the reward of those who had waited so long. (Text.)

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RIGHT VERSUS EXPEDIENCY

During the unparalleled excitement caused by Wilkes’ outlawry in 1768, Lord Mansfield, on pronouncing the judgment of the King’s Bench reversing the outlawry, discoursed on the terrors held out against judges, and the attempts at intimidating them. He said: “I honor the king and respect the people, but many things acquired by the favor of either are in my account objects not worth ambition. I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows not that which is run after; it is that popularity which sooner or later never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong upon this occasion to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press. I will not avoid doing what I think is right tho it should draw on me the whole artillery of libels—all that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow.” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(2785)

Righteousness—See [Convictions, Strong].

Rights Preferred to Privilege—See [Politeness].

RISK

It is better to go down on the great seas which human hearts were made to sail than to rot at the wharves in ignoble anchorage.—Hamilton W. Mabie.

(2786)

RISK SHIFTED

A young lady, in giving her reasons for preferring a particular church, remarked that she “liked it best because it allowed its members to dance.” She had been brought up to regard this as inconsistent for a professor of religion. She could not help feeling that it was running a risk to try to get to heaven and carry the world with her. But here was comfort. She had found a religious guide on which she could, as she fancied, shift off the responsibility. Instead of deciding for herself, in the light of Christ’s teachings, she chose to take a second-hand opinion of a mere man as a rule.

One is reminded of an incident related by Dr. Whately, of an old bridge which had long been thought unsafe even for foot passengers. People usually went a considerable distance around rather than venture upon it. But one evening a woman in great haste came up to the bridge before she reflected on its unsafe condition. It was late, and she had yet to dress for a party. She could not go all the way around, tho still afraid to venture. At last a happy thought seemed to strike her. She called for a sedan chair, and was carried over. Now the young lady who desired to follow the world and go to heaven too, was afraid to trust her own judgment on the subject of dancing. She feared the tottering arch might give way, and she be lost forever. To make all safe, she added to the weight of her own chance of error the additional chances of her human authority being wrong also.

(2787)

Risking Life—See [Coolness in Danger].

Rivalry—See [Stimulus from Rivalry].

RIVERS OF GOD

The Rev. Thomas G. Selby says:

Copious and unfailing rivers run just beneath the burning desolations of the Sahara. Twenty or thirty feet under the sand-drifts there is an impervious sheet of rock which prevents the escape of the collected rain-waters. It is easy to see the oasis, but not so easy to track the windings of the hidden river. The skilled engineer can get at the river, bring it up through his wells, and change the desert into an earthly paradise.

Society at large is not the dreary, all-devouring, illimitable ethical waste we often imagine. The rivers of God flow under natures we call reprobate, and create penitential moods which are the earnest of a coming righteousness. It is easy to map out the strips of moral fruitfulness which appear here and there in the world, but not so easy to find the deep secret contrition of those who are often classed as abandoned outcasts. The Savior of the world has an insight into character which enables him to see promise where men less sympathetic and discerning see the black marks of reprobation; and the angels share the visions of the Lord on whom they wait. It is by His art, as the Prophet of coming good, that the desert is made to bloom.—“The Divine Craftsman.”

(2788)

Robbery, Moral—See [Repentance, Late].

ROBBING JUSTIFIED

A wife has a right to rob her husband, in some cases, according to a decision of Judge Gemmell in the Municipal Court (Chicago). Gustave H. DeKolkey had had his wife arrested for taking money from him by force.

“My wife robbed me right in my own home,” said DeKolkey. “She got a boarder and her brother to help hold me. Then she went through my pockets and got $11.”

Mrs. DeKolkey was led up in front of the court’s desk.

“Did you rob him?” asked the judge.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “There was no other way to get money out of him. He hasn’t given me a cent for over a year. So I decided to rob him. I called my brother and we held him and I got what was in his pockets.”

“This is a plain case of robbery,” said the judge, “but it was perfectly justifiable under the circumstances. The defendant is discharged. A wife has the right to hold up her husband when he squanders his wages and does not give her enough for her support.”

(2789)

Rock of Ages—See [Security].

Room Enough—See [Upward, Look].

ROOT CONNECTION

To-day I have been transplanting magnolia-trees. There is one that stands among the earliest I planted, twenty years ago, and now it is a vast ball of white. I suppose five hundred thousand magnificent cups are exhaling thanksgiving to God after the long winter has passed. Now, no man need tell me that the root that nestles in the ground is as handsome or smells as sweet as these vases in the air; but I should like to know what would become of all these white cups in the air if the connection between those dirt-covered roots and the blossoms should be cut to-night. The root is the prime provider, and there can be no life and no blossom where there is no root connection.—Henry Ward Beecher.

(2790)

ROTE VERSUS REASON

Soon after I had left school—and when I was a freshman at college—I made the acquaintance of a young man of about my own age who possest a most marvelous memory, while he also showed most marvelous mental density. He had occasion to pass examination in Euclid, as we all of us did at the university at those times, and one would have said that he would have been singularly successful in these examinations, for, tho he had only read through our college Euclid once, he could recite or write out the whole of it; or, if preferred, he could begin at any point where one might start him and reproduce any quantity verbatim et literatim—atque punctuatim—so far as that was concerned. But not only was he utterly unable to understand a word of it all, he had not even brains enough to keep his real ignorance of Euclid to himself. He was always forgetting the good old rule ne quid nimis, and as he did not know where to stop in his marvelous recitations, the examiners naturally came to the conclusion, perfectly justified by the facts, that he knew his Euclid by heart, but knew nothing about geometry.—Richard A. Proctor, New York Mail and Express.

(2791)

ROUTINE

Commenting on the well-known dislike of the late Russell Sage for vacations, Forest and Stream says: “An office dig who digs voluntarily is as uneasy and as unhappy on a holiday as were those Pennsylvania mine mules which, on the occasion of the coal strike, were for the first time in many years lifted to the surface and turned out into the green fields in the sunlight. The poor creatures were in actual pain until they got back again into the darkness and the close atmosphere in the mine. The trouble with them was, that their whole nature as surface-dwellers had been supplanted by the attributes common to moles and the blind fishes of Mammoth Cave, and they could not stand in the open air and the light. So with a human being under the obsession of inordinate money-getting. The loss of time is only one component of the restlessness which attacks him after he gets away from the rut. His nature has become so molded and restricted to the ruling passion that he has lost capacity for finding employment in other things, least of all in vacation surroundings and vacation ways.”

(2792)

ROYALTY

Where was the real royalty as between the two individuals mentioned in this historic incident?

It was arranged by his friends that Doctor Morrison should be presented to George IV that he might bestow a copy of the Chinese Bible upon His Majesty. Who would not have liked to witness the interview! On the throne sat “the handsomest prince in Christendom, the finest gentleman of Europe” (so his courtiers told him), but whom Thackeray dubs “a monstrous image of pride, vanity and weakness,” who had lived sixty-two years and done nothing but invent a shoe-buckle; who had spent hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, on mere sensual gratification. Fifty thousand dollars a year, we are told, it took to clothe that royal back. Before His Gracious Majesty stood the son of a farmhand, Robert Morrison, twenty years his junior, who had lived simply and given largely; who had found out a useful thing to do, and had worked at it so faithfully that he had raised himself to be the equal of the greatest man in the realm.

Robert bent the knee and presented the Chinese Bible to his sovereign, which gift His Imperial Highness was pleased to accept. But it is to be feared that His Imperial Highness’ morals were no more benefited by the Chinese than by the English version.

(2793)

Royalty, Spirit of—See [Christian Spirit, The].

Royalty Unrecognized—See [Bargain-making].

Royalty’s Kindness—See [Appreciation].

Rubbish—See [Value in Rubbish].

Rudeness, Reaction of—See [Retaliation].

Ruin, Spiritual—See [Neglected Lives].

RUINS UTILIZED

A news item from Gainesville, Fla., says:

English and Eastern capitalists have bought a site here and it is said will invest $2,000,000 in mills for the manufacture of paper from the fiber obtained from pine stumps, thousands of which may be had in the immediate neighborhood.

The old pine stumps are useless. They are only the remains of past possibility and power. Their hope for future usefulness seems gone. Yet there is a new and better future for them, a greater possibility than ever known before. So in the realm of human lives a character that seems to be ruined is often reclaimed to useful living.

(2794)