Bishop Taylor, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, used to tell the story of a wealthy Parsee in India whom he had persuaded to read the New Testament. Deeply imprest, the man declared that if he could find Christians who matched that Book he would join them. He sought among the white people for the life of the Book, but reported to Bishop Taylor that he had failed to find it to his satisfaction. The latter then sent him among the native converts, receiving his pledge that he would make as diligent search there as he had made among the Europeans. In a short time he returned with enthusiasm, to say that he had discovered men and women whose lives corresponded with the Book. He himself became a Christian and suffered the loss of wealth and friends for the sake of the Name, and when he died of violence in Bombay his last words were, “It is sweet to die for Jesus.” The story points to the tremendous truth that it is not in our conventialized Christendom that the New Testament experiences are being reproduced most closely, but in the communities of disciples who are freshly out of raw heathendom.—William T. Ellis, “Men and Missions.”
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NATURALIZATION
Citizenship in heaven is not nearly so difficult as that of getting out naturalization papers in America.
The National Liberal Immigration League has petitioned the Department of Commerce and Labor to establish a calendar in the naturalization bureaus, so that applicants for second, or final, papers may be notified and attended to in regular order, instead of by the present first-come-first-served method with its resultant confusion and delays. Such a calendar would simplify matters wonderfully for the coming citizen. A man getting his final papers is obliged to bring with him two citizens as witnesses, who will swear that they have known him to be a resident of the United States for at least five years, the last year a resident of the State in which he receives his papers, and that he is a person of good moral character, and qualified in every way to become a citizen. Imagine the degree of good-nature essential in the instances of these witnesses, who must get up long before daylight, night after night, to accompany the potential citizen and see him turned back over and over again. Indeed, more than good-nature is involved, for the witnesses are in most cases working men, who are making an actual sacrifice, in that they are losing the time that is money to them, and the sleep that is essential to their welfare.—Harper’s Weekly.
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Nature—See [Handiwork of Nature].
NATURE AIDING SCIENCE
The cultivation of certain species of spiders solely for the fine threads which they weave has an important bearing upon the work of the astronomer.
No substitute for the spider’s thread has yet been found for bisecting the screw of the micrometer used for determining the positions and motions of the stars; not only because of the remarkable fineness of the threads, but because of their durable qualities.