So in life’s chorus, the least man can make or mar it by faithfulness or neglect. (Text.)
(2377)
PLACE, IN THE RIGHT
The rainbow is one of the most beautiful things in nature. It is made by a series and succession of falling drops, the series stretching across the sky, and the successive drops catching the reflection and refraction left by the drop below. Each drop has but a minute ray among the millions, and has this but for an instant as it comes into the right angle with the sun; but all together and in succession spread wide the beautiful arch of hope and promise. Each of us is among God’s creatures only as a single drop in the broad shower, and only for a little is our opportunity; but if we are in our place and in the right angle toward God, we may help spread His glory far and wide.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”
(2378)
PLAGIARISM, DETECTION OF
A man might as well hoist a ladder in a village at noonday and try to steal the town clock without being observed as to expect to carry off literary ware in our time and not be found out. The newspaper editor, scissors in hand and mucilage on the table, sits up to his chin in exchanges from the four winds of heaven. Beside that, all the world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap and transportation so rapid that before every preacher, and before every lecturer, and before every religious exhorter, there may sit persons from the most unexpected quarter, and if they heard three years ago something delivered in New Orleans which you delivered in Brooklyn, the discovery will be reported. Quote from all books you can lay your hands on. Quote from all directions. It is a compliment to have breadth of reading to be able to quote. But be sure to announce it as a quotation. Ah! how many are making a mistake in this thing; it is a mistake that a man can not afford to make. Four commas upside down—two at the beginning of the paragraph, two at the close of the paragraph—will save many a man’s integrity and usefulness.—T. De Witt Talmage.
(2379)
PLAN IN NATURE
There are several hundred thousand different kinds of animals living on this globe of the different types. Every one of them has its line of development. Every sparrow begins with the egg, and goes through all the changes which are characteristic of sparrow life, until it is capable of producing new eggs, which will go through the same change. Every butterfly comes from the egg, which produces the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, laying eggs to go through the same changes. So with all animals, whether of higher or lower type. In fact, the animal kingdom as it is now, is undergoing greater changes every year than the whole animal kingdom has ever passed through from the beginning until now; and yet we never see one of these animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce anything else than that which is like itself.—Prof. Louis Agassiz.