(2380)
PLAN, LACK OF
Emerson tells that when on a trip to New Hampshire he found a large building going up in a country town. Struck by its ungainly and rambling appearance, he asked a man who was working at it, who the architect was. And the reply was, “Oh, there isn’t any architect settled on as yet. I’m just building it, you see, and there’s a man coming from Boston next month to put the architecture into it.”
(2381)
PLANS, HUMAN, TRANSCENDED
The Rev. W. H. Fitchett says of John Wesley:
Had Wesley done nothing more than preach or write his memory might have failed. But at this stage Wesley links himself by one great achievement, not merely to English history, but to the history of religion. He creates a church! He did not do this consciously, or of deliberate purpose. He strove, indeed, not to do it; he protested he would never do it. But as history shows, he actually did it! And since history is not so much philosophy teaching by examples as God interpreting Himself by events, we are entitled to say that Wesley, in laying the foundations of a new church, did something that, no doubt, outran his own human vision, but which fulfilled a divine purpose.—“Wesley and His Century.”
(2382)
PLANT WORSHIP
The plant worship which holds so prominent a place in the history of the primitive races of mankind, would appear to have sprung from a perception of the beauty and utility of trees. Survivals of this still linger on in many parts of Europe. The peasants in Bohemia will sally forth into their gardens before sunrise on Good Friday, and falling upon their knees before a tree will exclaim: “I pray, O green tree, that God may make thee good.” At night-time they will run to and fro about their gardens crying: “Bud, O trees, bud, or I will flog you.” In England the Devonshire farmers and their men will to this day go out into their orchards after supper on the evening of Twelfth Day, carrying with them a large milk-pail of cider, with roasted apples prest into it. All present hold in their hands an earthenware cup filled with liquor, and taking up their stand beneath those apple-trees which have borne the most fruit, address them in these words: