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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