There is a legend, setting forth the power of touch, caught in the amber of old Greek pages. From their palace on Olympus, the gods looked down on barren fields. At last they sent Ceres down, clothing her with the power of touch. She touched the sand plain and it became a clover-field. She touched the bog and it became the spring that widened into a river. She touched the fallen log and it was clothed with moss and snow-drops. She touched a thorn-bush and it became an olive, and the brier ripened figs. Soon the gods, looking down, beheld hillsides soft with flush of grass and clustered food. Oh, wondrous power of the divine touch, setting forth the power of Christ and His disciples upon the souls of men. Jesus touched a prodigal, and he became a beautiful son; touched the Magdalen and she became a sweet saint and the angel of purity; touched the murderer and he became a hero, and dying, Jesus communicated the power of touch to His disciples. Peter and John touched three thousand enemies, and they became a church; touched slaves, gladiators, Roman soldiers, and they became disciples of righteousness and peace. And so the evangel of love spread, like a blest contagion.—N. D. Hillis.
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TOUCHINESS, FOOLISH
Could any touchiness exceed that of Robert Duke of Normandy? According to Holinshed, the king, in trying on a new cloak, with a hood, and finding it too tight for him, directed that the garment should be taken to his brother (the duke), who was a smaller man. A slight rent, however, had been made in the garment, and the duke perceiving it, and hearing that the cloak had been tried on by the king, indignantly exclaimed, “Now I perceive I have lived too long, since my brother clothes me like an almsman in his cast-rent garments,” and refusing all food, starved himself to death.—London Evening Standard.
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TOUGHNESS
The path of safety in the moral as in the physical realm is not so much the avoidance of risks as the training of the faculties to resist.
It is a question well worth considering what it is that makes the savage so hardy. He lives nearer to nature than does the civilized man, and that is the reason he is hardier, tougher, and more enduring. Civilized men have departed far from the natural order of life, and they are suffering the penalty—a shortened and a feeble life.
Unfortunately, the majority of civilized human beings subject themselves to a hothouse regimen, apparently thinking that the most important thing in winter is to keep away the cold. A cold day is a dangerous thing to one who is not ready for it. January and February are deadly months to those who are not prepared for them. During these months many people are carried off by pneumonia. After people have reached the age of forty or fifty years, they are particularly susceptible to this disease, because of the lowered power of resistance. Toughness is the result of the body’s power of resistance. (Text.)—Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Good Health.
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