DIVERSE INFLUENCES
Man, after all, is not ripened by virtue alone. Were it so, this world were a paradise of angels. No; like the growth of the earth, he is the fruit of all seasons, the accident of a thousand accidents, a living mystery moving through the seen to the unseen; he is sown in dishonor; he is matured under all the varieties of heat and cold, in mists and wrath, in snow and vapors, in the melancholy of autumn, in the torpor of winter as well as in the rapture and fragrance of summer, or the balmy affluence of spring, its breath, its sunshine; at the end he is reaped, the product not of one climate but of all; not of good alone but of sorrow, perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps stricken and withered and sour. How, then, shall we judge any one?—how, at any rate, shall we judge a giant, great in gifts and great in temptation, great in strength, and great in weakness? Let us glory in his strength and be comforted in his weakness, and when we thank heaven for the inestimable gift of Burns, we do not need to remember wherein he was imperfect, we can not bring ourselves to regret that he was made of the same clay as ourselves.—Lord Rosebery.
(803)
DIVERSION BY SMALL THINGS
The story of the way in which John Wesley partly failed in an attempt to gain back certain seceders from his following is told by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, as follows:
According to the Moravians themselves, the dramatic effect of Wesley’s departure from the building was spoiled by a petty but ingenious trick. As the persons present came into the room they placed their hats all together on the ground in one corner; but Wesley’s hat had been—by design—carried off. When he had finished his paper and called upon all who agreed with him to follow him, he walked across the room, but could not discover his hat! The pause, the search which followed, quite effaced the impressiveness of his departure, and, as Southey puts it, “The wily Molther and his followers had time to arrest many who would have been carried away in his wake.”—“Wesley and His Century.”
(804)
Diversity Desirable—See [Talents Differ].
Diversity in Work—See [Headwork].
Diverting the Mind—See [Offended Feelings].