C (continued 3)

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Comparative Religion—See Christianity Superior.

COMPARATIVE, THE

Vernon L. Kellogg writes about an ant dragon that he once observed, thus:

He was an ugly little brute, squat and humpbacked, with sand sticking to his thinly haired body. But he was fierce-looking for all his diminutiveness. Remember again that whether a thing is big or little to you depends on whether you are big or little. This dragon of the sand-pit was little to us. He is terribly big to the ants.—“Insect Stories.”

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COMPARISONS, APT

The Chinese call overdoing a thing, a hunchback making a bow. When a man values himself overmuch, they compare him to a rat falling into a scale and weighing itself.—Chambers’s Journal.

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Compass—See Bible.

COMPENSATION

Judge Noah Davis, when asked by a company of American brother lawyers as to the comparative advantages of different periods of life, replied, with his usual calm simplicity of manner, as follows:

“In the warm season of the year it is my delight to be in the country; and every pleasant evening while I am there I love to sit at the window and look upon some beautiful trees which grow near my house. The murmuring of the wind through the branches, the gentle play of the leaves, and the flickering of light upon them when the moon is up, fill me with an indescribable pleasure. As the autumn comes on, I feel very sad to see these leaves falling one by one; but when they are all gone, I find that they were only a screen before my eyes; for I experience a new and higher satisfaction as I gaze through the naked branches at the glorious stars beyond.” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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Mongolian wolves are not so dangerous as Siberian ones. The reason is that, unlike the Russians, the Mongols keep such poor sheepfolds that a wolf can help itself to a sheep whenever it likes, and so is seldom driven by hunger to attack a man.—John C. Lambert, “Missionary Heroes in Asia.”

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A pioneer farmer found after a storm that the lightning had cracked the wall of his cistern and his water-supply had leaked away, but a gurgling sound showed that the same stroke had split a rock and opened a hidden spring of living water.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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The one man who escaped the terrible eruption of Mt. Pelée was a prisoner who was in the jail at the time of the volcanic disturbance. He never imagined anything had happened until he missed receiving his meals and the visit of his guard. Then, escaping from the prison, he found himself in a city where thousands lay dead. God shelters his children behind many a strange rock. A prisoner—and yet saved! (Text.)

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COMPENSATION IN TRIALS

The difficulties which beset personal and family life are rich in compensation. We often speak of “keeping the wolf from the door,” and the majority find this a hard fight. What trouble the threatening animal gives us! If in the morning we are disposed for a little extra slumber, the ominous howl startles us from the pillow; if we are tempted to linger at the table, its fierce breathings at the threshold summon us straightway to duty; if we doze in the armchair, the gleaming eyes, the white teeth, the red throat at the window-pane, bring us to our feet. And yet how much the best of men, the most truly aristocratic families, owe to the wolf! Solicitude, fatigue, difficulty, danger, hunger, these are the true king-makers; and the misfortune with many rich families to-day is, that they are being gradually let down because they are losing sight of the wolf. The wolf not merely suckled Romulus; it suckles all kings of men. The wolf is not a wolf at all; it is an angel in wolves’ clothing, saving us from rust, sloth, effeminacy, cowardice, baseness, from a miserable superficiality of thought, life, and character.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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COMPENSATIONS OF PROVIDENCE

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COMPETITION

Much of the joy of life would vanish if we had no races to run, no contests to engage in. The true spirit of competition is exprest in the following rime:

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Competition, Self—See Anxiety, Cost of.

COMPLEXITY IN ORGANS

The tufts of feathers which distinguish the short-eared and long-eared owls, and are developed still more imposingly in the great eagle owl of northern Europe, are, of course, no more ears than they are horns; but the true ears of the owls are most remarkable organs. The facial disk of feathers, which gives them their most characteristic appearance, serves as a kind of sounding-board or ear-trumpet to concentrate the slightest sounds and transmit them to the orifice of the true ear, which is concealed in the small feathers behind the eye. Even in the barn-owl, which possesses the least complicated arrangement of this kind, the orifice of the ear is covered by a remarkable flap of skin; while in the other species there are striking differences in the size and shape of this orifice and its covering flap on the two sides of the head. The exact way in which owls utilize this elaborately specialized apparatus has still to be discovered; but it is a natural inference that two ears of widely different structure must give the owls which possess them a power of localizing sound which is of the greatest use to them when hunting small creatures in the dark. It is, therefore, all the more surprizing that the barn-owl’s ears have not this difference of structure, altho the power of instantly locating the rustle of the running mouse must be almost indispensable. For catching small birds, which are the especial prey of the wood-owl, keenness of sight rather than of hearing must be necessary, since they are chiefly caught when at roost; and the large nocturnal eye is developed in most of the owls almost as remarkably as the ear. In the short-eared owl, which is a day-flying species, the eye is correspondingly reduced. It has also a far less conspicuous facial disk; and this might also seem to be naturally explained as a result of its diurnal habits, with the consequent reduction of the need for acute hearing, if it were not for the marked difference in the structure of its two ears, which is even greater than in the case of the wood-owl. In the study of such complex problems, we are soon forced to realize how inadequate is even the most helpful and fascinating of single clues. The equilibrium of nature is no simple thing, like the balance of a pair of scales; it more resembles the complicated equipoise of an aeroplane among air-currents playing in three dimensions.—London Times.

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COMPLIMENT

Few have equalled Sir Joshua Reynolds in skill and graciousness of compliment. When he painted the portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the “Tragic Muse,” he wrought his name on the border of her robe, with the remark, “I can not lose this opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment.”

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During a visit once with Queen Victoria, who had sent for him to her palace, the poet Longfellow was seating himself in a waiting coach at the close of the royal interview, when a working man, hat in hand, approached, and asked:

“Please, sir, yer honor, an’ are you Mr. Longfellow?” Said the poet, “I am Mr. Longfellow.” “An’ did you write ‘The Psalm of Life?’” continued the questioner. “I wrote the ‘Psalm of Life,’” was the answer. “An’ yer honor, would you be willing to take a working man by the hand?”

Instantly Mr. Longfellow responded with a warm hand grip. In telling the story later the poet said, “I never in my life received a compliment that gave me greater satisfaction.”

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I recollect once standing in front of a bit of marble carved by Powers, a Vermonter, who had a matchless, instinctive love of art and perception of beauty. I said to an Italian standing with me, “Well, now, that seems to me to be perfection.” The answer was, “To be perfection”—shrugging his shoulders—“why, sir, that reminds you of Phidias!” as if to remind you of that Greek was a greater compliment than to be perfection.—Wendell Phillips.

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COMPLIMENTS, SPARING OF

The first time I ever stood in the pulpit to preach was in the meeting-house of the ancient Connecticut town where I was brought up. That was a great day for our folks and all my old neighbors, you may depend. After benediction, when I passed out into the vestibule, I was the recipient there of many congratulatory expressions. Among my friends in the crowd was an aged deacon, a man in whom survived, to a rather remarkable degree, the original New England Puritan type, who had known me from the cradle, and to whom the elevation I had reached was as gratifying as it could possibly be to anybody. But when he saw the smile of favor focused on me there, and me, I dare say, appearing to bask somewhat in it, the dear old man took alarm. He was apprehensive of the consequences to that youngster. And so, taking me by the hand and wrestling down his natural feelings—he was ready to cry for joy—he said: “Well, Joseph, I hope you’ll live to preach a great deal better than that!”—Joseph H. Twitchell.

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Compositions Compared—See Education Not Vicarious.

COMPREHENSIVENESS IN EDUCATION

“What are these boys studying Latin for?” said an English visitor at a manual-training school as he looked in upon a class reading Cæsar.

“What did you study Latin for?” was my illogical but American response. “Why, I am a bachelor of arts?” was his prompt reply, with the air of one who had given a conclusive answer. “Perhaps these boys will be bachelors of arts by and by,” I added cheerfully. “Then, what in the world are they in a manual-training school for?” he exclaimed, with almost a sneer at my evident lack of acquaintance with the etiquette of educational values. I tried to explain my theory of an all-round education—and my practise of “putting the whole boy to school”—but he would not be convinced. He could not see the propriety of mixing utility and tool dexterity with culture—Calvin M. Woodward, Science.

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COMPROMISES IN GRAVITIES

All orbits, including the orbits of comets, are the result of compromises in gravities. Now you have got to get over the idea that because one body attracts another strongly it is likely to draw it smack into it. It doesn’t. I made an apparatus in my laboratory the other day to show my students about that.

I fixt up a little gun capable of shooting a steel ball quite a distance up an inclined plate of glass. The ball shot upward and then rolled directly back into the muzzle of the gun time after time. That was to show what a comet would do if just merely shot out into space to be uninfluenced by any other heavenly bodies after it got a start.

Then I put a powerful electric magnet under the plate of glass, quite a little distance away from the track of my steel ball. This time when it was shot upward instead of keeping on its straight path or swerving directly into the magnet, as some of my students expected it to do, it shot on past, curving its course toward the magnet, and then finally it swung around the magnet in very much the way the comet is swinging around the sun. On its return course it swung off in a new direction altogether. My students were quite delighted with the oval course taken by the steel ball. It was just such a course as they had seen mapped out for Halley’s visitor.—H. Jacoby, New York Times.

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Compulsion in Religion—See Militant Evangelism.

CONCEIT

There are too many men who make the sentiment of this verse their creed:

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See Comparisons, Apt; Self-flattery.

CONCEIT OF OPINION

When Lord Hardwicke’s marriage bill was in the House of Commons, Fox, afterward Lord Holland, saying that one clause gave unheard-of power to parents on the marriage of minors, proceeded to lay open the chicanery and jargon of the lawyers, and the pride of their mufti, and drew a most severe picture of the Chancellor under the application of the story of a gentlewoman at Salisbury, who, having a sore leg, sent for a country surgeon, who pronounced that it must be cut off. The gentlewoman, unwilling to submit to the operation, sent for another more merciful, who said he could save her leg without the least operation. The surgeons conferred. The ignorant one said: “I know it might be saved, but I have given my opinion; my character depends upon it, and we must carry it through.” The leg was cut off. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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CONCENTRATION

It has been told of a modern astronomer that one summer night, when he was withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness showed a phenomenon. He passed the whole night in observing it, and when they came to him early in the morning and found him in the same attitude, he said, like one who has been collecting his thoughts for a few moments:

“It must be thus; but I will go to bed before it is too late.” He had gazed the entire night and was not aware of it.

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See Absorption, Mental.

CONCERT, LACK OF

Crazy people never act together, says the superintendent of a large asylum for the insane, quoted in The Medical Times. “If one inmate attacks an attendant, as sometimes happens, the others would look upon it as no affair of theirs and simply watch it out. The moment we discovered two or more inmates working together we would know they were on the road to recovery.” It is on this account that there are so few concerted mutinies in insane asylums; so that the number of attendants does not have to be large.

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Conclusion, A Reasonable—See Ethical Principle.

CONDEMNED, THE

“Vessels fitted unto destruction”—how many may be unconsciously so marked by their Maker! A vessel is condemned as unseaworthy; her sails are sold, her spars and rigging, and when all that can be moved is gone, the dismantled hulk is moored in some coaling station. There, black from stem to stern, with a great white number painted on her side, she floats until her timbers rot to pieces—

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CONDESCENSION

A learned counsel (Mr. Brougham, as some say), when the judges had retired for a few minutes in the midst of his argument, in which, from their interruptions and objections, he did not seem likely to be successful, went out of court, too, and on his return stated he had been drinking a pot of porter. Being asked whether he was not afraid that this beverage might dull his intellect, he replied: “That is just what I want it to do, to bring me down, if possible, to the level of their lordships’ understanding. (Text.)—James Croake, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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See Greatness; Personality, Influence of.

Conditions Before the Advent of Missionaries—See Missionary Work, Value of.

Conditions Modify Rules—See Devotion to the Helpless.

CONDITIONS SUGGEST COURSES

During the last years of his life a brain disease, of which he had shown frequent symptoms, fastened its terrible hold upon Swift, and he became by turns an idiot and a madman. He died in 1745, and when his will was opened it was found that he had left all his property to found St. Patrick’s asylum for lunatics and incurables. It stands to-day as the most suggestive monument of his peculiar genius.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

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CONDUCT, CANONS OF

Coleridge lays down three canons of criticism in literature, which hold equally in conduct and endeavor:

First, What has the author attempted to do? Second, Is it worth doing? And, third, Has he done it well?

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CONDUCT, PAST, UNCONSIDERED

Paul’s doctrine, that he who offends in one point is guilty of the whole law, is illustrated in this anecdote:

A notary public was convicted of forgery and sentenced to be hanged; and being asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed, remarked that it was very hard that he should be hanged just for one line, considering the thousands of harmless sheets he had written in the course of his life. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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CONFESSION

One of the duties of the writer during the first days of his clerkship was to “lock up.” One morning in the very first week of his employment he found the door unlocked and a policeman standing guard. Had he forgotten to lock that door? A hasty survey revealed that nothing had been taken away, and the policeman was dismissed. Should he confess the delinquency? It was almost sure dismissal. But he resolved to make a clean breast of it, and when his employer came in later he told all the circumstances, and bravely admitted that he must have failed to lock the door. While making this confession, the policeman walked in, to report finding the door unlocked. But his report had been forestalled, and, with an injunction to be more careful in future, the matter was dismissed. The confession forestalling that report was all that saved dismissal. But that confession won the confidence of his employer, and won a higher trust and esteem than existed before. This is one of the first lessons to learn. Confess instantly a fault, a loss, a mistake, and it is half retrieved.—James T. White, “Character Lessons.”

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See Falsehood.

Among the hard-working Labrador fishermen was a rich man who had opprest them, but whom they believed to be strong enough to defy them. Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, the medical missionary, who is also a magistrate, went to the offender and told him that he must confess his sin and pay back to the fishermen a thousand dollars. He curst the missionary. At the next church service, the doctor announced that a sinful man would confess his sin that night. They couldn’t believe that the rich sinner would yield. At the evening service, Dr. Grenfell asked them to keep their seats while he went after the sinner. He found the man at a brother’s house on his knees in prayer, with all the family.

“Prayer,” said the doctor, “is a good thing in its place, but it doesn’t ‘go’ here. Come with me.”

He meekly went, and was led up the aisle, where all could see him, and, after the doctor had described the great sin of which he was guilty, he asked, “Did you do this thing?” “I did.” “You are an evil man of whom the people should beware?” “I am.” “You deserve the punishment of man and God?” “I do.”

At the end of it all the doctor told the man that the good God would forgive him if he should ask in true faith and repentance, but that the people, being human, could not. For a whole year, he charged the people, they must not speak to that man; but if, at the end of that time, he had shown an honest disposition to mend his ways, they might take him to their hearts.

The man finally paid the money and fled the place.

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CONFESSION NOT CONCLUSIVE

Two men named Boven were convicted in a Vermont court, mainly upon their own confession, of the murder of a half-witted dependent brother-in-law. They even said that certain bones found were those of the supposed victim. But the brother-in-law was found alive and well in New Jersey, and returned in time to prevent the execution. He had fled for fear they would kill him. The bones were those of some animal. They (the Bovens) had been advised by some misjudging friends that, as they would certainly be convicted upon the circumstances proved, their only chance for life was by commutation of punishment, and this depended upon their making a penitential confession. These and many similar cases have satisfied English and American lawyers that confessions alone are unreliable as evidences of guilt. When it is known that one accused, especially one charged with a capital offense, intends to make a confession, it is the practise in our courts to delay the trial in order to give him ample time to decide whether or no he will pursue that course.—Boston Globe.

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CONFESSION, UNREPENTANT

A sergeant was accused, once upon a time, by his brethren of the court, of having degraded their order by taking from a client a fee in copper, and on being solemnly arraigned for this offense in their common hall, it appears from the unwritten reports of the Court of Common Pleas, that he defended himself by the following plea of confession and avoidance: “I fully admit that I took a fee from the man in copper, and not one, but several, and not only in copper, but fees in silver; but I pledge my honor as a sergeant, that I never took a single fee from him in silver until I had got all his gold, and that I never took a fee from him in copper until I had got all his silver, and you don’t call that a degradation of our order!” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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CONFESSIONS

The Rev. Jonathan Goforth gives some striking instances of the confessions of Korean converts during a revival:

A prominent Christian who had bought some property for the mission confest that he had only paid eighty yen for the property, but had charged the mission five hundred yen. He sold his land so as to make restitution.

Another confest that he was proud and censorious, but this did not relieve him. A few days later he confest that he had stolen three dollars and a lamp. Still he failed to get peace. After a few more days of agony, he confest that during the war while he acted as manager of transport he had cheated the Japanese and Koreans out of two hundred yen. He made restitution and received blessing.

The leader of a robber band with some of his followers was converted in the great spiritual movement. He confest his sin, then went to the magistrate and delivered himself up. The official was so astounded that he said: “We have no such law that we can condemn a man without an accuser. You may have your liberty.” Here the Spirit of God was more effective than police and detective force. They needed not either to spend a term in the reformatory, for they were made new men in Christ Jesus.

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CONFIDENCE

Confidence is well placed when it rests upon a proved experience.

A traveler, following his guide amid the Alpine heights, reached a place where the path was narrowed by a jutting rock on one side and a terrible precipice on the other. The guide passed over, and holding on to the rock with one hand, extended the other over the precipice for the traveler to step upon it and so pass around the jutting rock. He hesitated, but the guide said, “That hand has never lost a man.” He stept on the hand and passed over safely.

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The medical missionary among the Afghans, Dr. T. L. Pennell, on one of his journeys came to a village across the border late at night. Many outlaws infested the village, but the chief to whose care he had entrusted himself took the precaution of putting his bed in the center of six of his men, fully armed, each of whom was to keep guard in turn. Dr. Pennell being very tired after a hard day’s work, soon fell sound asleep. This proved to be his safety. Some of the fanatical spirits wanted to kill him in sheer wantonness, but the others said, pointing to his prostrate form peacefully sleeping, “See, he has trusted himself entirely to our protection, and because he trusts us he is sleeping so soundly; therefore no harm must be done to him in our village.” His confidence disarmed their deadly impulse. (Text.)

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Two men were once standing by a building on which a little boy had climbed who was afraid to get down. Looking up at him, one man opened his arms and, with a kind voice, said: “Jump, my little fellow, and I will catch you.” But the boy shrank back and would not jump. Then the other man opened his arms and said: “Come, my boy, jump, and I will catch you.” Instantly the little face cleared, a smile chased away the tears, and with a rush he jumped and was safely caught in the outstretched arms. Why was the boy afraid of one man and willing to trust the other? Because the first man was a stranger and the second man was his father. He knew his father would not let him fall.

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A story is told by Colonel William Conant Church, of the Army and Navy Journal, which illustrates how unshaken was the President’s confidence in Grant’s ability to march the army of the Potomac against the army of northern Virginia and capture the stronghold of the rebellion. The incident took place just before Grant established his headquarters in the field.

When he called upon the Secretary of War, the latter said:

“Well, General, I suppose you have left us enough men to garrison the forts strongly?”

“No, I can’t do that,” was the General’s quiet reply.

“Why not? Why not?” repeated the nervous Secretary.

“Because I have already sent the men to the front, where they are needed more than in Washington.”

“That won’t do,” said Stanton. “It’s contrary to my plans. I will order the men back.”

Grant maintained a quiet determination, and replied:

“I shall need the men there, and you can not order them back.”

“Why not? Why not?” cried the Secretary.

“I believe I rank the Secretary of War in this matter,” remarked Grant.

“Very well, we will see the President,” sharply responded the Secretary.

“That’s right; he ranks us both.”

Going to the President, Secretary Stanton, turning to Grant, said:

“General, state your case.”

But the General calmly replied:

“I have no case to state. I am satisfied as it is.”

When Stanton had given his view of the matter, Lincoln crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and like the wise philosopher that he was, said:

“Now, Mr. Secretary, you know we have been trying to manage this army for nearly three years, and you know we haven’t done much with it. We sent over the mountains and brought Mr. Grant, as Mrs. Grant calls him, to manage it for us, and now I guess we’d better let Mr. Grant have his own way.”

The winter of 1863 was a trying time for General Grant. It was a winter of floods in the South, and a winter of discontent among the people of the North. He could not move his army, and many began the old cry after Donelson, “idle, incompetent, and unfit to command in an emergency,” and again arose a clamor for his removal. It was a season of false alarm and sensational rumors.

But there were two men in the land from whence came words of cheer. One was listening quietly in a store in Cincinnati to a great deal of rambling and grumbling talk about the way General Grant was trying to take Vicksburg. When all others present had given vent to their feelings, this man said in a moderate tone: “I think he’ll take it. Yes, I know he’ll take it. ’Lis’ always did what he set out to do. ’Lis’ is my boy, and he won’t fail.”

The other man who believed in General Grant was in the White House. He was too good to be unkind, and too wise and prudent to err. While men of large political influence were urging General Grant’s removal for the good of the country, the philosopher at the White House said: “I rather like the man; I think we’ll try him a little longer.” By these thirteen words the fate of Vicksburg was sealed.—Col. Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

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When Alexander once was about to engage in battle with Darius, having completed his arrangements, he lay down to sleep. Next morning Tarmenio exprest surprize that he could sleep so soundly when such vast issues were impending. “You seem as calm,” said he, “as if you had had the battle and gained the victory.” “I have done so,” replied Alexander, “for I consider the whole work done when we have gained access to Darius and his forces, and find him ready to give us battle.” (Text.)

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See Essentials; Versatility.

Confidence in His Own Ability—See Versatility.

CONFIDENCE IN MEN

If a man can invest his hundreds of thousands of dollars on the ocean or in distant countries, where men can not understand the documents we write, it shows that there is trust between man and man, buyers and sellers; and if there is trust between them it is because experience has created the probabilities of truthfulness in the actions of men and all the concordant circumstances. If men did not believe in the truth of men, they never would send to China, Japan or Mexico their great properties and interests, with no other guarantee than that the men are trustworthy. The shipmaster must be trustworthy, the officers of the government must be trustworthy, and that business goes on and increases the world over is a silent testimony that, bad as men do lie, they do not lie bad enough to separate man from man.—Henry Ward Beecher.

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CONFIDENCE, INSPIRING

In his reminiscences concerning his career, Mr. John D. Rockefeller says this in regard to a critical epoch in his fortunes:

I went to a bank president whom I knew, and who knew me. I remember perfectly how anxious I was to get that loan and to establish myself favorably with the banker. This gentleman was T. P. Handy, a sweet and gentle old man, well known as a highgrade, beautiful character. For fifty years he was interested in young men. He knew me as a boy in the Cleveland schools. I gave him all the particulars of our business, telling him frankly about our affairs—what we wanted to use the money for, etc., etc. I waited for the verdict with almost trembling eagerness.

“How much do you want?” he said.

“Two thousand dollars.”

“All right, Mr. Rockefeller, you can have it,” he replied. “Just give me your own warehouse receipts; they’re good enough for me.”

As I left that bank, my elation can hardly be imagined. I held up my head—think of it, a bank had trusted me for $2,000! I felt that I was now a man of importance in the community.

The confidence of the bank president in him and his business ventures had strengthened his own appreciation and confidence. So each man reacts on the other. (Text.)

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CONFIDENCE, LACK OF

Admiral Dupont was once explaining to Farragut the reason why he failed to enter Charlestown harbor with his fleet of iron-clads. He gave this reason and that reason and the other reason; and Farragut remained silent until he had got through, and then said, “Ah, Dupont, there was one more reason.” “What is that?” “You didn’t believe you could do it.”

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CONFLICT, SPIRITUAL

Upon the side of the great entrance-hall of the Royal Museum in Berlin is painted a colossal picture of Kaulbach’s. It represents the last battle between the Romans and the Huns, which decided the fate of European civilization. The spirits of the slain, fierce and restless as before, rise from their bodies and continue the battle in the air. In the shadowy combat the forces are led by Attila, “the scourge of God,” borne aloft upon a shield, and by Theodoric, the Roman chief, with sword in hand and the cross behind.

The vivid portraiture is a symbol of the battle waging, not so much between brute forces as between the spirit of two opposing civilizations for the mastery of the world.

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Conflict to Fellowship—See Eternal, The, at Hand.

Conflicts of Nature—See Strong and Weak.

CONFORMITY

Paul’s method of being all things to all men suggests that a wise and proper conformity to one’s surroundings, where it involves no sacrifice of principle, may be as useful as the white hue of animals in arctic regions described in this extract:

Wherever all the world around is remarkably uniform in color and appearance, all the animals, birds, and insects alike necessarily disguise themselves in its prevailing tint to escape observation. It does not matter in the least whether they are predatory or defenseless, the hunters or the hunted; if they are to escape destruction or starvation, as the case may be, they must assume the hue of all the rest of nature about them. In the arctic snows, for example, all animals, without exception, must needs be snow-white. The polar bear, if he were brown or black, would immediately be observed among the unvaried ice-fields by his expected prey, and could never get a chance of approaching his quarry unperceived at close quarters. On the other hand, the arctic hare must equally be drest in a snow-white coat, or the arctic fox would too readily discover him and pounce down upon him off-hand; while conversely, the fox himself, if red or brown, could never creep upon the unwary hare without previous detection, which would defeat his purpose. For this reason, the ptarmigan and the willow-grouse become as white in winter as the vast snow-fields under which they burrow; the ermine changes his dusky summer coat for the expensive wintry suit beloved of British Themis; the snow-bunting acquires his milk-white plumage; and even the weasel assimilates himself more or less in hue to the unvarying garb of arctic nature. To be out of the fashion is there quite literally to be out of the world; no half measures will suit the stern decree of polar biology; strict compliance with the law of winter change is absolutely necessary to success in the struggle for existence. (Text.)—Cornhill Magazine.

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Congenital Neurasthenics—See Inebriety, Incurable.

Conjugal Rights—See Robbing Justified.

CONNECTION

You can get no water from your old pump. When you try you get only a painful wheezing. Pumps are not living things, but they, too, suffer exhaustion. Must you give it up, and dig a new well? Oh, no. The well is all right, and has given abundant and sweet water for a generation. You look it over, and find that the old leather valve is dry and worn out. Pour in a pitcher of water to wet it, and the wheezing is cured. Put in a new valve and the old pump is good for years to come. God’s supply of living water is abundant as ever. It is only your connection with it that failed.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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CONQUEST BY MAN

These vehement elements, of air and water, demand to be wrestled with and patiently mastered, by the vigorous soul, in order that they may administer to our happiness. There is the wax. In the soul is the seal, designed to impress it. There are the materials, upon which and with which the spirit is to operate. But no implements, even, are given it for its use. It must forge them, as it wants them. They are not found ready fashioned to the hand, as ornamental stones are, in the caverns and rock-rifts. They must be conceived by our skill, and completed by our labor. But the moment we begin, all is ready for our progress.—Richard S. Storrs.

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CONQUEST, COMMONPLACE

Even the conquest of the North Pole takes on an aspect of the commonplace, especially after many years of hard work. The New York Times quotes this entry from Peary’s journal:

The pole at last! The prize of three centuries, my dream and goal for twenty years, mine at last! I can not bring myself to realize it.

It all seems so simple and commonplace. As Bartlett said when turning back, when speaking of his being in these exclusive regions which no mortal had ever penetrated before:

“It is just like every day!”

(535)

Conquest, Peaceful—See Emigration, Conquest by.

CONQUEST, SEVERE

Death Valley is the most barren part of the Great American Desert. More men have died in its arid wastes than on any other equal area of the world’s surface, barring the great battle-fields. It lies, a great sink in the sandy plain, about 250 miles north and east of Los Angeles, Cal., and within the boundaries of that State. The valley received its sinister name owing to the fact that in the early fifties a party of emigrants, some hundred and twenty in number, traveling overland by wagon from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Los Angeles, perished in its awful solitudes, barely a man escaping.

In the Wide World Magazine is given the story of a man who, alone and unaided, conquered Death Valley in the hottest month of the desert year. The tale of awful suffering endured by this man, H. W. Manton, of Rhyolite, Cal., is told for the first time in his own words.

For almost a week Manton was lost in the heart of Death Valley. In three days he tramped eighty miles over sands so hot that he could scarcely walk on them, tho shod with heavy shoes. During those never-ending days he had no food, and but one drink of water.

When he staggered up to Cub Lee’s Furnace Creek ranch, more dead than alive, his tongue was swollen to such a size that his mouth could no longer contain it. His lips and eyelids were cracked open; his clothing was in tatters, and his shoes were coated with a heavy incrustation of borax and other alkalines, which had eaten great holes in the leather.

At first he could not drink, and the touch of water was as fire to his parched lips and tongue. Kind-hearted ranchmen and miners forced the precious fluid into his mouth with a straw, with a spoon—any way to get him revived. And eventually he spoke, telling the strange story of his crossing the dread pit; of how he had wandered therein for many days, with no companions save the lizards and the snakes of the barren sands.—Boston Transcript.

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CONSCIENCE

There is an ingenious instrument used in testing the condition of railroads whereby every slight deviation in the width or levelness of the track, every defect of the rails, and even the quality of the steel and manufacture are registered.

Is not a well-instructed and carefully cultivated conscience just such a dynograph?

(537)

“Conscience makes cowards of us all.” The following rather amusing incident well illustrates this hackneyed observation of Shakespeare:

On one of Landseer’s early visits to Scotland the great painter stopt at a village and took a great deal of notice of the dogs, jotting down rapidly sketches of them on a piece of paper. Next day, on resuming his journey, he was horrified to find dogs suspended from trees in all directions or drowning in the rivers, with stones around their necks. He stopt a weeping urchin, who was hurrying off with a pet pup in his arms, and learned to his dismay that he was supposed to be an excise officer who was taking notes of all the dogs he saw in order to prosecute the owners for unpaid taxes. (Text.)

(538)

The religious ferment of the age made a tremendous impression on Bunyan’s sensitive imagination. He went to church occasionally, only to find himself wrapt in terrors and in torments by some fiery itinerant preacher; and he would rush violently away from church to forget his fears by joining in Sunday sports on the village green. As night came on the sports were forgotten, but the terrors returned, multiplied like the evil spirits of the parable. Visions of hell and the demons swarmed in his brain. He would groan aloud in his remorse, and even years afterward he bemoans the sins of his early life. When we look for them fearfully, expecting some shocking crimes and misdemeanors, we find that they consisted of playing ball on Sunday and swearing. The latter sin, sad to say, was begun by listening to his father cursing some obstinate kettle which refused to be tinkered, and it was perfected in the Parliamentary army. One day his terrible swearing scared a woman, “a very loose and ungodly wretch,” as he tells us, who reprimanded him for his profanity. The reproach of the poor woman went straight home, like the voice of a prophet. All his profanity left him; he hung down his head with shame. “I wished with all my heart,” he says, “that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing.” With characteristic vehemence Bunyan hurls himself upon a promise of Scripture, and instantly the reformation begins to work in his soul. He casts out the habit, root and branch, and finds to his astonishment that he can speak more freely and vigorously than before. Nothing is more characteristic of the man than this sudden seizing upon the text, which he had doubtless heard many times before, and being suddenly raised up or cast down by its influence.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

(539)

See Eye, The Searching; Missionary Accomplishments.

CONSCIENCE A LIGHT

The woodsman carries a box of safety matches protected against the rain and snow. In the arctic zone he knows that if he loses the match and the light he has lost life itself. Man can lose his health but not his conscience. But, if stumbling, the torch has fallen, and the light flamed low, snatch it up, and relight it, at the altars of God. So shall the light in thee wax into greater light, until conscience is a true pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, guiding thee into the summer land where man needs no light of the lamp, neither light of the sun.—N. D. Hillis.

(540)

CONSCIENCE A MONITOR

I remember when a boy my mother had a beautiful vase. I was charged not to touch it. My fingers, however, boy-like, itched to touch it. I frequently went around it, and peered behind it. I wondered if there might not be some painting on the bottom of it, as there was on the sides. In lifting ii up, one day, when I had grown bolder, it fell to the hearthstone and broke into a thousand pieces. I knew I had wounded the mother heart in that moment. She heard the crash and came in. I knew that I deserved punishment. But she only said, “My dear boy; do you see what you have done.” It was burned into my memory then what it cost to disobey law, and in all the sixty years that have elapsed since then, when I have looked upon the treasures of others, I have heard her voice saying to me, “Do you see what you have done?”—Bishop D. A. Goodsell.

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CONSCIENCE A MORAL MENTOR

A writer speaks of a special form of the barometer, used generally by travelers, in which air supplies the place of mercury as a measuring medium. Speaking of its use, he says:

As the pressure of the outside air varies does it rise and fall, and by a beautifully delicate apparatus this rising and falling is magnified and represented upon the dial. Such barometers are made small enough to be carried in the pocket, and are very useful for measuring the heights of mountains; but they are not quite so accurate as the mercurial barometer, and are therefore not used for rigidly scientific measurements; but for all ordinary purposes they are accurate enough, provided they are occasionally compared with a standard mercurial barometer, and adjusted by means of the watch-key axis provided for that purpose, and seen on the back of the instrument. They are sufficiently delicate to tell the traveler in a railway whether he is ascending or descending an incline, and will indicate the difference of height between the upper and lower rooms of a three-story house. The unseen air in the aneroid is a mark of the rise or fall in altitude of the possessor of the instrument.

Conscience plays a like part in morals. It is always with us and always admonishes us of the varying moral altitudes to which we rise or fall.

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CONSCIENCE BENUMBED

One of the most astonishing things in prison life is said to be the deficiency of conscience in criminals. Scenes of heartrending despair are rarely witnessed among them. Their sleep is broken by no uneasy dreams; on the contrary, it is easy and sound: they have also excellent appetites. They have a sense of self-righteousness, and feel, on the whole, that they have been wronged. Recently the newspapers told us of the execution of a grave-digger upon the Continent, who had been convicted of four murders, five robberies, eight cases of incendiarism, and other crimes. When he was informed that he would be hanged early next morning, he said that he deserved his fate, but he assured his judge that worse fellows than he were running about the world.

To have no consciousness of sin, no proper consciousness of it, is no proof of our integrity; much more likely is it a proof that our conscience has become benumbed and indurated by years of worldliness and disobedience. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(543)

CONSCIENCE, CHRISTIAN

The following is told of Mr. Frank Crossley, a great promoter and founder of London missionary work:

Mr. Crossley was conscience incarnate. While yet a poor apprentice he had got free admission to a theater through the connivance of a fellow workman who kept the door; but when, as a renewed man, conscience demanded reparation for this sort of robbery, he reckoned up the entrance fee he had evaded, and sent the theater company sixty pounds.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

(544)

CONSCIENCE, TROUBLED

A quiet, bashful sort of a young fellow was making a call on a Capitol Hill girl one evening not so very long ago, when her father came into the parlor with his watch in his hand. It was about 9:30 o’clock. At the moment the young man was standing on a chair straightening a picture over the piano. The girl had asked him to fix it. As he turned, the old gentleman, a gruff, stout fellow, said:

“Young man, do you know what time it is?”

The bashful youth got off the chair nervously. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “I was just going.”

He went into the hall without any delay and took his hat and coat. The girl’s father followed him. As the caller reached for the doorknob, the old gentleman again asked him if he knew what time it was.

“Yes, sir,” was the youth’s reply. “Good-night!” And he left without waiting to put his coat on.

After the door had closed the old gentleman turned to the girl.

“What’s the matter with that fellow?” he asked. “My watch ran down this afternoon and I wanted him to tell me the time, so that I could set it.”—Denver Post.

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CONSCIOUSNESS

Is there any difference between the vibrations of sound on the tympanum of the ear and those on the surface of the water? Science does not seem to see a great difference, but Ruskin finds, in the differing effects, an illustration of the mystery of consciousness:

It is quite true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch vibrates, too; but the ditch hears nothing for all that; and my hearing is still to me as blest a mystery as ever, and the interval between the ditch and me, quite as great. If the trembling sound in my ears was once of the marriage-bell which begun my happiness, and is now of the passing bell which ends it, the difference between those two sounds to me can not be counted by the number of concussions. There have been some curious speculations lately as to the conveyance of mental consciousness by “brain-waves.” What does it matter how it is conveyed? The consciousness itself is not a wave. It may be accompanied here or there by any quantity of quivers and shakes, up or down, of anything you can find in the universe that is shakeable—what is that to me? My friend is dead, and my—according to modern views—vibratory sorrow is not one whit less, or less mysterious, to me, than my old quiet one.

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CONSECRATION

A Chinese preacher, whose wages were twenty-two dollars a month, refused the offer of the post of consul at fifty dollars, that he might be free to preach the gospel to his countrymen. His countrymen said of him: “There is no difference between him and the Book.” (Text.)

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CONSEQUENCES

Mr. Justice Burroughs, of the Common Pleas, used to resort to the use of proverbs and parables in dealing with the juries. One day at nisi prius, much talk was made about a consequential issue in the case. He began to explain it to the jury thus: “Gentlemen of the jury, you have been told that the first is a consequential issue. Now, perhaps, you do not know what a consequential issue means; but I dare say you understand nine-pins. Well, then, if you deliver your bowl so as to strike the front pin in a particular direction, down go the rest. Just so it is with these counts. Knock down the first, and all the rest will go to the ground; that’s what we call a consequential issue. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(548)

CONSEQUENCES, IRREPARABLE

The doctrine of the following verse (unidentified) is quite doubtful. Is it not the hope of Christianity that men now broken by sin will yet, by God’s healing grace, soar even higher than ever?

(549)

CONSEQUENCES, UNNOTICED

A little girl in Kansas has recently given the telegraph companies a vast amount of trouble in a peculiar way. Her daily duty was to herd a large drove of cattle on a range through which passed the telegraph lines. For weeks, some hours nearly every day, these lines absolutely failed to work, and the trouble seemed to be in the vicinity of where this girl herded her father’s cattle; but it was a long time before they discovered the cause. Finally, they found out that in order to get a better view of the herd the girl had driven railroad-spikes into a telegraph-pole, and whenever she got weary watching the cattle from the ground she would climb the pole and seat herself on a board across the wires and watch her herd from that lofty station. Whenever the board happened to be damp it destroyed the electric current and cut off all telegraphic communication between Denver and Kansas City. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.

(550)

CONSERVATION

Under the iron law of conflict in the “survival of the fittest,” the world finds a shipwrecked brother in its path and removes him without ceremony and covers him with scorn and contempt. Christ reverses this iron law.

Formerly when a war vessel discovered a derelict, the latter was immediately destroyed by dynamite. The government has now entered upon a new policy. Whenever it is possible, the abandoned vessel is towed into the nearest port. Recently two abandoned schooners were brought in, the value of the vessels and their cargo being estimated at more than sixty thousand dollars.

When Jesus finds a human derelict He does not destroy him. He cleanses him and rehabilitates him, and makes him valuable in the kingdom. (Text.)

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Christian treatment of the Indian not only has improved his character, but has saved him from threatened extinction.

The idea is prevalent that the red man is doomed to disappear from the earth at no distant day. But the census tables give no such indication. The first official count was taken about seventy years ago, and gave the number as 253,461. In 1880 the figures had risen to 256,127, in 1900 to 272,073, and now (1909), by actual count, the reservations are found to contain 284,000.

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A bundle of wood is placed in our kitchen stove to kindle the fire. It is consumed. Its ashes represent what the tree took from the soil. Its carbon goes up the chimney, restoring to the air what some tree took from the air. Nothing was lost. The earth received again what it originally gave. To the air was restored its original contribution of carbonic acid gas, which the leaf manufactured into wood. And so God has made a universe of perennial youth, where nothing is lost nor can be lost.—E. M. McGuffey.

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CONSERVATION OF INFLUENCE

Dr. F. F. Shannon, commenting on the early death of a talented man, says:

“Such a man dead at 40?” you ask. “Why, to what purpose is this waste?” Well, a man can make a match, but it takes God to make a sun. We know the match must go out, the sun never does, tho his shining face is often hidden from our eye. And so the sun of this man’s genius—of any man’s genius—can never go out. The flame is burning yet—in a few hearts still in the flesh, and in countless glorified spirits before the throne. There is not enough wind, loosed or unloosed, in the vast caverns of the universe to blow out that flame, nor enough blackness in the untenanted halls of space to swallow up its light! Do you tell me that the God who is so strict in the economy of His universe as to refuse a throb of energy to be lost, or an atom to be wiped out of existence, or a few pieces of bread to perish in the desert, will allow that genius, which is the breath of His own being, to be wasted without contributing wealth to the world, to the universe, to God Himself!

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CONSERVATION OF REMAINDERS

A man was in possession of a great farm. The abundant crops finally failed, and other calamities came, and at last the wife of the great landowner lost her reason. Nearly all had been lost, and the farmer was left with only a few feet of ground as his possession. I had not the courage to visit this man in his destitution. After a lapse of time, however, I went to his humble abode, and was amazed to see the little garden in the highest state of cultivation. And I exclaimed: “Why, how is this? How did you have the heart to do this, after you had lost all?”

“Why, what would you have had me do?” was the reply. “This is all I had, and I tried to make the best of it.”

So it is for us to strengthen that which is left in the Church and in ourselves as individuals.—Olin A. Curtis.

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CONSERVATISM, FALSE

There stands the false conservative, anchored to the past. Whatever is, for him, is right and good. He is constitutionally opposed to change. Wagon-wheels make a rut an inch deep across the prairie, but when this man is thirty he is in a rut up to his eyebrows. When he dies, at seventy, you can truly say, that his image is truth lying at the bottom of a well. He loves his father’s house because it is old; he loves old tools; old laws; old creeds. He stands at his gate, like an angry soldier, waving his hands and shouting warnings to all who approach. He has one injunction for every boy starting out to make his fortune: “Watch your anchor, my son; don’t cast off your moorings”; as if any Columbus, who spent all his time throwing out anchors, could ever have crossed the sea! As if any world voyage could be made by a captain who never dared cast off his moorings! In the Arabian tale, when the sheik was lost in the desert, he took off the bridle, and committed the camel to God and his own instincts, trusting the beast to find its way to the water springs. But if the old sheik had been a false conservative, he would first of all have staked the camel down by a lariat, and then committed himself to God, like these church dignitaries and councils that stake the religious or political thinker down by a lariat, which they then label in a humorous moment, “liberty of thought,” and having made progress impossible, they commit themselves to the care of the God of progress.—N. D. Hillis.

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Conservatism Natural—See Progress.

CONSIDERATENESS

This incident is from a source not identified:

A few days ago I was passing through a pretty, shady street, where some boys were playing at baseball. Among their number was a little lame fellow, seemingly about twelve years old—a pale, sickly-looking child, supported on two crutches, who evidently found much difficulty in walking, even with such assistance.

The lame boy wished to join the game, for he did not seem to see how his infirmity would be in his own way, and how much it would hinder the progress of such an active sport as baseball.

His companions, very good naturedly, tried to persuade him to stand at one side and let another take his place; and I was glad to notice that none of them hinted that he would be in the way, but that they all objected for fear he would hurt himself.

“Why, Jimmy,” said one of them at last, “you can’t run, you know.”

“Oh, hush!” said another—the tallest in the party; “never mind, I’ll run for him,” and he took his place by Jimmy’s side, prepared to act. “If you were like him,” he said, aside to the other boy, “you wouldn’t want to be told of it all the time.”

As I passed on I thought to myself, “That boy is a true gentleman.”

(557)

See Kindness; Service, Interested.

Consideration for Others—See Others, Consideration for.

Consideration for Weakness—See Weakness, Consideration for.

CONSISTENCY

Those who walk with God are sure to exercise a powerful effect, conscious or unconscious, upon their worldly friends and neighbors. It is said of certain of the apostles that those who watched them “took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.”

A certain mill-owner was an infidel. He ran his mill seven days in the week, yet on Sundays he stopt it for a short time in the morning and again at noon. At length some one ventured to ask him why he acted thus. His reply was, “It is because I know that Deacon B. will pass at a certain time on his way to church, and again on his way back. I do not mind the rest of you, for you do not properly live what you profess, but I tell you I do mind him, and to run my mill while he is passing would make me feel bad here”—putting his hand upon his heart.

Theosophy in its mystic theories includes the concept that the spirit within each individual forms a visible aura or halo around him, which can be seen by many who possess the faculty of discernment. The spirit of a true Christian is apprehended by those about him far more accurately than might be imagined. For the spirit inevitably impels the actions of the life.

(558)

CONSTITUTION IN OBSCURITY

A schoolboy in Brooklyn was asked: “What is the Constitution of the United States?” He replied: “It is that part in small print in the back of the book that nobody reads.”

(559)

Constraint—See Acquiescence to Providence.

Consumption—See Tuberculosis.

Consumption and Vocal Exercises—See Singing Conducive to Health.

CONTACT

If one’s heart be charged with sympathy, he will convey it by his handshaking, as if he carried with him this ingenious toy:

An “electric handshaker” to shock unsuspecting friends, has been devised by a man in Paterson, N. J. The specification of the patent that he has secured reads, according to The Western Electrician: “It is intended that the cell or battery and coil be concealed in the inside breast pocket or other convenient hiding-place on the person intending to operate the toy. The two wires are to be run down the sleeve of the operator and the ring slipt on one of his fingers, the two contact buttons being turned toward the palm of the hand. If now, the circuit through the induction-coil and battery being closed, the operator shakes hands or otherwise brings the two buttons on the ring into contact with another person, this person receives a most surprizing and effective electric shock. Owing to the small size and the ingenious method of concealing the apparatus, the recipient of the shock does not at once discover the source of the discharge, and the toy is productive of much amusement.” (Text.)

(560)

See Sympathy.

Contact with the Blind—See Blindness and Contact.

Contagion—See Post-mortem Consequences.

Contagion of Evil—See Evil, Virulency of.

CONTAMINATION

A party of young people were about to explore a coal-mine. One of the young ladies appeared drest in white. A friend remonstrated with her. Not liking the interference, she turned to the old miner, who was to conduct them, and said:

“Can’t I wear a white dress down in the mine?”

“Yes, mum,” was his reply. “There is nothing to hinder you from wearing a white frock down there, but there’ll be considerable to keep you from wearing one back.”

There is nothing to hinder a Christian from conforming to the world’s standard of living, but there is a good deal to keep him from being unspotted if he does. Christians were put into the atmosphere of this world to purify it, and not to be poisoned by it.

(561)

Mr. Hilditch, of the Sheffield Laboratory of Bacteriology and Hygiene, Yale University, has demonstrated that the average number of bacteria in each of twenty-one bills was 142,000, while by far the most common forms present were the varieties of the pyogenic staphylococcus. These organisms were not in possession of their full virulence, but merely produced a more or less local reaction, on guinea-pig injection, with swelling of the lymph glands of the groin. Their constant presence on money is certainly of greater significance than merely indicating the exposure to the bacterial contamination of the air; they clearly indicate that the money has been contaminated by handling and without regard to the virulence or the danger of infection to which these particular organisms themselves expose those who receive the money, they establish beyond question the most fundamental and significant fact for scientific demonstration, viz., that money is a medium of bacterial communication from one individual to another.—The Popular Science Monthly.

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CONTAMINATION, DEATH FROM

For the soldier in the far-away Philippines, death lurks in many places. Perhaps it is the enemy in the open, or the shot from the thicket, or the assassin’s knife in the dark. These are not the deadliest foes, however. The cholera is everywhere. Man can guard against the one, but he falls a victim to the other. Not long since a certain constabulary officer had met the enemy and defeated them. Before he reached camp on the return march, however, disease laid hold upon him for its own. Ere he reached the camp he was dead. In trying to explain that sudden demise, a companion of the march said:

When we stopt at shacks on the roadside and asked for water it was furnished us in a coconut shell with the native’s thumb dipt in and the water so muddy one could not see the bottom, but down it went with some jest about a cool death.

The thumb of the native, dipt in the shell of water, brought death to the drinker. There is another sort of cup in which lurks the serpent of death—the wine cup.

(563)

Contempt of Patriotism—See Memorials of Patriotism.

CONTENT

Robert Trowbridge wrote for Scribner’s Magazine the following verse:

(564)

CONTENTMENT

There is a story of an old woman who was very uncomfortable in her temper. She was always fretting and worrying and complaining. Nothing ever went right with her, and everybody was tired of her continual crossness and grumbling.

At last, late in her life, there came a change over her, and this cross, crabbed old woman grew gentle, patient and amiable. She was so altered from her former self that one of her neighbors took courage to ask her how it was that she, who had always found life so full of prickles, now seemed to touch the smooth and pleasant side of everything.

“Well,” said she, “I’ll tell you how it is. I’ve been all my life a-struggling and a-striving for a contented mind, and now I’ve made up my mind to sit down contented without it.”

(565)

See Optimism.

Contentment More than Raiment—See Character More than Clothing.

Contest, Made for—See Body, Mastering the.

Contingency—See Common Problem, The.

Continuity of Life—See Life, Continued.

Contraband Traffic—See Evidence, Providential.

Contraction of Stomach—See Adaptation.

Contrariness—See Dourness.

CONTRAST NECESSARY TO INTEREST

In nature as well as in poetry the sense of beauty is stimulated by contrast. If all women were pretty, how soon we should cease to admire lovely eyes and fair complexions and the thousand charms which make women in their weakness stronger than men are in their strength; if all men were handsome fine features would be disregarded. In climates which have months of perpetual drought and heat, the blue sky becomes hateful, and the sun, instead of being the best of friends, as in temperate lands, is regarded as an enemy. An Englishman finds cloudy days depressing because they are so frequent in his own land; his brothers in tropical lands welcome them because they are so few. In animal life, too, the same rule holds good, and I question if we should admire the exquisite shape of a gazelle or of a well-bred horse, and the superb plumage of the peacock and the secretary-bird, were it not for the contrast afforded by the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the vulture.—Illustrated London News.

(566)

Contrasted Careers—See Careers Contrasted.

Contrasts, Shameful—See Extravagance, Censurable.

CONTROL, DIVINE

The late Prof. Henry Drummond was staying at the house of a friend whose coachman had imperiled his career more than once by drunkenness. “Do try and speak to him about it,” said the lady to Professor Drummond. Driving to the station, Professor Drummond sat beside the coachman. The carriage narrowly escaped collision through the carelessness of another driver. “Didn’t I manage that well?” said the coachman to Professor Drummond. “You did, indeed. How was it?” “Because,” said the coachman, “I understand the horses’ mouths exactly and they obey my slightest guidance.” Drummond seized the opportunity immediately. “I have only a minute,” he said, “but let me ask, Why don’t you throw the reins of your life to God, who understands your mouth and is ready and willing to guide you?” The word went home to the coachman’s heart. (Text.)

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CONTROL OF CIRCUMSTANCES

The time has not yet come when man may plow the atmosphere for rain as he plows the soil for crops. If mines must be worked and towns built in arid regions, let promoters of these schemes be required to build aqueducts and bore wells sufficient in advance to supply the needed water, not waiting until droughts come and the people die. Every place on this globe has its rainy years and its dry years. Areas of cold and heat, wind and calm, rain and drought, appear and move and disappear in irregular succession. We must prepare for them and provide against disaster. We can not control the weather, but we may control ourselves.

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CONVERSION

Rev. J. Hawksley, a missionary among the Indians of the Klondyke, was one evening holding a service and using a magic lantern. He threw upon the screen a picture of Christ cleansing the temple. An inveterate gambler in the audience was so imprest with the attitude of Christ that the words in explanation went straight to his heart. “If Christ was so angry at those who did such things in His earthly temple, I am sure He would never let such a sinner as I am come into His holy temple above. I will give up my gambling and ask His pardon.” And the man kept his word.

(569)

That man steeped in iniquity can be won back by the grace of Christ to a life of decency and service is one of the marvels of the world.

Luther Burbank, the well-known botanist, finds in nature this renewing and generating quality. He can take a tree that shows distinct evidence of decay, that looks as if it were beyond recovery, and treat it, and treat it again, until he rescues it from its bad habits of many years’ standing. He directs its energies so that they flow in new channels and, as “if by the shock of recreation,” what was once blighted and blasted becomes beautiful, fragrant and fruitful. (Text.)

(570)

In 1855 some Hebrew Christians met in New York to observe the Passover. The meal being over, one after the other rose to testify to faith and love in Christ. One man sat with head dropt between his hands, then sobs shook his body, and those around saw that a mighty conflict was in progress in his soul. Suddenly he leapt to his feet and cried, “I will no longer deny my Lord! I will follow Him outside the camp.” God took that Polish Jew—for it was Bishop Schereschewsky—and through him gave the Mandarin Bible to the vast empire of China. The Passover had become the Supper of the Lord.

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Like a ship becalmed in tropic seas, whose sails hang useless in the breathless air, whose sailors wearily, idly wander about the decks or lean listlessly over the bulwarks looking into the waveless, torpid sea, and over which the heavy gloom of despair and hopeless waiting hangs like a stifling air, so is many a soul arrested in the voyage of life. Its energies are like the useless sails, its thoughts like the listless sailors, the whole spirit of its life like the dull, weary scene of the idly drifting ship. And when at length the welcome wind comes rippling the sea’s dead calm, filling the drooping sails, lifting the ship onward in its course, what music in the rustle of its coming! what joy in the new force it brings to the forceless ship! what animation of life, revival of hope, fleeing of all the dull, dreary spirits which haunted the scene a moment before! So is a soul who has lived with no great, good purpose which gave progress, importance, and interest to life, when at length it seizes on the great Christian purpose of living unto God. (Text.)—W. R. Brooks, Baptist Examiner.

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See Creature, A New.

CONVERSION AND A BUTTON

In the life of Charles G. Finney there is an account of the conversion of a prominent merchant. He went to hear Mr. Finney preach and was powerfully affected. Mr. Arthur Tappan, the eminent merchant, sat near him and noticed his agitation. In telling his experience afterward he said that as he arose to go, Mr. Tappan stept up and took him gently by the button of his coat and asked him to stay for prayer and conversation. He tried to excuse himself, but Mr. Tappan held on till he finally yielded. He said afterward, “He held fast to my button, so that an ounce weight at my button was the means of saving my soul.”

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Conversion, Evidence of—See Family Religion.

CONVERSION, GENUINE

The convert is known by his fruits. Conduct, conversation, and character, are the infallible tests of a personality transformed within.

In a large iron factory one of the worst men in the place was converted. He had been a man of terrible temper, and could scarcely speak without swearing and blaspheming against God. After his conversion his comrades waited for his temper to break out as before, and to hear him give utterance to a string of oaths. But nothing of the sort occurred. So they prepared a trap for him, which they felt sure would cause his downfall. They heated a long bar of iron and tempered it so that it would look as tho it were cold. Then they laid it on the floor when he was absent, and waited for him to come in and pick it up. Presently he returned, and, stooping over, grasped the hot iron with both hands. His comrades now expected an explosion, for there was a badly blistered strip of flesh on each hand. But the man simply turned round and said quietly, “Men, I didn’t think you would do that.”

At these words, so different from what they expected, tears ran down the cheeks of those strong men; a revival broke out then and there, and many of those ironworkers found salvation, because that man had not lost his temper, but had shown the reality of his transformation.

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CONVERSION, NOT UNNATURAL

Why should people balk at conversion as if it was something foreign to the universe? The fact is that there is not a moment of time when the process ceases. Dr. W. L. Watkinson calls attention to it in this way:

You come away from your house leaving your inkpot with the sun shining upon it. You go back. Where is your ink? Why, if you look up into the sky to-morrow you will see it in the rainbow! Nature is absolutely full of cleansings, of refinements, of marvelous chemistries, upliftings, transformations, transmutations, transfigurations! And do you mean to tell me that in a world where you see every day the miracle of renewal, the miracle of transfiguration—do you mean to tell me that the only thing in it that can not be changed is the human soul, that which it is most desirable to change? (Text.)

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CONVERSION, SINCERE

Mr. C. T. Studd, a missionary to China, tells the following:

A white-haired old Chinaman, over fifty years of age, an old opium-smoker, came to us, and having learned of Jesus Christ, was converted, went home and took down his idols. The elders of the village came to him for a subscription to their heathen temples. “I now worship the true God and can not henceforth pay any money for idol worship,” said the old man. When his reply was known, his village and a neighboring village took counsel and decided that they would kill him. One day, as the old man sat in his chair, a mob surrounded his home yelling and cursing. He sat quietly praying. One of the six men who stood at the door ready to kill him shouted, “Now, old man, you come out.”

“No,” he replied quietly, “if you want me out, you must come and pull me out.”

A dispute arose among the representatives of the villages as to which should have precedence in this act of religious zeal, and the contention waged so high that neither one dared to kill the gray-haired old man. They dispersed to their homes, and after living peacefully a while longer, the old Christian passed quietly to his heavenly home in 1895.

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CONVERTED BY THE COMET

The first conversion to Christianity by Halley’s comet was recorded to-day. As far as the available records show, this is the comet’s first convert.

At 4:30 o’clock yesterday morning a number of people who had shortened their matutinal slumbers to watch the great sidereal visitor from the roof of a Fourth Avenue apartment house were startled by a loud cry from one of their party. The man, a professional skeptic, was standing with arms outstretched to the heavens, weeping profusely.

“This convinces me that there is a God,” he said to his friends. “Hereafter I shall always live as a Christian. These stars could not be unless there is a God.”

The profound impression created on the man by the spectacle had not worn off to-day, and he assured his friends he meant to attend church regularly hereafter and to conduct himself as a Godfearing man should.

“I had never seen the heavens as I did then,” he declared this morning. “I did not realize what a wonderful world it is.”

The man’s name is withheld in order to save him from what his friends say would be embarrassing publicity. His agnostic beliefs have long been the despair of his well-wishers, who are elated over his curious conversion.—Brooklyn Eagle. (May, 1910.)

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Converts in Heathendom—See Native Converts.

Convict, A—See Dead Tho Alive.

CONVICT LABOR

Last summer about forty per cent of the Colorado convicts were put to work outside their prison walls. A thousand were employed exclusively in road-building. The cost for each prisoner employed was thirty-six cents a day and the counties where the roads were built paid this amount, less the amount the State would have to pay to maintain them in the prison. The day’s work was eight hours, and for each month’s service there was a substantial subtraction from the term of imprisonment. No chains were attached, no stripes were worn and there was no armed guard to patrol the work camps; yet less than one-half of one per cent of those thus employed were lost by escapes.

The success of the method may be due largely to the tact and judgment of the warden. The road work is said to be the desire of every prisoner, but he must earn the privilege by good conduct. The warden personally has a talk with each prisoner before assigning him to this service and receives his pledge that he will be true and faithful to his trust. “The best effect of this,” he says, “is that every man who goes from prison to road work and keeps his word with me, has taken a long step toward reformation.”

This seems to be one of the best solutions of the two problems, how to get good roads and employ the inmates of our penal institutions in healthful labor, under conditions that appeal to their manliness and better nature. Of course, this method must be discriminatingly applied, but the proof that it is workable is a valuable contribution to penology.—Boston Transcript.

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CONVICTION

Alexander McLaren says:

I once heard that if you take a bit of phosphorus and put it upon a slip of wood and ignite the phosphorus, bright as the blaze is, there drops from it a white ash that coats the wood, and makes it almost impossible to kindle the wood. And so, when the flaming conviction laid upon your heart has burnt itself out, it has coated the heart, and it will be very difficult to kindle the light there again.

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Conviction as a Foundation—See Human Nature, Insecurity of.

CONVICTION THROUGH A MONKEY

The Boston Herald is the authority for this story from Baton Rouge, La.:

Because their conviction for murder was based almost entirely on the animosity displayed against them by a trained monkey, Christopher Starr and his wife, Mamie, circus performers, are serving life sentences in State prison.

A movement has been started to obtain a new trial for them. During the circus season, James Ackerman, proprietor of a one-ring circus, was murdered while his show was playing at Devall’s Landing, La.

Mr. and Mrs. Starr, who had had a troupe of trained animals with the show, were arrested soon afterward, but there was little evidence against them, and they would have been released but for the actions of Scamp, a pet Himalayan ape, belonging to Mr. Ackerman.

Ackerman had been feeding the ape when he was slain, and when the animal, which was the only living witness of the crime, saw Starr, he flew into a terrible rage.

This action was repeated whenever Starr appeared, despite the fact that he formerly had been a friend of Scamp, and it was repeated when Mrs. Starr was seen.

The monkey’s actions caused husband and wife to be indicted, and when placed on trial the monkey was brought into court, and so imprest the jury that, altho the evidence was not over-strong, they were found guilty.

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CONVICTION, UNYIELDING

Lord Lyndhurst told a curious anecdote about a trial of a civil cause in which the jury would not agree on their verdict. They retired on the evening of one day, and remained till one o’clock the next afternoon, when, being still disagreed, a juror was drawn. There was only one juror who held out against the rest—Mr. Berkeley (M.P. for Bristol). The case was tried over again, and the jury were unanimously of Mr. Berkeley’s opinion, which was, in fact, right—a piece of conscientious obstinacy which prevented the legal commission of a wrong. (Text.)—Greville’s “Memoirs.”

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Convictions, Lack of—See Incertitude.

CONVICTIONS, STRONG

Many years ago in the city of New York there was an organized set of dishonest men known as the Tweed Ring. They stole $51,000,000 from the State and city, and everybody knew it. When they told Tweed that he was under arrest, he dared to say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” There was a merchant in New York named William Sloane. They put him on the Grand Jury. Because of his large business interests and the tremendous demands upon his time, he said, “I can not serve.” But earnest men said, “Here is the bulwark of sin and here is the need of righteousness.” Immediately he said, “I will serve.” Now, certain men on the jury had been bought up by Tweed. One man in particular stood out. For twenty-three hours that jury sat in council. They could not come to an agreement; this one man would not yield. Finally, Mr. Sloane put his hand on this man’s shoulder and said: “Do you know, sir, that the people whom we represent know the character of this man on trial? They know that we have explicit, convincing evidence against him. And do you know that I will stay here until I die before I will go out and say that this jury does not agree?” The man yielded, Tweed was convicted, sentenced and committed to jail.

There has never been a time in the history of our own land or in the history of Christendom when men standing for righteousness and truth have not accomplished something. It may sometimes mean their death. (Text.)

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Convictions versus Cash—See Responsibility Affects Judgment.

Cooking, The Art of—See Waste, The Problem of.

COOLNESS

During the battle of Waterloo the Duke of Wellington appeared frequently among his men. Sergeant Cotton, in his book “A Voice from Waterloo,” says:

Whenever the Duke came, which at this momentous period was often, there was a low whisper in the ranks “Here’s the Duke!” and all was steady as on parade. No matter what the havoc and destruction might be, the Duke was always the coolest man there; in the words of an eye-witness of this bloody scene, the Duke was coolness personified.

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COOLNESS IN DANGER

Michael Henry Ryan, able seaman on the liner Philadelphia, would rather drown than be rescued by means of a rope which had a poorly tied sailor’s knot in it. Ryan proved this by risking his life in mid-Atlantic waves until he could retie the knot.

The rescue in itself was one of the most remarkable in the history of the American line. The captain from the bridge saw Ryan go over the side. It was too rough to launch a boat and the liner was stopt almost in its own length and sent astern so that it drifted down upon the struggling seaman. A line was lowered.

When Ryan caught the rope he examined the knot. The sea was smashing him against the side of the ship.

“Who tied this knot?” he called out to the men on deck. And then he calmly untied the knot and retied it in his own way. All the while he gave his opinion of the lubbers on deck and their inability to tie a knot. Then he put the loop under his arms and called out to those above to haul him up.—Chicago Tribune.

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Cooperation—See Help One Another; Working Together; World Improving.

Cooperation, Divine—See Faith in God; Growth, Cause of.

COOPERATION, LACK OF

An old Norse legend tells of a departed spirit meeting his guardian angel in the other world, and commiserating him upon his forlorn and haggard looks, only to receive the reproving reply: “No wonder I am worn out. All your life I have been fighting in your behalf, and I never got a bit of assistance from you.” (Text.)

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COOPERATION WITH GOD

The farmer drops a seed into the ground and goes away and leaves it. It sprouts and grows, and by and by he reaps the harvest of the sowing, and he says, “I have harvested, I have raised so many bushels of corn to the acre.” Oh, no, he has not. He has sown so many seeds, he has cultivated so many acres, he has put in his sickle or his harvesting machine, and he has gathered so many stalks. But he could not have done it if some forces of nature had not been at work perfecting that which he began. He and nature, as we say—he and God, as I say—have worked together to raise the harvest. (Text.)—Lyman Abbott.

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See Gratitude.

COPYING VAIN

It would never make an arithmetician of a boy at school if he merely copied the solution of arithmetic problems from his neighbor’s slate or paper, even tho the solutions thus copied should be the correct ones. To become an arithmetician the boy must himself learn to solve problems; and this means that he must understand thoroughly every step in the process of solution. The process must go through him, or through his intelligence, as well as that he must go through the process. He must know what he is aiming at, and why it is that he adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides, every time that he does any of these. Merely to put down figures on his paper, even should they be the right figures by chance, unless he understands the why and the when, would do him no good whatsoever. And it would not make the matter one whit better if he imagined the schoolmaster would be pleased with seeing him put down right figures without understanding what he was doing, or why he was doing it. The whole would only show that he was far back in intelligence, and would hardly ever become an arithmetician. We can not become truly religious either by being mere copiers of the religion of others, or by fetish worship.—Alexander Miller, “Heaven and Hell Here.”

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Cordiality—See Hospitality in Church.

CORN VERSUS GOLD

Drop a grain of California gold into the ground, and there it will lie unchanged to the end of time, the clods on which it falls not more cold and lifeless. Drop a grain of our gold, of our blest gold, into the ground, and lo! a mystery. In a few days it softens, it swells, it shoots upward, it is a living thing. It is yellow itself, but it sends up a delicate spire, which comes peeping, emerald green, through the soil; it expands to a vigorous stalk; revels in the air and sunshine; arrays itself, more glorious than Solomon, in its broad, fluttering, leafy robes, whose sound, as the west wind whispers through them, falls as pleasantly on the husbandman’s ear as the rustle of his sweetheart’s garment; still towers aloft, spins its verdant skeins of vegetable floss, displays its dancing tassels, surcharged with fertilizing dust, and at last ripens into two or three magnificent batons like this [an ear of Indian corn], each of which is studded with hundreds of grains of gold, every one possessing the same wonderful properties as the parent grain, every one instinct with the same marvelous reproductive powers. There are seven hundred and twenty grains on the ear which I hold in my hand. I presume there were two or three such ears on the stalk. This would give us one thousand four hundred and forty, perhaps two thousand one hundred and sixty grains as the product of one. They would yield next season, if they were all successfully planted, four thousand two hundred, perhaps six thousand three hundred ears. Who does not see that, with this stupendous progression, the produce of one grain in a few years might feed all mankind? And yet with this visible creation annually springing and ripening around us, there are men who doubt, who deny the existence of God. Gold from the Sacramento River, sir! There is a sacrament in this ear of corn enough to bring an atheist to his knees.—Edward Everett.

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CORRUPTION, INNER

Athenian society decayed at last, not at all because its artists had reached the limit of human invention, or its philosophers the necessary term of human thought, but because the moral faculties and tastes which should have presided in that society were not developed in proportion to the esthetic and intellectual powers which added to its ornament. It was outwardly like the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon, of costly ivory, overlaid with gold; but it was wood within; and the wood rotted; that is all that can be said of it. Then the cunning of the ivory, and the splendor of the gold, fell and were broken, and the nations gathered the shining fragments.—Richard S. Storrs.

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COSMOLOGY, PRIMITIVE

Knowing nothing of the planetary system, early man had to account in his own way for the apparent fixity of the earth, and as the Greeks invented the giant Atlas, the Hindus contrived a huge turtle to bear the world upon its patient back. What sustained the giant or the monster, the ancient mind inquired not. To make everything out of anything and believe with implicit faith in his own creations was the happy faculty of early man, not entirely fallen from possession in these days of all-questioning. The first Egyptians knew that the heavens and the earth were formed by the breaking of the cosmic egg, an idea suggested by the resemblance of the skies to the half of an eggshell. That is as poetic and more agreeable than the Norse idea of a giant dashed to pieces to make earth, water, and starry firmament. The Mexican legend as to the creation of man resembles the Hebraic, clay and the breath of life admitted. But the North American Indians explain the mixt nature of man by declaring that the daughter of the Great Spirit, living in the wigwam, Mount Shasta, stole forth one day, was seized by a patriarchal grizzly, who took her home and wedded her to his son. Man was the result of this union. As a punishment for the sacrilege in contaminating the race of the Great Spirit, grizzlies were deprived the power of speech and made to wander ever after on all fours.—Chicago Inter-Ocean.

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Cosmopolitanism—See Americanism, True.

Cosmopolitanism in Education—See Education by Travel.

Cost of Disease—See Health and Science.

COST RECKONED

When your child throws away a piece of bread, make him pick it up again and tell him the history of that piece of bread. Tell him what has been requisite that that bread might exist. Tell him of the toils of the plowman and of the sower, under the sky, inclement and changeful; the obscure bursting of the seed in the ground, the long sleep under the snow, the awakening in the spring, when the green life along the furrows makes its orisons to the sun, source of life. Describe the hope of the farmer when the corn puts forth its ears, and his anguish when the storm rises on the horizon. Do not forget the harvester who wields his scythe in the dog-day heat, and that poor prisoner of the cities, pledged to nocturnal toil in overheated cellars, the baker. (Text.)—Charles Wagner, “The Gospel of Life.”