L

LABELS, MISLEADING

Not long ago this country woke up to the fact that with a good deal of our canned food we were not getting just what the colored label on the outside of the can led us to suppose. It was a shocking disillusionment to find that the label showed luscious peach jelly, when the inside of the can contained only some nicely prepared and flavored gelatine, quite innocent of any relation to peaches. The country at once had indigestion, and passed laws to keep the peaches and the labels in the neighborhood of the same can.

The labels on persons are also misleading, because one can see the label but not always the real person. The titles and degrees are supposed to be descriptive of the owner’s brains, and sometimes they are; but they are not always accurate, and they never make brains. A university might confer a B.A. or an LL.D. on a lineal descendant of Balaam’s beast of burden, and yet it would not make him wise.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”

(1744)

See Envy Gratified; New, The.

LABOR

This song of labor is by Caroline A. Lord:

(1745)

Labor, A Hero of—See Energy Indomitable.

LABOR, AVOIDING

“I like to sew where there is no thread in the machine, it runs so easily,” said a little girl.

A good many people, I think, are pretty fond of running their machines without thread.

When I hear a boy talking very largely of the grand things he would do if he only could and if things and circumstances were only different, and then neglecting every daily duty and avoiding work and lessons, I think he is running his machine without any thread.

When I see a girl very sweet and pleasant abroad, ready to do anything for a stranger, and cross and disagreeable in her home, she, too, is running her machine without any thread.

Ah, this sewing without thread is very easy indeed, and the life machine will make a great buzzing! But labor, time, and force will in the end be far worse than lost.—The Friend.

(1746)

LABOR BY PATIENTS

Patient labor at the Elgin State Hospital (Illinois) has become one of the most striking features in any of the seventeen charitable institutions of Illinois.

Fiscal Supervisor Whipp, of the State Board of Administration, has just returned from Elgin, where he has been investigating the construction of buildings of cement blocks veneered with granite.

Patients have already built a cold storage room and bath-house, and now are at work on a cottage for the acute insane. They make the veneered blocks in the basement of the institution in winter. The process itself is comparatively new. It has been employed no more than a year at Elgin, but has worked out with remarkable success—Boston Journal.

(1747)

LABOR FOR THE COMMUNITY

The worker bee is never found loafing while the sun is shining. Their work is wholly for the hive; for the community that is, and they not infrequently work themselves to death gathering and carrying pollen, with which they load themselves down heavily.

The work of the truly unselfish life is a willingness to work, and even if need be, to die for the good of mankind.

(1748)

LABOR IN VAIN

The Pyramids of Egypt are among the seven wonders of the world. Cheops, said to be the largest of them all, covers an area of over thirteen acres, is larger than Madison Square, New York, and twice the height of Trinity Church spire. It contains enough material to build a city as large as Washington, including all its public buildings. Four hundred thousand men were employed twenty years to build it. The purpose of its erection was that it might be the tomb of kings.

How much better would have been the result if all this labor had been spent to serve those who were alive and the then future generations.

(1749)

LABOR, OPPORTUNITY FOR

The verses below carrying a helpful lesson, are by Ellen M. H. Gates:

(1750)

LABOR-SAVING DEVICES

I have heard old men say that the mere easy use of friction-matches saves every day for each active man and woman ten minutes of life. I think that is true. You are not old enough to remember the adventures of the boy called out of his bed in the morning to go and fetch a pan of coals from the next neighbor’s. The lad tumbles into his clothes, plows through the snow, finds that Mrs. Smith’s luck has been better than his mother’s, and the careful ashes of her hearth have preserved the vestal fire. A glowing brand is given him in his warming-pan, and he returns in triumph home. The alternative would have been to strike flint against steel, not to say against knuckles, till a reluctant spark fell on tinder equally reluctant, till this was fanned by careful breath till it would light a match which would light a candle. The journey to Mrs. Smith’s was, on the whole, light in comparison. Does one trivial invention save twenty minutes a day in each household, ten minutes to a man, ten minutes to a woman? That is a saving for this nation of more than twice the amount of work which Cheops put upon his pyramid, and so much addition to the real resources of the world is made by that one invention.—Edward Everett Hale.

(1751)

See Precaution.

Lad with Ready Answer—See Early Religion.

Lamb, The, Slain—See Christ the Lamb.

LANGUAGE, FORMATION OF

For three centuries after the battle of Hastings French was the language of the upper classes, of courts and schools and literature; yet so tenaciously did the common people cling to their own strong speech that in the end English absorbed almost the whole body of French words and became the language of the land. It was the welding of Saxon and French into one speech that produced the wealth of our modern English.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

(1752)

Large-heartedness—See Friend, The Orphan’s.

Larger, The, Extinguishing the Smaller—See Sunlight and Starlight.

LAST RESORT OF A WOMAN

“I am not Mrs. Nation; I have no hatchet; I am not crazy.”

These words came from the lips of a Lewis woman, as she met her husband face to face in a hotel barroom the other evening, says the Lewis Pilot. They were directed to the bartender and the loungers, as the former handed the woman’s husband a glass of whisky.

She continued: “That man has not done a day’s work this winter, and I am worn out trying to support him and the rest of the family. I want to know if something can not be done to keep him from destroying his own life and starving his family?”

The woman was thin and pale. Her lips quivered as she spoke. Her frail body could hardly stand the strain of the unfamiliar environment. As she finished the little girl by her side burst into tears, the bartender took back the whisky, the abashed husband stood with bowed head, one by one the loungers left the room. Presently the bartender, gazing at the poor woman, solemnly vowed that the man should not drink at his bar again.

It was a pathetic scene; it was the last resort of a desperate woman. As she left the hotel with her husband and the little girl there was a lesson too painful for any pen to picture.

(1753)

Last Words—See Death Compelling Sincerity.

LATENT POSSIBILITIES

Beauty of character may be evolved out of the most unpromising material which only seems fit to be flung forth and burned. If a child cries we should try to make it laugh; if we meet melancholy folk, we should seek to cheer them; if they have to live in contact with evil tempers, we must endeavor to sweeten them.

At certain seasons of the year some great conservatories are full of ugly plants, with terrible spines sticking out of great, fat, succulent, selfish-looking leaves. These plants are cacti. They wear only a frightful and repellent aspect. Yet they are favorites of the horticulturist. He waters them and nurtures them. And suddenly the whole place is ablaze with their unspeakable loveliness. They have burst into glorious efflorescence, and spectators come to look on them with joy and wonder. Many of them bloom, especially in the night.

(1754)

See Possibilities, Latent.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE GOSPEL

There are inhabitants of three hundred towns in the Philippine Islands to-day who are stretching out their hands to America for Christian missionaries, and there is not a single person to go. Do they need us? I reply by telling you an incident. I sent a man named Nicholas Zamora, one of our preachers, out about four or five miles from the city. The man has a good voice; it is like a bell, and you can hear it four or five blocks. They were singing for about ten minutes, when a policeman came along and rushed the whole company off to jail. We have a saying in the Philippines that our converts do not have any backbone until they have been in jail about three times. They did not have any regular jail, using instead the lower floor in the policeman’s house. When they arrived there, Nicholas said: “Well, we are here; I guess we might as well do something”; and they began to sing the first verse of “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” The policeman came down-stairs and said that singing must cease, and went back up-stairs. Nicholas said, “I guess we might as well have the second verse,” and they began to sing it. The policeman came down again in high dudgeon and berated them most vigorously; and having cooled off, he went up-stairs again. Nicholas said, “We will now have the third verse.” The policeman came down again as they were starting in strongly on the third verse. This was too much for the policeman, who said in anger: “Get out of here, and go right back to America. I don’t propose to have any psalm-singing Methodists in my jail.”—J. L. McLaughlin, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

(1755)

LAUGHING PLANT, A

Palgrave, in his work on Central and Eastern Arabia, mentions a plant whose seeds produce effects analogous to those of laughing-gas. The plant is a native of Arabia. A dwarf variety is found at Kasum, and another variety at Oman, which attains a height of from three to four feet, with woody stems, wide-spreading branches, and light green foliage. The flowers are produced in clusters and are yellow in color. The seed-pods contain two or three black seeds of the size and shape of a French bean. Their flavor is a little like that of opium, the taste is sweet, and the odor from them produces a sickening sensation and is slightly offensive. These seeds, when pulverized and taken in small doses, operate on a person in a very peculiar manner. He begins to laugh loudly and boisterously, and then sings, dances, and cuts up all kinds of fantastic capers. The effect continues about an hour, and the patient is extremely comical. When the excitement ceases, the exhausted individual falls into a deep sleep, which continues for an hour or more, and when he awakens, he is utterly unconscious that any such demonstrations have been made by him.—Scientific American.

(1756)

LAUGHTER

Albert J. Beveridge, United States Senator from Indiana, believes that the direction of his career was completely changed by a careless laugh. A writer in Success quotes him as saying:

When I was a youth in Illinois I heard that the Congressman from our district intended to hold an examination to determine what young man he should appoint to West Point. I pitched in and studied hard for that examination, and found it easy when I came to take it. Most of the other fellows seemed to be still struggling with it when I had finished, and I was so confident that I had made few mistakes that I was in a pretty cheerful frame of mind. This is why I laughed when one of the strugglers asked a rather foolish question of the professor in charge. The latter evidently felt that the dignity of the occasion had been trifled with, for he scored one per cent against me. When the papers came to be corrected this loss caused me to fall one-fifth of one per cent below the boy who stood highest on the list. He is a captain in the army now, where I suppose I should be had it not been for that laugh. I believe in the power of cheerfulness. Looking back, I am rather glad that I laughed. (Text.)

(1757)

LAUGHTER AS A VENT

It might be said of Lamb, as of Abraham Lincoln, “laughter was his vent”; if he had not laughed, he would have died of a frenzied brain or of a broken heart. With Lamb the maddest mood of frolic was a rebound from the blackest mood of melancholia; a fact which Carlyle, who did know Lamb’s history, might have remembered before he used the phrase “diluted insanity,” which, in view of that sad history, is nothing less than brutal.—W. J. Dawson, “The Makers of English Prose.”

(1758)

LAUGHTER, PERILS OF

There is certainly no harm in a good laugh, and truly it is not forbidden to a jester to speak the truth. Yet the laugh must have the right ring to it. Socrates laughed, and Voltaire laughed, as Thomas Erskine remarked; yet, as he said, what a difference in the laugh of the two! And the man who laughs all the time will not know what to do when the hour of weeping comes. The laughing philosopher is a very shallow philosopher or else a very shallow laugher. An awful gravity which comes from a man taking himself too seriously is a thing which irresistibly invites a tweaking of the nose; but a ridicule which beats and splashes on all sides and at all times, fixing its pasquinades nightly on the statues of our national heroes, smirking in the presence of names and thoughts that ought to be shrouded in sacred reverence, is one of the things that no right soul can abide.—Christian Union.

(1759)

LAUGHTER, PROVOKING

The doctor who could not laugh and make me laugh I should put down for a half-educated man. It is one of the duties of the profession to hunt for the material of a joke on every corner. Most of them have so esteemed it. Garth, Rabelais, Abernethy, and a hundred or so more too near to be named, what genial, liver-shaking, heart-quickening, wit-waking worthies they were and are! To the son who loves her best, nature reveals most her tricks of workmanship. He knows there is a prize in every package of commonplace and sadness, and he can find it—not only the bit of fun shining to the eye of a connoisseur like an unset jewel, but the eccentricity, the resemblance, the revelation, countless signs and tokens of the evanescent, amusing, pathetic creature we call the human.—A. B. Ward, Scribner’s.

(1760)

LAUGHTER, VALUE OF

To what a dreary, dismal complexion should we all come at last, were all fun and cachinnation expunged from our solemn and scientific planet! Care would soon overwhelm us; the heart would corrode; the river of life would be like the lake of the dismal swamp; we should begin our career with a sigh, and end it with a groan; while cadaverous faces and words to the tune of “The Dead March in Saul,” would make up the whole interlude of our existence. Hume, the historian, in examining a French manuscript containing accounts of some private disbursements of King Edward II of England, found, among others, one item of a crown paid to somebody for making the king laugh. Could one conceive of a wiser investment? Perhaps by paying one crown Edward saved another. “The most utterly lost of all days,” says Chamfort, “is that on which you have not once laughed.” Even that grimmest and most saturnine of men, who, tho he made others roar with merriment, was never known to smile, and who died “in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole”—Dean Swift—has called laughter “the most innocent of all diuretics.” (Text.)—William Matthews, Home Magazine.

(1761)

LAW AND GRACE

One of the notable figures in the history of the American Navy is that of Admiral Porter. Wise in counsel and daring in execution, he has left his impression very deep upon its development and traditions. At one time he was in command of the Naval Academy at Annapolis when the following incident occurred:

General Grant was on a visit to the Academy. As he stood watching the evolutions of the midshipmen, the general had his ever-present cigar in his mouth. The marine on duty walked up to the general and said, “General, I beg pardon, but it is against the rules to smoke in the academy.” “All right,” replied the general, and, with soldierly promptness, he proceeded to take the cigar from his mouth. At that instant Admiral Porter stept forward and said, “I abrogate that rule.” (Text.)

(1762)

LAW AND LOVE

A boisterous New-year’s eve reveler, by the name of Downey, was arrested on a Third Avenue elevated train in New York City:

After listening to the testimony Magistrate Cornell decided that Downey’s New-year’s enthusiasm had been excessive, and that he must pay ten dollars to the city treasury. Downey had used all his available cash in celebrating, and he was about to be led to the court prison, when his wife, who had been tearfully listening to the evidence, fell in a faint. She was lifted up by Callahan, the policeman who arrested her husband, and who revived her and then inquired if she had any money with which to pay the fine.

“Not a penny,” she replied, “and poor Jack will have to go to jail. He’s such a good husband, too,” and the little woman wept.

“I won’t let him go to jail,” said Callahan, and he drew a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to the clerk. Thereupon the Downeys fell on his neck and wept for joy.

(1763)

Love is, in the spiritual world, what the powers of attraction, resulting in beautiful harmonies of combination and interrelation are seen to be in the physical. But the subject of the law which claims love from moral beings must freely accept its beneficent rule; while the crystal can not choose another finish for its angles, or the star select for itself a rule which will square it instead of rounding it.—Richard S. Storrs.

(1764)

LAW ENFORCED

Violating a petty township ordinance on a hunting expedition on Long Island, his friends were indignant when Garibaldi was hauled before a local magistrate, as described in a recent number of the Century. To the protests and condolences, the patriot replied: “No, friends, these officers of the law have done nothing more than their duty and I deserve the correction. The Americans make and enforce the laws proper to the regulating of their own communities, just as we hope some day to do with ours in Italy.”

(1765)

LAW FOR THE TRANSGRESSOR

In certain places we see regulations like these placarded: “No smoking allowed,” “No betting allowed,” “No swearing allowed”; and we perceive at once the kind of place we are in, and the kind of people who usually frequent them—that is sufficiently clear from the prohibitory legislation. We never think of putting up such regulations in a temple. So the commandments of Moses assume this to be a sinful world; they are addrest to sinners; there is in them the idiom of impeachment and condemnation.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(1766)

Law, Help—See Prohibition as a Benefactor.

Law, Impartial Enforcement of—See Impartiality.

Law in Earlier Times—See Punishment, Former Severity of.

Law, Invariable—See Gravitation, Law of.

LAW, MORAL

We teach children that two and two are four, but not that it is wrong to tell lies as a bookkeeper. We teach them that fire burns, in science, but in morals we do not tell them that the boy who tries to satisfy his hunger for pleasure with sin, is one who eats red-hot coals when he is hungry. We tell the girl that hot water scalds, but we do not tell her that there are passions and pleasures through selfishness that blight the soul, and do not satisfy, just as scalding water and boiling oil, and carbolic acid will not satisfy thirst.—N. D. Hillis.

(1767)

Law More Than the Individual—See Impartiality.

LAW, NATURAL

The laws of matter are simply the mode in which matter in virtue of its constitution acts. Oxygen unites chemically with hydrogen, in certain proportions, under certain conditions, simply because of the qualities or attributes wherewith these two gases are invested. It is not the law which determines the combination, but the qualities which determine the law. These elements act as they act, simply because they are what they are.

(1768)

LAW, OBEDIENCE TO

The world has no place in it for a lawless man. What we call liberty is really a form of obedience to law, and whatever you may achieve later in life will represent the discovery of law and the instant acceptance thereof. The Indian obeys one law—and can therefore swim the river. Obeying the law of fire, he achieves a canoe, hollowed out with the flame. Obeying the law of the wind, nature fills his sail, and releases him from bondage to the oar; obeying the law of steam, nature gives the man a ship. Obeying the law of electricity, his car doubles its speed. Obeying the law of the air, the man spreads his wings like a bird.—N. D. Hillis.

(1769)

Law Prohibiting Evil—See Cocaine Restrictions.

LAW, SEVERITY OF ANCIENT

On February 9, 1810, Romilly, the great reformer, obtained leave to bring in three bills to repeal the acts which punish with death the crimes of stealing privately in a shop goods of the value of five shillings, and of stealing to the amount of forty shillings in dwelling-houses or on board vessels of navigable rivers. In May that relating to shops was passed, the two others were opposed by the Government. But on May 30 the former bill was rejected by the House of Lords by a majority of 31 to 11. There were no less than seven bishops who voted for the old cruel law. These learned Christian gentlemen devoutly believed that transportation for life was not a sufficiently severe punishment for the offense of pilfering what is of five shillings’ value (dollar and a quarter).—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”

(1770)

Lawless Business Men—See Misery an Educator.

LAWLESSNESS

We see in the following incident how men who break law forfeit the right to secure the protection of the law:

A man in the preventive service on the south coast told this history to Mrs. Norton, the authoress. He said he had once been a smuggler. Desiring to reform he went to his smuggling companions and demanded his share (one-third) of the boat, as he wanted to leave the partnership. They refused, and laughed at his demand; tho he offered to refer the claim to an arbitrator, they only laughed the more. This exasperated him; so he went out one night and sawed off a third of the boat. This did him no good, but the expense to his companions would be more than his share if they had peaceably given it to him. Mrs. Norton made some comments on this method of redress, to which the man rejoined: “Yes, marm, but you see they darn’t nor I darn’t complain at law, ’cos it was a smuggling craft; and that’s how it would always be, if there was no law, a man wud try and right hisself, and if he couldn’t, he’d revenge hisself. That just it.” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(1771)

LAWLESSNESS, SPRINGS OF

It was recently my good fortune to be invited to talk to a club of Jewish boys. Among other matters I talked to them about law and lawlessness, and tried to show that the spirit of lawlessness, now so rife in this country, manifests itself at first in little ways. I reminded them of the wanton lawlessness of automobile drivers in exceeding speed limits, and then I sought to bring the illustration close home to them by asking if they ever saw a fellow at a ball-game, where scores of men were standing in line waiting for their turn to get a ticket, pass up to the head of the line and surreptitiously induce some friend there, or even a stranger, to buy a ticket for him, and thus take advantage of all those who had come before him. They all recognized the illustration. It is a very common incident in American life. Then I pointed out that such a proceeding is a rank violation of the law of courtesy and fair play, and that any one who would do that thing ruthlessly is sowing the seeds of lawlessness, and may some day expect to reap the consequences.—George W. Coleman, “Searchlights.”

(1772)

Laymen, Opportunities of—See Pew, If I Were in the.

LAZINESS, EXCUSE FOR

In the book of Proverbs is this verse: “The sluggard saith, ‘There is a lion without; I shall be slain in the street.’” This means that a lazy man did not wish to go to work, and so pretended that there was a lion in the street, and offered as an excuse for not going to work that the lion in the street would kill him if he went out.

It is a fact that every lazy boy and every indolent girl has a lion; that is, some excuse for not doing what is asked. A daughter is told to do her piano practising and exclaims: “Oh, I can’t! It is so cold in the parlor” (lazy man’s lion). A son is asked to run to the store on an errand and answers that his shoe hurts his foot when he walks (lazy man’s lion). On Sunday morning he can not go to church because it is rainy (lazy man’s lion). He can not study his lessons because his eyes hurt him (lazy man’s lion). She can not eat the crusts of her bread because her gums are sore (lazy man’s lion). She can not get up in time for breakfast because her throat pains her (lazy man’s lion).

Look out for the lazy man’s lion, that foolish excuse for not doing what we should do!—E. H. Byington, Congregationalist.

(1773)

LEADERSHIP, FAITHFUL

Sir Garnet Wolseley, in his Egyptian campaign against Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir, selected a Scotch Highlander to lead his force over the desert sands by the light of the stars, so timing the silent march as to reach the point of assault at daybreak. March and assault were successful, but the poor Highlander fell mortally wounded. Sir Garnet, learning of this, went over to the brave man, who, seeing his commander, said: “Didn’t I lead them straight?”

Happy the Christian guide who in death can make a similar claim. (Text.)

(1774)

Leaf, The Form of a—See Creation, A Witness of.

Leaners and Lifters—See Lifters and Leaners.

LEARNING BY EXAMPLE

Prof. Lloyd Morgan made some interesting experiments in the instincts of birds, by rearing chickens and wild fowl from an incubator, so that they never could have learned anything from their parents. He found that they needed to be taught almost everything necessary to the proper conduct of their lives—not only to distinguish what was good to eat, but even the very acts of eating and drinking. They showed no fear of the human race, and plainly did not understand the language of their own mother when he placed them near her. The mothercluck of the hen had no meaning for the incubator chick, who nevertheless came promptly when he called. These experiments proved conclusively that young birds are taught—or learn by imitation, which is the same thing—to eat and drink, to understand their native tongue, to recognize and procure their food, and to fear mankind.—Olive Thorne Miller, “The Bird Our Brother.”

(1775)

LEARNING PROCESS, THE

A young boy learns to play golf largely by taking the sticks as he has seen some one hold them and whacking at the ball in a haphazard fashion. Sometimes he hits it squarely, and then he gets a satisfaction that tends to impress on him the memory of the movement resulting in this satisfaction. He tries the next time to reproduce this feeling and to locate the point of difference, tho he is or may be conscious of none of these efforts on his part. He keeps trying and trying until he succeeds, noting meanwhile the ways other people stand, hold their clubs, and swing, and comparing them with his way. An old man, on the other hand, tries this method but makes no such progress. He is not free to establish a dozen new ways of getting a swing as the boy is. He has one or two already established ways of turning on his feet and of swinging his arms, but these unfortunately are not such as to help him in his golf. He must, therefore, not merely recognize and strive for the details of the right way, but he must more or less consciously break up the old ways. His chances are poor of success unless he is wisely directed; i.e., taught.—Stuart H. Rowe, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1907.

(1776)

Learning Transformed Into Life—See Principles, Mastering.

Leisure—See Time, Improving.

Lessons, Class—See Encouragement.

LETHARGY

In some parts of Africa the natives are attacked with “sleeping-sickness.” The first symptom is drowsiness, and the following days and weeks drift past in sleep. The sleep grows deeper and heavier until the sufferer has passed out into the unknown, to the sleep that knows no waking.

Sleeping-sickness, in a moral sense, is a common disease in the world. It is often as fatal to activity and character as the dread plague of Africa is to the body. The temperature of the heart falls, the soul sleep deepens, God is forgotten, Christ forsaken. (Text.)

(1777)

LETTER OF GOD

An incident is related of William Duncan, the “Apostle of Alaska”:

One day soon after Mr. Duncan had arrived among the Indians there, a fine-looking old Indian chief, Neyashtodoh, one of the chiefs of the Kitlahns, who had three sons, called upon him. “I have heard that you have come here with the letter of God. Is that so? Have you the letter of God with you?” asked the chief. “I have,” said Mr. Duncan. “Would you mind showing it to me?” “Certainly.” Mr. Duncan placed a large Bible on the table. “This is God’s Book.” The Indian caressed it reverently. “Is God’s letter for the Tsimsheans?” “Certainly. God sent this Book to your people, as well as to mine.” “Does that Book give God’s ‘heart’ to us?” “It does.” “And are you going to tell the Indians that?” “I am.” “It is good—it is good, chief,” was the answer of Neyashtodoh.

(1778)

LEVELING

“‘Washing a hill away’ is a process employed by a land-improvement company near Baltimore,” says Indoors and Out. “The summit of a hill was to be lowered about nine feet. The operations covered an area fifteen hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide. From a stream near by water was forced at eighty pounds pressure through eight-inch pipes to a five-inch reducing nozzle and then against the wall of earth. This fell in cartloads every few minutes, and so thin was it, with the water added, as to be easily conveyed through pipes to an abandoned pond which the company wished to fill as a part of the improvement plans.” (Text.)

The streams of Christian influence are leveling society by washing away human pride and building up the humble.

(1779)

Levity—See Gravity.

LIAR EXPOSED

In a large factory in which were employed several hundred persons, one of the workmen, in wielding his hammer, carelessly allowed it to slip from his hand. It flew half way across the room, and struck a fellow workman in the left eye. The man averred that his eye was blinded by the blow, altho a careful examination failed to reveal any injury, there being not a scratch visible. He brought a suit in the courts for compensation for the loss of half of his eyesight, and refused all offers of compromise. Under the law, the owner of the factory was responsible for an injury resulting from an accident of this kind, and altho he believed that the man was shamming, and that the whole case was an attempt at swindling, he had about made up his mind that he would be compelled to pay the claim. The day of the trial arrived, and in open court an eminent occulist retained by the defense examined the alleged injured member, and gave it as his opinion that it was as good as the right eye. Upon the plaintiff’s loud protest of his inability to see with his left eye, the occulist proved him a perjurer, and satisfied the court and jury of the falsity of his claim. And how do you suppose he did it? Why, simply by knowing that the colors green and red combined made black. He prepared a black card on which a few words were written with green ink. Then the plaintiff was ordered to put on a pair of spectacles with two different glasses, the one for the right eye being red and the one for the left eye consisting of ordinary glass. Then the card was handed him and he was ordered to read the writing on it. This he did without hesitation, and the cheat was at once exposed. The sound right eye, fitted with the red glass, was unable to distinguish the green writing on the black surface of the card, while the left eye, which he pretended was sightless, was the one with which the reading had to be done.—Pottery Gazette.

(1780)

Liberality—See Generosity.

LIBERALITY IN RELIGION

Father Mathew was going among a large number of his temperance converts, signing the cross on their foreheads, when a man on his knees looked up and said, “Father, here am I, an Orangeman, kneeling to you, and you blessing me.” “God bless you, my dear, I didn’t care if you were a lemon-man,” said Father Mathew.

(1781)

Liberty—See Freedom Chosen.

Liberty, A Spider’s Struggle for—See Ingenuity.

LIBERTY, INDIVIDUAL

Throughout his life Milton, tho profoundly religious, held aloof from the strife of sects. In belief, he belonged to the extreme Puritans, called Separatists, Independents, Congregationalists, of which our Pilgrim Fathers are the great examples; but he refused to be bound by any creed or Church discipline:

In this last line of one of his sonnets is found Milton’s rejection of every form of outward religious authority in face of the supreme Puritan principle, the liberty of the individual soul before God.—William J. Long, “English Literature.”

(1782)

Liberty, Promoting—See Emancipation.

LIBERTY, SPIRITUAL

Madam Guyon, in the Bastile, speaks to us still of patience in suffering. The walls of her prison were nine feet thick and a narrow slit through the massive masonry admitted all the light that ever reached her. The cell was narrow and dirty with the mold of ages. Dreary and cold in winter and suffocating in summer. No privileges, no books, no recreations or employments. But here was born that blithe bird-song of her captivity:

(1783)

LIBERTY SYMBOLIZED

The other day I came down the East River on the steamer. I saw the Bartholdi statue, and my only comment on it, in voice or in thought, was upon its dingy appearance. I wondered that it had not been cleaned. When I sat in my house reading afterward, I came to an account of the ecstasy of an immigrant when first he saw the statue. It was to him the incarnation of all that he had hoped for. Its torch seemed to light his feet to the ways of peace and prosperity. It seemed to be calling a welcome from this land that is free. It seemed even to his devoted heart to be like the figure of the Christ beckoning him and promising him the liberty of a child of God. I wish it might be that we could never see it without similar emotion.—C. B. McAfee.

(1784)

Liberty, Workers for—See Emancipation.

LIES IN BUSINESS

You, merchants, must not twine lies and sagacity with your threads in weaving, for every lie that is told in business is a rotten thread in the fabric, and tho it may look well when it first comes out of the loom, there will always be a hole there, first or last, when you come to wear it.—Henry Ward Beecher.

(1785)

LIFE

A lady occupied a whole year in searching for and fitting the following lines from English and American poets. The whole reads almost as if written at one time and by one author:

(1786)

As I passed down through India I saw two little rice-fields side by side. One was green and growing; the other was dead and dry. I looked for the cause. The great lake was full of water. There was no lack there. Into the one the living water was flowing, for the channel was open. The other was choked. Brother, is your life green and growing, fruitful and joyful, or barren and dry because the channel is choked?—G. S. Eddy, “Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions,” 1910.

(1787)

LIFE A CYCLE

An old man who was just one hundred and three years of age, recently died in Chester, England. Not long before his death he tried to get out of bed, and they said to him: “Father, where do you want to go? What do you want to do?” He answered, “Father is calling me to breakfast.” He repeated it two or three times—“Father is calling me to breakfast.” The old man had become a child again. He was in his little trundle-bed again hearing his father’s voice up the stairway calling him to come to breakfast.

So when we have traveled around the circle of life, we get into the childhood of our old age, and hear the voices of the friends of our youth, which is one of the evidences of the belief that we shall hear those voices again. We would not thus recall them nor remember them if we were not to hear them again.

(1788)

LIFE, A DEVOTED

Florence Nightingale, heroine of the Crimean War Nursing Service, as a child at Lea Hurst, was accustomed to minister to the sick poor, and it so happened that the clergyman of the parish was a man of considerable medical skill. Curiously enough, it was an animal that first turned her thoughts to nursing—the dog of her father’s shepherd. Poor Cap’s leg was thought to have been broken and he was about to be destroyed, when the girl, under the clergyman’s direction, prepared a simple hot compress and soon had the delight of seeing her patient convalescent. The fame of this exploit spread abroad, and many an animal was brought to her to be healed; perhaps that was why she always advocated that sick people should have dumb pets about them if possible. As she grew older, the little girl who had instinctively bandaged her broken dolls in the most professional manner was allowed to attend to the wounds and ailments of real people, and this at a time when ambulance classes were unheard of, and when the only sick nurses available were ignorant and untrained women. Miss Florence did not find the ordinary life of a girl in society appealed to her. With characteristic decision she gave it up and spent the next few years in visiting hospitals in England, Ireland and Scotland. It is easy to see now that the great want of those days was trained women nurses, but it required exceptional intelligence—indeed, we might almost say, a touch of genius, to see it then in the late forties. The question was how to supply the need; characteristically again, Miss Nightingale began with herself. In 1851 she entered the Society of Sisters of Mercy, a Protestant institution at Kaiserverth on the Rhine, for training deaconesses or nursing sisters. Here she thoroughly qualified herself as a nurse, and on her return to London she devoted much time and money to the Governesses’ Sanatorium in Harley Street.

The autumn of 1854 saw the beginning of the enterprise for which all this time she had been unconsciously preparing herself. The country was being horrified by the tidings which continually came home of the appalling mismanagement of the military hospitals in the Crimea. Our gallant soldiers were dying by hundreds for lack of the simplest and most elementary nursing. It seemed, as religious people say, a clear “call” to this country squire’s daughter, and that very evening she wrote to Mr. Sidney Herbert (afterward Lord Herbert of Lea), the Secretary at War, and sketched her plan. At the very same time Mr. Herbert himself was writing to her to ask if she would organize and take out a company of nurses and the two letters crossed in the post. In October, 1854, Miss Nightingale started for the East with thirty-eight nurses in her command, some of whom were naturally nuns. The day after her arrival came the wounded from Balaklava, quickly followed by six hundred wounded from Inkerman and in a few months she had ten thousand poor fellows under her care. She did much more than organize; she would traverse at night, her little lamp in her hand, the four miles of crowded hospital wards and Longfellow’s famous lines are no poetic fiction, many a dying man turned to kiss her shadow as it fell.

Miss Florence Nightingale was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit, the coveted distinction formerly reserved exclusively for men. She received the freedom of the City of London in 1908 and was a Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.—Belfast (Ireland) Telegram.

(1789)

LIFE, A NOBLE

I have seen at midnight the gleaming headlight of a giant locomotive, rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of danger and uncertainty, and I have thought the spectacle grand. I have seen the light come over the eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy darkness, like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree and blade of grass sparkled as myriad diamonds in the morning rays, and I have thought that it was grand. I have seen the lightning leap at midnight athwart the storm-swept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, ’mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into midday splendor, and I have known that it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty’s throne, is the light of a noble and beautiful life, shining in benediction upon the destines of men, and finding its home in the bosom of the everlasting God.—John Temple Graves.

(1790)

LIFE A TREE

A Scandinavian allegory represents human life as a tree, the “Igdrasil,” or the tree of existence, whose roots grow deep down in the soil of mystery; the trunk reaches above the clouds; its branches spread out over the globe. At the foot of it sit the Past, the Present and the Future, watering the roots. Its boughs spread out through all lands and all time; every leaf of the tree is a biography, every fiber a word, a thought or a deed; its boughs are the histories of nations; the rustle of it is the noise of human existence onward from of old; it grows amid the howling of the hurricane; it is the great tree of humanity.

(1791)

LIFE A VOYAGE

O Neptune! You may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever happens I shall keep my rudder true.

—Seneca’s “Pilot.”

Thou hast embarked; thou hast made the voyage; thou art come to shore; now land! (Text.)

—Marcus Aurelius.

(1792)

Life and Faith United—See Religion Allaying Fear.

LIFE, APPRECIATION OF

Many who carelessly declare this life to be of no desirable value discover how strongly they hold to it if by chance they seem in danger of losing it. Thus Rev. Asa Bullard writes:

My father had a blacksmith-shop; and sometimes when not called away on professional duties, he would do little jobs in his shop in the evening. One evening, when I was a little boy, I asked him to let me go with him and see him make nails.

He said I would get sleepy and cry to come back. I thought I shouldn’t; and so was permitted to go with him. He fixt me a nice seat on the forge, where I could see him blow the bellows, heat the nail-rod red hot, and then hammer out the nails. It was real fun to watch him for some time.

By and by I began to grow tired and sleepy; and then I wished I was back at the house and in bed; but I did not dare to say anything about it. At length father looked up, and seeing that I was very sleepy and ready to cry, he asked:

“What is the matter, Asa?”

I said: “I wish I was never made!”

Father drew the hot nail-rod out of the fire and raised it as tho he was going to strike me, when I exclaimed:

“I don’t want to be killed, now I am made!” Then, with a hearty laugh, he took me home to mother.—“Incidents in a Busy Life.”

(1793)

Life as Testimony—See Native Converts.

Life, Brevity of—See Brevity of Life.

LIFE CHEAP

Mard Bird, in “Persian Women and Their Creed,” tells the following:

A Persian Haji’s baby had convulsions and the parents brought it to the Mohammedan village teacher, who said the child was possest, and the only remedy for her disease was for them to buy a prayer of the exact length of the child, and strap it on her back. The child was so long that the cost of the prayer was five dollars, and the parents decided that a girl baby was not worth that much and took her home to die.

(1794)

LIFE, CLINGING TO

They used to tell during the Civil War of a colonel who was ordered to assault a position which his regiment, when they had advanced far enough to get a good look at it, saw to be so impossible that they fell back and became immovable. Whereupon (so the story ran) the colonel, who took the same sense of the situation that his command did, yet must do his duty, called out in an ostensibly pleading and fervid voice: “Oh, don’t give it up so! Forward again! Forward! Charge! Great heavens, men, do you want to live forever?”—Joseph H. Twichell.

(1795)

LIFE, CONTINUED

A few years ago I was walking along the shore of the Susquehanna River, in Harrisburg, Pa., accompanied by the little boy of my friend, Dr. Hill. Night was fast closing down over the earth, when the little fellow looked up and said: “Brother Shannon, where does the river go to, when the night comes on?” I saw at once that the question was big with the wonder and mystery of a child’s mind. He had just come from his own home; he saw men and women going home; he saw the birds flying to their homes in the trees, and he wondered if the river had a home, too. Of course, I could have answered that the river has its home in the sea, but I said: “My child, the river flows on just the same through the night as through the day.” And men say: “Where does the soul go to when the night of death comes on?” The Master says: “It goes on just the same, thrilled with my joy, united with my destiny, and deathless in my life!”—F. F. Shannon.

(1796)

LIFE, DESIRE FOR LONG

The enchanters of China promised the emperors of that country to find an elixir of long life that should efface the irreparable inroad of years. The astrologers and necromancers of the Middle Ages flattered themselves to have discovered the fountain of youth, in which a person had merely to bathe in order to recover his youth. All such dreams were long ago dispelled by the progress of science. Yet, in the heart of most men, there is such a desire to prolong their stay upon the earth that the art of living for a long time has not ceased to impassion a large number of persons who would be willing to endure all the evils of an indefinitely prolonged old age. We have several times had proof of this mania, which Dean Swift has so wittily stigmatized in his second voyage of Gulliver by showing in what a state of abjection the mortals of Laputa lived—those unfortunates who were condemned to survive their own selves through the loss of memory of what they had been. One of the perpetual secretaries of the Academy of Sciences has written a volume to prove that man should consider himself young up to eighty years of age. A noble Venetian named Cornaro spent twenty years in a scale-pan in order to ascertain what alimentary regimen was best adapted to him. We have known old men who, having learned that Mr. Chevreul had never drank anything but water, took the resolution to abstain wholly from wine, hoping in this way to exceed a hundred years. Fortunately, a rag-gatherer, who had reached the same age as the celebrated academician, spared them this sacrifice, by informing his confrére in longevity that he had never drank anything but wine.—La Science Illustrée.

(1797)

Life, Fecundity of—See Propagation, Prolific.

LIFE, FEEDING THE

The Mississippi River, which empties its wealth of waters into the Gulf of Mexico, is fed by the Missouri, the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Red River, and indirectly the Allegheny and Monongahela, and the Yellowstone and the Platte. The Amazon River drains an area of two and a half million square miles, or the waters of more than a third of all the South American continent. The River Nile is almost equally enriched by tributaries.

But no river is more fed by confluent currents than is that of a life which draws to itself all resources of knowledge and grace. (Text.)

(1798)

LIFE FROM DEATH

Clinton Scollard, in The Outlook, draws a lesson from the new-fallen snow:

(1799)

Life, Inward—See Character More than Clothing.

LIFE LEARNED FROM DEATH

Prof. G. Currie Martin draws this suggestive picture:

In the gallery at The Hague there hangs a wonderful picture by Rembrandt. When the visitor first looks at it the horror that it inspires seems too great to be borne, for there, in the very forefront of the canvas, so that the spectator imagines he could touch it, is the grim and ghastly form of a corpse lying livid and rigid upon the dissecting-table. To add still further to the sense of shrinking it evokes, the scalpel of the surgeon has been thrust into the flesh, and he is laying bare the muscles of the arm. But if the visitor has only patience and courage for a moment to overcome the first sense of repulsion, he will find that he goes away from an examination of the picture thinking no longer of death and its terror, but of life and its power. For the skill of the artist is shown in so presenting the great and eternal contrast between death and life that the latter triumphs. Above the figure of the corpse are grouped the faces of the great scientists and physicians who, as they listen to the words of the lecturer, are drinking in the new-found knowledge that is to make them the conquerors of disease, and those portraits are so wonderfully painted that the spectator finds himself ever afterward thinking of the power of life that they manifest and of the greatness of human knowledge that has wrested the secrets from death itself which make life more powerful and safe. (Text.)

(1800)

Life-line, A—See Ingenuity.

LIFE-LINE HYMN

A speaker at one of Evan Roberts’ remarkable revival services in Wales, was telling of a “vision” he had had, and of a voice which exhorted him to “Throw out the life-line,” when instantly the listeners sang the whole hymn together.

Mr. Ufford, the author of the lines, once sang them at a watch-service in California, and there he told how the Elsie Smith was lost on Cape Cod in 1902, showing the very life-line that saved sixteen lives from the sea, and by chance one of the number was present at the service.

From a room, in a building hired for religious services in a Pennsylvania city, and where a series of revival meetings was being held, rang out, one night, the hymn, “Throw out the life-line,” in the hearing, next door, of a convivial card-party. It was a sweet female voice, followed in the chorus by other and louder voices chiming in. The result was the merriment ceased as one of the members of the card-party remarked: “If what they’re saying is right, then we’re wrong,” and the revelers broke up. An ex-member of that party is now an editor of a great city daily, and his fellows are all filling positions of responsibility. The life-line pulled them ashore.

In a Massachusetts city, twenty years ago, this hymn won to Christ a man who is now a prosperous manufacturer.

At a special service held at Gibraltar for the survivors of an emigrant ship that went ashore there during a storm, this hymn was sung with telling effect.

The story of that life-line is long enough and strong enough to tie up a large bundle of results wrought by it.

(1801)

Life-material—See Material for a Great Life.

LIFE, NEW, FROM GOD

In London there dwells a man interested in rare and exotic plants. A friend who had been in the Amazon brought him home a rare tree. In the winter he keeps it in the hothouse, but when summer comes, he carries it into his garden. So beautiful is the bloom that he gave garden-parties that men might behold the wondrous flower. One summer’s day he noticed a strange thing that set his pulses throbbing—a singular fruit had begun to set. Sending for an expert, they took counsel together. They knew that this was the only tree of the kind in Paris, and they could not understand from whence had come the pollen that had fertilized the plant. At length they published the story in the papers, and that story brought the explanation. A merchant wrote that years before he had brought to Marseilles a young plant from the Amazon. The pollen of that tree nearly four hundred miles away had been carried on the wings of the wind over hill and vale, and found out the blossom that awaited its coming.

And not otherwise is it with the soul. Because it is in His likeness, it shares with Him in those attributes named reason, wisdom, goodness, holiness and love. The soul waits. Without God it can do nothing. Its life is from afar. Expectant and full of longing, it hungers and thirsts, and desires His coming. That repentant youth, lying in the desert, with a stone for his pillow, waits, and then the light comes from God.—N. D. Hillis.

(1802)

LIFE, ORIGIN OF

The old philosophers who held that all things originated in the sea were not far out of the way, if we are to believe some of the latest biological theories or speculations. That organic evolution began with marine creatures, Haeckel told us long ago. That sea-water is a particularly sympathetic medium for vital processes, has more lately been shown by Loeb in his experiments on the fertilization of the eggs of certain marine creatures. M. René Quinton, of the Laboratory of Pathologic Physiology of the College de France, has published a book, entitled “Sea-water as an Organic Medium,” in which he asserts that as the cell itself has persisted in living organisms, being practically the same in the human body as in our earliest marine predecessors, so the conditions of its life closely reproduce those of primordial times. The cell in our own bodies is bathed in a fluid that closely resembles sea-water in chemical composition and that approximates in temperature to that of the ocean when life first appeared in it. (Text.)

(1803)

LIFE, PASSION FOR

Ponce de Leon searched Florida for the spring of the elixir of life; thousands of alchemists have attempted to concoct it; innumerable patent medicines in every drugstore testify to the universal effort to prolong earthly existence; a miser will fling away his last piece of gold to save his life; lawyers will battle to the last device of law to save a client from execution if only to prolong his existence in a prison; and tho Bacon says “there is no passion so mean as that it can not mate and master the fear of death,” he was speaking only of sudden and occasional passions. The rule is that passion to live outmasters all other passions.

What a word then is this of Jesus when He says, “I came that they might have life.”

(1804)

LIFE, PERSISTENCE OF

A spring of air never loses its elasticity; but it never gains an energy which it had not at first. Tho prest a thousand years under incumbent weights, the instant they are removed it reassumes its original volume; but it gathers no more from the long repose. But the life in the seed tends constantly toward development, into the stalk, the blossom and the fruit. As long as the seed remains perfect and vital, this tendency remains, inhering in it; so that three thousand years after it was shaken from the wheat-ear on the Nile, if planted it develops and brings forth fruit in English gardens.—Richard S. Storrs.

(1805)

Life Pictures—See Realism.

LIFE PROLONGED

“In the city of New York alone there are 150,000 people living to-day who would be dead if the mortality of fifty years ago still prevailed,” says a writer in The Booklover’s Magazine. “Popular opinion has scarcely yet come to realize what medical science has been doing in late years. People sicken and die, think the laity, and the efforts of the physician are just as futile as before the recent discoveries about which so much is said. This idea is, however, erroneous. I will venture to say there is scarcely an adult living to-day who has not experienced or will not experience an actual prolongation of life due to discoveries of the last fifty years.”

(1806)

LIFE PURPOSE

A story is told of Rubens that during his sojourn as ambassador to the Court of Philip in Spain, he was detected at work upon a painting by a courtier, who, not knowing much about his true fame, exclaimed in surprize, “What! does an ambassador to his Catholic Majesty amuse himself with painting pictures?” “No,” replied Rubens, “the painter sometimes amuses himself with diplomacy.”

The serious business of life is the producing of a good character; all else is pastime. (Text.)

(1807)

These noble ambitions for a true life are put in verse by H. H. Barston:

(1808)

LIFE RECRUDESCENT

Edith M. Thomas is the author of the lines below, found in the Canadian Presbyterian:

(1809)

LIFE, RESPONSE OF

The touch of God upon men is not answered unless the soul be spiritually alive:

The sun shines down upon the dead twig that has fallen from the tree. All his rich and marvelous powers are exerted. He wraps it about with his mighty arms. He kisses it and bathes it in tides of summer warmth, and smiles upon it and beckons it to come—but it lies there a dead twig to the last. But a vine has peeped through the soil. The sun discovers it and whispers the secrets of the sky to its tiny quivering leaves, and out go the filmy tendrils, and up and up goes the loving plant, climbing the golden trellis of the sunbeam toward its lover, the sun.—John K. Willey.

(1810)

LIFE-SAVING

Every man should try to be as alert and well prepared for helping and saving men as the steamers here described:

All Pacific mail-steamers are carefully protected by a rigid practise in fire and life-saving drills. At the tap of the bell, the crew spring to their places by boat and raft; each officer, with a pistol hung by his side, takes his station; and the precision and quickness with which it is all accompanied inspire the beholder with very comfortable feelings.

The life-drill is practised in case some one should fall overboard. Certain members of the crew are assigned to this duty, ready at any moment to throw out life-lines, buoys that strike a light when they hit the water, or man the emergency lifeboat that is kept in position to be lowered instantly.—Marshall P. Wilder, “Smiling ’Round the World.”

(1811)

See Knowledge Applied.

Life-saving Attachment—See Economy of Energy.

LIFE-SAVING BY WIRELESS

The former sound liner Kentucky is at the bottom of the Atlantic at lat. 32.10, long. 76.30, which is more than a hundred miles off the South Carolina coast, south of Cape Hatteras. Her captain and crew of forty-six men are on their way to Key West on board the Mallory liner Alamo. It was the fourth rescue by wireless since that method of communication at sea has been in use. Called by the international distress signal, the Alamo reached the sinking vessel just as the electricity died and but an hour before she sank.

In the meantime her distress calls, heard throughout Atlantic coast waters and sent by W. G. Maginnis, wireless operator, had started speeding toward her the United States Government battleship Louisiana, on a speed trial in the vicinity, the cruiser Birmingham and the revenue cutters Yamacraw and Seminole.

When 150 miles off Sandy Hook, at the very outset of her long journey, she sprang a leak. By working hard at the pumps Captain Moore managed to get her into Newport News with sixteen inches of water in her hold. She was repaired and certified safe and sound by the United States inspector there and Lloyds. Luckily, this little wooden ship, packed tight with coal, had been installed with wireless before she left. The international distress call, S. O. S., set the sound waves jumping all over the coast and the Atlantic. The United States Government received the message at the same time that every sea-captain on the ocean got it. The Alamo, bound for Key West, got it at 11:30 and headed dead for the source at once. Later this came through the air:

“We are sinking. Our lat. is 32 deg. 10 min.; long., 76 deg. 30 min.

“Kentucky.”

The Alamo was sixty-five miles off. She had made the run by 3:50 o’clock, when the Kentucky appeared in sight.

The boat was sinking rapidly and in half a gale the work of transferring the crew of the Kentucky by lifeboat was accomplished. As the last man was taken off only the superstructure was visible above the water.

(1812)

LIFE, SELF-PROPAGATING

The yeast-plant is so small that it can be seen only under the microscope. Each yeast-plant consists of a closed sack or cell, containing a jelly-like liquid named “protoplasm.” Under the microscope the yeast-plant is seen to change in form. Sometimes little swellings grow out, like knobs on a potato, and these will by and by separate themselves from the parent and become other yeast-plants. It is alive and growing.

“What we need,” said McLeod, “is not life, (from galvanism), but the life of life”—Jesus himself. (Text.)

(1813)

LIFE, SOURCE OF MAN’S

The goddess of the Greek mythology springs from the crest of the curling sea. The spirit of poetic and legendary lore is born of moonbeams playing upon fountains. The glittering elf of the household story leaps up on the shaft of the quivering flame. The meteor is invoked, or the morning-star, to give birth to new spirits; the sunset-sheen on distant hills is imagined to become incorporate in them; or the west wind, toying over banks of flowers, to drop their delicate life from its wings. But when God forms the life, in each conscious soul, and fills this with its strange and unsearchable powers, he creates it by a ministry diverse from all these, and as distantly removed as it is possible to conceive from its own unique nature, and its height of prerogative. He creates it by the ministry of these fleshly forms, which are authors, under Him, of a life that transcends them; a life not limited as they are by space, not subject as they are to material assaults, and not dependent as they are on shelter or on food.—Richard S. Storrs.

(1814)

LIFE, SPENDING

A good life is never lost. It yields cumulative results. This rime expresses the truth:

(1815)

LIFE, THE SIMPLE

Washington loved the simple life of home and countryside, of friend and neighbor, of master and servant. “To make and sell a little flour annually,” he wrote, “to repair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, will constitute employment for the few years I have to remain on this terrestrial globe.” But he was still ready for the summons of duty, whether it was to put his shoulder to the wheel of a stranger’s broken-down carriage on the roadside, to serve on the petty jury of his country, or to accept command of the army preparing to meet the French. Washington would never have identified effective citizenship with prominence. The citizen who was never mentioned in the news-letters might be quite as great as the general and President. At Ipswich, Mass., on one occasion, Mr. Cleaveland, the minister of the town, was presented to him. As he approached, hat in hand, Washington said, “Put on your hat, parson, and I will shake hands with you.” “I can not wear my hat in your presence, general,” said the minister, “when I think of what you have done for this country.” “You did as much as I,” said Washington. “No, no,” protested the parson. “Yes,” said Washington, “you did what you could, and I have done no more.”—A. MacColl, Northwestern Christian Advocate.

(1816)

Life, The Whole, the Test of Character—See Character, Unseen Places in.

LIFE, THE WINGED

The story is told of how the birds received their wings. Created originally without wings, they hopped about, until one day God said to them: “You are beautiful and hop finely and sing sweetly, but I want you to fly. Let me give you wings.” At first they refused, saying that wings would be weights. Besides, they liked to hop. But at length they consented to receive wings and flew.

(1817)

LIFE, USES OF

In this world we have but brief glimpses of the best and brightest things. Sunset splendors linger but a little while; spring blossoms are scattered by the winds while we watch their unfolding; and autumn leaves soon fade and fall and dissolve into forest mold; the dull landscape glows for a time with supernal splendor, giving us a foretaste of the glory that shall be revealed; the wind passes over it and it is gone. For the leaves there are other and higher uses than to enrobe the branches with autumnal tints. They live and die to serve God in the mysterious economy of life. It is so with human destiny; our noblest achievements seem to perish in a day, but no life of faithful service can be lost in the consummation of God’s plan.—The Living Church.

(1818)

LIFE AS AN ART

These verses are from a poem by John Kendrick Bangs in The Century:

(1819)

LIFE, VALUE OF

There is a suggestive and saddening passage in Miss Ellen Terry’s recent “Reminiscences.” The great actress was talking to Sir Henry Irving, her old comrade on the stage, as he lay ill. “Do you ever think, as I do sometimes, what have you got out of life?” asked Miss Terry. “What have I got out of it?” said Irving, stroking his chin and smiling slightly, “Let me see—well, a good cigar, a good glass of wine, good friends.”

And that summary satisfies many another. The pathetic futility of it all! Material things vanish, and then what remains? Life should be more rewarding than this. (Text.)

(1820)

LIFE, VENERATION FOR

Powhatan Bouldin’s “Home Reminiscences” has a story which shows John Randolph’s peculiar veneration for growing things. The incident is related by a friend of Randolph’s nephew:

When I was a boy I visited at Roanoke. The house was completely environed by trees and underwood, and seemed to be in a dense virgin forest. Mr. Randolph would not permit even a switch to be cut near the house.

Without being aware of this, one day I committed a serious trespass. My friend Tudor and I were roving about, when I, perceiving a straight young hickory about an inch thick, felled it. Tudor said that his uncle would be very angry, so I immediately went and informed him what I had ignorantly done, and exprest my regret. Mr. Randolph took the stick and looked pensively at it as if commiserating its fate. Then, gazing at me, he said:

“I would not have done this for fifty Spanish-milled dollars!”

I had seventy-five cents and had entertained some idea of offering it, but when I heard about the fifty dollars I was afraid of insulting him by such meager compensation.

“Did you want this for a cane?” asked Mr. Randolph. “No, sir.” “No, you are not old enough to need a cane. Did you want it for any particular purpose?” “No, sir. I only saw that it was a pretty stick and thought I’d cut it.” “We can be justified in taking animal life to furnish food or to remove a hurtful object. We can not be justified in taking even vegetable life without some useful object in view. Now, God Almighty planted this thing, and you have killed it without any adequate object. It would have grown into a large nut-tree and furnished food for many squirrels. I hope and believe you will never do so again.” “Never, sir, never!” I cried.

He put the stick into a corner, and I escaped to Tudor. It was some time before I could cut a switch or fishing-rod without feeling I was doing some sort of violence to the vegetable kingdom.

(1821)

Life versus Business—See Religion versus Business.

LIFE VERSUS CHURCH

The manner in which Wesley by his zeal was pushed outside of the Church of England limits is told thus by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett:

But these two features of that work—open-air preaching and the itinerant nature of his ministry—determined many things. They determined, for example, the general question of Wesley’s relation to ecclesiastical order. For that order he had been, and still was, a zealot; but he was slowly learning that there were things more precious, as well as more urgent, than mere ecclesiastical use and wont. England was mapped out, for example, into parishes; and were these faint lines of ecclesiastical boundaries, drawn by human hands and guarding fancied human rights, to arrest such a work as Wesley was beginning? They were like films of cobweb drawn across a track of an earthquake! And many an ecclesiastical cobweb of the same kind had to be brushed aside to make room for the new religious life beginning to stir in Great Britain.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(1822)

LIFE, WASTING

Henley’s brilliant epitaph on George Moreland sums up not only that artist’s life, but no less the life of too many before and since:

He coined himself into guineas, and so, like the reckless and passionate spendthrift he was, he flung away his genius and his life in handfuls, till nothing else was left him but the silence and the decency of death.

(1823)

LIFE, WATER OF

The Scavatori from Naples, some years ago, dug up from among the ruins of Pompeii an urn of bronze filled with pure water, sweet to the taste and unaltered in quality. It had lost none of its pristine excellence after centuries of time.

Jesus described Himself as living water, and after two thousand years this has lost none of its purity or strength.

(1824)

LIFE WHAT WE MAKE IT

Life is what we make it. It varies in its prospect with the sort of eyes that see it. A writer remarks on this, as he takes his walk over the fields:

The laborer is coming along the road with his lumbering wagon; or the shepherd is standing by the gate of the field; or the gamekeeper is out to see to his snares; and you say to the countryman, whichever you meet, how beautiful the country is when the red berries so thickly stud the hedge.

“Beautiful enough,” he replies, “but it’s no pleasant sight for us poor folk; it means we shall have a hard winter.”

Because of this relation of the individual to the coloring of life, it behooves each one to make his own world beautiful and he will do so when his own life is in accord with truth. (Text.)

(1825)

LIFE WORK, CHOOSING A

In a current book a college president tells this story:

A traveler in Japan says that one day as he stood on the quay in Tokyo waiting for a steamer, he excited the attention of a coolie doing the work of a stevedore, who knew he was an American. As the coolie went by with his load, in his pigeon English he said, “Come buy cargo?” By which he meant, “Are you in Japan on business?” The man shook his head. The second time the coolie passed, he again asked, “Come look and see?” By which he meant to ask if the American were a tourist seeing the country. Receiving a negative reply, the next time he passed he tried one more question. “Spec’ die soon?” By which he meant to ask if the man was there for his health.

This the writer used to describe three different classes of people in the world. There is the young man who seems to be in the world for his health. They want to be coddled. There is the young man who seems to be in the world as a traveler. He wants to be amused. There are the young men who are in the world for business. They mean to do something and be somebody.—N. McGee Waters.

(1826)

Life Yet to Be—See Future, The.

Life’s Furrow—See Symbol of Life.

LIFE’S MELODY

A great pipe-organ has one or two thousand pipes. Some are twenty feet long, and large enough for a man to stand in, others are no bigger or longer than a common lead-pencil; some are made of wood, some of zinc, some of lead; and every one is set to make its own peculiar note. No pipe ever makes any other note than its own. But the organist is not limited to one tune. He can play any tune he may wish simply by changing the order of the notes which he sounds.

The laws of God’s world are fixt; but on that great organ He is master, and it obeys His will; and rest assured that He it is that is playing the melody of your life.—James M. Stifler, “The Fighting Saint.”

(1827)

LIFE’S TURNING TIDE

(1828)

LIFTERS AND LEANERS

A prosperous member of a church in Scotland had been besought often by his pastor to give to the work of evangelizing the poor in Glasgow, but would always reply: “Na, I need it for mysel’.” One night he dreamed that he was at the gate of heaven, which was only a few inches ajar. He tried to get in, but could not, and was in agony at his poor prospect. Just then the face of his minister appeared, who said: “Sandy, why stand ye glowering there? Why don’t ye gae in?” “I can’t; I am too large, and my pocketbook sticks out whichever way I turn.” “Sandy,” replied the minister, “think how mean ye have been to the Lord’s poor, and ye will be small enough to go through the eye of a needle.” Sandy awoke, and began to reduce both his pocketbook and his meanness by generously lifting forward the cause of his Lord.

We may depend upon it that it is the lifters and not the leaners who have the joy, and the peace, and the triumph of the Christian life.—Louis Albert Banks.

(1829)

LIGHT

The traveler to the heavenly country will often set in contrast to the conditions described below, the time and scene in which “they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light” and “the Lamb is the light thereof.”

In any large city the small hours of the night, while most people are asleep, is the time when the bread is made and baked, the great newspapers printed, the food products, such as milk and vegetables, prepared and brought into the city. If we were obliged to dispense with our modern systems of illumination the world would be set back in its civilization beyond our power to imagine.

(1830)

Jesus stated long ago the philosophy of the paragraph below when He said “Neither cometh to the light lest their evil deeds should be reproved” and “men love darkness ... because their deeds are evil.”

The municipality had better take the cue, less light, more crime, more light, less crime. There are still dark spots to be found at night within the city limits where a few powerful arcs would wield an immediate influence. It is easy to see that arc-lights are cheaper than police officers and a brightly lit city the greatest imaginable offset to criminality in any stage or form. (Text.)—Electricity.

(1831)

An English writer has this to say about the phosphorescent light cast by the sea-fish called the smelt:

Anybody desirous of seeing the sort of light which it emits may do so very easily by purchasing an unwashed smelt from the fishmonger, and allowing it to dry with its natural slime upon it, then looking at it in the dark. A sole or almost any other fish will answer the purpose, but I name the smelt from having found it the most reliable in the course of my own experiments. It emits a dull, ghostly light, with very little penetrating power, which shows the shape of the fish, but casts no perceptible light on objects around.

Here the light is so dim that it gives no illumination beyond outlining the fish. Many men are like that. They have a little light, but it never shines beyond themselves. It merely outlines their own lives and sometimes scarcely that. (Text.)

(1832)

It has been a long stride forward from producing light and heat by means of flint to producing it by matches. What would civilization do without matches? Few realize the immense labor, capital and material used to produce this tiny article of commerce. As a matter of fact, thousands of men are employed, millions of dollars invested and vast forests cut down to meet the demand in America of 700,000,000,000 a year. One plant alone on the Pacific coast covers 240 acres and uses 200,000 feet of sugar-pine and yellow-pine logs in a day. The odds and ends will not do. A constant search is in progress for large forests of perfect trees to meet the future need.

If such labor and pains are necessary to keep at hand the means of lighting that which at best is only a temporary flame, what should measure our diligence to keep our spiritual light burning? (Text.)

(1833)

See Shining as Lamps.

LIGHT AFTER NIGHT

Mary Elliot interprets the moral cheer of recurring dawn in these musical lines:

(1834)

LIGHT AND ACTIVITY

Those who would glow with the brightness of a blest life can not so shine unless they are luminous with activity.

We are passing along a country road on a dark evening and are arrested by seeing luminous points in the herbage at the foot of a hedgerow or side of a lane. We find on investigation that the beautiful little lights are emitted by glowworms. At first sight these appear to be stationary, but we find by patient waiting and watching that the little creatures are slowly moving as they shine and that each glowworm ceases to emit its lovely gleam directly it stops moving. And in human life are not the bright lights of society, of the family, of the Church, those persons who are incessantly in action? The sluggard is too dull to shine; the energetic souls go sparkling on their way and charm as well as help. (Text.)

(1835)

Light and Darkness—See Blind Guides.

LIGHT AS A CURE

Dr. Hasselbach, of Copenhagen, has become convinced that the light treatment is effective in heart disease and affections of the nervous system. Dr. Hasselbach, after experimenting on his own perfectly normal organs, next experimented on two doctors. Both of these were complete invalids, one suffering from angina pectoris and the other from a nervous affection of the heart. This treatment, which lasted in one case for a month and in the others for six weeks, resulted in enabling both doctors to resume their practise. (Text.)

(1836)

Light, Attraction of—See Suicide Prevented.

LIGHT-BEARERS

Natural science has shown that the transmission of light to our globe is dependent on the luminous atmosphere surrounding the sun; and that light existed originally independent of the sun, and consisted of the undulations of a luminiferous ether. The latest theory maintains that the body of the sun is simply an irritant, having the property of setting the undulations of this ether into motion, but wholly devoid of light in itself.

Such a luminous atmosphere is the environment of one’s life, and capable of being made the means of constituting each man a luminary to the world.

(1837)

Annie Winsor Allen is the author of this cheering verse:

(1838)

LIGHT, BENEFITS OF

If we company with Him who said, “I am the light of the world,” our moral natures will experience something corresponding to the physical benefits of light when it is applied in moderation.

Light acts as a stimulant to the bodies of men as well as of animals. The ability of the blood to carry through the system oxygen that is taken from the atmosphere during breathing is increased by exposure to light. The blood is assisted also, by the action of light on it, in giving off the carbonic-acid gas that the body has accumulated, and thus frees the system from the impurities out of the blood.

(1839)

LIGHT, CHRISTIAN

A lighthouse called the Pharos was built at Alexandria, Egypt. It ascended 550 feet in the air and sent its light over the sea for a distance of 100 miles. Its purpose was as a memorial to King Ptolemy.

An upright character is a lighthouse to this storm-tossed world. (Text.)

(1840)

LIGHT DEVELOPING BEAUTY

The human soul can only develop its full capacities when illumined. Light from without must call out the latent powers of the mind.

The sea-anemone is attractive only when light reaches them. In gloom or shadow they fold themselves up on their peduncles and look withered and repellent. In the sunshine that plays on the waters in their pools these strange creatures open out like blossoms expanding their petals. (Text.)

(1841)

LIGHT, DIVINE

In the oxy-hydrogen lantern the operator first lights the hydrogen burner, and it burns like any other gas-light. Then he turns slowly upon it a little jet of oxygen, under which at first the flame seems dying down. But presently the lime candle kindles, and its flame, concentrated by the condensers to a small jet, begins to glow with a brilliancy that darkens everything else and can not be endured to look on. So in the movement of the world—in the “coming age”—there is high character and grand heroism, and as one studies it he sees that it is not Stephen’s face that shone like an angel, or Moses’ which had to be veiled, but the ineffable Spirit that shone out in them both. The power of the coming age is not the power of any man, but the power of the God who made all things, and whose glory here glows and burns brighter than the sun, bringing out the littlest worthiness of human character in the concentrated light of love.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(1842)

Light, Excess of—See Advice Disregarded.

LIGHT FOR RESCUE

The recently improved buoy is a remarkable device now in use in the life-saving service of the United States. By means of the signal lights, its position will always be known to those on shore and on the wreck. The green light moving toward the vessel mutely tells the shipwrecked passengers that help is at hand and encourages them to hold on until the buoy reaches them.

How many imperiled mariners on the sea of life are lost in the darkness because they see not the helping hand stretched out to save them.

(1843)

LIGHT-GIVING

One of the first lessons that Jesus inculcated in the minds of His disciples who were to become His messengers, was that they should be lights in the midst of the moral and spiritual gloom.

A preacher one dark night lost his way in a corner of a strange neighborhood. Meeting a farm laborer and asking his way, he received for answer, “Follow that light and you will not have gone far before you hear the bells of the next village.”

(1844)

LIGHT, IMMORTAL

Richard Watson Gilder, who died in 1909, and whose dream is now reality, wrote this beautiful prayer: