G (continued 2)

(1294)

Gratuities—See Ridicule, Apt.

GRAVITATION AND ICEBERGS

The hundreds of thousands of icebergs that every spring and summer terrify our ocean steamers are simply detachments from the glaciers that perpetually cover the face of northern lands. As far as can be learned, the interior of Greenland has a surface of tall hills and deep gulches, with an elevated range rather on the eastern side, running from north to south. Hence, if the climate of the interior of Greenland were mild, this extended range would serve as a watershed diverting streams to the sea on both sides. But the temperature some distance inland is nearly always below the freezing point, so that the almost constant snowfall and the brief midsummer rains remain on the surface, accumulating year after year, till there are formed thousands of square miles of blue compact ice, some of it over 1,500 feet thick. This enormous body of ice, like water, is subject to the laws of gravitation, and is eternally on the march to the sea. But its rate of travel is so slow as to be in most places imperceptible to the eye. So deep is this mass of inland ice that after a couple of days’ march from the sea there are no longer any hills visible, the entire landscape being white and naked. The ice from the higher ground is being constantly forced into the valleys and most of these valleys terminate toward the sea in very deep fjords. These fjords are in reality the launchways for most of the ice-floes and a great many of the bergs. You might lie for hours in your boat by most of the glaciers where they enter the sea, and not be aware that they were moving; but each one pushes constantly, and at a regular rate of speed, outward and outward into the sea, till the buoyancy of the water under it causes it to break at the shore, and sets it free to rove the ocean for thousands of miles, till it melts in Southern latitudes.—Edmund Collins, Harper’s Weekly.

(1295)

GRAVITATION, LAW OF

Time after time astronomers have found seeming irregularities in the planets’ motions, which they could not explain by, nor deduce from this law of Newton’s (law of gravitation). In every case, however, later investigations showed the fault to lie in the imperfections of their methods; their calculations, or their assumptions in regard to the number and size of the planets were in error, not the law of gravitation. A discrepancy of only two minutes between the observed and theoretical places of Uranus led to the discovery of Neptune, and possibly the minute discrepancy in the motions of Mercury may lead to important discoveries regarding the properties or distribution of matter in the neighborhood of the sun.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”

(1296)

GRAVITATION, MORAL

When the strata of the earth forms, the heaviest elements work down to the bottom, the next heaviest fall on these, and so on to the top, where the lightest will be found.

The same is true of men. You do not have to do anything to men to put them down or lift them up. Every man sooner or later goes “to his own place.”

(1297)

GRAVITY

Shiel told Moore of a good thing said by Keller, an Irish barrister. Keller, meeting some judge, an old friend of his, a steady, solemn fellow who had succeeded as much in his profession as Keller had failed, said to him: “In opposition to all the laws of natural philosophy, you have risen by your gravity, while I have sunk by my levity!” (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(1298)

GREAT MEN SHOULD BE PROVIDED FOR

We can not secure the great man’s arrival, but when he has come we can show that we know him and appreciate him, as the bees know and appreciate the one who is, of all others, most valuable to the hive. When “Dexter,” the famous race-horse owned by Robert Bonner, was found drawing a clay-cart, and the signs of speed in him were unmistakable, what a world of excitement there was! No harness was too fine, no stable too good for him. He had valets to attend his most delicate wants—watchers by night and by day. I do not say there was the slightest unappropriateness in this. I merely ask if the man of wonderful possibilities is not of as much account and deserving of as much care as the wonderful horse. The great man, or man of genius, will forego yachts and palaces and the muniments of wealth, tho he could enjoy them. What he needs at once is that sure provision which shall give him subsistence and leave him free from worldly toil and worry, as a prerequisite to prosecuting his work.—Joel Benton, Lippincott’s.

(1299)

GREAT MEN’S BEGINNINGS

The parents of Isaac Barrow, the celebrated English divine, conceived so mean an opinion of his temper and parts when he was a boy at the Charterhouse School, that his father used to say, if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least promising. Adam Clarke’s father was equally uncomplimentary to his own flesh and blood when he proclaimed his son to be “a grievous dunce.” Poe, at West Point, was a laughing-stock to his schoolmates. Sheridan’s mother presented him to a new tutor as “an incorrigible dunce.” Byron, at Harrow, was in no wise distinguished above his fellows. Napoleon and Wellington in their schooldays were distinguished only for dulness.—Lippincott’s Magazine.

(1300)

Great, The, and Little Contrasted—See Sins, Accumulated.

Greater, The, Controlling the Lesser—See Master-mind, The.

GREATNESS

Homer makes his hero, like Saul, a head and shoulders taller than the soldiers around him. And Egyptian artists paint their conquering monarch twenty times as tall as the pigmy enemy whom he is destroying at a single blow.

True greatness is more than stature.

(1301)

Upon his return to Washington, Grant made preparations to leave immediately for the West, but at the close of a consultation with the President and the Secretary of War, he was informed that Mrs. Lincoln expected his presence the same evening at a military dinner to be given in his honor, at which twelve distinguished officers, then in the city, were to be present. Frank B. Carpenter, who was then at the White House, working on his celebrated painting, “Lincoln and His Cabinet,” says Grant turned to the President and said that it would be impossible for him to remain over as he must be in Tennessee at a given time. The President insisted that he could not be excused, and here we have another manifestation of Grant’s independence and willpower. He said to Lincoln: “But the time is very precious just now, and really, Mr. President, I believe I have had enough of this show business.”

So, while the man of deeds—indifferent to blandishments and caring nothing for receptions—was speeding on his way to Nashville to meet Sherman and talk over the momentous business of trying to end the war, the twelve “distinguished” officers were banqueted without a guest of honor. But perhaps in the feasting and the merrymaking of the night, they could not but ponder over the strange things which had come to pass that day—a general so devoted to his duties in the field as to have no time or desire to be received by Congress or banqueted by the wife of a President; a man who had been out of the position of a common store-clerk hardly three years, given command of all the Union forces on land and sea; a great load lifted from the long-burdened heart of Lincoln; the bells of time ringing in a better day for the cause of the Union.—Col. Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

(1302)

GREATNESS APPRECIATED

Mr. Moore, writing in The Congregationalist on “The Benediction of a Statue,” says:

The man was only one of the thousands that have stopt for a moment or two at least in front of the Phillips Brooks statue during the past week. He was a working man of about fifty, with a strong, square-jawed, bronzed face. He had evidently come over to look at the statue during the noon hour, for he had on his blue flannel shirt and carpenter’s overalls. He gazed a moment and then brushed his eyes rather furtively.

“How do you like the statue?” he was asked.

“It’s fine, but isn’t quite Phillips Brooks. It’s a strong face like his, but I sort of miss the light in the eyes. It isn’t as kind-looking as Phillips Brooks.”

“You knew him, then?”

“Yes, I knew him well. I have talked with him many times. He always spoke to me on the street. He used to always ask about the wife and baby, and now—the wife has gone on beyond, too.”

He took a last look at the statue and then hurried away, for it was almost one o’clock. Just then a colored man of about forty joined the group.

“Know him? Why, I knew him as well as I know my wife. I used to be charman of a house just a few doors away from his on Clarendon Street. He always said, ‘Good-morning, John,’ to me when he met me, as he was going over to the church in the morning. Of course, when I knew him he was older than the statue shows him. He never spoke to you like he was saying, ‘I’m the rich Mr. Brooks.’ He treated you just like you was as good as him.”

Two messenger-boys stopt for a moment. “Who’s that man?” one asked the other.

“Why, that’s a great preacher that used to preach in that church. They say he was an awfully good man. They say he could preach like anything, and yet he was just as common with folks as anybody.”

An intelligent, rather elderly Hebrew was criticizing the statue very severely to several people, but he said: “I used to go to school with him. He was certainly a wonderful preacher and a very, very good man. He surely deserved the best statue Boston could ever put up for him. But I dislike the background and the other figure in this very much.”

(1303)

GREATNESS CALLED FORTH

At every great call for great deeds the right man comes out of the common crowd to do it, this is the truth Sam. Walter Foss enforces in these verses:

(1304)

GREATNESS DISCOUNTED

Daniel Webster in the very height of his fame, just after his famous Bunker Hill speech, took a run down to his native village which he had not visited in so many years that he found himself quite unrecognized by his former cronies. Accosting an old friend of the Websters, he gradually, after due discussion of the weather and the crops, turned the conversation upon his own family. Thereupon his companion burst out into enthusiastic encomiums upon the virtues and abilities of Daniel’s elder brother Ebenezer, who had died young and whose early death he fittingly deplored. Daniel slipt in a modest query as to whether there was not a brother named Dan. “He never was much account,” said the old gentleman, with a shake of his head. “I believe he went up to Boston and became some kind of a lawyer.”—Lippincott’s Magazine.

(1305)

GREATNESS, HEROIC

A truly great soul is the man described by Sarah Knowles Bolton in the verse below:

(1306)

GREATNESS, HUMAN, A BAUBLE

Having strayed by some odd eddy of circumstance into the House of Lords, when the King was present, John Wesley draws a picturesque little vignette of him.

“I was in the robe-chamber, adjoining the House of Lords, when the King (George II) put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed with age, and quite clouded with care. And is this all the world can give even to a king, all the grandeur it can afford? A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarce move under it! A huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head! Alas, what a bauble is human greatness!”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(1307)

GREATNESS IN MEN

Edwin Markham describes a noble type of man in the following poem:

(1308)

GREATNESS OF GOD

The following verse from “The Marshes of Glynn,” by Sidney Lanier, shows how a reverent poet can see symbols of God and His care in a marsh:

(1309)

GREATNESS SERVING

A mother and daughter were traveling through a forest. Overcome by the long journey, the mother fainted and fell by the wayside. As soon as consciousness was partly restored to her she sent her little child to seek out a minister. The little daughter went weeping on her way. She soon met a stranger riding a horse. The man inquired of her why she was weeping. She asked him if he were God’s minister, and he said that he was. She led him to the side of her dying mother. His bodyguard soon arrived. Reverently did they uncover as they found the King of England kneeling in prayer for the dying peasant. The greatest among them was their servant. (Text.)

(1310)

GREATNESS, TRUE, OF A CITY

(1311)

Greatness Unrecognized—See Help, Unexpected.

GREED

The large families in this country to-day are to be found only in the industrial centers. Greedy men have considered this their opportunity, and have located great stocking and silk factories in these places for the sake of employing the children of these families.

I saw in the ill-ventilated rooms of these silk-factories girls by the dozen under fourteen years of age. More than once I saw a stoop-shouldered, anemic girl, apparently not more than eleven years of age, standing all day before her machine so fatigued that she stood on one foot while she rested the other by holding it against the leg on which she was standing. To my inquiry as to her age the reply was, “The affidavit said she was fourteen.”

A girl in whose machine the silk by chance became tangled was approached by a foreman with the jaw of a bulldog and a face whose every feature indicated brutality, and who poured out a stream of profanity as he threatened to dismiss her if it occurred again. These girls were the daughters of coal-miners or of a coal-miner’s widow.

We are pretty generally agreed that society owes to every one equal treatment with his fellows in an effort to get a living and an equal protection in using the opportunities that exist. When one looks into the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes of veritable children to whom in so many cases the home was never the holy of holies, and where instead of the gentle voice and loving hearts of teachers there is the brutal taskmaster, one feels the need of some new Declaration of Independence.

A railroad that owns and operates mines in this region, last year, in addition to an already fat dividend on its stock, declared a stock dividend of fifty per cent. Would that it were possible to print on every share of that dividend a description of the existence that is called life in this section of our land! (Text.)—Jesse Hill, Christian Endeavor World.

(1312)

See Dishonesty; Game of Greed.

Greed, Commercial—See Cruelty.

GRIEF, EXPRESSING

Great griefs can seldom be borne in silence; nor is it well that they should be. Just as the cry of pain springs to the lips of a child when it is hurt, so the wounded spirit longs for utterance to ease its sorrow. Far from being a rebellious and unnatural desire, this longing to somehow unburden the soul in words is a merciful gift of God, who, even when he chastens, would fain temper the wind to the shorn lamb. See how the noblest souls have sought and found, not only a balm for sorrow, but sorrow’s own deeper meaning in uttering their heart’s profoundest cry. Think of that magnificent memorial poem in which Tennyson gathered up, as in a sacred urn, the fragments of his broken heart. Was his sorrow for Hallam the less, that he thus robbed it of its bitterest sting, the sting of helpless silence and hopeless brooding? Was Cicero less noble, less heroic, because, after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia, he wrote a treatise, on consolation to alleviate his sorrow? No; utterance sanctifies the grief whose pang it softens. God does not will that we should suffer in white-lipped silence. He never drives the barbed arrow into the human heart.—Zion’s Herald.

(1313)

GRIEF, REVEALED

Clinton Dangerfield discounts in this poem the stoicism of the age that refuses to reveal its griefs and evils:

(1314)

GRIEVANCES

A man strikes me with a sword, and inflicts a wound. Suppose, instead of binding up the wound, I am showing it to everybody, and, after it has been bound up, I am taking off the bandage constantly and examining the depth of the wound, and making it fester—is there a person in the world who would not call me a fool? However, such a fool is he who, by dwelling upon little injuries or insults, cause them to agitate and influence his mind. How much better were it to put a bandage on the wound and never look at it again!

(1315)

I once said to a woman who had suddenly lost her best friend after years of the closest intimacy, without a quarrel or scene, and for no apparent reason, “every time he thinks of you he will be filled with remorse.” She replied, “Remorse? Not at all. He is quite sure that all the fault lies on my side. In retrospect, he has created imaginary grievance.” I indignantly protested, ready even to pity her the more. She smilingly silenced me by putting her finger on my lips, saying: “Do not pity me, I might have had grievances, but I have none; in spite of everything, mine is the better part.” And she was right.

Grievances are like a double-edged sword that wounds on one side the heart it enters, on the other the heart that sends it forth, and the most unhappy heart always holds the weapon, for the point that pierces sinks into depths from whence it is difficult to draw it from the wound. In reality everybody is a victim to grievances; they that harbor as well as they who create them, and for this reason frank explanations are never resorted to. And the saddest thing of all is, that the causes are often so slight and the suffering so great, as in the case of the Neapolitan, who, having never read the works of Tasso and Ariosto, fought seventeen duels on their respective merits.—Dora Melegari, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy.”

(1316)

GRIP

“He seems to have lost his grip,” said one man to another in talking of an acquaintance who had not been long in the ranks of the “middle-aged.” They both felt that their friend had talents; they longed to see him apply them with judgment and success. The term “grip” was an expressive one. Whatever one’s work may be, it can not be properly done unless the worker has firm hold of his tools. Lack of grip may often be resolved into lack of incentive, and, therefore, whoever imparts to his comrade a sufficient motive for holding fast, is doing him service of the most effectual kind.—Providence Journal.

(1317)

Growing Old—See Old, How to Grow.

GROWING TOO FAST

It is said that during the wars of Frederick II of Prussia men became so scarce that they actually enrolled schoolboys. If there happened to be a child that was growing too fast the parents would be heard to say, “Don’t grow so fast or the recruiting officer will catch you.” Do not rush into responsibility. (Text.)

(1318)

Growth—See Assimilation; Faith in God.

GROWTH, CAUSE OF

Carbon from the air entering the cells of plants comes in contact with a substance called chlorophyll resident in the cells. A wonderful change at once takes place. When the sun is shining, the carbonic acid and water contained in the cells are decomposed; i.e., separated into the parts composing them. These, with the carbon, then unite again and form a new substance very different from either the carbon or the water, viz., starch or like substance, which, with some of the mineral matters supplied through the soil water, serves as food for the protoplasm of the cells, so that the latter increase in number rapidly and thus cause the plant to grow.

There is real growth of the soul of man only when the divine spirit unites with the human powers. (Text.)

(1319)

Growth, Curious—See Obstacles, Unexpected.

GROWTH, EVIL

Educators make much of growth, nor can we over-emphasize the importance of the principle. But if the thing that is increasing is bad, then growth is a curse immeasurable. Given a spark and growth means a conflagration that ruins a city. Given a gipsy-moth in the parks of New England and growth means the devastation of the forests of a State. Given a disease, and growth means death. Given any form of sin, and growth means the wreckage of character and destiny. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

(1320)

Growth in Educational Work—See Needs, Meeting Children’s.

GROWTH IN NATURE

Once, a half-century ago or more, a farmer and his men came down from the pastures, and for purposes of their own cut a ditch straight through the middle of the bog to the open water. The hundreds of scrawny night-herons, sitting on pale blue eggs in scraggly nests in the cedar swamp, must have heard the cedars laugh as this went on. It was the swamp’s opportunity. Where the farmer and his men with incredible labor cut and tore away the marsh-grass roots the cedars planted their seeds, and called upon the alders and the swamp-maples and the thoroughwort, the Joe Pye weed, and a host of other good citizens of the swamp to help them.

So vigorous was the sortie and so well did they hold their ground, that you may trace the farmer’s wide ditch to-day only as a causeway down which the swamp has come to build a great wooden area in the midst of the bog, accomplishing in half a century what it might not have done in five times had it not been for human aid.—Winthrop Packard, “Wild Pastures.”

(1321)

Growth, Spiritual—See Spiritual Perturbation.

Growth Through Struggle—See Struggle and Growth.

GROWTH, UNCONSCIOUS

Moses, when he came down from the mountain, “wist not” that his face shone. So in much of our spiritual life, we are unconscious of the fact of growth. As a writer upon life in the fields likening the spiritual life to that of the seed says:

But all the winter through, tho it was hidden by frost and snow, the seed was growing beneath the earth; the difference is that now we can see it. And so it is with the growth of the soul. The soul is growing, tho we do not know it, in its winter weather, when all is dead and cold and dark; when the Spirit has convinced us of sin and we say, “I seem to have no part and lot with the saints, no joy nor peace; I only feel the burden of my iniquities; I question whether I am a living soul.” Ah, but the seed sown by the hand of God is growing through all those wintry days; if a man can feel and lament his weakness, his deadness, his barrenness, he is a living soul. (Text.)

(1322)

Growths, Undesirable—See Barriers.

Guardian Friends—See Pledge-keeping.

GUARDS OF THE SOUL

As there is a silence that thunders, so there is a severity that is the inflection of pity and love. That is not the kindest surgeon who refuses to make the wounded soldier suffer. That is not the truest mother who lets the child work its own will and riot in selfish pleasures. It is not a little thing for a pilgrim to make his way across a dark continent. Are there serpents and wild beasts in the jungle? Then on either side of the path through the forest let thorn-bushes be planted that they may scourge the child back into the path. Is the chasm deep? A veritable abyss? Then, when the bridge is strung across the gulf, let a railing be placed on either side, with sharp prongs of iron to hold the child back from the edge of the bridge, lest in a careless mood he fall and be crusht upon the cruel rocks beneath. It is a dangerous journey that man makes through the wilderness. And God has planted on either side of the way the Ten Commandments like ten thorn-bushes, buttresses and guards, that the pilgrim may be confined to the path that leads to prosperity, safety and peace—N. D. Hillis.

(1323)

Guest Surprized—See Tact.

Guidance—See Safety from Water-Brooks; Trust.

GUIDANCE, GOD’S

(1324)

Thomas F. Porter, in the Boston Globe, expresses in these verses the confidence of faith in God’s guidance:

(1325)

Guidance, Spiritual—See Spirit, Winds of the.

GUIDANCE EVILWARD

A story is told of certain mariners who followed the direction of their compass, believing it to be infallibly right as a guide, till they arrived at an enemy’s port, where they were seized and made slaves. The secret was that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship and to beguile them into obliquities, had hidden a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle. (Text.)

(1326)

Guide and Traveler—See Confidence.

GUIDE, THE PERFECT

Once I was out with a guide climbing a mountain, and the guide himself lost his way. He was compelled, greatly chagrined, to beat about for quite a while till he found it. This could never happen to Christ.

Sometimes a guide in the Alps, in spite of all his care, loses the life of a traveler. The unfortunate man may slip and the rope may break; or, if the rope holds, he may be heavy enough to drag down his guide with him into the crevasse.

When a traveler hesitated to place his foot in the hand of a guide who asked him to step upon it out over a precipice when rounding a perilous turn, the guide reassured him by saying, “This hand never lost a life.” That was true of the guide, but it did not prove that he never would lose a life.

Of Christ’s hand stretched out to help us it may be said truly: “This hand never lost a life, and never can lose one.”—Amos R. Wells, in The Christian Endeavor World.

(1327)

Guides—See Experience, Value of.

Guides and Prayer—See Blessing the Ropes.

GUILT

The only thing needed to show guilt or innocence is sufficient light:

Aaron Burr once defended a prisoner charged with murder, and as the trial proceeded it became too manifest to him that the guilt of the murder lay between the prisoner and one of the witnesses for the prosecution. He accordingly subjected this witness to a searching and relentless cross-examination; and then, as he addrest the jury in the gathering dusk of evening, he brought into strong relief every fact that bore against this witness, and suddenly seizing two candelabra from the table, he threw a glare of light on the witness’s face, and exclaimed, “Behold the murderer, gentlemen!” Alarmed and conscience-stricken, the man reeled as from a blow, turned ghastly pale, and left the court. The advocate concluded his speech in a tone of triumph, and the jury acquitted the prisoner. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

(1328)