P (continued 2)

(2375)

See Christ Our Pilot.

PIRACY, BIRD

The Buffalo Evening News gives us the following from the city forester of that city:

A war of extermination has been declared against the English sparrow by the Department of Agriculture, which has just issued a bulletin on the subject in which this busy, fighting bird is outlawed as a pirate of the air. It is declared that he studiously hunts and eats insects which are beneficial to plant life, while he more or less passes over those which are harmful. The only good thing he does is to eat the seed of weeds and prevent their spread. Aside from that there is nothing to be said in his favor.

More than that, he is murderous. He hunts the nesting-places and destroys eggs and young bluebirds, house-wrens, tree-swallows and barn-swallows. The robin, the catbird, and the mocking-bird he attacks and drives out of parks and shade-trees. He has no song, but he drives out the song-birds and brings only noise in return.

After having learned all this about the sparrow after an extensive investigation, the Department of Agriculture describes various ways to destroy him.

City Forester Filer said yesterday he has not seen a copy of the bulletin, but that he agrees with its conclusions. “There is a good deal of justice in declaring the English sparrow a pirate,” said Mr. Filer. “These birds were originally imported to New York to get rid of an insect pest, the linden moth, which that city was then fighting. The sparrow didn’t like these moths, and he doesn’t like any caterpillar with fuzz on it, and he took to the streets for his living. They spread and multiplied very fast.

“The robin is the only other bird we have in Buffalo in numbers and the sparrows eat their eggs. In the parks we have a few other varieties, but they are not numerous, and the sparrows are not as plentiful in the parks as they are in the streets, where they prefer to get their living.

“Most of the destructive moths, particularly the gipsy, tussock and browntail, have hairy caterpillars, and the sparrows will not eat them, so they are no good for that purpose.”

(2376)

Placards—See Pictures, Influence of.

PLACE, FILLING ONE’S

Sir Michael Costa was once rehearsing with a vast array of performers and hundreds of voices, when, in the mighty chorus, amid the thunder of the organ, and the roll of drums, and the blare of brass instruments, and the clashing of cymbals, he suddenly stopt and exclaimed, “Where is the piccolo?” That little instrument had ceased to play, and the great master of music missed it.

So in life’s chorus, the least man can make or mar it by faithfulness or neglect. (Text.)

(2377)

PLACE, IN THE RIGHT

The rainbow is one of the most beautiful things in nature. It is made by a series and succession of falling drops, the series stretching across the sky, and the successive drops catching the reflection and refraction left by the drop below. Each drop has but a minute ray among the millions, and has this but for an instant as it comes into the right angle with the sun; but all together and in succession spread wide the beautiful arch of hope and promise. Each of us is among God’s creatures only as a single drop in the broad shower, and only for a little is our opportunity; but if we are in our place and in the right angle toward God, we may help spread His glory far and wide.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

(2378)

PLAGIARISM, DETECTION OF

A man might as well hoist a ladder in a village at noonday and try to steal the town clock without being observed as to expect to carry off literary ware in our time and not be found out. The newspaper editor, scissors in hand and mucilage on the table, sits up to his chin in exchanges from the four winds of heaven. Beside that, all the world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap and transportation so rapid that before every preacher, and before every lecturer, and before every religious exhorter, there may sit persons from the most unexpected quarter, and if they heard three years ago something delivered in New Orleans which you delivered in Brooklyn, the discovery will be reported. Quote from all books you can lay your hands on. Quote from all directions. It is a compliment to have breadth of reading to be able to quote. But be sure to announce it as a quotation. Ah! how many are making a mistake in this thing; it is a mistake that a man can not afford to make. Four commas upside down—two at the beginning of the paragraph, two at the close of the paragraph—will save many a man’s integrity and usefulness.—T. De Witt Talmage.

(2379)

PLAN IN NATURE

There are several hundred thousand different kinds of animals living on this globe of the different types. Every one of them has its line of development. Every sparrow begins with the egg, and goes through all the changes which are characteristic of sparrow life, until it is capable of producing new eggs, which will go through the same change. Every butterfly comes from the egg, which produces the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, laying eggs to go through the same changes. So with all animals, whether of higher or lower type. In fact, the animal kingdom as it is now, is undergoing greater changes every year than the whole animal kingdom has ever passed through from the beginning until now; and yet we never see one of these animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce anything else than that which is like itself.—Prof. Louis Agassiz.

(2380)

PLAN, LACK OF

Emerson tells that when on a trip to New Hampshire he found a large building going up in a country town. Struck by its ungainly and rambling appearance, he asked a man who was working at it, who the architect was. And the reply was, “Oh, there isn’t any architect settled on as yet. I’m just building it, you see, and there’s a man coming from Boston next month to put the architecture into it.”

(2381)

PLANS, HUMAN, TRANSCENDED

The Rev. W. H. Fitchett says of John Wesley:

Had Wesley done nothing more than preach or write his memory might have failed. But at this stage Wesley links himself by one great achievement, not merely to English history, but to the history of religion. He creates a church! He did not do this consciously, or of deliberate purpose. He strove, indeed, not to do it; he protested he would never do it. But as history shows, he actually did it! And since history is not so much philosophy teaching by examples as God interpreting Himself by events, we are entitled to say that Wesley, in laying the foundations of a new church, did something that, no doubt, outran his own human vision, but which fulfilled a divine purpose.—“Wesley and His Century.”

(2382)

PLANT WORSHIP

The plant worship which holds so prominent a place in the history of the primitive races of mankind, would appear to have sprung from a perception of the beauty and utility of trees. Survivals of this still linger on in many parts of Europe. The peasants in Bohemia will sally forth into their gardens before sunrise on Good Friday, and falling upon their knees before a tree will exclaim: “I pray, O green tree, that God may make thee good.” At night-time they will run to and fro about their gardens crying: “Bud, O trees, bud, or I will flog you.” In England the Devonshire farmers and their men will to this day go out into their orchards after supper on the evening of Twelfth Day, carrying with them a large milk-pail of cider, with roasted apples prest into it. All present hold in their hands an earthenware cup filled with liquor, and taking up their stand beneath those apple-trees which have borne the most fruit, address them in these words:

simultaneously dashing the contents of their cups over the trees.—The Gentleman’s Magazine.

(2383)

Planting That Multiplied—See Missionary, A Little.

PLAY AND MORALS

Play is related to morals. As we learn from Judge Lindsey: “The whole question of juvenile law-breaking—or at least nine-tenths of it—is a question of children’s play. A boy who breaks the law is in nine cases out of ten not a criminal. He is obeying an instinct that is not only legitimate, but vital, and which, if it finds every lawful channel choked up, will seek an outlet at the next available point. The boy has no especial desire to come in conflict with the laws and usages of civilized society.” Give a boy an opportunity to play at his favorite game, and the policeman will need, as Mr. Lee puts it, “a gymnasium himself to keep his weight down.” Give children playgrounds, and the same spirit and imagination which form rowdy gangs will form baseball clubs and companies for games and drills. Precinct captains attribute the existence of rowdyism and turbulence to lack of better playgrounds than the streets. They break lamps and windows because they have no other provision made for them. London, after forty years’ experience, says tersely, “Crime in our large cities is to a great extent simply a question of athletics.” “This is not theory, but is the testimony you will get from any policeman or schoolmaster who has been in a neighborhood before and after a playground was started there. The public playground is a moral agent, and should be in every community.” The play of youth needs careful and scientific direction, so as to develop active and manly qualities of mind and character.—George J. Fisher, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1907.

(2384)

PLAY, COMMENDABLE

Lovely human play is like the play of the sun. There’s a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere—that’s the sun’s play; and great human play is like his—all various—all full of light and life, and tender, as the dew of the morning.—John Ruskin.

(2385)

PLAY NECESSARY

The child has an artificial occupation named play through games. Having the food as raw material for the body, that food can be built into the physique only through the free play of the legs and arms, through exercise and fresh air. In Prospect Park we behold the maple bough pushing out a soft growth of one or two feet, and then the sap coursing through the young growth furnishes food; then comes the spring and summer winds to give the sap and the bough its exercise; playing with the leaves in the air, bending it, twisting it, hardening the young growth, until it can stand up against the storms of winter. And not otherwise does the growing child need its exercise. The little boy flings out his arm with the ball, and so stretches the arm. Then, when the arm is stretched, along comes the angel of the blood and drops in a little wedge, so that the stretched arm can not draw back. Thus the growth is permanent. This is the function of all the games for little children, to stretch the blood into the body and then by forcing the arterial blood into the extremities to make the stretching permanent. One thing, therefore, is vital, the playground. (Text.)—N. D. Hillis.

(2386)

PLAY, SIGNIFICANCE OF

When things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor. A little girl who had broken her doll was seen to perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing, putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to perform with the entire doll. The part stood for the whole; she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys. In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things. So when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”

(2387)

PLAYFUL ATTITUDE, THE

Playfulness is a more important consideration than play. The former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward manifestation of this attitude. When things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing. Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom. The person is not bound to the physical traits of things, nor does he care whether a thing really means (as we say) what he takes it to represent. When the child plays horse with a broom and cars with chairs, the fact that the broom does not really represent a horse, or a chair a locomotive, is of no account. In order, then, that playfulness may not terminate in arbitrary fancifulness and in building up an imaginary world alongside the world of actual things, it is necessary that the play attitude should gradually pass into a work attitude.—John Dewey, “How we Think.”

(2388)

PLAYTHINGS, EARTH’S

(2389)

PLEASANT LOOKS

If one does not believe that his countenance adds to or detracts anything from the lives or expressions of others, let him pause for a moment before that now celebrated “Billiken.” It is almost impossible to look at the little imp and not smile. The Japanese teach their maids in the hotels, and those also in higher walks of life, the art of smiling. They are compelled to practise before a mirror. One can not stay long in Japan without being inoculated with the disposition to “look pleasant.” The “look pleasant, please,” of the photographer goes deeper than the photograph plate.

No one wants to associate long with an animated vinegar cruet. A disposition is easily guessed from the angle of the corners of the mouth; a disposition is molded by compelling those angles to turn up or down. If a merry heart maketh a glad countenance, it is also true that a glad countenance maketh a merry heart—in the one who has it and in the one who beholds it. “Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”—Baptist Commonwealth.

(2390)

Pleasure a Deceiver—See Slaves of Pleasure.

PLEASURE, ETHICS OF

Mrs. Wesley discusses with exquisite good sense the whole ethics of pleasure:

“Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure take this rule: Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things—in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”

The wisest of casuists might find it difficult to better that interpretation of human duty!—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2391)

PLEASURE, MOCKERY OF

In the days of the Inquisition cruel men deceived the prisoner, as pleasure and sensualism deceive the young now. With soft words the jailer promised the prisoner release on the morrow. When the appointed hour came he opened the door and pointed down the corridor, and oh, joy of joys! yonder was the green sward, cool with grass, and gay with tulips and crimson flowers. With a shout of joy the prisoner ran forward to cast himself upon the cool ground, but lo! it was a mockery, a delusion, a lying deceit. What afar off seemed grass was really sheet-iron painted in the similitude of verdure. What looked like red tulips and crimson flowers was iron beaten into the similitude of blossoms and heated red hot by flames underneath. Where coolness was promised scorching was given. The vista promised pleasure; it gave pain. And when a man or a woman looks upon the worldly life, with all its pleasures of appetite and physical sense, from afar off, it wears a brilliant aspect and a crimson hue. But near at hand the scene changes, and lo, the honey is bitter, all the fountains of peace are poisoned.—N. D. Hillis.

(2392)

PLEASURES, POISONOUS

A gentleman in Paris desired to buy a ring, and, as he tried on several rings in the jeweler’s store, he noticed one that was set with tiny eagle’s claws. The next day his hand began to swell. The doctor told him that he was poisoned, and on inquiry he found that the old ring came from Italy, and was once used for poisoning an enemy. For four centuries that particle of poison had remained between the eagle’s claws.

Watch the rings of pleasure which the world offers, there are within them the eagle’s claws with the poison. Those pleasures may sparkle with fascination and seem greatly desirable, but they mean death in the end. The poison is subtle; the claws are concealed; but at last poison and claws do their fatal work.

(2393)

Pledge—See Loyalty.

PLEDGE-KEEPING

The Archbishop of York, at a recent meeting, told how, when he was at Portsmouth, he had induced a working man to sign the pledge. The man said: “Ah, sir, I won’t be able to keep this pledge. Every night I have to pass ten public-houses, and my mates are with me, and we treat each other.”

The archbishop said, “Do you think it would help you if I were to see you home?”

At this the meeting broke out into a cheer.

“Don’t cheer that,” said the archbishop; “that is the kind of work which the clergy are doing every day.” The man replied, “If you could only see me past these houses, I should get home all right.”

(2394)

PLUCK

What a characteristic story of poverty and pluck is that of Andrew Carnegie! His father, a Scotch weaver who worked with hand-looms, thrown out of employment by improved machinery, came to Pittsburg when “Andy” was but ten years of age. The boy went to work as a bobbin-boy at $1.20 a week. At thirteen he was promoted to the post of engineer of the factory engine. At fourteen he became telegraph boy, and was promoted at sixteen, for quick intelligence, to the post of telegraph operator at a salary of $300 a year. About this time his father died, and the support of the family devolved on him. He soon got a dollar a week extra for copying telegrams for the papers, which he called his “first bit of capital.” His salary went for household expenses, but the dollar surplus he invested wisely, first in the express business, then in sleeping-cars, and, finally, as an outcome of his management of transportation in the Civil War, in a plant to manufacture iron railway bridges. And so by alertness and economy and untiring energy he came to be the world’s most distinguished manufacturer and philanthropist, putting as much talent into giving as he had before put into getting.

(2395)

See Courage in Life; Stedfastness.

POET APPRECIATED

“If ‘W,’ at Haverhill, will continue to favor us with pieces as beautiful as the one inserted in our poetical department to-day, we shall esteem it a favor.” This note appeared in the Free Press, of Newburyport, Mass., June 8, 1826. The “W” referred to was John G. Whittier, then in his nineteenth year, and the editor of the Free Press was William Lloyd Garrison, then in his twenty-first. “W” did continue to “favor us” with pieces quite as beautiful as the one inserted in the Free Press in 1826; indeed, with pieces more and more beautiful, of a wider and deeper application to American life, until he was recognized—tho not till after many years—as the chief of the purely American poets, indebted to America and its life in the highest degree for his equipment in song.

The first piece of “original poetry”—we are told by the sons of Mr. Garrison, in their admirable life of their father—was found lying near the door in the office of the Free Press. The editor, having a strong tendency to tear “original” sin—verse or otherwise—to pieces, says he had a momentary impulse to dispose of this in that way, without reading it; but summoning the resolution so needful in an editor, he read the poem and published it. He had the courage, moreover, to inquire about the writer, and found him to be a “Quaker lad who was daily at work on the shoemaker’s bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time,” says the editor, “in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden.” The parents of the lad were poor, “unable to give him a suitable education,” and unwilling, as being unable to, let him indulge in the unprofitable but delightful pursuit of verse-making. “Poetry will not give him bread,” they said, as many a father has had to say. But the poet, proverbially “born, not made,” is not easily unmade, since nature presides at the birth and fosters her own.—Journal of Education.

(2396)

Poetry and Religion—See Religion and Poetry.

POETRY, POPULAR POWER OF

Poetry is not always the possession of the mart and street, but in the case of a favored few who write, there is this high compliment of approval, as the following suggests:

Walter Camp was talking about football at a dinner at the New York Athletic Club.

“Had we not reformed our football,” he said, “it would have fallen into grave disrepute—into such grave disrepute as surrounded cricket and football both during the Boer War, when Kipling wrote his poem about

“That poem hit the English ‘footers’ hard. One of the English ‘footers’ during their visit to us told me how he was walking one day to his club in football clothes, when a newsboy hailed him.

“‘Paper, sir?’

“The footballer walked on; whereupon the boy yelled after him:

“‘Yah, ye muddied oaf! Like as not ye can’t even read!’”

(2397)

Poet’s Insight—See Viewpoint, The.

POINT OF VIEW

The ancient Athenians demanded a last statue by their great sculptors, Alcamenes and Phidias. When the two Minervas were unveiled in the public square, the people declared the statue of Alcamenes to be perfect, believing it to be living. The judges were about to award the prize. Phidias calmly approached the tribunal and said: “Is it not for the top of a column the chosen statue is designed?” “Certainly,” replied the magistrates. “Then,” said Phidias, “is it not from the effects produced by its height that judgment should be pronounced?” The statues were raised to their positions by machinery. The Minerva of Alcamenes lost her charms in the ascent. The statue of Phidias, which had shocked the spectators by its massive, unpolished appearance in the Forum, from the column’s height took on such grandeur and majesty that the multitudes shouted with one accord, “Phidias is the sculptor of the gods!” (Text.)

(2398)

In “Stories of English Artists” we are told that Gainsborough’s pictures can only be properly appreciated when viewed at the right distance. As Sir Joshua Reynolds remarked in one of his famous “Discourses,” all those odd scratches and marks which on close examination are so observable in Gainsborough’s pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design, this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance by a kind of magic at a certain distance assume form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places.

No doubt the apparent chaos and disorder of human events and careers, and of the natural world, would fall into order and express to us God’s wise designs if we could place ourselves at the right point of view!

(2399)

Two old darkies, lounging on a street corner in Richmond, Va., one day, were suddenly aroused by a runaway team that came dashing toward them at breakneck speed. The driver, scared nearly to death, had abandoned his reins, and was awkwardly climbing out of the wagon at the rear end. One of the old negroes said: “Brer’ Johnson, sure as you born, man, de runaway horse am powerful gran’ and a monstrous fine sight to see.” Johnson shook his head doubtfully, and then replied, philosophically, “Dat ’pends berry much, nigger, on whedder you be standin’ on de corner obsarvin’ of him, or be gittin’ ober de tail-board ob de waggin.”—Marion J. Verdery.

(2400)

See Distance.

A skilful artist was traveling in Egypt, painting pictures as he went. One day he showed to a gentleman who had lived in that country for many years one of his pictures of the Nile. The friend criticized the picture somewhat severely, maintaining that it was not true to nature. Here on the canvas the Nile appeared blue and clear; whereas, through all the years of his residence by the very banks of the river, he had never seen its waters otherwise than brown and muddy. The artist replied that he had painted it as it had appeared to him. He invited his friend to a place situated at some distance from the stream and then turned round to look back. To the astonishment of the critic, there lay the river, clear, blue, and sparkling; however muddy it might be at close quarters, when surveyed from afar its surface reflected the brilliance of the sky overhead. The gentleman admitted that he had always been content to gaze down into the muddy waters by the bank and so had missed the charm of the best view of the Nile.

Would it not be better for many of us, supposing some things seem to be unpleasant, or ugly, or unnecessary, to view them from a more favorable position?

(2401)

Poison, Disguised—See Death Masked in Beauty.

POISON DRINK

An officer from Japan, visiting America, one day, while looking about a big city, saw a man stop a milk-wagon.

“Is he going to arrest the man?” he asked.

“No,” was the answer; “he must see that the milk sold by this man is pure, with no water or chalk mixed with it.”

“Would chalk or water poison the milk?”

“No; but people want pure milk if they pay for it.”

Passing a whisky saloon, a man staggered out, struck his head against a lamp-post, and fell to the sidewalk.

“What is the matter with that man?”

“He is full of bad whisky.”

“Is it poison?”

“Yes; a deadly poison,” was the answer.

“Do you watch the selling of whisky as you do the milk?” asked the Japanese.

“No.”

At the markets they found a man looking at the meat to see if it was healthy.

“I can’t understand your country,” said the Japanese. “You watch the meat and the milk, and let men sell whisky as much as they please.”

(2402)

Poison Pleasures—See Pleasures, Poisonous.

POISONS AND MEDICINES

Almost all medicines are poisons. That which saves life in one dose causes death in another. There is no more useful medicine in the modern pharmacopoeia than arsenic; yet three out of five women who poison themselves do so with arsenic. Strychnine is a terrible poison, but nux vomica is a most valuable drug. In Greece criminals were sometimes forced to take their own lives by drinking a cup of hellebore; we in our day cure many diseases of the stomach with veratrum. If a drug which destroys life under given conditions saves it in others, why may not a disease germ which is noxious in one set of circumstances prove beneficial when the circumstances are changed and the exhibition of the germ regulated by scientific principles.—San Francisco Call.

(2403)

POLICY, SELFISH

There is much that passes muster as acts of generosity which, if spiritually analyzed, would be found to be merely selfish policy, like that exercised by the spider:

The moment an ill-starred fly or other insect comes in contact with the net of the spider, it is sprung upon with the rapidity of lightning, and if the captured insect be of small size the spider conveys it at once to the place of slaughter, and having at its leisure sucked all its juice, throws out the carcass. If the insect be large and struggles to escape, the spider envelops its prey in a mesh of thread, and its legs and wings secured, it is conveyed to its den and devoured. But when a bee or large fly, too powerful to be mastered by the spider, gets entangled in its toils, then the wary animal, conscious of its incapacity to contend with such fearful odds, makes no attempt to seize or embarrass the victim. On the contrary, it assists the entangled captive in its efforts to free itself, and often goes so far as to break that part of the web from which it is suspended. This act has upon it the color of generosity, but it is really nothing more than the performance of selfish cunning. The tyrant, feeling himself incapable of doing an injury, determines to have no molestation. To this end he performs an act of manumission.

(2404)

Polish—See Education.

POLITENESS

“Women should not complain that they have to stand in street-cars and other public conveyances,” said an old gentleman. “Children learn common politeness at home, if they learn it at all.

“On the car that I just left was a handsomely drest woman and her son, a fine-looking boy of ten. The car was crowded when I got on and the little man and his mother sat near the door. As soon as I entered the boy made a motion to get up, but his mother held him down.

“‘Mama, the man is lame,’ I heard him whisper. ‘I don’t care if he is; you have paid for your seat and have a right to it,’ she answered him pettishly. The little fellow blushed at his mother’s remark.

“Now, that woman will probably read the riot act to the next man who refrains from giving her a seat in a crowded car, but what can she expect when she teaches her own son to be discourteous to the lame and the halt?” (Text.)

(2405)

Politics—See Interests, Significant.

Politics a Duty—See Ballot a Duty.

POLITICS IN DISFAVOR

While the science of politics ought to be held in the highest esteem for what its true nature and possibilities are, yet in actual life and practise the reverse is often true. As an instance of popular disfavor, the following incident in Success is in point:

Representative Lorimer, of Chicago, who is a great walker, was out for a tramp along the conduit road leading from Washington, when, after going a few miles, he sat down to rest.

“Want a lift, mister?” asked a good-natured Maryland farmer driving that way.

“Thank you,” responded Mr. Lorimer, “I will avail myself of your kind offer.”

The two rode in silence for a while. Presently the teamster asked: “Professional man?”

“Yes,” answered Lorimer, who was thinking of a bill he had pending before the House.

After another long pause, the farmer observed: “Say, you ain’t a lawyer or you’d be talkin’; you ain’t a doctor ’cause you ain’t got no satchel, and you shore ain’t a preacher, from the looks of you. What is your profession, anyhow?”

“I am a politician,” replied Lorimer.

The Marylander gave a snort of disgust “Politics ain’t no profession; politics is a disorder.”

(2406)

POPULARITY

John Wesley keenly appreciated the dangers that attend public favor.

Among the quaint but intensely practical counsels he gives are some as to the art of escaping popularity:

How shall we avoid popularity? We mean such esteem and love from the people as is not for the glory of God. 1. Earnestly pray for a piercing sense of the danger and the sinfulness of it. 2. Take care how you ingratiate yourself with any people by slackness of discipline. 3. Or by any method which another preacher can not follow. 4. Warn the people among whom you are most of esteeming or loving you too much. 5. Converse sparingly with those who are particularly fond of you.

Times and men are strangely changed since those words were written. What preacher to-day has to study anxiously “how to avoid popularity,” or finds any necessity for warning the people among whom he labors against “esteeming him or loving him too much!”—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(2407)

Population—See Cities of the World; City, Growth of a Great.

Population, Non-Church and Church-Membership—See Church Statistics.

Population, Over-—See Survival.

Populations, Religious, of World—See Religious Conditions of the World.

Position, Advantage of—See Favoritism.

Position and Worth—See Worth, Estimating.

POSSESSION

When the Australian miner was drowned because he had heavy bags of gold round his waist, while trying to swim ashore from the wreck, it was an open question which possest which. Just so I am quite convinced that men stuffed with information or “the science of the day” are not always possest of true wisdom. Wisdom itself, anyhow, is not an end but a tool to work with.

(2408)

Possessions—See Ambition.

POSSESSIONS, UNDESIRABLE

“The regular practise of the Christian is exceptional with the world,” says a writer in the Pacific Monthly.

“Out in Kansas when the bottom dropt out of the great boom in real estate some years ago, men found it harder to get rid of property than to acquire it. A lawyer going through the country one day met an old friend leading a reluctant cow toward town. Inquiry brought out the information that the cow had been secured in exchange for a city lot. ‘And do you know,’ said the new owner of the bovine, ‘that I turned a neat trick on the old granger! He can’t read a word, and in the deed I worked off two lots on him instead of one.’”

(2409)

POSSIBILITIES, LATENT

The diamond unworn is still a diamond. And the power unused is not therefore less real, or less majestic. What men do, is by no means the measure of what they might do, if they used with a rational energy their powers.—Richard S. Storrs.

(2410)

Posthumous Blessing—See Revenge, A Christian’s.

POST-MORTEM CONSEQUENCES

The start of tuberculosis in France in a serious sense may be traced to the great importance of mummies and mummy-cases at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt, and this start gave the disease its first great foothold in Europe, whence it has spread all over the Eastern world and throughout the Western hemisphere as well. Dead bodies preserved in the manner peculiar to the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs are undoubtedly favorite lodging-places for the tubercular bacilli. (Text.)

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POVERTY

This letter was left by Miss Alice Law, aged 26, an editor employed by a local publishing firm in Chicago, who committed suicide by asphyxiation:

I am ending my life because I am seized with an acute disinclination to live, and I believe I have an absolute right to end my life if I wish. The struggle is too hard. There is too much work, too much monotony, too much weariness and not enough art, music, recreation and rest.

I am to change it. I am in my right mind. My reasoning powers are as good as ever. I go because I want to. The chief reason is because I am too near starved. Let the State pay my expenses. If I were blind, crippled or had an incurable disease the State would be obliged to take care of me. So I think I will take advantage of my rights and be buried at the public expense, as I have no money to defray the putting of me under ground.

The prices charged for a casket and burial are too exorbitant for persons in moderate circumstances. It just keeps the family in bankruptcy for a year. This condition is outrageous, and I do not want this injustice in my case.

Doubtless Christianity has achieved much, but in the light of such a revelation of suffering and despair, under conditions of modern life, there would seem yet much to do.

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At a dinner given in honor of Mr. Carnegie by the surviving members of the United States Military Telegraph Corps of the Civil War, he said:

Comrades, I was born in poverty, and would not exchange its sacred memories with the richest millionaire’s son who ever breathed. What does he know about mother or father? These are mere names to him. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness. What do they know about it? They know only one side; they imagine the other. I have lived both, and I know there is very little in wealth that can add to human happiness beyond the small comforts of life. Millionaires who laugh are very rare. My experience is that wealth is apt to take the smiles away. (Text.)

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The reason the Yankees are smart is because they have to wrest a precarious subsistence from a reluctant soil. “What shall I do to make my son get forward in the world?” asked an English lord of a bishop. “Give him poverty and parts.” Well, that’s the reason the sons of the Pilgrims have all got on in the world.—John R. Paxton.

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Poverty as a Stimulus—See Compensation in Trials.

POVERTY, CHRISTIAN

When before in history was there such an inexpensive order of preachers as these early helpers of Wesley? They laid up much treasure in heaven, but had very empty pockets on earth. One of them, John Lane, died at Epworth. His entire wardrobe was insufficient to pay his funeral expenses, which amounted to £1 17s. 3d. All the money he possest was 1s. 4d., “enough,” records Wesley briefly, “for any unmarried preacher of the gospel to leave to his executors.” (Text.)—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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POVERTY, EARLY, OF UNITED STATES

The present great wealth of this country forms a striking contrast to the facts given below:

So low were the funds in the public treasury of the United States at the close of 1789 that the Attorney-General and several Congressmen were indebted to the private credit of Alexander Hamilton, their Secretary of State, to discharge their personal expenses. President Washington was obliged to pass a note to Tobias Leer, his private secretary, to meet his household expenses, the note being discounted at the rate of two per cent per month, and members of Congress were paid in due-bills.

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Poverty to Wealth—See American Opportunity.

Power by Faith—See Faith and Power.

POWER CONTROLLED

These verses on the locomotive are from the New York Christian Advocate:

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Power from God—See Springs from God.

POWER IN SELF-REPRESSION

Says a recent journal:

Many years ago, in the lecture-room of President Woolsey, of Yale University, a young man who did not know his lesson ventured to make a mock recitation and to give an impertinent answer. The president was a man of fiery temper, tho it had been curbed and subdued by the discipline of years. On this occasion his face turned white; he bowed his head upon the desk before him. There was a half-minute’s silence of death; he raised his head, called upon another man, and the recitation went on. He knew that if he spoke to the offender he would speak too much, so he said nothing.

The students of that class knew well what a lava-flood was penned up there. Self-repression did not seem to them a sign of weakness—it was the greatest evidence of power.

Shall we call it a sign of weakness in God that he bears with the sins of men? When God humbles himself to behold and to forbear, shall we not see in this voluntary self-limitation one of the proofs of his greatness? (Text.)

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POWER, SUSPENDED

In the early spring of 1848 occurred a natural phenomenon so strange, so sudden, and so stupendous that the older inhabitants of western New York still speak of it with awe and wonder. This phenomenon was nothing less than the running dry of Niagara Falls.

The winter of 1847 and 1848 had been one of extreme severity. Ice of such thickness had never been known as formed on Lake Erie that season. When the break-up came, toward the end of March, a strong northeast wind was blowing, which piled the great fields of ice in floes, and then in banks as high as miniature icebergs. Toward night on March 30 the wind suddenly changed to the opposite direction and increased to a terrific gale, which hurled back the piled-up ice and drove it into the entrance of Niagara River with such force that a huge and almost impenetrable dam was formed. For a whole day the source of the river was stopt up, and the stream was drained of its supply. By the morning of the 31st the river was practically dry, and thus for twenty-four hours the roar of Niagara Falls was stilled. Then in the early morning of April 1, the ice-pack gave way under the tremendous pressure from above, and the long-restrained volume of water rushed down and reclaimed its own.

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POWER THROUGH UNION WITH GOD

It is only when we link ourselves with the power that lifts that we can accomplish results which are beyond our strength.

A great weight was to be lifted a little way out from the shore. Vain efforts had been made to bring it to the surface. Great chains had been wrapt about the mass and stout steam-tugs had puffed and strained without avail, and engines from the shore had exerted all their power with no result. A young man offered to raise the weight and he was told to try. A great flat barge was towed out over the sunken hulk, about which chains had been passed, and these were fastened to the barge. When the tide was out, the chains were wrapt still closer; then the young man sat down and waited. In the night the tide came in and the barge rose steadily with the incoming tide, bringing with it the burden to which it was chained. Higher and higher it rose, till at last it was out of the mud and mire. The seemingly impossible had been accomplished by linking the obstacle to the power of the tide. (Text.)

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POWER WITHIN

Men and churches often wait for outside help to draw them along. They need the lesson taught in this anecdote:

When an engineer in Bolivia brought over the Cordilleras the first locomotive ever seen in these latitudes, the native Indians came up from the Amazon basin to see this sight, and sat on their haunches discussing what this strange monster could be. They said: “It is made to go; let’s make it go”; and so they lassoed the buffers, and about thirty of them began to pull, and drew the locomotive a few yards. They exclaimed, “Ay-ay-ay-ay Tatai Tatito.” “The great and little father hath enabled us to do something wonderful!”

The next day the engineer got up steam and hitched a couple of cattle trucks to the locomotive and, when the Indians came again, put them into the trucks and locked them in. Then he stood on the fire-plate of the locomotive and opened the regulator, and let the steam into the cylinder, and it began to move the piston, and the piston the crank, and the crank the wheel, and the wheel the locomotive; and the locomotive carried the Indians along ten miles an hour! What did they not say to their “great and little father!” But they learned this great lesson—that locomotives are not made to be moved along by outside human power, but by means of a power within, and so to carry human beings along.

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Practicable and Impracticable—See Prediction, False.

PRACTICAL RESPONSES CLARIFY CONFUSION

The acquisition of definiteness and of coherency (or constancy) of meanings is derived primarily from practical activities. By rolling an object, the child makes its roundness appreciable; by bouncing it, he singles out its elasticity; by throwing it, he makes weight its conspicuous distinctive factor. Not through the senses, but by means of the reaction, the responsive adjustment, is the impression made distinctive, and given a character marked off from other qualities that call out unlike reactions. Children, for example, are usually quite slow in apprehending differences of color. Differences from the standpoint of the adult so glaring that it is impossible not to note them are recognized and recalled with great difficulty. Doubtless they do not all feel alike, but there is no intellectual recognition of what makes the difference. The redness or greenness or blueness of the object does not tend to call out a reaction that is sufficiently peculiar to give prominence or distinction to the color trait. Gradually, however, certain characteristic habitual responses associate themselves with certain things; the white becomes the sign, say, of milk and sugar to which the child reacts favorably; blue becomes the sign of a dress that the child likes to wear, and so on, and the distinctive reactions tend to single out color qualities from other things in which they had been submerged.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”

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PRACTICAL, THE

According to Mr. Bliss Perry, the greatest idealists are the most practical workers:

Take those men of the transcendental epoch, whose individuality has been fortunately transmitted to us through our literature. They were in love with life, enraptured of its opportunities and possibilities. No matter to what task a man set his hand, he could gain a livelihood without loss of self-respect or the respect of the community. Let him try teaching school, Emerson would advise; let him farm it a while, drive a tin-pedler’s cart for a season or two, keep store, go to Congress, live the “experimental life.” Emerson himself could muse upon the oversoul, but he also raised the best Baldwin apples and Bartlett pears in Concord, and got the highest current prices for them in the Boston market. His friend Thoreau supported himself by making sandpaper or lead-pencils, by surveying farms or by hoeing that immortal patch of beans; his true vocation being steadily that of the philosopher, the seeker. (Text.)—Atlantic Monthly.

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PRACTISE

No man ever yet learned by having somebody else learn for him. A man learns arithmetic by blunder in and blunder out, but at last he gets it. A man learns to write through scrawling; a man learns to swim by going into the water, and a man learns to vote by voting.—Henry Ward Beecher.

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“Did you know this telephone business has resulted in a telephone ear?” said a clerk whose work called him constantly to the telephone, according to The Tribune, New York. “I don’t mean that our hearing is injured, but that the left ear becomes more keen than the right. If you’ll notice, all the telephones are left-handed. That is, the instruments are so placed that we hold the receiver with the left hand, so that we may have the right hand free to use in taking notes of messages, I presume. Of course, one naturally claps the receiver to his left ear, as it would be almost impossible to twist it around to his right ear. Consequently, the left ear gradually becomes much sharper in catching sounds than the right ear. If you don’t believe it, just try holding the receiver in your right hand some time and use your right ear. You’ll find that conversation which was perfectly distinct to the left ear sounds confused and muffled to the right, and there is a distinct effort to understand. It is simply that the left ear is a trained telephone ear, while the right ear is not.” (Text.)

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Rubenstein—that thunderer of the keyboard—is credited with the following dictum: “If I do not practise for a day I know it; if I miss two days my friends know it; and if I miss three days the public knows it.” (Text.)

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PRACTISE AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING

Many children outside of the Sunday-school will learn the Bible from Christian parents or will study it for themselves; but there is no way, so far as I can conceive, of learning the industrial work of the church except in some such training-school as the young people’s society furnishes. For this work can be learned only by doing it. It can not be taught by text-books, or imparted by instruction. Like every other kind of industrial training, it must be gained by practise. The carpenter learns to build a house with saw and hammer and nails in hand, not by reading an elaborate treatise on housebuilding. The painter takes his easel and brush, and practises long and patiently, if he would be an artist; there is no other way. It is exactly the same with the necessary activities of church life. If the church is worth sustaining, if its work is to be done in the future, if we are to have prayer-meetings and missionary activities and an earnest religious life, if the Church is to be a power for good citizenship and righteous living, it must have some such industrial training-school.—Francis E. Clark, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1903.

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PRACTISE, GRADUATED

In drilling recruits for the Chinese army, each man is required to carry sand in his knapsack. For the first day he carries two ounces; on each succeeding day he increases this amount two ounces, until at last he is carrying sixteen pounds. These men can run at a dog-trot for ten consecutive hours and arrive at the end of that time in a fit condition for fighting.—Marshall P. Wilder, “Smiling ’Round the World.”

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Practising What They Preach—See Evil, Self-destructive.

PRAISE

Ruby T. Weyburn, in The Youth’s Companion, gives this fanciful origin of the music of praise:

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Perhaps in nothing connected with religious practise are opportunities more neglected than with regard to the praise of God. Multitudes who receive the bounties of Providence know nothing of the emotion of gratitude, and many awaken too late to a sense of their own ingratitude.

Billy Bray, the Cornish preacher, was a constant visitor among the sick and dying. On one occasion he was sitting by the bedside of a Christian brother who had always been very reticent and afraid to confess joyously his faith in Christ. Now, however, he was filled with gladness. Turning to Billy, whose beaming face and sunny words had done much to produce this joy, he said, “Oh, Mr. Bray, I am so happy that if I had the power I’d shout ‘Glory.’” “Ah, mon,” said Billy, “what a pity it was thee didn’t shout ‘Glory’ when thee hadst the power.” (Text.)

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See Thanksgiving.

PRAISE DEPENDENT ON SUCCESS

Toward the close of his second administration, Grant thus reviewed, in a private conversation with Henry Clay Trumbull, the criticisms of his public career:

I don’t wonder that people differ with me, and that they think I am not doing the best that could be done. I can understand how they may blame me for a lack of knowledge or judgment. But what hurts me is to have them talk as if I didn’t love my country and wasn’t doing the best I knew how. It was just that way in war-time. I didn’t do as well as might have been done. A great many times I didn’t do as well as I was trying to do. Often I didn’t do as well as I expected to do. But I had my plans and was trying to carry them out. They called me “fool” and “butcher.” They said I didn’t know anything and hadn’t any plans. But I kept on and kept on, and by and by Richmond was taken, and I was at Appomattox Court House, and then they couldn’t find words enough to praise me. I suppose it will be so now. In spite of mistakes and failures I shall keep at it. By and by we’ll have specie payments resumed, reconstruction will be complete, good feeling will be restored between North and South; we shall be at Appomattox again, and then I suppose they’ll praise me.

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Praise Helpful—See Encouragement.

Praise, Judicious—See Heart-hunger, Satisfying.

PRAISE, SEEKING

A delicate woman, without children, and married to a superior but occupied and preoccupied man, suffered intensely when her husband neither perceived nor commented upon a new costume, or upon some ornament she had added to the drawing-room. Never a word of praise escaped his lips. One day she told him the sorrow this caused her. “But what do you want?” he replied, distrest. “I don’t know how to observe such things. What must I do?”

The wife reflected a moment, and then the two arranged that when there was anything unusual the wife was to make him a certain sign. His attention called, he would then understand, look, and admire. “And now I am satisfied,” she said, a little ashamed of her childishness. “What he says will not be spontaneous, I know, and yet I shall be pleased to hear it; it will brighten my life.”

This absurd, and yet touching incident reveals a state of mind that certain natures can not understand, but which is, nevertheless, more common than we think.—Dora Melegari, “Makers of Sorrow and Makers of Joy.”

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PRAISE-SPIRIT, THE

When Epictetus was a boy and a slave his angry master twisted his leg in an instrument of torture until it broke.

“Do you think,” he says after he has worked out his philosophy of contentment, “that because my soul happens to have one little lame leg I am to find fault with God’s universe? Ought we not when we dig, and when we plow, and when we eat, to sing this hymn to God, because He hath given us these implements whereby we may till the soil? Great is God because He hath given us hands, and the means of nourishment and food; and insensible growth, and breathing sleep; these things we ought to hymn, because He hath given us the power to appreciate these blessings and continuously to use them. And, since the most of you are blinded, ought there not to be one to fulfil this song for you, and on behalf of all to sing a hymn of happiness to God? And what else can I do, who am a lame old man, except sing praises to God?”

This was the epitaph given him: “Epictetus, a slave maimed in body, a beggar through poverty, and dear unto the immortals.” (Text.)

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PRAISE, TIMELY

Mrs. Marion Hutson indicates in this verse the desirability of praising the worthy while they are alive to appreciate it:

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PRAISE, UNITED

The British Government at great cost is causing the national anthem to be translated into the languages of India, including Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Bengali, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Kavarese, Marathi, Gugerati, Tunjabi, Malay, Taniel, Tilugu, Singhalese and Burmese, so that the natives in their jungles may unite in “God Save the King” on all important occasions.

We have a greater spectacle described in Rev. 5:9–13, where the unity of praise includes all the tongues and nations of the earth.

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PRAISE, UNNECESSARY

An interesting story in regard to General Miles comes from a recent encampment of the Grand Army at San Francisco, and is published in The Saturday Evening Post. The General, while being entertained at a club, was rallied good-humoredly by an old-time comrade for his failure to win a laudatory “send-off” in his retirement papers.

“In reply to that,” remarked General Miles, “let me tell a story. The application may seem a trifle egotistical, but as the story is a good one, I’ll venture it.

“In the early days of the West an itinerant preacher, stopping for refreshment one day at the pioneer home of one of his parishioners, was served, among other things, with apple-pie. It was not a good pie. The crust was heavy and sour, but the encomiums which that preacher heaped upon it were great. The good wife knew that she had had bad luck with the baking, and as she was in reality an excellent cook, she determined that the next time that preacher came her way he should have a pie that was faultless.

“He told her when he was to return, and on that day she set before him an apple-pie that was the real thing. He ate it, but to her astonishment vouchsafed not a word of commendation. This was more than the housewife would stand.

“‘Brother,’ she exclaimed, ‘when you were here last you ate an apple-pie that wasn’t more than half-baked, and you praised it to the skies. Now you have eaten a pie that nobody needs to be ashamed of, but you haven’t a word to say in its favor. I can’t understand it.’

“‘My good sister,’ replied the preacher, ‘that pie you served me a few days ago was sadly in need of praise, and I did my full duty in that direction; but this fine pie, bless your heart, does not require any eulogy.’”

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Praising Rival—See Self-estimate.

PRAYER

Many prayers that fail would be answered if means were used by the petitioner like those employed by Paul Kruger, the former president of the South African Republic.

At one time, when game was very scarce, he went with a party to hunt the hartbeest. They scoured the veld for days without a sign for their prey. Paul Kruger announced then his purpose of going into the hills to pray for food, like a patriarch of old.

He was gone for a number of hours. When he returned he announced that in three days a large herd would pass that way. The party camped. In less than the appointed time the prophecy was fulfilled, and much game was secured. The Boer hunters were much struck with wonder, and dubbed Kruger “the man of prayer.”

Some time after, the Kafir who accompanied Kruger on his expedition of petition told the truth of the affair. Kruger, when he left the hunting party, had struck out for a neighboring Kafir kraal, and informed the natives that his men were starving. If they, the natives, did not discover game in three days, he said, he would bring his whole party over the hill and kill every Kafir. The natives, being sore afraid of the Boer methods, all turned out, scoured the region, and drove the game to the Boer camp. Thus Kruger’s “prayer” was answered.

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Stonewall Jackson never failed to invoke the Prince of Peace to preside over his battles. Old Jim, his faithful servant, said:

“De gen’al is de greates’ man fo’ prayin’ night an’ mornin’ an’ all times. But when I sees him git up sev’al times in de night, besides, an’ start in prayin’, I knows dar’s gwine ter be semp’n up, an’ I go straight an’ pack his haversack, ca’se I know he’ll be callin’ for it ’fo’ daylight.”—The Sunday Magazine.

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The tenor of Scripture is that if we are in tune with the divine mind, and so are receptive of the secret whispers and suggestions of the Spirit of God, then that Spirit will first inspire in us the prayers which our Heavenly Father can consistently answer.

Every prayer is a transaction with order. You go home with a packet of seeds for your little girl, and you take her out, and say: “This little plot shall be yours. Whatever comes of this packet of seeds shall be yours.” Now, what can come of a penny packet of seeds in all this infinite universe, with stars and systems whirling round? Beauty can come of it! Life can come of it! Why? Because your little gardener is transacting with order. She is dealing with law, and law will deal with her, and out of the seed she sows there shall come beauty to gladden her. When she kneels an hour or two later, and breathes forth from a pure heart a prayer to the eternal God for blessing upon herself and you, will you say, “What good can come of it?” Good can come of it! Good must come of it! She comes to where law rules, where right is triumphant. Prayer is not a dip into a lucky bag. It is dealing with eternal law. (Text.)

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See Earth, Cry of; Faith and Prayer; Prejudice Disarmed.

Prayer, A Child’s—See Children’s Religious Ideas.

PRAYER AND DEED

A farmer whose barns were full of corn, was accustomed to pray that the wants of the needy might be supplied; but when any one in needy circumstances asked for a little of his corn, he said he had none to spare. One day, after hearing his father pray for the poor and needy, his little son said to him, “Father, I wish I had your corn.” “Why, my son, what would you do with it?” asked the father. The child replied, “I would answer your prayers.”

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PRAYER AND EFFORT

A pastor tells of a man who had been caught on the river in a sudden break-up of the ice, and who himself expected to be drowned, and whose neighbors had given him up as lost. The man had thrown himself on his knees on one of the pieces of ice, and was engaged in what he supposed was his last prayer on earth, when his friends on shore noticed that the pieces of ice had readjusted themselves so as to make a safe way from where he was kneeling to the land. They lifted their voices and shouted to the poor man to stop praying and run to the shore. He opened his eyes, saw his opportunity and was saved. Prayer and deeds must go hand in hand.

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Governor William E. Russell, of Massachusetts, who died at the age of thirty-nine, but had in that short life been mayor of his city and governor of his State, and had gained national fame, early began to think and act right. As a schoolboy, when boating with five companions, his craft was overturned and he swam a mile to shore. Asked by his mother about his struggle to reach land, he said, “I thought of you, prayed to God, and kept my arms and legs in stroke.” (Text.)

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Prayer and Guides—See Blessing the Ropes.

PRAYER AND THE BODY

In the shadow, unseen, keeping watch above his own, is the genius of the inventor. The earth gives iron, the sheep give their wool, the soil gives the dyes, the steel gives the shuttles, the spinner gives his fingers, but Arkwright and Jenner explain the warm cloth against the snow and chill of winter. Nature is a loom, the days and the nights are shuttles, the sunbeams tint the texture, forests and mines, herds and flocks furnish the threads, and the cloth of purple and gold is brilliant with towns and cities—but God is the weaver of the web. And if man with higher laws can set aside lower ones, if man with an X-ray can make the body transparent, think you that the great God by His influence upon man’s intellect and imagination can not start influences spiritual that will soon manifest themselves through man’s body upon forces that are physical? If man were spirit, and spirit alone, prayer could not be answered in a physical realm, because there would be no point of connection between a spiritual being and a physical universe. But man’s body is the medium of communication, and the God of spirit moving upon the spirit of man acts through the body of inventor, scientist, surgeon, sower, reaper, nurse, teacher, statesman, and plays upon these delicate strings called the forces of nature and so answers prayer.—N. D. Hillis.

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PRAYER ANSWERED

A penitentiary convict had been converted, and was released from prison in Chicago. He found it impossible to get work. He woke in the night, and arose and prayed for help. He prayed till daylight, crying in agony, “Oh, God, give a poor fellow a chance!” Then he drest and went out again to hunt work. Presently he heard a cry and saw a runaway horse coming down toward him. He snatched up a cracker-box and smashed it on the horse’s face. Then he seized the bridle and stopt him, tho he was dragged some distance; and in the crowd gathering about him was the father of the children in the carriage, and he was the man God sent to “give the poor fellow a chance.”—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. How many of us really expect an answer to our prayers? How many of us wait for God as they who wait on the morning? Yet it is this expectant attitude of the soul resting upon the divine promise that triumphs over hindrances. There is an example of this in the life of Charles Kingsley. When a young man, he had become engaged to a beautiful girl to whom he had given his whole love. But her parents deemed him an unsuitable match, and they forbade absolutely all communication between the two young people for two years, which were to Kingsley the darkest and most terrible in his life. But in his diary he tells us that during that period he lived on one verse, Mark 11:24, “Therefore I say unto you what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Before the two years were over, Kingsley’s prayer was answered, and the girl became his wife.—Donald Sage Mackay, “The Religion of the Threshold,” page 296.

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PRAYER, AVAILING

In the first parish where I labored lived a man who was not only agnostic in his attitude toward things religious, but even derided them, and was wont to chaff his wife on her devotion to her Church. The wife, however, went on her quiet but earnest way, living out her religion in the home. One morning very early the husband awoke and discovered his wife beside his bed absorbed in whispered prayer. Her pale, upturned face was fixt with intensity upon the Invisible, and her warm hand was resting upon his own, she supposing him to be asleep. As the husband’s eyes opened on the unexpected scene, the suggestion came like a flash to his soul, “My wife’s God is more real to her than her husband is. If she is so earnest for my welfare as to rise at such an hour and pray alone for me, it is time I had some care for my own soul”; and he instantly arose from his bed, knelt beside her and added his own prayer to hers. He gave his heart to God on the spot, and that very morning came to the early meeting at the church and announced his change of heart; the next Sabbath he united with the Church.—H. C. Mabie, “Methods in Evangelism.”

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PRAYER BY GREAT LEADERS

The following is from The Saturday Evening Post:

At the critical hours of American history when the noonday sky was midnight and the atmosphere saturated with murk—where do we find our great American leaders unable by human eyes to see before them? We find them, do we not? on their knees beseeching divine guidance and groping for a clasp of the Unseen Hand which would lead them and this people into the light again. The whole winter of the American troops at Valley Forge is an historical panorama of heroism, self-denial, and sacrifice. Yet every noble incident of that season of doom and dread furnishes but details of the background for the great central picture which the American mind loves to dwell upon—Washington on his knees at Valley Forge. It was Lincoln who in 1864 declared: “God bless the churches, and blest be God who in this hour giveth us the churches.” And Washington, in 1789, immediately after he was made the first President of the republic, wrote to the bishops of the Methodist Church:

“I trust the people of every denomination will have occasion to be convinced that I shall always strive to prove a faithful and impartial patron of genuine, vital religion.... I take in the kindest part the promise you make of presenting your prayers at the throne of grace for me, and that I likewise implore the divine benediction on yourself and your religious community.”

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PRAYER, CONVINCING

George W. Coleman, in his book “Searchlights,” says:

One of my ministerial friends, who has resigned his pulpit because of his out-and-out socialistic views, naturally stirred up a good deal of angry opposition in some quarters, altho he has one of the sweetest characters I have ever known. Hateful and contemptuous things were said. There was much damning with faint praise, especially among former friends.

A level-headed friend of mine, a woman of sixty years or thereabouts, heard something of the commotion, and, to satisfy her curiosity, dropt into the church one Sunday to hear for herself what the minister really had to say for his peculiar and unpopular views. When I met her soon afterward, her only comment was, “Well, I have only to say that a man who can pray like that can’t go very far wrong, whether its socialism or anything else.”

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PRAYER FOR COMMON NEEDS

Mrs. Scranton, a missionary in Korea, writes in the Bible Society’s Reporter of a Korean Christian woman whose reply to a neighbor was a beautiful testimony to her faithfulness in prayer:

The neighbor said she could not pray—she had no time, and furthermore she had no skill with her lips. The Christian replied, “Am I not a busy woman, and yet I pray. When I get up in the morning I say, ‘My Heavenly Father, You have given me these garments with which I clothe my naked body. Without them I should be ashamed. Now please clothe my soul that it may never be ashamed or afraid.’ When I wash my face and hands I pray that I may be made clean inside as well as outside. I make the fire; and if I put on much wood it burns brightly, and I ask that the Holy Spirit may kindle just such a fire in my heart. Then I sweep the room and I say, ‘Please sweep away all the bad there is in and around me.’ When I cook the rice I pray that heavenly food may be given to my soul to keep it from starving to death.” Has not this woman learned the secret of prayer?

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PRAYER FOR OTHERS

James Whitcomb Riley writes this altruistic prayer:

(2450)

Prayer for the Devil—See Readiness in Retort.

PRAYER IN SECRET

After I became interested in religion, in seeking a place for retirement for my secret devotions, I thought of a large closet out of the spare chamber. That closet was a place where my mother kept her blankets, comforters and various kinds of bed-clothes. It was large and without a window. When the door was shut it was total darkness; no eye but that of Him who “seeth in secret” could behold any one who there sought retirement from the world.

In that closet I erected my altar for secret prayer. It was my Bethel; and none but God can ever know the Bethel seasons I there enjoyed in communing with the Savior in that time of my first love, and until I left my home to prepare for the work of the gospel ministry. (Text.)—Asa Bullard, “Incidents in a Busy Life.”

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See Service, Unseen.

PRAYER MEDIA

The ether is the medium not only of light, electric and other force-vibrations, but of thought-vibrations also. The two souls at the ends of the two thousand miles of distance are something like two wireless telegraphic stations. One sends up its cry for help, its prayer-vibration, into the ether; the whole celestial hemisphere quivers with that cry, that soul-vibration. The soul of the friend at this end of the line, being sympathetic, or keyed in unison, picks out of the ether its own; it hears and reads the cry of the beloved soul yonder, and sends back, through the ether, its answer of comforting thought and suggestion. Now, grant that that sort of thing is a fact in human experience, and we have what is very nearly a demonstration of the possibility and nature of prayer. If two human souls can hear and answer each other irrespective of space and time, then the human soul and the divine soul can do likewise. We have only to think God immanent in the universal ether, filling it as a soul fills the body, and our case is complete.—James H. Ecob.

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Prayer-meeting Maintained—See Immigration.

Prayer Only in Name—See Diplomacy, Cowardly.

Prayer, Power of—See Persecution and Prayer.

PRAYER, TAKING TIME FOR

“One might as well rush into the street unclothed,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “because he had no time to dress, or into battle unarmed because he had no time to secure his weapons, as to go forth to the experiences of any day without taking time to pray.”

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PRAYER, THE CALL TO

The call to prayer heard from minarets five times daily in all Moslem lands is as follows: The muezzin cries it in a loud voice and always in the Arabic language: “God is most great! God is most great! God is most great! God is most great! I testify that there is no god but God! I testify that there is no god but God! I testify that Mohammed is the apostle of God! I testify that Mohammed is the apostle of God! Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! Come to prosperity! God is most great! God is most great! There is no god but God!” In the call to early morning prayer the words “prayer is better than sleep” are added twice after the call to prosperity. (Text.)—Samuel M. Zwemer, “The Moslem World.”

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PRAYER, VIEWS OF

The Christian conception of prayer is “enter into thine inner chamber and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.”

With the Moslems the first requirement of correct prayer is that it be in the right direction; that is, toward the Kaaba at Mecca. Because of this, private houses, as well as mosques, all over the Mohammedan world, are built accordingly, and not on meridian lines. It is often pathetic to hear a wayfarer or a Moslem who travels on an ocean steamer ask which is the proper direction to turn at the hour of prayer. To pray with one’s back to Mecca would be unpardonable. Many Moslems carry a pocket-compass on their journeys to avoid all possible errors of this character. (Text.)—Samuel M. Zwemer, “The Moslem World.”

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PRAYERS

Mr. Keppel in his book “Christmas in Art,” tells this story:

I remember a touching little incident which occurred in New York. My dear old mother, who was a Methodist, had died, and our kindly Irish cook prayed twice daily for the repose of the old woman’s soul. A Catholic friend of the cook’s told her that it was wrong to pray for a deceased heretic, and the cook carried the question to her father-confessor. The good priest’s decision was in this wise: “My daughter, I can not tell you whether such prayers can do good to the soul of a deceased heretic—but your prayers will certainly do good to your own soul.”

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Prayers Unanswered—See Faith, Steadfast.

PREACHING

Whitefield was just twenty-one when he received deacon’s orders, and he at once leapt into fame as a preacher. “I intended to make 150 sermons,” he says, “and thought I would set up with a good stock-in-trade.” As a matter of fact, this greatest of English preachers only possest a single sermon when he began his preaching career. In his humility he put his first and solitary discourse into the hands of a friendly clergyman, to show how unprepared for the work of the pulpit he was. The clergyman used one-half of the sermon at his morning service, and the other half at his evening service, and returned it to its astonished author with a guinea by way of payment.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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See Consecration; Education to be Prized; Speech, Common.

Preaching, Call To—See Influence, Individual.

PREACHING CHRIST

Some man went to hear Spurgeon preach one day, and when he came back to his friend’s house, his friend asked him: “What do you think of Spurgeon?” He replied: “Nothing at all.” The friend in amazement repeated his question, and again the answer was: “I do not think anything of him at all,” and then he brushed away some moisture in his eyes and added: “But I never can forget his Savior.”—Cortland Myers.

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Preaching, Fearless—See Fitness.

PREACHING FROM MANUSCRIPT

One year I invited the pastor of a great church in Cincinnati, and he came, and he spoke on Sunday morning. He pulled out a forty-page manuscript and stood there and read the gospel for a whole hour, and those good country people never saw it done before, and when they adjourned for dinner they got under the trees and talked about the proceedings. They said, “What do you think of that letter from Cincinnati?” And I never see a fellow pull his manuscript now that I don’t wonder where that letter is from.—“Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones.”

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PREACHING, GOSPEL

I have seen an advertisement reading thus: “If the druggist says, ‘We haven’t Brown’s soap, but here is something just as good,’ don’t take it! Go somewhere else.” The Church is in business, and Church attendance is controlled by business principles. The man who drops in wants the gospel, nothing else will answer, and he can not be expected to continue dropping in unless he gets it.—David James Burrell.

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Preaching Occasions—See Opportunities Improved.

PREACHING, RESPONSIBILITY IN

Those who have inadequate views of their responsibility in preparing to preach the gospel ought to be impressively reminded of their failure in this respect, as was a moderate minister, who was a keen fisher, when he said to Dr. Andrew Thompson: “I wonder you spend so much time on your sermons, with your ability and ready speech. Many’s the time I’ve written a sermon and killed a salmon before breakfast.” To which saying Dr. Thompson replied, “Well, sir, I’d rather have eaten your salmon than listened to your sermon.”

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Preaching, Roosevelt’s—See Speaking to do Good.

Preaching Spoiled—See Sympathy, Lack of.

PREACHING THE WORD

When Dr. Cuyler, of Brooklyn, died, the Sunday-school remembered that he used to come in every now and then during the years of his history, and repeat just a single verse from the superintendent’s desk; and the next Lord’s Day after the funeral, they marched up in front of it in a long line, and each scholar quoted any of the texts that he could recollect. The grown people wept as they saw how much there was of the Bible in the hearts of their children, which this one pastor had planted. Yet he was a very timid and old-fashioned man; he said he had no gift at talking to children; he could only repeat God’s Word. If preachers and teachers would follow such a simple example, what a power there would be in their ministrations. (Text.)

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PRECAUTION

A California vine-grower, in a region where once in a great while the temperature fell a few degrees below the freezing-point, thus endangering his crop, rigged up an electric-alarm system which signalled to him when the temperature out in the fields had fallen low enough to require the lighting of fires to prevent frost. A neighbor, more fond of his ease, immediately improved on this apparatus. He fixt his brushwood ready for firing, and then arranged his electrical apparatus so that when the temperature fell to thirty-two degrees a current should be sent through a platinum wire in some fine combustibles and light the fires, instead of signaling him to do the work himself. The apparatus is cheap and more reliable than hired men, so that it is likely to be adopted in the parts of the state exposed to inopportune frosts.—Philadelphia Ledger.

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Justice Willes about 1780 sentenced a boy at Lancaster to be hanged, with the hope of reforming him by frightening him, and he ordered him for execution next morning. The judge awoke in the middle of the night, and was so affected by the notion that he might himself die in the course of the night, and the boy be hanged, tho he did mean that he should suffer, that he got out of his bed and went to the lodgings of the high sheriff, and left a reprieve for the boy, or what was to be considered equivalent to it, and then, returning to his bed, spent the rest of the night comfortably. (Text.)—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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PRECAUTIONS

The day when an engineer could drive his train ahead at full speed, at his own discretion, and make up as much lost time as the recklessness of his daring permitted, has passed with the romantic age of railroading. No longer does he gamble thus with death to win back minutes. A cool-nerved human machine sits in an office miles away and tells him exactly how fast he may go. Mute signals stretch out their arms to him by day or glow red-eyed at night along the track and halt him if he rides too fast or if there is danger ahead. At intervals of from a thousand feet to five miles there are towers with men in them who note the minute and second of his passing, and telegraph it forward and back over the line. Nowadays the engineer is rarely out of touch with possible orders for more than a few minutes at a time. In place of the daring and the old speed madness that used to characterize the making up of time, the man who lasts the longest now in the cab is the one who possesses the calculating skill developed by long experience. He accomplishes much more simply by taking advantage of every trifle in winning back his time second by second.—Thaddeus S. Dayton, Harper’s Weekly.

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It is said to be scarcely possible to induce working men engaged in dangerous employments to take the most rudimentary precautions against disease and accident. The knife-grinder neglects his mask, the collier his lamp; they are ingenious in evading the regulations framed for their safety.

Similarly in our recklessness and presumption we ignore the things which are designed to secure the safety of our character, the peace of our soul. Let us be sure that we prize those manifold and gracious arrangements by which God seeks to save us from the power of evil, that we profit by them to the utmost.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

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Probably the greatest menace to the safety of navigation at sea is the fog. Modern steamships are seldom endangered by the severest storms, but when the impenetrable envelop of mist encloses a vessel, she is exposed to the most terrible of perils—a collision at sea. A single ship may be comparatively safe even in a fog, but when there are a fleet of vessels the danger is greatly multiplied. In addition to the customary fog-horns and sirens a fleet of war-ships often will keep informed of their relative positions by the firing of signal-guns from the flagship. Another excellent method generally employed is the use of the fog-buoy.

Each vessel in a warship fleet carries a fog-buoy, a large cask painted a bright red. This is cast overboard at the first sign of any fog and floats from the stern of the vessel attached by a rope of grass fiber which does not sink beneath the surface of the water. Sufficient rope is paid out by each vessel, so that its fog-buoy floats at the bow of the ship next astern—two cable’s-length (four hundred yards) when in close order and double that distance in open order. By this means the exact stations of the individual ships of a fleet are maintained even tho proceeding at a moderate rate of speed.—Harper’s Weekly.

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PRECAUTIONS, SCIENTIFIC

The teller of a bank standing behind his window in these days of electricity can touch a push-button close to his hand and close the door of every safe in the place before a thief could have time to operate, and by the same signal he can call the police or give the alarm to all the bank officials.

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PRECEPT AND PRACTISE

One of the great railroad companies has begun a campaign against the use of tobacco by its employees, and, while none are to be discharged because they indulge in it, they are requested to break the habit if possible. This may be a good thing, but example speaks louder than precept; if the officers want the employees to abandon smoking and chewing, the reform ought to begin in the president’s office and go down all along the line until it reaches the trackmen and laborers. A well-known railroad executive, now deceased, said it was of no use to preach temperance to railroad employees if officers’ special cars ran over the road with wines and liquors on board to be consumed en route. He set an example by keeping intoxicants out of his car even when he had guests.—Manufacturers’ Record.

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(2470)

Preciseness Overdone—See Scruples, Minute.

Precision—See Ahead of Circumstances.

PRECOCITY

Precocity is not always a cerebral disease, certainly, tho where it is pronounced the presumption is not in its favor. Slower growths are the surer and attain the greater heights. Usually precocity wants a depth which is not supplied to the subject in more mature years. With the comparatively few exceptions that can be noted, it lacks staying power. The most remarkable case of collapsed precocity that occurs to us is that of the Englishman Betty, the “young Roscius.” He went on the stage at the age of twelve years in 1803, played Hamlet and other prominent characters, and in four years amassed a fortune of over $150,000, at a time when money was worth twice its present face value. For twenty-eight nights in Drury Lane he earned over $3,000 a night. He left the stage to go to school, and on his return, three years later, made an utter failure and never amounted to anything as an actor thereafter.—New York World.

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It is said of Jonathan Edwards that he commenced the study of Latin at six years of age; at eight he was keenly interested in spiritual matters. At ten he wrote, like a philosopher, a quaint and humorous essay on the immortality of the soul, and at twelve years of age wrote an original paper on the habits of the flying-spider.

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Of Mrs. Wesley’s father it is gravely recorded that “when about five or six years old he began a practise, which he afterward continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible.” The phenomenon of a child not six years old who solemnly forms, in the cells of his infantile brain, the plan of reading twenty chapters of the Bible every day—and sticks to it through a long life—would in these modern days be reckoned nothing less than astonishing. Of Hetty Wesley, the sister of John, it is on record that at eight years of age she could read the Greek Testament. Do any such wonderful children exist in these days?—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

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See Prodigy, A.

PREDICTION, FALSE

Mr. James A. Briggs cites a paragraph from the Boston Courier of June 27, 1827, then edited by Joseph T. Buckingham, one of the ablest and most liberal of New England editors. It was but sixty-two years ago that he thus spoke of the projected railroad from Boston to Albany:

Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog’s tail that quidnuncs might not become extinct from want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moves one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up a project for a railroad from Boston to Albany—a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be impracticable and at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts; and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon.

The road was built, and there is no more prosperous road in the country.—Harper’s Weekly.

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Preferences—See Selection.

PREFERRED CREDITOR

An Israelite without guile, doing business down in Chatham Street, New York, called his creditors together, and offered them in settlement his note for ten per cent on their claims, payable in four months. His brother, one of the largest creditors, rather “kicked”; but the debtor took him aside and said, “Do not make any objections, and I will make you a preferred creditor.” So the proposal was accepted by all. Presently, the preferred brother said, “Well, I should like what is coming to me.” “Oh,” was the reply, “you won’t get anything; they won’t any of them get anything.” “But I thought I was a preferred creditor.” “So you are. These notes will not be paid when they come due; but it will take them four months to find out that they are not going to get anything. But you know it now; you see you are preferred.”—Heman L. Wayland.

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PREHISTORIC WOMAN

In the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons lies a famous skull. Discovered at Gibraltar many years ago, it has been agreed to be that of a human being of prehistoric times. Professor A. Keith, curator of the museum, has compared the skull minutely with those of the people of all nations to-day, and has set it side by side with all other available prehistoric relics. “The skull, I have little doubt, is that of a woman,” he said. “From the size of her brain she must have been shrewd—probably a woman, too, of considerable spirit. One can reckon pretty accurately also the time at which she lived. It must have been at least 600,000 years ago. From the jaws and the fact that the muscles of mastication were remarkably strong it is possible to deduce what this prehistoric woman ate. Nuts and roots probably entered very largely into her diet. She was in the habit of eating things which required a great amount of mastication before much nourishment could be derived from them, hence the unusual development of the jaw muscles.”