T

TABOOED TOPICS IN THE EAST

The greatest danger of falling into verbal sin, perhaps, is that missionaries talk upon topics which are tabooed. For instance, you meet a friend whose shop is next to a house that has burned down, and you congratulate him upon it. It is an awful mistake, a most ill-omened remark. When Dr. Nassau, of Gabun, met some children and tried to cultivate the friendship of their mothers, he began to count them, which was unfortunate to the last degree. One can not talk about death in many countries without giving great offense. There are many other topics that are tabooed, but they can be learned about from native teachers.—H. P. Beach, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.

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TACT

In 1747 Mr. John Brown was invited to become the pastor of a church at Hingham. There was but one opponent to his settlement, a man whom Mr. Brown won over by a stroke of good humor. He asked for the grounds of his opposition. “I like your person and your manner,” was the reply, “but your preaching, sir, I disapprove.” “Then,” said Mr. Brown, “we are agreed. I do not like my preaching very well myself, but how great a folly it is for you and me to set up our opinion against that of the whole parish.” The force of this reasoning appealed to the man, and he at once withdrew his objections.—The Argonaut.

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The impression that most people have regarding the life of kings and queens is that of everything in a costly and magnificent style. One of the admirable things about the life of King Edward VII at Sandringham Palace was its simplicity.

Court formality was laid aside and the king’s guests enjoyed themselves without restraint. As host and hostess King Edward and Queen Alexandra were notably hospitable, and the person who failed to enjoy himself at the royal table was indeed an unfortunate being. Many were the tales told about the king’s tact, as displayed toward his guests, not the least of which was one concerning the famous English sculptor, Alfred Gilbert. Gilbert received an invitation to Sandringham, and his servant, in the excitement of packing, omitted to put a pair of black shoes into his bag. When the sculptor arrived at the king’s residence he discovered, much to his dismay, that he must appear in tan shoes if he wished to attend dinner. His embarrassment was all the more keen because he was aware that the king disliked tan footgear. However, there was nothing for him to do but make the best of matters, and on the shoes went. In some mysterious manner word of Gilbert’s predicament reached the king’s ears, and when Edward appeared to greet his guest the latter was surprized to note that his host also wore tan shoes.

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At Bannockburn Lord Randolph Murray was being sorely prest by a large body of cavalry. Sir James Douglas got leave from Bruce to go to his aid, but just as he came up he found the English in disorder, and many horses galloping away with empty saddles. “Halt!” he cried to his men; “These brave men have already repulsed the enemy; let us not diminish their glory by seeking to share it.”—William Moodie.

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Colonel Nicholas Smith, in “Grant the Man of Mystery,” says:

Grant is often called “The Silent Man.” While he wrote with fluency and with great rapidity, it was difficult for him to express himself extemporaneously until after his Presidential career, and many interesting stories are told of his attempts to talk. A large body of ministers once called upon him and made a long address, to which he was compelled to reply. After a sentence or two, Mr. Fish noticed that his voice faltered, and fearing that he might be at a loss what to say, the secretary, standing next to him, caused a diversion by beginning to cough violently. The President afterward said to Mr. Fish, “How fortunate it was for me that you had that cough, as I had felt my knees begin to shake. I do not think that I could have spoken another word.”

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We may please and help and comfort the very same persons whom we may by different treatment irritate, bringing out the worst where we might with tact bring out the best that is in them. You take a piece of ribbon-grass and rub it from end to end and admire its velvet smoothness; but as you then rub it the other way you find it is pricking you as if malignantly. And one of the mysteries of electricity is that the same magnet with which you can attract by presenting one pole will repel if you present the other. (Text.)

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TACT, LACK OF

The natural effect of a lack of tact is seen in the man described below, who used the means to offend the very person who was to decide his fate.

Under no circumstances can a missionary, worthy of the name, be ever induced to say anything that would wound the susceptibilities or grieve the heart of one of his heathen or Mohammedan auditors. That is not necessary. They tell the story of a judge in Aleppo. He had but one eye. A person was condemned to prison, as he thought, unjustly. He rose before the judge and said: “Oh, one-eyed judge, I am imprisoned here on a false accusation; and I tell you, oh, one-eyed judge, that this man who has testified against me has received a bribe; and oh, one-eyed judge, if I do not get justice, I will report this case to the pasha; and if the pasha do not do justice, oh, one-eyed judge, I will report it to the sultan himself.” The judge rose from his seat in a rage and said: “Take the man back to prison. I won’t hear him plead before me and call me forever a one-eyed judge.”—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

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It is a good story which Chauncey M. Depew tells of a dinner that the late King Edward as Prince of Wales once gave in honor of James G. Blaine, on one of his visits to England before he had even been a candidate for the Presidency. The one disagreeable man at the dinner was a duke of the royal house, who had a reputation for lack of tact. During a lull in conversation he blurted out: “The greatest outrage in history was the revolt of your people against King George III. There was no justification for it then, and there is no excuse for it now.” The prince, according to Dr. Depew, was plainly embarrassed. The one man who had the tactfulness to carry off the situation was Mr. Blaine who, in a carefully-modulated voice replied: “Perhaps if George III had possest as much diplomacy as his great-grandson, America might still be English.” The Prince of Wales, after the subject was passed, gript Blaine’s hands with a twinkle of admiration.—Boston Transcript.

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Taint—See Impure Thoughts.

Talent Neglected—See Neglect of Duty.

Talent, Using the Best—See Advantage, Working to the Best.

TALENTS

Rev. G. Campbell Morgan tells this story:

Some years ago a woman came to me at the close of the Sunday morning service and said, “Oh, I would give anything to be in this work actively and actually. I would give anything to have some living part in the work that is going on here next week in winning men and women to Christ, but I do not know what to do.”

I said, “My sister, are you prepared to give the Master the five loaves and two fishes you possess?” She said, “I do not know that I have five loaves and two fishes.” I said, “Have you anything that you have used in any way specially?” “No,” she did not think she had. “Well,” I said, “can you sing?” Her reply was, “Yes, I sing at home, and I have sung before now in an entertainment.” “Well, now,” I said, “let us put our hand on that. Will you give the Lord your voice for the next ten days?” Said she, “I will.”

I shall never forget that Sunday evening. I asked her to sing, and she sang. She sang the gospel message with the voice she had, feeling that it was a poor, worthless thing, and that night there came out of the meeting into the inquiry room one man. That man said to me afterward that it was the gospel that was sung which reached his heart; and from that day to this—that is now eleven or twelve years ago—that man has been one of the mightiest workers for God in that city and country I have ever known. How was it done? A woman gave the Master what she had.—The Church Advocate.

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TALENTS, BURIED

Half a billion dollars is the value of the buried talent (hoarded money) of the United States, according to investigations made by the Federal Government, the conclusions of which recently were made public by Postmaster-General Meyer in The Woman’s World.

Even at the rate proposed for postal depository savings, 2 per cent, the idleness of the $500,000,000 costs its possessors $10,000,000, a sum equal to the entire public debt of the United States in 1839, and almost as much as the Government spends annually in maintenance of Indians.

However, money is accounted worth in business not less than 4 per cent, and very few securities, particularly in the West, earn less than 4 per cent. The basis of computation of the $20,000,000 annual loss caused by the safety-deposit sort of security was that rate. In the industrial world money—and the very money that is now “hoarded”—is worth more than 4 per cent. The money panic of 1907 never would have happened if the buried talent of $500,000,000 had been in circulation, according to financial authorities.

As the buried talent is loss financially, so it is in every domain of possibility. In the moral and spiritual life it is even worse; the disinclination to use becomes in time inability to use. (Text.)

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TALENTS DIFFER

Ralph Waldo Emerson teaches the lesson that everything is needed in its own place, in this quaint bit of verse:

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Tales That Won Fame—See Genius Can Not be Hidden.

Talk—See Club Wisdom.

TALKING AND SICKNESS

The Emmanuel movement in San Francisco, so far at least as it has to do with St. Luke’s Hospital, is a confest failure. The local experiment has lasted a year, and every effort, it is claimed, has been made to give the prescribed treatment a thorough test. The hospital’s psychopathic ward has been discontinued, and the clerical superintendent of the mental healing part of the institution, the Rev. A. P. Shields, D.D., has sent in his resignation. “It was found,” says Bishop Nichols, “impossible to secure beneficial results by placing patients in a psychopathic ward associated with a hospital. All the depressing influences of the hospital bore down upon them. The constant atmosphere of suffering made a cure impossible, and, finally, we were forced to the conclusion that we had failed.” This same reasoning condemns the cause of those people outside of hospitals who are always talking of disease and fatalities (unless it be distinctly for curative purposes in the case of disease), so helping to make the more depressive the depression of mental and nervous sufferers. There are well people who always, by their lugubrious manner or talk, carry about with them the atmosphere of the sick-room—who are simply walking hospitals.—The Observer.

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Taming Animals—See Kindness to Animals.

Tampering with Peril—See Temptation.

TASKS, THE REAL

When I was a boy I was set by my father to the task of dipping all the water out of a spring-hole in the hay-field. I performed the task faithfully, thinking that the object was to empty the hole. But the next day I was obliged to tell my father that the task had gone for nothing, as the hole was as full as ever. I had merely removed certain accumulated impurities, which was the real object of the work.

So we often toil with definite objects in view when all the while Providence is at work through us at a very different and always a more important task. We may be disappointed that we have not emptied the hole, or we may more wisely rejoice that we have freshened the spring.

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Taste and Propriety Violated—See Missionaries’ Mistakes.

Teacher, A Young—See Child Religion.

TEACHER, THE COMPETENT

I am reminded of a remark made to me recently by a gentleman in middle life, a very excellent carpenter, whom I saw watching my boys, twenty-four of them, at work making their first weld in the forging shop. He seemed intensely interested as he watched one of the young men at his work. I said: “You seem to like to see the boys work. Do you understand what they are doing?” “Yes,” said he, “I worked a year once in a blacksmith shop.” “Well,” said I, “then I suppose this operation of welding is a very simple matter to you.” “Not at all,” said he; “I never made a weld in my life. I never got a chance. I kindled the fire and blew the bellows, and I did some striking for other men; but they never let me try to make a weld.” Then he added, with a good deal of feeling, “These boys learn more in one week about the really essential art of forging than I learned in half a year.” And the secret of it is they have a thoroughly skilled workman who is competent both to teach and to demonstrate every principle involved.—Calvin M. Woodward, “Journal of the National Education Association,” 1905.

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TEACHER, THE IDEAL

Dr. Ernest Fox Nichols, the new president of Dartmouth College, gives this bit of classic advice to teachers:

In twenty years of teaching and observation, I have become convinced of some things connected with teaching as a profession. No teacher can hope to inspire and lead young men to a level of aspiration above that on which he himself lives and does his work. Young men may reach higher levels, but not by his aid. The man in whose mind truth has become formal and passive ought not to teach. What youth needs to see is knowledge in action, moving forward toward some worthy end. In nobody’s mind should it be possible to confuse intellectual with ineffectual. Let it not be said:

It ought to be impossible, even in satire, to say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

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TEACHER, THE IDEAL, AT WORK

In the photographic studio it is not enough to have a favorable light, expensive lenses, and the latest arrangement of shutters and slides. It is not enough to have fair women and brave men before the camera. It is not enough to have a perfect plate, ready to respond to the faintest ray of light; there must also be a skilled operator, who shall moderate the glare, arrange the shadows, measure the distance, adjust the instrument, calculate the exposure, pose the sitters, engage the attention, and at the psychologico-photographic moment spring the shutter.

In like fashion the artist-teacher deals with his carefully sensitized pupil as he prepares to take a picture worth developing. Deftly he arranges each detail and improves every condition; then he unveils before him some image of truth and beauty wrought by skilful hands and eagerly awaits the results. If he succeeds, he knows it without troublesome delay. He glances swiftly about his class, detecting here and there a pupil who responds, “his rapt soul sitting in his eyes”; and the instructor glows with the consciousness that his labors have not been in vain.—D. O. S. Lowell, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1905.

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TEACHERS, ALERTNESS OF

It is an interesting commentary on the earnestness and professional zeal of the teachers as a class, that they are in such large numbers willing to spend no inconsiderable portion of their summer vacation, and no small part of their scant earnings, in paying board, tuition, and incidentals at some summer watering-place to pursue their studies, brushing up neglected places in their education, and fitting themselves for higher and better work in their profession. Especially is this noticeable when we find them spending several weeks in close attendance upon the teaching and lectures of the most famous experts the country has produced, getting hints, and more than hints—principles—of the best methods of teaching the common-school studies.—Journal of Education.

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TEACHER’S FUNCTION, THE

You look into the face of a mirror, and an image is before you—more truthful, if less flattering, than that which the photographer produces. You pass on, and another comes and looks into the same mirror; but it tells no tales of you, revives no recollection. A thousand persons pass before the glass, and when the day is done, it is just as brilliant and just as vacant as when it made its first reflection. Do we desire a likeness that shall endure? Science must come to our aid with its camera and its chemicals; the image must be caught upon a sensitized plate or film and then fixt so it shall not fade.

In like manner the teacher may hold up a truth before an untrained pupil. It may be beautiful and inspiring, as reflected in the mirror of the pupil’s mind. He may understand it, assent to it, even enjoy it; but he may also forget it as he looks upon the next picture. To prevent such loss, it becomes the teacher’s function to see that his pupil’s mind is not a mere mirror from whose polished surface glide these bright images in swift succession, but a sensitized plate on which truths may be photographed and fixt. (Text.)—D. O. S. Lowell, “Proceedings of the Religious Education Association,” 1905.

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Teacher’s Kindness—See Effacement of Sins.

Teaching—See Negative Teaching.

Teaching Sympathetically—See Sympathy in Teaching.

TEACHING VERSUS PRACTISE

A Chinese legend tells of an old sage who sat at a fountain. The three founders of the principal religions of the land met him there looking for an apostle to carry his message to men. Said he in explanation of the reason why he did not go himself and carry his own message: “I can not go because only the upper part of me is flesh and blood—the lower part is stone. I can talk but can not walk. I can teach virtue, but I can not follow its teaching.”

The legend seems to be a parabolic way of pointing out the well-known fact that it is far easier to preach than to practise.

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TEARS AND FEELING

The higher the pitch of refinement, the less the fall of tears. This is true of both sexes, but especially of men, and in men in proportion to the fulness of their manhood. Children, of whichever sex, cry at their own cross will, but the schoolboy will hardly shed tears when he is flogged; the young man is ashamed to weep when he is hurt by a fall, except into love; while the full-bearded adult has completely triumphed over feeling. All these statements are true with a difference among nations, due to climatic, historic, or other influences. One of the mysteries of tears is that tho, as the ministers of emotion, they start to assuage sorrow, yet when a mighty grief strikes us they withhold their relief. Petty troubles not only express themselves, but are garrulous; the great are silent from sore amazement. Friends, brothers, sisters and children can weep over the pallid face, but the wife or mother looks on her dead with wild, unmoistened eyes. Niobe is turned into stone; and, most dreadful of all, she is conscious that she has been petrified to her inmost soul.—J. T. L. Preston, Atlantic Monthly.

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TEARS, POWER OF

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Technical Education, The Effect of—See Education, Higher.

TECHNICALITIES

Lord Clarendon, in describing the fire in the Temple, London, in 1666, says: “The Lord Mayor, tho a very honest man, was much blamed for want of sagacity in the first night of the fire, before the wind gave it much advancement. When men who were less terrified with the object prest him very earnestly that he would give orders for the present pulling down those houses which were nearest, and by which the fire climbed to go further, the doing whereof at that time might probably have prevented much of the mischief that succeeded, he thought it not safe, and made no other answer than that he durst not do it without the consent of the owners. His want of skill was the less wondered at when it was known afterward that some gentlemen of the Inner Temple would not endeavor to preserve the goods which were in the lodgings of absent persons, because they said it was against the law to break up any man’s chamber.”—Croake James, “Curiosities of Law and Lawyers.”

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Teeth, The Value of Good—See Assimilation.

Teleology—See Work Divinely Intended.

Telephone Possibilities Discredited—See Opportunity Lost.

Temperament—See Environment.

TEMPERANCE

That chronic alcoholism among the Russians may explain, in part, at least, some of the results of the war in Manchuria, is the editorial opinion of American Medicine. Says this paper:

On the Japanese side the reports are all of one tenor, and depict an almost universal abstinence. What drinking is done is in extreme moderation. Upon the Russian side we hear of immense stores of vodka, champagne by carload lots, and orgies innumerable. The Russian officer is notorious, by general report, of course, for the large quantities of alcohol he daily consumes, and it is impossible for any brain to submit to such insults without undergoing the changes long known to take place in heavy drinkers. It is not remarkable then that the older officers, who are managing the campaign, are constantly outwitted by the healthy-minded Japanese. (Text.)

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In April, 1838, William Martin knocked at Father Mathew’s door in obedience to a summons. The friar met him at the threshold, his handsome face radiant with kindness and good-nature.

“Welcome, Mr. Martin, welcome! I have sent for you to assist me in forming a temperance society in this neighborhood.”

“I knew it,” said the Quaker; “something seemed to tell me that thou would’st do it at last.”

“For long I could not see my way clearly to take up the question. I have been asked by several good men to take up the cause, and I feel I can no longer refuse. How are we to begin?”

They began with a little meeting in the friar’s school-room, when Father Mathew, after his address on temperance, said, “I will be the first to sign my name in the book which is on the table, and I hope we shall soon have it full.” He then approached the table; and, taking the pen, said in a loud voice, “Here goes, in the name of God!”

In three months from the day that Father Mathew signed the book “in the name of God,” the number on the roll was 25,000; in five months it rose to 131,000; in less than nine months it was 156,000.—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”

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John B. Gough, the temperance orator and reformer, asked that on his monument the following sentiment should be cut:

I can desire nothing better for this great country than that a barrier, high as heaven, should be raised between the unpolluted lips of the children and the intoxicating cup; that everywhere men and women should raise strong and determined hands against whatever will defile the body, pollute the mind, or harden the heart against God and His truth.

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See Abstainers Live Long; Drink, Peril of; Longevity Accounted for; Personal Influence.

Temperance and Prosperity—See Prohibition.

TEMPERANCE IN THE PRESS

So far as their advertising sections are concerned, our great magazines are rapidly “going dry,” asserts the Sunday-school Times (Philadelphia), after an investigation of some sixty of our popular monthly and weekly publications. In this investigation “strictly agricultural and other class papers, whether trade or religious publications, were not considered, it being the purpose to limit this inquiry to the secular magazine of general interest.” Of the sixty editors who were asked whether their periodicals accepted or refused the advertisements of intoxicating liquors, forty put themselves on record as absolutely excluding such advertisements. While the list does not approach completeness, the Sunday-school Times claims for it that it is typical.

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TEMPERANCE, RESULTS OF

The social results of Father Mathew’s temperance reform in Ireland were as follows:

In four years from 1837 to 1841 homicides decreased from 247 to 105; assaults on the police, from 91 to 58; incendiary fires, from 459 to 390; robberies, from 725 to 257. The sentences of death were decreased from 66 in 1839, to only 14 in 1846, and transportation to penal settlements from 916 to 504. Father Mathew said: “Every teetotaler has gained morally and intellectually by the movement, but my immediate family have been absolutely and totally ruined by this temperance mission.”

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TEMPERATURE

Many things depend upon temperature—the psychological climate of the soul. Sometimes in mountain regions you will see clouds gathering around the mountain peak, and staying there in spite of a strong wind blowing. You wonder how that is. It is cold up there, and the warm air, vapor-laden, climbing up the side of the mountain, reaching that cool region, makes clouds as fast as the winds can blow them away. Which thing is an allegory. There are psychological climates which make clouds, and there are other psychological climates which make clearness; and cloud and clearness do not depend upon purely intellectual and syllogistic operations, but upon something deeper by far—the attitude of the will toward God and righteousness. That is the significant thing. And there we come upon a doctrine which we have only recently begun to emphasize speculatively, a doctrine of pragmatism, a doctrine which Christianity has always held, that “if any man wills to do the will of God, he shall know.” And I fancy he will never know in any other way. It is the will. One must “will to do the will” of God; then he shall know. Of course, it does not mean that he shall know all about the metaphysics of the Athanasian Creed, or the “Thirty-nine Articles.” But it means that he who thus wills to do the will of God shall come out into practical assurance, on the right track. It means that he is not alone, but the Father is with him.—Prof. Borden P. Bowne, Zion’s Herald.

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Temple Extravagance—See Egotism.

Temples, Christian versus Heathen—See Religions Contrasted.

Temporary Helps—See Shoring Up.

TEMPTATION

C. G. D. Roberts tells of the capture of a great eagle at the head waters of the St. John River in the Northwest. The eagle occasionally found its food at the edge of a lake where the fish came into the shallow water. One morning he found on the spot a great stone which aroused its suspicions, and perched on the stump of an old tree to watch matters. Nothing further happening, it went down and hopped on the stone and breakfasted as before. It did this for several days, when one morning he found a stick laid across the stone in a slanting position with something hanging loosely from the upper end. Further suspicion led to a closer examination, but, satisfied again, he ate as before. This he did for several days, becoming more careless and confident, until one day while enjoying his morning meal on that stone and hopping about, an Indian hidden in the reeds pulled two strings, dropping the stick and unloosing the meshes of a net around the eagle and caught it.

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A little Jewish newsboy was selling evening papers among the clerks in a large office in one of our great cities. Unawares, as he approached the cashier, he found himself right next to an open cash-drawer overflowing with coin. The little fellow’s eyes shone at the sight. But, quicker than a wink, he stept back beyond reach, and nothing would induce him to approach any nearer, even to sell a paper, until the drawer had been shut.

I happen to know that this little fellow comes from a home of poverty, where there are many children and little time or strength is left for parental training of the children, and that the poor boy often goes hungry, finding it too far to go home for a bite, and not daring to spend a copper of his hard-earned treasures for any self-indulgence.

But how many native boys of ten years of age, think you, would have had the moral perception, the strength of character, and the quickness to act that was exhibited by this little son of a poor immigrant family? (Text.)—George W. Coleman, “Search-lights.”

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There were two ways in which the ancients kept from yielding to the music and final destruction of the Sirens. Ulysses fortified himself with bonds that held him fast to the mast while his boat carried him, listening, by the seductive strains. The Argonauts carried Orpheus with them in their boat, and were so engrossed in listening to his music that they never even heard the tempting sounds from the shore. (Text.)

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Temptation, a Boy’s—See Slowness.

Temptation and Desire—See Desires, Inordinate.

TEMPTATION, PLAUSIBILITY OF

During the Boxer troubles in China, the greatest stress was brought upon the native Christians to have them recant their faith. Dr. Li, a Christian physician of Peking, was not only in imminent peril of his life, but, to add to his anxiety, kind but mistaken friends were urging him to pursue a questionable course of action in order that his life might be saved. One of his friends of the nobility came to him and said:

Things are getting worse and worse. Allow me to put a few idols in your room, and if the Boxers come they will think you are not Christians. Now, I knew that this was Satan’s plan. I was in a difficulty. Could I refuse my protector’s request, and so endanger him? But God gave me wisdom and words so that I was able to keep clean, and yet not to offend my friend, who was so genuinely anxious for my safety.

On another occasion, as he was trying to escape from the city, he says:

Just as I was about to start, some one urged me to carry some strings of paper money in my hand, “for,” said he, “then people will imagine you are going to burn it at a grave.” This seemed a very simple and safe expedient; but I would not agree to it, because I felt it would, after all, be nothing short of a denial of Christ. (Text.)

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TEMPTATION RESISTED

Ever since that bait was offered to the Redeemer and rejected, the tempter has been constantly setting the perilous alternative before the souls of men. The glittering bait is specially dangled before the greatest and noblest souls, and these prove their greatness and nobility by exchanging it for a cross.

Both John Knox and Richard Baxter were offered by carnal state powers a bishopric in the Erastian Church. How unspeakably poorer would have been the religious history of both Scotland and England had these men found their popular success in ecclesiastical preferment! To-day Spinoza is honored for declining the fortune that was offered to him, and it is refreshing to read how Diderot instantly said “No” to the bribe of a hundred thousand francs a year from Catharine the Great to become a member of her court. It is the glory of the memory of Faraday that he declared “He could not afford to be rich.” Cobden stood for the poor, and therefore he stood out against Palmerston’s offer of a baronetcy and a seat in his Cabinet. Gold weighed heavy then, as now, but it did not outweigh the souls of these heroes. (Text.)

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TEMPTATION TWO-SIDED

A lad of seventeen was telling an older friend, recently, of an experience he had had that day. As the apprentice of a carpenter, he had been sent to a saloon to take the measures for a new counter. It was very cold weather, and he arrived with his teeth fairly chattering in his head, for his coat was thin. The saloon-keeper immediately mixt a hot drink and pushed it over the counter to him. “It’ll cost you nothing,” he said; “drink it down, and you’ll soon stop shivering, my boy.”

“He meant it kindly, too, and didn’t think any harm,” said the apprentice, as he told the story. “That’s what made it harder to push it back, and I didn’t want it.”

“It must have been a big temptation,” said the friend. “That saloon-keeper might have started you on the road to ruin.”

“Well,” replied the lad frankly, “I’d rather have had it than some other kinds. You see, it takes two to make a temptation. There’s no saloon-keeper and no cold weather can make me drink when I don’t want to. The temptation I’m afraid of is the one that I’m ready for before it comes, by hankering after it. I don’t take much credit to myself for refusing that drink; and, if I had taken it, why, I wouldn’t have put all the blame on the saloon-keeper, as some folks do. It takes two, every time, to make a successful temptation.”

It was an honest way to look at the question. Temptation is not all a matter of outward happening, but also of inner readiness. No outsider can be responsible for our sins as we are responsible. “He tempted me” only explains one side of the temptation. The other side—the personal side—we must answer for, and no excuse will save us. “It takes two,” and one of the two is always our own responsible self.—Michigan Christian Advocate.

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Temptations—See Curves of Temptation.

TENACITY

After Grant got fairly well started in his studies, the best he could say for himself is in this characteristic sentence to his father: “I don’t expect to make very fast progress, but I will try to hold on to what I get.” Here was somewhat a foreshadowing of the bulldog tenacity which afterward made him so famous.—Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”

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See Clinging by Faith.

Tenacity of Birth and Training—See Aristocracy, Ingrained.

TENDENCIES, INHERITED

From earliest childhood, says his mother, Charles Hamilton (the aviator), has given unmistakable evidence of his desire to leave the earth and invade the skies. The mother—who, with perfect confidence in his ability, saw her son go aloft in an aeroplane for the first time and immediately wanted to take a trip on it with him—dates her first realization of this fact to the day when Charles, but eight years old, surreptitiously borrowed her best parasol, climbed with it tightly clutched in his hands to the eaves of the barn, and then jumped off, employing the parasol parachute-wise to break his fall.

He not only broke his fall, but he completely smashed the parasol in that little escapade. But his mother did not have the heart to punish the child for his act because, as she put it, “I realized that, after all, it was only the budding desire to fly that I myself have felt since early girlhood. How could I punish my boy for doing what I always had wanted to do?”

The interim between that barn-and-parasol episode of Hamilton’s achievement of his insatiable ambition—to fly—was the matter of only a few years. He managed to get a balloon man, who was giving exhibitions in a spherical gas bag just outside of New Britain, to take him up. From that moment his fever to invade the sky knew no bounds, and, as he himself put it only a few days ago, never is he happier than when up in his aeroplane doing the now-famous Hamilton dip.

After a lapse of several years, during which he left his beloved machinery and aerial paraphernalia long enough to get in some schooling, Hamilton turned his attention to ballooning on his own account. Then kites of all fashions, shapes and sizes took up his attention. The dirigible balloon coming in, he turned to that, and for four years gave exhibitions that startled the world by their daring and success. Then he returned to the kite end of the game, working with Israel Ludlow along those lines of aviation. Finally he made his first aeroplane ascension, and since then he has done almost everything possible to do with a heavier-than-air machine of the present-day type.

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TENDENCY

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TENDERNESS

“The tenderest are the bravest; the loving are the daring.” This finds its illustration in an incident related by the wife of Gen. George E. Pickett, of the Confederate army, just after his famous Gettysburg charge:

One Sunday, just after the battle, when he was in Richmond recruiting his division, we were walking to church together, when we saw a little Hebrew child, standing first on one foot and then on the other, rubbing his eyes with very dirty hands, and crying as if his heart would break.

“What is the matter, little man?” my Soldier asked.

“My shoes is hurtin’ my feet so, I can’t walk! I can’t get anywhere!” the boy sobbed. General Pickett knelt down, unlaced the shoes, took them off, tied them together, wiped away the muddy tears with his own clean handkerchief, and, taking the child in his arms, carried him to his home. (Text.)

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Tenderness, Contrasted—See Destiny.

TENDERNESS OF GOD

I have seen bullets made out of cold lead, crusht into shape in the steel grip of a machine; and I have heard that gold and silver, tho cold, are stamped into money by a powerful steel die; but when God would mold a man to His will He warms the wax before He presses His seal upon it.—Franklin Noble, “Sermons in Illustration.”

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TENSION, MORAL

The German marshal, von Manteuffel, in a speech made in Alsace-Lorraine, said:

War! Yes, gentlemen, I am a soldier. War is the element of the soldier, and I should like to taste it. That elevated sentiment of commanding in battle, of knowing that the bullet of the enemy may call you any moment before God’s tribunal, of knowing that the fate of the battle, and consequently the destiny of your country, may depend on the orders which you give—this tension of mind and of feelings is divinely great. (Text.)

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Terminology, Christian—See God First.

Terminology, Fear of—See Moods of the Spirit.

Terror—See Fright.

Test of Character—See Business a Test of Character.

TESTIMONY, A SHEEP’S

One of the occupations in Australia is sheep-raising. There are large ranches upon which many sheep and lambs find food, and the shepherds guard their own.

One day a man was arrested for stealing a sheep. The man claimed that the sheep was his own, that it had been missing from his flock for some days, but as soon as he saw the animal he knew him.

The other man claimed the sheep, and said he had owned him since he was a lamb, and that he had never been away from the flock.

The judge was puzzled how to decide the matter. At last he sent for the sheep. He first took the man in whose possession the sheep was found to the courtyard, and told him to call the sheep.

The animal made no response, only to raise his head and look frightened, as if in a strange place and among strangers.

Bidding the officers take the man back to the court-room, he told them to bring down the defendant. The accused man did not wait until he entered the yard, but at the gate, and where the sheep could not see him, he began a peculiar call. At once the sheep bounded toward the gate, and by his actions showed that a familiar voice was calling.

“His own knows him,” said the judge. (Text.)

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TESTIMONY, FRUIT OF

James Henry Potts, D.D., in his book, “The Upward Leading,” relates this incident:

An obscure Highland boy, whose parents had taught him to revere God, became a marine on board a British man-of-war. When a battle raged and the deck was swept by a tremendous broadside from the enemy, the captain, James Haldane, a profane man, ordered another company on deck to take the place of the dead. At sight of the mangled remains of their comrades, the marines became panic-stricken and ungovernable. The captain raved at them, condemning them all to the tortures of hell.

Up stept the Highlander, and touching his hat, says, “Captain, I believe God hears prayer; if He hears yours, what will become of us?” When the battle was over, Captain Haldane reflected on the words of the brave marine, became interested in the claims of religion, surrendered his heart to God, became a preacher of the gospel and pastor of a church in Edinburgh.

Through his instrumentality his brother, Robert Haldane, was brought to reflection, became a decided Christian, settled in Geneva, stirred up Protestantism there, and became the means of leading a large number of theological students in the light, among the number being J. H. Merle D’Aubigne, author of the immortal “History of the Reformation,” and the father of the Rev. Dr. D’Aubigne, whose visit to the United States served to create new interest in the evangelical religion of France.

Dr. Potts might have added that out of that Bible class of Haldane, at Geneva came every conspicuous evangelical leader of France in the latter part of the century.

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TESTIMONY INDISPUTABLE

Elder Chang, a Christian from the Scotch Presbyterian Mission in Manchuria, recently visited Pyeng Yang, Korea, and gives the following report of what he learned:

Being strangers, we naturally looked up some Chinese merchants, who, however, were not Christians. “Who are you?” they asked us. “Christians from Manchuria.” “Are there, then, Christians in Manchuria also?” asked the Chinese. “Oh, yes, many of them.” “Are they the same sort as the Christians here?” “We don’t know. What are the Christians here like?” “Good men. Good men.” “Why do you think so?” asked the Korean elder. “Oh, a man owed us an account five years ago of twenty dollars. He refused to acknowledge more than ten, and we had no redress. A few months ago he became a Christian and came and asked us to turn up that old account, and insisted on paying it up with interest for all these years.” Instances like this are happening all over Korea.—Missionary Review of the World.

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TESTIMONY OF NATURE

It is by carefully noting small and apparently insignificant things and facts that men of science are enabled to reach some of their most surprizing and interesting conclusions. In many places the surface of rocks, which millions of years ago must have formed sandy or muddy sea beaches, is found to be pitted with the impressions of rain-drops. In England it has been noticed that in many cases the eastern sides of these depressions are the more deeply pitted, indicating that the rain-drops which formed them were driven before a west wind. From this the conclusion is drawn that in the remote epoch when the pits were formed the majority of the storms in England came from the west, just as they do to-day.—Harper’s Weekly.

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Testimony of Service—See Witness of Service.

TESTIMONY OF WORK

A story is told of a poor woman who, by reason of her poverty, was kept from many a service for her Lord which she feared He might require at her hands—and she was dying. She was saying to her young daughter, who stood near the bed, that she regretted her fruitless life, and was wishing that she might have more to show the Master when she met Him face to face. “Mother,” sobbed the daughter, “show Him your fingers.” Her hands were calloused with work she had done unselfishly for others in her Master’s name. (Text.)

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Testing—See Permanent, The; Trial a Means of Grace.

TESTS

An English writer says:

About fifty years ago two eminent French chemists visited London, and rather “astonished the natives” by a curious feature of their dress. They wore on their hats large patches of colored paper. It was litmus paper, and their object in attaching it to their hats was to test the impurities of the London atmosphere. Blue litmus paper, as everybody knows nowadays, turns red when exposed to an acid. The French chemists found that their hat decorations changed color, and indicated the presence of acid in the air of London; but when they left the metropolis and wandered in the open fields their blue litmus paper retained its original color. By using alkaline paper they contrived to collect enough of the acid to test its composition. They found it to be the acid which is formed by the burning of sulfur, and attributed its existence to the sulfur of our coal.

It would be well if we all had some kind of moral “litmus paper” with which to test our moral atmosphere. Is not God’s spirit in us such a testing instrument? (Text.)

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Oriental cloth merchants call in the sun as an expert witness in determining the quality of the finer products of the loom. Servants of the seller pass the web slowly between the purchaser and the sun. If no blemish is revealed by the flood of light which this incorruptible witness pours through warp and woof, the piece is passed and paid for as perfect. Every language used by these dealers has its word meaning, “judged by the sun.” Greek merchants, in New Testament times, advertised “sun-judged” cloth in all the market-places. (Text.)

Paul uses this practise as a figure of speech in Phil. 1:10. To be “sincere and without offense,” means to be able to pass severe tests like the sun test.

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The Chautauquan gives an account of Greek coins from which is taken the following extract:

In spite of the guarantee that might be afforded by the mark of a state or a prince, we find the Greeks applying certain tests to determine the genuineness of the currency offered to them. Plating was easily detected by jabbing the suspected coin with some sharp instrument. At other times the touch-stone was used. One which was known as the “Lydian stone” was supposed to reveal a proportion of foreign metal as small as a barley corn in a stater. Another test, in the case of silver, was to polish the coin, and then breathe on it. If the moisture quickly disappeared the metal was pure. Yet another way to detect alloy was to heat the coin, or coins, on red-hot iron. If the metal was unalloyed it remained bright; if mixt with other substances, it turned black or red according as it was more or less impure. (Text.)

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See Ideas, Power of.

TESTS OF FITNESS

When the Rodah Bridge at Cairo was practically finished as far as the structural work itself was concerned, it was put to an official test. The testing was minute, complex and severe in character. Dead weights of sand and steel rails were piled up on each pier in succession, exerting a pressure of 1,000 tons. Subsequently live weights of steam-rollers, tramcars, loaded with sand and water-carts filled with water were run on the bridge while an immense pressure was brought to bear on the bridge. If no fault or strain was visible in the material, then it was ready for use.

Happy is the man who will cheerfully bear every burden he is called upon to bear, knowing that he is being made ready for usefulness.

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TESTS, PERSONAL

General Nelson A. Miles, when head of the army, used to be continually besieged by cranks with pneumatic rapid-firing guns, dirigible war balloons, and other martial inventions. But the general would weed these cranks out with admirable speed. An inventor, quoted in the New York Independent, says:

“I sat in his office with him one day when a servant brought in a card. ‘Oh, send him in,’ said General Miles. ‘His business won’t take more than a minute or two.’ So in came a wild-eyed, long-haired man, twisting his soft hat nervously in both hands. ‘General,’ he said, ‘I have here’—and he took out a small parcel—‘a bullet-proof army coat. If the Government would adopt this—’ ‘Put it on. Put it on,’ said General Miles, and he rang the bell. The servant appeared as the inventor was getting into the coat. ‘Jones,’ said the general, ‘tell the captain of the guard to order one of his men to load his rifle with ball and cartridge and—’ ‘Excuse me, general, I forgot something,’ interrupted the inventor, and with a hunted look he disappeared.”

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Text Finding—See Early Religion.

TEXT, POWER OF A

The effect which the Word of God sometimes has is illustrated in the following incident related of Robert Moffat, missionary in Africa:

In the large kitchen, where the service was to be held, stood a long table, at the head of which sat the Boer, with his wife and six grown children. A large Bible lay on the table, and underneath it half a dozen dogs. The Boer pointed to the Bible as the signal for Mr. Moffat to begin. But, after vainly waiting for others to come in, he asked how soon the working people were to be called. “Work-people?” impatiently cried the farmer; “you don’t mean the Hottentots—the blacks! You are not waiting for them, surely, or expecting to preach to them; you might as well preach to those dogs under that table!” A second time, and more angrily, he spoke, repeating the offensive comparison.

Young as Mr. Moffat was, he was disconcerted only for a moment. Lifting his heart to God for guidance, the thought came into his mind to take a text suggested by the rude remarks of the Boer. So he opened the Bible to the fifteenth of Matthew and twenty-seventh verse: “Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” Pausing a moment, he slowly repeated these words with his eyes steadily fixt on the face of the Boer; and again pausing, a third time recited the appropriate words. Angrily the Boer cried out, “Well, well, bring them in.” A crowd of blacks then thronged the kitchen, and Moffat preached to them all the blessed Word of God.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”

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The following incident shows how an apparently chance occurrence may bring conviction through the word of Scripture:

While in the St. Louis jail, Burke had obtained a copy of a city paper which published a sermon by Mr. Moody, then preaching in St. Louis. This paper announced the topic of Mr. Moody’s sermon in a sensational headline, “How the Jailer at Philippi was Caught.” Burke thought the reference was to the town of Philippi in Illinois, a place of which he knew; and he began to read what he supposed to be jail news. He became interested as he read on. Nine times in the sermon he came upon the text, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” It imprest him so deeply that in the cell that night for the first time Burke prayed. Soon after he believed, and was assured of salvation. The jailer thought Burke was playing the “pious dodge,” and only suspected him the more. When the case came to trial, however, he escaped conviction, and was released. For some months the ex-convict could find no one so to trust him as to give him steady work. He finally was given a position under the sheriff of the county, made the collector of the office, and until he died some time afterward, Burke never disappointed the confidence reposed in him.—H. C. Mabie, “Methods in Evangelism.”

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Texts—See Fitness.

Thankfulness—See Unselfishness.

THANKS

A little scene of child-life has often seemed to me to contain the most touching lesson for men. A child knows when it receives a service from any one that it should say thank you. But, often, when a child renders us a service, we forget to thank it. After having waited in vain for the little word which should be pronounced, it then itself says, “Thank you,” and goes its way. The child has a feeling that something ought to happen and does not; then he takes charge of it himself.—Charles Wagner, “The Gospel of Life.”

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THANKS, THE SOLACE OF

Even “hello girls” are tired sometimes, tho we think of them as part of the electrical apparatus. To-day Central was tired, her head ached, she had just succeeded, after repeated calls, in getting the number wanted by 349-M, and here they were, calling her up again! “Can’t that woman be quiet a minute?” soliloquized Central while she reiterated, “Number, please?” trying not to speak crossly. “Central,” said a pleasant voice, “I want to thank you for taking so much trouble to get me that last number. You are always very kind and obliging, and I do appreciate it.” The surprize was so great, so overwhelming, that Central could only murmur confusedly, “I—oh—yes, ma’am.” Nothing like this had ever happened before. Suddenly her headache was better, suddenly the day was brighter, suddenly, too, there came a lump in her throat, and she reached for her handkerchief. It was so good to be thanked. (Text.)

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THANKSGIVING

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THANKSGIVING DAY

Robert Bridges is the author of these verses:

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THEFT, A CHECK ON

Persons who have been laying in their supply of coal for the winter months may have noticed that many of the lumps were coated with whitewash, and they doubtless wondered what was the reason for the unique decoration. Altho the white color may be considered to have improved the appearance of the ordinary black coal, that was not the object in view.

For many years the railroads have been annoyed by coal thieves and thousands of tons of fuel were stolen annually. As the great carloads, containing forty tons each, are being carried from the mines, it is very easy for unscrupulous persons to remove a ton or two from a car without causing any noticeable change in the appearance of the load. Only when the car is again put on the scales is the loss detected, and then it is too late to trace the guilty parties.

To check these depredations the railroad men have adopted the whitewash method of safeguarding their freight. After a car has been loaded a solution of lime and water is sprayed over the coal, and when the water has evaporated a white coating of lime remains on the top layer of lumps. Then, if any of the coal is removed, a black patch will be left upon the white surface to attract the attention of inspectors and station agents before the train has gone many miles from the scene of the theft, and thus the offender is easily traced.—Harper’s Weekly.

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THEFTS ALL EQUAL

I saw some men playing “banker and broker.” They had some filthy-looking cards, and some paltry pennies. They were a good-natured lot of fellows, and the game looked very simple. But I tell you that the great gamblers against whom the laws are made began their wrong-doing in just that way. And the playing for little stakes is worse. If a man takes from me a large sum of money and gives me nothing in return, I can make some excuse for him, because the temptation was great. But if a man takes from me a paltry dime, that is wanton. And the man who stole a million and the clerk who stole a quarter, and the shoe-shiner who stole a nickel and the man who stole a ride, and the woman who used a postage-stamp the second time are all thieves alike.—A. H. C. Morse.

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Theism—See Religious Instruction Denied.

THEOLOGY AS A DISCIPLINE

Men that work by doctrines are men that think they have found out the universe; they have not only got it, but they have formulated it; they know all about the Infinite, they have sailed around eternity, they know all about the Eternal and the Everlasting God, and you will hear them discuss questions of theology: “No, God could not, consistent with consistency, do so-and-so.” They know all His difficulties; they know how He got round them. One might easily come to think that God was their next-door neighbor. Well, after all, whether it is true or false—their systematic views, their dogmas—the pedagogic views are very important to teach young and middle-aged and old to attempt, by philosophic reasoning, to reach into these unfathomable depths. They produce a power upon the brain of most transcendent importance; they, in their way, may not increase the sum of human knowledge, but they increase the capacity of the human brain for profound thought and investigation. (Text.)—Henry Ward Beecher.

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THEOLOGY, SCHEMES OF

When Kossuth visited America in 1851, he worked out here, with American statesmen, a constitution for Hungary, and had plates engraved for the printing of treasury notes, and a system of money. When Kossuth went down to the steamer to sail home, he had an ideal and new republic of Hungary, and oh, wonder of wonders! he carried it in a handbag! Just as I have seen theological professors carry what they thought was a whole church, in a book of notes under the arm. Unfortunately, Kossuth never produced the written constitution in the character of twenty millions. And unfortunately, many teachers, wise in their polity, and sound in their theology, think like God and act like the devil.—N. D. Hillis.

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THEOLOGY SHAPED BY EXPERIENCE

The influence on John Wesley’s theology of an escape as a child from a burning dwelling is thus described by Rev. W. H. Fitchett:

His theology translated itself into the terms of that night scene. The burning house was the symbol of a perishing world. Each human soul, in Wesley’s thought, was represented by that fire-girt child, with the flames of sin, and of that divine and eternal anger which unrepenting sin kindles, closing round it. He who had been plucked from the burning house at midnight must pluck men from the flames of a more dreadful fire. That remembered peril colored Wesley’s imagination to his dying day.—“Wesley and His Century.”

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Theory, Erroneous—See Vitality Low.

THEORY VERSUS PRACTISE

A fellow has the cramp-colic and is tied up in a double bow-knot. By and by an old, dignified doctor comes in with a can of mustard in one hand, and a dissertation on mustard in the other. He walks up to the bed, and says, “My friend, be quiet about an hour and a half, and let me read you a dissertation on mustard; this mustard grew in the State of Connecticut; it was planted about the first of June and cultivated like potatoes, and vegetables of a like character.”

About that time another paroxysm hit the fellow, and he said, “Good Lord, doctor; I don’t care how it grew or where; spread some on a rag and put it on me.”—“Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones.”

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See Knowing and Doing.

THINGS

Among the causes of worry let us mention an over-emphasis of things, an undue estimate of wealth, equipage and luxury. When men are once bitten with the desire for abundance, worry inevitably follows. It is a truism that the most beautiful things are the simplest things. Witness a Doric column. One substance, marble, and a fluted line, giving form—no more. But, oh, how beautiful! The lily has two colors, white with a tiny stamen of gold, and then for contrast a black mud-puddle in which it grows. The two lovers have their happiest days in the little cottage, with a tiny vine over the front window, three or four great authors, one big chair before the open fire, two or three old familiar songs, a few friends—heaven lies round about this little house. Twenty years pass by. The man and woman are bitten now with the love of many things. Forgetting the few books that once he digested, the man buys 5,000 volumes—many people are under the delusion that they have read a book because they have bought it. Now also the man and woman buy twenty or thirty chairs, and one sits in one chair in one room, and the other in another chair in another room. There used to be one chair. They begin to collect things for things’ sake; curios and clothes and rare editions, until the house becomes a museum, and the palace is as cold as a storage-plant, where love chilled to death twenty years ago. And the man and woman are mere care-takers of the things they have collected, mere drudges, hirelings; in fact, this man and his wife are the only servants in the house that work for nothing.—N. D. Hillis.

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THINGS, NOT BOOKS

The tragedy of the race was when men, who had lived next to things, began to fancy that if all that men knew could be gathered into contrivances called books, and the children shut in a building with these books, they could learn all about the world on which gravity chains us, without the trouble of ever looking at the things themselves.

When I was a little boy I was once studying in geography the animals of the Rocky Mountains. Just then a boy rushed in breathless, and said that there were “four men outside with three big bears.” The teacher shut the door and cracked me on the head for looking out over the high window-sill. And yet these men had brought to our door the very real things concerning which we were studying. But school was about book bears, not real bears.

Once in the University of Cincinnati I saw a young woman assiduously studying an oyster. Perplexed, she looked up and asked the professor a question about the thing which she was studying. The professor walked to her table, looked carefully at the oyster, and answered her. Why didn’t she ask the oyster? Even the professor had to do so. The oyster was the court of last resort, and it was in session before her; but the old view-point had so walled in her vision that she could not even see the decision before her eyes.

To read things out of books requires a former experience of things. Let us go back to things.—William I. Crane, “Journal of the National Education Association,” 1905.

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Things versus Men—See Forgiveness.

Thinkers—See Character.

THINKING DEFINED

Thinking is specific, not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees or river. Thinking is specific in that different things suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories and in that they do this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse. Accordingly, any subject, from Greek to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixt inner structure, but in its function—in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection.—John Dewey, “How we Think.”

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THINKING EMPIRICAL OR SCIENTIFIC

Apart from the development of scientific method, inferences depend upon habits that have been built up under the influence of a number of particular experiences not themselves arranged for logical purposes. A says, “It will probably rain to-morrow.” B asks, “Why do you think so?” and A replies, “Because the sky was lowering at sunset.” When B asks, “What has that to do with it?” A responds, “I do not know, but it generally does rain after such a sunset.” He does not perceive any connection between the appearance of the sky and coming rain; he is not aware of any continuity in the facts themselves—any law or principle, as we usually say. He simply, from frequently recurring conjunctions of the events, has associated them so that when he sees one he thinks of the other. One suggests the other, or is associated with it. A man may believe it will rain to-morrow because he has consulted the barometer; but if he has no conception how the height of the mercury column (or the position of an index moved by its rise and fall) is connected with variations of atmospheric pressure, and how these in turn are connected with the amount of moisture in the air, his belief in the likelihood of rain is purely empirical. When men lived in the open and got their living by hunting, fishing, or pasturing flocks, the detection of the signs and indications of weather changes was a matter of great importance. A body of proverbs and maxims, forming an extensive section of traditionary folklore, was developed. But as long as there was no understanding why or how certain events were signs, as long as foresight and weather shrewdness rested simply upon repeated conjunction among facts, beliefs about the weather were thoroughly empirical.—John Dewey, “How we Think.”

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While many empirical conclusions are, roughly speaking, correct; while they are exact enough to be of great help in practical life; while the presages of a weatherwise sailor or hunter may be more accurate, within a certain restricted range, than those of a scientist who relies wholly upon scientific observations and tests; while, indeed, empirical observations and records furnish the raw or crude material of scientific knowledge, yet the empirical method affords no way of discriminating between right and wrong conclusions. Hence it is responsible for a multitude of false beliefs. The technical designation for one of the commonest fallacies is post hoc, ergo propter hoc; the belief that because one thing comes after another, it comes because of the other. Now this fallacy of method is the animating principle of empirical conclusions, even when correct—the correctness being almost as much a matter of good luck as of method. That potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high-tide and die at low-tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror, that a patent medicine cures a disease—these and a thousand like notions are asseverated on the basis of empirical coincidence and conjunction. Moreover, habits of expectation and belief are formed otherwise than by a number of repeated similar cases.—John Dewey, “How We Think.”

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THINKING, HOW COORDINATED

The sight of a baby often calls out the question: “What do you suppose he is thinking about?” By the nature of the case, the question is unanswerable in detail; but, also by the nature of the case, we may be sure about a baby’s chief interest. His primary problem is mastery of his body as a tool of securing comfortable and effective adjustments to his surroundings, physical and social. The child has to learn to do almost everything: to see, to hear, to reach, to handle, to balance the body, to creep, to walk and so on. Even if it be true that human beings have even more instinctive reactions than lower animals, it is also true that instinctive tendencies are much less perfect in men, and that most of them are of little use till they are intelligently combined and directed. A little chick just out of the shell will after a few trials peck and grasp grains of food with its beak as well as at any later time. This involves a complicated coordination of the eye and the head. An infant does not even begin to reach definitely for things that the eye sees till he is several months old, and even then several weeks’ practise is required before he learns the adjustment so as neither to overreach nor to underreach.

It may not be literally true that the child will grasp for the moon, but it is true that he needs much practise before he can tell whether an object is within reach or not. The arm is thrust out instinctively in response to a stimulus from the eye and this tendency is the origin of the ability to reach and grasp exactly and quickly; but nevertheless final mastery requires observing and selecting the successful movements and arranging them in view of an end. These operations of conscious selection and arrangement constitute thinking, tho of a rudimentary type.—John Dewey, “How to Think.”

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THIRTEEN SUPERSTITION, THE

“Have a thirteenth floor in this building?” queries a part owner of one of the famous office buildings in New York. “Never! The thirteenth floor is sometimes difficult to rent; tenants would prefer to go higher or lower.

“The thirteen hoodoo affects more otherwise sane men than is acknowledged. Many of the most famous business buildings in the country have no thirteenth floor—the fourteenth story follows the twelfth. By following this plan, we take the least risk. As the names of tenants are arranged alphabetically on the directory, the omission is seldom noticed.”—System.

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Thorn, Value of the—See Cross, Glorious.

THOROUGHNESS

A prosperous Brooklyn manufacturer tells how a single watchword made him wealthy, besides helping him in his character. When a young man he started for Australia in a sailing vessel, intending to go into business there; but he became very weary of the slow and stormy voyage and half determined to leave the ship at a South American port and return home. He asked advice from an old man, who was one of his fellow passengers. The counsel he got was, “If you undertake to do a thing, do it.” He took the advice, and the motto also. In Australia he soon acquired twenty-five thousand dollars, which he brought back to this country and greatly increased by fidelity to the same ever-present watchword.

(3230)

If ever a literary success was earned by hard work, General Wallace earned it with “Ben Hur.” He first started the book as a novelette, which he intended to offer to Harper’s Magazine; but the story expanded until it far outgrew the original design, and occupied its author for seven years. Full as it is with the most graphic pictures of Palestine, it is difficult to realize that General Wallace had never been in that country when he wrote the novel. The general was recently asked how he accomplished such wonderful results, and replied as follows:

“I doubt if any novel has ever had more careful studies for its background and life than those made for ‘Ben Hur.’ I knew that the novel would be criticized by men who had devoted their lives to Biblical lore, and I studied Palestine through maps and books. I read everything in the way of travel, scientific investigation, and geography. I had scores of maps and worked with them about me. My best guide was a relief map of Palestine made in Germany. This was hung on my wall, and by means of it I took my characters through the passes of the mountains and up and down the hills, measuring their daily travel by the scale of miles. I also made studies of the bird and animal life of the time and place.” (Text.)

(3231)

THOROUGHNESS IMPOSSIBLE

Thoroughness is all right to talk about, but there is nothing that has been thoroughly done in this world, and it will be a good many years before anything will be thoroughly done. Talk about absolute thoroughness! It is nonsense! We may attain unto it as we attain unto perfection, but we might as well attempt to shoot the moon as to reach thoroughness or perfection in this world. Is there a single college graduate who knows thoroughly anything that he had studied in his college course? Take Latin, which the average college student studies seven solid years. What does he know when he gets through? Can he talk it? Can he even read an author which he has never before seen, with any degree of fluency and acceptability? Then take mathematics. How many students are thorough in it? We venture that the roll-call of college graduates who could be counted thorough in mathematics would be called in an extremely short space of time. Our ideals should be high. This is all right. We should aim at never doing anything in a half-way manner. But the tasks half done, the studies half learned, the books half read, and the work half accomplished constitute by far the largest portion of our lives.—School Journal.

(3232)

THOROUGHNESS IN PREPARATION

One of the remarkable characteristics displayed by Charles E. Hughes in the conduct of his important lawsuits conducted against great corporations on behalf of the people was his complete mastery of the facts entering into the cases. In regard to this characteristic, the following is illuminating as showing his painstaking preparation for his cases:

His habit of thorough preparation made him one of the most formidable trial lawyers in New York. When he went into court, he could usually defeat his adversary not only on the point directly at issue, but upon dozens of others that might come up correlatively. In his search for information he never limited his investigations to law-books. He was once called upon to defend a patent held by a company manufacturing a mechanical piano-player. He mastered all the law points involved, and then began to work on the mechanism itself. He had an instrument moved up to his house, and spent many hours playing upon it, taking it apart, and becoming entirely familiar with its mechanical details. When Mr. Hughes appeared in court, he confounded the experts by his familiarity with the technicalities involved and easily won his case.

(3233)

THOROUGHNESS, LACK OF

There are jumping men who always hit the top bar with their heels and never quite clear it. There are women whose stitches always come out, and the buttons they sew on fly off on the mildest provocation. And there are other women who will use the same needle and thread, and you may tug away at their work on your coat or your waistcoat, and you can’t start a button in a generation! There are poets who never get beyond the first verse; orators who forget the next sentence, and sit down; gold-diggers who buy a pickax and stop there. There are painters whose studios are full of unpainted pictures. And if sluggards ever took good advice, what long processions we should constantly meet, slowly traveling on their way to the ant.—James T. Fields.

(3234)

Thought Before Thing—See Utility as Theistic Evidence.

Thought, Progress of—See Progress Unfinished.

Thoughts, Beautiful—See Literature as an Inspiration.

Thoughts from the Garden—See Upward Look.

Thrashing, the Effect of a Sound—See Shaking-up.

Threat Ignored—See Loyalty.

Thrift—See Worth, Estimating.

Tides, Spiritual—See Flood Tide, Spiritual.

Ties—See Christian Unity.

TIME

In a recent address at Princeton University Gen. Horace Porter, ex-Ambassador to France, told of a chaplain at West Point who, on one occasion, facing his audience and about to begin his sermon, took out his watch and laying it down deliberately before him as a monitor, said: “In contemplating the things of eternity, we must ever be mindful of time”; then proceeded with his discourse.

There is a worldliness that tones and balances an other-worldliness.

(3235)

See Love and Time; Man, Slow Development of.

TIME A MONITOR

Mary Lowe Dickinson tells what we would do if we had only a day to live.

(3236)

TIME BRINGS FORTUNE

Ten years ago Henry Brink, of Melrose, purchased a few thousand shares of stock in an Arizona gold-mine. In return for several hundred dollars he received a great bundle of beautiful green certificates handsomely engraved.

After waiting in vain for the mine to become productive, and finally deciding that as an investor he was as green as his certificates, Brink smiled over his loss and papered his room with the souvenirs of his folly. As a mural decoration the stock was worth par.

Now he has been informed that porcelain clay of rare quality has been discovered on the mine site and that his certificates in consequence were worth a fortune.—Boston Journal.

(3237)

TIME, CHANGES OF

The way in which the passage of time alters our views and feelings is exprest in the following verses by Theodosia Garrison:

(3238)

See Mutation.

TIME ENOUGH

Joaquin Miller, “The Poet of the Sierras,” recently visited a friend in Boston whose literary taste runs largely to Emerson, Browning and Maeterlinck. This friend, says Lippincott’s Magazine, found the venerable poet in the library one afternoon deeply absorbed in a book.

“What are you reading?” asked the Bostonian.

“A novel by Bret Harte,” replied the poet.

The Hubbite sniffed. “I can not see,” said he, “how an immortal being can waste his time with such stuff.”

“Are you quite sure,” asked Miller, “that I am an immortal being?”

“Why, of course you are,” was the unwary reply.

“In that case,” responded the Californian grimly, “I don’t see why I should be so very economical of my time.”

(3239)

TIME, IMPROVING

John Wesley’s toils as a preacher were interspaced with frequent islets of leisure. This man, who seemed to live in crowds, had yet in his life wide spaces of solitude. He preached to his five-o’clock-in-the-morning congregation, then mounted his horse, or stepped into his chaise, and rode or drove off to the next gathering. Betwixt the two crowds he had hours of solitude—to think, to read, to plan. He was the master, it may be added, of the perilous art of reading on horseback. His work itself was a physical tonic.—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”

(3240)

TIME-KEEPING WITH FLOWERS

A curiosity among timepieces is a clock of flowers. It is well known that every blossom has its precise hour for opening its petals and for closing them. Some open at sunrise and close at sunset; but as a matter of fact, there is not an hour of the day nor of the night even but some flower begins or ends its period. In Pliny’s time forty-six such flowers were known. The number since then has very largely increased. From these a floral timepiece has been made.

Man’s life and deeds, like these flowers, ought to keep God’s time.

(3241)

Time, Killing—See Idleness.

TIME PRECIOUS

Mere amusement, a pleasing invention to kill time, is not a high aim for a novel. Killing time is the worst kind of murder. Remember while we are killing it, it is surely killing us. We need no books to help us. Rather give us books that will enable us to make time live, so that every moment in life will bear its own blossom. Then will we value each hour as the miser does his golden disks, letting each slip through his fingers slowly and longingly, for its power and worth is known to him so well. Naturalism will never help us. Dredging stagnant ponds does not purify them. It merely sets the filth in circulation.—Book Chat.

(3242)

See Novels, Good and Bad.

Time, Redeeming—See Knowledge, Thirst for; Painstaking.

TIME SAVERS

Harry Harm, the son of a Columbia grocer, has found a practical use for a lot of carrier-pigeons. It used to take him half a day to gather orders, half a day to fill them, and half a day to deliver; but now, thanks to the pigeons, the work is done in one day. When Mr. Harm starts he takes a crate of pigeons along in his wagon, and after he secures a few orders he takes the duplicate order-slips, which are of thin paper, puts them in a tiny roll on a pigeon’s leg, and the bird is liberated. It at once flies to its loft at the store, where the clerks relieve it of its orders. This plan is followed until the man covers his entire route, and when he returns to the store the clerks have the goods ready for delivery.—Philadelphia Press.

(3243)

TIME, THE PRESENT

(3244)

Time too Short—See Fame and Time.

TIMELINESS OF GOD

(3245)

TIMIDITY

May T. McKean, in Zion’s Advocate, reports an acquaintance as saying to her:

I wish I could say the thoughts that come to me, but I could no more speak in a meeting than I could fly. I could not preside at even the smallest meeting. Indeed, I can scarcely make a motion in our own little circle. The sound of my own voice frightens me; it sounds queer and hollow and far off, and I forget everything I had in mind before. But, honestly, I believe I could be a more useful woman in Christ’s kingdom if I were not so timid. I guess I did not begin right. I was always afraid I would not say or do the right thing, and now I can not do anything. (Text.)

(3246)

A master in Italian music was Arcangelo Corelli. He was once performing with Handel, and on another occasion with Scarlatti, in the presence of the King in Naples, when his cunning failed him and he made certain faults in execution which so chagrined the artist that he died broken-hearted from brooding over his mistakes.

(3247)

See Genius Discounted; Self-consciousness; Tact.

Tipping—See Ridicule, Apt.

Tithes—See Giving, Faithful.

Titles—See Labels, Misleading.

Toast, Witty—See Washington, George.

TOBACCO HABIT

Rev. W. F. Crafts is authority for the statement that four-fifths of the men who now fill positions of large responsibility in our land did not use tobacco before they were sixteen years of age, and even those who did, with three exceptions, mention the fact with regret.

(3248)

TO-DAY

The following is from The British Weekly:

(3249)

TOIL ACCEPTED

An unidentified writer pens this brave poem:

(3250)

TOIL AND PROVIDENCE

God helps those who help themselves.

It is common to attribute the great discoveries in science and industry to accident or sudden inspiration. But however suddenly discoveries are made, in some sense they are usually a result of long and patient toil and experimentation. Daguerre worked for many years trying to make the light print a likeness on glass or metal before an accidental hint gave him the clue.

(3251)

Toil and Study—See Missionary, A, in the Making.

TOKEN, VALUE OF A

The following incident appeared in a New York daily:

Bent with age but bright-eyed and alert, James Swift, eighty-four years old, was committed at his own request to the almshouse yesterday by Magistrate Krotel, sitting in Yorkville Court.

“I’m goin’ to start for California just as soon as I come out of the almshouse,” Swift told the magistrate. The old man displayed a silver watch with copper chain, which, he said, was a perpetual pass over the Union Pacific Railroad. It had been given him as a token that he was one of the men engaged in the construction of the road, the presentation being made on the occasion of the driving of the last spike in May, 1866. All he had to do, he said, when he wanted to ride over the road was to show the timepiece to the conductor.

(3252)

TO-MORROW, UNCERTAINTY OF

(3253)

TONGUE, A SWEARING

A long, long time ago, in the summer-time, a man was stung in the face by a bee. This made him mad, and he swore and swore and then swore again. The swear was so hot that his kettle of time boiled over and he wasted half an hour swearing at the bee. A friend who was sorry to hear him swear, said: “Jim, I am sorry for you. I think that bee might have stung you in a better place.” Again the kettle boiled over. “Where might it have stung me?” asked the swearer. “Why, it would have been better for you if it had stung you on the tip of your tongue.” Read the third chapter of James and then think of the need of a bee on the tip of the tongue—J. M. Farrar.

(3254)

TONGUE, THE

Would not the world be benefited by the surgery suggested in the following anecdote:

An old lady of his flock once called upon Dr. John Gill, a London preacher, with a grievance. The doctor’s neckbands were too long for her ideas of ministerial humility, and after a long harangue on the sin of pride, she intimated that she had brought a pair of scissors with her, and would be pleased if her dear pastor would permit her to cut them down to her notions of propriety.

The doctor not only listened patiently, but handed over the offending white bands to be operated upon. When she had cut them to her satisfaction and returned the bits, it was the doctor’s turn. “Now,” said he, “you must do me a good turn also.” “Yes, that I will, doctor. What can it be?” “Well, you have something about you which is a deal too long and which causes me no end of trouble, and I should like to see it shorter.” “Indeed, dear sir, I will not hesitate. What is it? Here are the scissors; use them as you please.” “Come then,” said the sturdy divine; “good sister, put out your tongue.” (Text.)—Tit-Bits.

(3255)

Sarcasm, ridicule, and all forms of bitter speech may be compared to the weapon described below:

The falarica, an ancient weapon, was a sort of javelin, consisting of a shaft of wood, with a long point of iron. This point was three feet long. Near the end were wound round the wooden shaft long bands of tow saturated with pitch and other combustibles, and this inflammable band was set on fire just before the javelin was thrown. As the missile flew the wind fanned the flames, and striking the shield of the soldier opposing it, it could not be pulled out and the shield was destroyed. (Text.)

(3256)

The words of James (3:8) about the “deadly poison” of the tongue when “set on fire of hell” are called to mind by the following caution:

(3257)

TOOLS

Dr. David Gregg says:

Tool-makers are the powers in this world. The Jewish legend sets this into the light. When Solomon completed his great temple he prepared a luxurious feast to which he invited the artificers who had been employed in its construction. But in unveiling the throne, it was discovered that a stalwart smith, with his sledge-hammer, had usurped the place of honor at the king’s right hand. Whereupon the people made an outcry, and the guards rushed in to cut down the intruder. “Hold, let him speak,” commanded Solomon, “and explain if he can his great presumption.” “O King,” answered the smith, “thou hast invited to the banquet all the craftsmen but me. Yet how could these builders have reared the temple without the tools which I furnished?” “True,” exclaimed the king; “the seat of honor is his by right, and he shall hold it; for back of all great and effective work are tools.” What is said of the trades may be said of the professions. The best professional work is done, other things being equal, by those who command the best tools.

(3258)

See Genius versus Tools.

Tools and Man—See Man a Creator.

TOOLS, MORAL

What matter a few troubles and pains now, if it is only the work of the chisel and hammer cutting away the hindering crust, to reveal the diamond?—J. R. Miller.

(3259)

Topics Tabooed—See Tabooed Topics in the East.

TOTAL ABSTAINERS IN DEMAND

The other day I picked up a newspaper and, glancing over the advertisements for help, read as follows:

“Wanted—A bartender. Must be a total abstainer. Apply,” etc.

Is not that a curious advertisement? What should we think of such an advertisement in another line of business? How would an advertisement like this look?

“Wanted—A barber who has never had his hair cut. Apply at the barbershop on the corner.”

Or this?

“Wanted—A salesman in a shoe-store. He must go barefooted while on duty. Apply at Bank’s shoe-store.”

What other business finds it necessary or desirable to advertise for help pledged to make no use of the goods sold? Can it be that the liquor traffic finds it has wrought so great demoralization among its followers that it is forced to draw upon temperance or total abstinence “fanatics” in order to continue its business?—California Voice.

(3260)

See Abstainers Live Long.

Total Abstinence—See Personal Influence.

TOTAL ABSTINENCE, VALUE OF

Here is testimony from the medical examiners of prominent life insurance companies as to the value of abstinence from alcohol:

(1) I note that you ask whether or not we believe, other things being equal, that the use of alcoholic drinks is a personal handicap and increases the actuarial risk. In reply to this question we must certainly answer in the affirmative. There have been numerous articles written and numerous statistics compiled on the effect of total abstinence, and they show without question that the mortality experienced among total abstainers has been decidedly less than that experienced among moderate drinkers.

(2) This company prefers total abstainers for insurance risks. This is from a selfish standpoint, as we are forced to believe they are better risks for the company. We are imprest by the large number of applicants living in the States of Alabama and Georgia who say they drank periodically or regularly before prohibition went into effect, but do not drink anything now. If prohibition in Alabama and Georgia and the “dry” counties of Indiana has done nothing else, it has made a difference in the answers given by applicants to this company.