Chapter XIV: Preface (14)

Death, ever present all the world over--how softened his grim
visage is when associated with the name of Jesus, how awful when
he appears alone. The writer still recalls one summer long ago,
May, 1889, when funeral preparations were being made before a
neighboring house. He made inquiry of An, his host: “I didn’t
know that there was a death.” “Yes, the master of the house is
dead; they will bury him.” “But when did he die? To-day when
we were out?” “No, no, not to-day. He died before you came.”
I had been there two months. They had a bier ornamented with
dragons’ heads, painted in wild colors, that suggested skull and
cross-bones. The funeral service was a fearful row; everybody
was noisy, many were weeping, many were drunk. A more gruesome
performance than that which I saw, over that horrible, unburied
body, no one could imagine. To-day that same village sits as it
did then, with background of mountain and foreground of sea,
but how changed! All is Christian; Sunday is a day of rest,
and every house is represented at the service in the chapel.
They have lived down old-fashioned death in that village and
exchanged it for quiet sleep.--JAMES S. GALE, “Korea in
Transition.”

(686)

DEATH COMPELLING SINCERITY

When the great man comes to the hour of his death, we expect
him to be natural, avoiding all sentiments that are forced or
incongruous. That is the striking thing about the last words
of Sir Walter Raleigh; they were the inevitable and necessary
words. Looking down upon his enemies and his friends, Raleigh
exclaimed about the executioner’s axe, “It is a sharp medicine,
but it is a sure cure of all diseases.” When the sheriff asked
if the niche in the block would fit his neck, Raleigh answered,
“It matters not how the head lies, if only the heart be
right.”--N. D. HILLIS.

(687)

DEATH DOES NOT CHANGE CHARACTER

When corn is cut down and is lying on the ground, and is
afterward put into the granary, it is the very same corn as had
grown up to full maturity in the earth. So also the souls in
the granary above are the very same souls as had grown up to
maturity in heaven on earth. When they are transferred to heaven
above, they are not tares which had been cut down on earth, and
which somehow in the process of cutting had been transformed
into corn or wheat. Unless wheat will grow up as wheat in the
earth, and be harvested as wheat, it will not turn into wheat
in the act of cutting, or while it is being removed to the
granary.--ALEXANDER MILLER, “Heaven and Hell Here.”

(688)

DEATH MADE PLAIN

To Paul Laurence Dunbar the secret of death has already been made plain, of which before he died he wrote as follows:

The smell of the sea in my nostrils,
The sound of the sea in mine ears;
The touch of the spray on my burning face,
Like the mist of reluctant tears;

The blue of the sky above me,
The green of the waves beneath;
The sun flashing down on a gray-white sail
Like a simitar from its sheath.

So I said to my heart, “Be silent;
The mystery of time is here;
Death’s way will be plain when we fathom the main,
And the secret of life be clear.”

(689)

DEATH MASKED IN BEAUTY

A news item from Chicago says:

Robert Wahl, one of the foremost chemists in the United States,
with a knowledge of drugs and subtle poisons far beyond the ken
of the average alchemist, is charged with threatening to kill
his wife by giving her a flower to smell.

It would have been a murder that no latter-day coroner or
detective could have proved--something unheard of since the days
of the Borgias.

The deadliest influence may be conveyed to the mind and soul as well as to the senses by the most delicate and apparently beautiful means.

(690)

DEATH NOT TO BE FEARED

The following lines by Maltbie D. Babcock were read by him just before sailing abroad on the voyage from which he never returned:

Why be afraid of death as tho your life were breath?
Death but anoints your eyes with clay. O, glad surprize!

Why should you be forlorn? Death only husks the corn.
Why should you fear to meet the Thresher of the wheat?

Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet sleeping you are dead
Till you awake and rise, here, or beyond the skies.

Why should it be a wrench to leave your wooden bench?
Why not with happy shout run home when school is out?

The dear ones left behind--O foolish one and blind.
A day, and you will meet--a night, and you will greet.

This is the death of death, to breathe away a breath
And know the end of strife, and taste the deathless life,

And joy without a fear, and smile without a tear,
And work, nor care to rest, and find the last the best.

(691)

=Death-rate Reduced=--See IMPROVED CONDITIONS.

=Death, Religion in=--See RELIGION TO DIE BY.

DEATH, SPIRITUAL

Says a writer in the _North China Herald_:

One of the facts that ineffaceably cut into my memory during my
first winter in New-chwang was the finding on one morning about
New Year’s time thirty-five masses of ice, each mass having been
a living man at 10 o’clock the preceding night. The thermometer
was a good bit below zero. The men had just left the opium dens,
where they had been enjoying themselves. The keen air sent them
to sleep, and they never wakened.

The freezing was only the external manifestation of a spiritual benumbing that long before existed within. (Text.)

(692)

=Death Swifter than Justice=--See JUSTICE DELAYED.

DEATH, THE CHRISTIAN’S

For centuries the world has admired the calmness and fortitude of Socrates in the presence of death, but if Socrates died like a philosopher, Patrick Henry died like a Christian. In his last illness, all other remedies having failed, his physician, Doctor Cobell, proceeded to administer to him a dose of liquid mercury. Taking the vial in his hand, and looking at it for a moment, the dying man said:

“I suppose, doctor, this is your last resort?”

“I am sorry to say, governor, that it is.”

“What will be the effect of this medicine?”

“It will give you immediate relief, or--” The doctor could not
finish the sentence.

His patient took up the word: “You mean, doctor, that it will
give relief or will prove fatal immediately?”

“You can live only a very short time without it,” the doctor
answered, “and it may possibly relieve you.”

Then the old statesman said:

“Excuse me, doctor, for a few minutes,” and drawing over his
eyes a silken cap which he usually wore, and still holding the
vial in his hand, he prayed in clear words a simple, childlike
prayer for his family, for his country, and for his own soul,
then in the presence of death. Afterward, in perfect calmness,
he swallowed the medicine.

Meanwhile Doctor Cobell, who greatly loved him, went out upon
the lawn, and in his grief threw himself down upon the earth
under one of the trees, and wept bitterly. Soon, when he had
sufficiently mastered himself, the doctor returned to his
patient, whom he found calmly watching the congealing of the
blood under his finger-nails, and speaking words of love and
peace to his family, who were weeping round his chair.

Among other things, he told them that he was thankful for that
goodness of God which, having blest him through all his life,
was then permitting him to die without any pain. Finally fixing
his eyes with much tenderness upon his dear friend, Doctor
Cobell, with whom he had formerly held many arguments respecting
the Christian religion, he asked the doctor to observe how great
a reality and benefit that religion was to a man about to die.

And after Patrick Henry had spoken these few words in praise of
something which, having never failed him in his life before, did
not then fail him in his very last need of it, he continued to
breathe very softly for some moments, after which they who were
looking upon him saw that his life had departed.--_The Youth’s
Companion._

(693)

DEATH, THE RING OF

The whole world hates death. In Madrid, the Spanish capital,
in one of its beautiful parks, stands a statue of its patron
saint, about whose neck hangs a rare and valuable ring set with
pearls and diamonds. It is never stolen, for nobody wants it.
The reason is that a tragic story hangs about it. Every one
who ever wore it died--Mercedes, Queen Christina, Infanta del
Pillar, and others. It is known as “The Ring of Death.” (Text.)

(694)

DEATH, UNTIMELY

Louis Albert Banks tells this story of a young girl cut off just after her graduation from school:

And there is her diploma, lying just as she threw it there, when
she came home from college, but a few days before she was taken
ill. I came up with her to the room, and she flung the diploma
in there with a sort of girlish glee, and it stuck at an angle
across the compartment of the bookcase. She closed the door on
it and said, “Well, I’m glad I’ve got you anyhow!” and it has
never been touched since. Two weeks later, we went with her over
to the cemetery and laid her beside her father; and there lies
her unused diploma that cost her so much hard work and that she
was so proud to obtain. (Text.)

(695)

DEATH USUALLY PAINLESS

Sudden and violent death, shocking to the senses, may not be,
probably is not, painful to the victim. Drowning, hanging,
freezing, shooting, falling from a height, poisoning of
many kinds, beget stupor or numbness of the nerves which is
incompatible with sensation. Persons who have met with such
accidents, and survived them, testify to this. Records to this
effect are numberless. Death from fire dismays us; we can
scarcely conceive aught more distressing. In all likelihood,
however, it appears far worse than it is. Fire probably causes
suffocation from smoke, or insensibility from inhaling flame, so
that the agony we imagine is not felt. They who have been near
their end have experienced more pain on returning, so to speak,
from their grave, than if they had gone to it. They have endured
all the pangs, corporeal and mental, of death, without actually
dying. It is an error, therefore, to suppose that men may not
have tasted the bitterness of death, and yet be alive and in
good health.--JUNIUS HENRY BROWNE, _The Forum_.

(696)

=Death Valley Conquered=--See CONQUEST, SEVERE.

DEATH WITH SAVAGES

H. M. Stanley relates that an African king, as a delicate
compliment, presented him with the heads of a dozen of his
own subjects whom he had just killed in his guest’s honor;
and these twelve unfortunates accepted death as stolidly
as a matter of course, and the incident made no sensation
whatever.--HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN, _Chautauquan_.

(697)

DEBAUCH, FATAL

A twisted auto on a dead man’s chest--
Ye ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done their best--
Ye ho! and a bottle of rum!
The roadhouse bar and the “lady friend”--
Ye ho! and a bottle of rum!
And at eighty miles they took the bend--
Ye ho! and a bottle of rum!
A swerve that mocked their drunken wills,
A crash and a shriek through the darkness thrills;
“Joy riding” is the pace that kills--
Ye ho! and a bottle of rum!

--New York _World_.

(698)

=Debt Paid=--See KINDNESS.

=Debt-paying Converts=--See TESTIMONY, INDISPUTABLE.

=Debts, Payment of=--See PAYMENT OF DEBTS.

=Debtors to All=--See MUTUALISM.

=Decadence, National=--See RETRIBUTION INEVITABLE.

DECAY

Old ships lying at anchor may have the appearance of soundness
and the outward evidence of strength, usefulness, and sea-going
qualities, but, when carefully examined for a sea voyage, are
often found to be covered with barnacles and to be affected with
dry rot. When such a vessel, no matter what good it has done
or what use it has been in the traffic and carrying trade, is
condemned, it is at once replaced by a new or more modern one
that is in perfect order and fully seaworthy. What is true of
vessels is often true of men also.--_American Artisan._

(699)

See JUDGMENT, GRADUAL.

=Deceit=--See ENTICEMENT; UNTRUTHFULNESS.

=Deceit Discovered=--See FALSEHOOD.

DECEIT WITH GOD

Rev. F. W. Hinton, of Allahabad, relates this story in the C. M. S. _Gazette_:

A young Bengali student came to me to ask for an explanation of
difficult passages in a book he was reading. He said his name
was “Sat Kori,” which means “seven cowry-shells,” and explained
the reason for his curious name. His mother had borne several
children before him, but all had died; so, like many other Hindu
mothers, she thought God or the Evil One had a grudge against
her, and if he could, he would take this last little one also.
So she called the nurse who attended her in her illness, and
made pretense to sell the baby to her for seven cowry-shells,
and gave the boy the name of Seven Cowries to deceive the God
into thinking he was of little worth. I asked the student if
he thought the ruse had made any difference, and he replied,
“Perhaps--at any rate, I did not die as the others had done.”
So, a university student more than half believes that one can
cheat God by a trick like that!

(700)

DECEPTION

John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, talking about unfair methods in use at the mines for weighing coal, said:

This method is most unfair. The fist-and-pound method, in fact,
was scarcely worse. The fist-and-pound method originated, they
say, in Scranton. A simple-minded old lady ran a grocery store
there. A man came in one day and asked for a pound of bacon.
The old lady cut off a generous chunk of bacon, and then, going
to weigh it, found that she had mislaid her pound weight. “Dear
me,” she said, “I can’t find my pound-weight anywhere.” The man,
seeing that there was about two pounds in the chunk cut off,
said hastily: “Never mind. My fist weighs a pound.” And he put
the bacon on one side of the scales and his fist on the other.
The two, of course, just balanced. “It looks kind o’ large for
a pound, don’t it?” asked the old lady as she wrapt the bacon
up. “It does look large,” said the man, as he tucked the meat
under his arm. “Still--” But just then the old lady found her
pound-weight. “Ah,” she said in a relieved voice, “now we can
prove this business. Put it on here again.” But the man wisely
refrained from putting the bacon on the scales to be tested. He
put on his fist again instead. And his fist, you may be sure,
just balanced the pound-weight. The old lady was much pleased.
“Well done,” she said, “and here’s a couple o’ red herrin’ for
yer skill and honesty.” (Text.)--New York _Sun_.

(701)

* * * * *

One evening, as Vincent de Paul, the distinguished French
priest, was returning from a mission, he found a beggar lying
against the wall. The wretch was engaged in maiming an infant,
in order to excite more compassion from the public when he went
to beg. Vincent, horror-struck at the sight, cried, “Ah, you
savage! you have deceived me. At a distance I mistook you for
a man.” Then he took the little victim in his arms and carried
him to the crèche, where foundlings were kept.--EDWARD
GILLIAT, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”

(702)

See SAMPLING.

DECEPTION EXPOSED

“Don’t try to make musicians out of all children
indiscriminately and thus you will avoid such household
conversations as one I overheard the other day,” said Baron
Kaneko of Japan, who has been spending the summer in the Maine
woods.

“I was on a train and a father and his young son sat near me.
The father said: ‘John, do you practise regularly on the piano
while I am away at business?’--‘Yes, father,’ replied the boy.
‘Every day?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘How long did you practise to-day?’
‘Three hours.’ ‘And how long yesterday?’ ‘Two hours and a half.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that you are so regular.’ ‘Yes, father.’
And the next time you practise be sure to unlock the piano. Here
is the key. I locked the instrument last week and I have been
carrying the key in my pocket ever since.’” (Text.)--Buffalo
_Enquirer_.

(703)

DECEPTION JUSTIFIED

Truth in the abstract is perhaps made too much of as compared
to certain other laws established by as high authority. If the
Creator made the tree-toad so like the moss-covered bark to
which it clings, and the larva of a sphinx so like the elm-leaf
on which it lives, and that other larva so exquisitely like
a broken twig, not only in color, but in the angle at which
it stands from the branch to which it holds, with the obvious
end of deceiving their natural enemies, are not these examples
which man may follow? The Tibbu, when he sees his enemy in the
distance, shrinks into a motionless heap, trusting that he may
be taken for a lump of black basalt, such as is frequently met
with in his native desert. The Australian, following the same
instinct, crouches in such forms that he may be taken for one
of the burnt stumps common in his forest region. Are they not
right in deceiving, or lying, to save their lives? or would a
Christian missionary forbid their saving them by such a trick?
If an English lady were chased by a gang of murdering and worse
than murdering Sepoys, would she not have a right to cheat their
pursuit by covering herself with leaves, so as to be taken for
a heap of them? If you were starving on a wreck, would you
die of hunger rather than cheat a fish out of the water by an
artificial bait? If a schoolhouse were on fire, would you get
the children down-stairs under any convenient pretense, or tell
them the precise truth, and so have a rush and a score or two
of them crusht to death in five minutes?--OLIVER WENDELL
HOLMES.

(704)

=Decision Dependent Upon Call=--See TESTIMONY, A SHEEP’S.

=Decisive Deeds=--See OPPORTUNITY.

DECORATING SOLDIERS’ GRAVES

Strew flowers, sweet flowers, on the soldiers’ graves,
For the death they died the nation saves,
’Tis sweet and glorious thus to die--
Hallowed the spot where their ashes lie.

On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their martial tents are spread,
While glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

--_Evangelical Messenger._

(705)

=Decoration Day=--See HONOR’S ROLL-CALL.

DECREES

A minister esteemed it his religious duty to visit an extreme
frontier settlement to preach. To reach that settlement he had
to pass through a wilderness infested with hostile Indians. When
about to start on one of these journeys, he took his rifle from
its rack and was about to depart with it on his shoulder when
his good wife said to him: “My dear husband, why do you carry
that great, heavy rifle on these long journeys? Don’t you know
that the time and manner of your taking off has been decreed
from the beginning of time, and that rifle can not vary the
decree one hair’s breadth?” “That is true, my dear wife, and I
don’t take my rifle to vary, but to execute the decree. What if
I should meet an Indian whose time had come according to the
decree and I didn’t have my rifle?”--HENRY C. CALDWELL.

(706)

DEED, THE GOOD

A man walked south on Main Street one afternoon recently. He had
no overcoat and he shivered as the north wind struck him. Near
the junction he stopped and picked something up. It was a bright
silver dime.

“Wasn’t I lucky,” he said to a man who had seen the episode, who
related the story to a reporter on the Kansas City _Times_.
“I haven’t a cent and have had nothing to eat since yesterday
noon. Now for the nearest lunch-wagon.”

A little girl came along at that moment. She, too, was poorly
drest.

“I’ve lost a dime,” she half sobbed, as she inspected the
pavement.

“I guess I’ve got what you were looking for,” said the man, as
he handed the dime to the child, who danced away with only a
“Thank you, mister.”

“Just my luck,” said the man with the stomach.

(707)

DEEDS, BRAVE

This prayer in verse is by Harry P. Ford:

Our Father, God, while life is sweet
With earthly joys that round it cling,
Grant us brave deeds, for heaven meet,
To shape the dreams that death may bring.

(708)

DEEDS, HEAVENLY

A cripple girl on a train was presented with a bunch of
roses by another girl on board. She held them to her
lips, and prest them to her bosom, and fell asleep.
Later her father came in from the smoker, and took his
little daughter in his arms. Waking up, she said: “Oh,
father--I’ve--been--in--heaven--and--I’ve--got--some--roses.”

Deeds of love make a heaven.

(709)

DEEDS, NOT APPEARANCES

The Orientals have a proverb which says: “Provided that
beneficence have long fingers and rapid steps, what does it
matter if its wry faces displease thee? Don’t look at its face.”
(Text.)--_Revue des Deux Mondes._

(710)

DEEDS THAT TALK

At a laymen’s meeting of Southern Baptists held in Richmond,
Mr. R. E. Breit, president of a Texas oil company, was called
upon for an address. He said, “Brethren, I never made a speech
in my life and I can’t make one now; but if Brother Willingham
(secretary of the missionary society) will send ten men to
China, he can send the bill to me.” (Text.)

(711)

DEEDS VERSUS WORDS

A boy was pushing a heavily loaded barrow up a steep hill,
using every ounce of energy. “Hi, boy,” called out a
benevolent-looking old gentleman, “if you push that zigzag,
you’ll find it go up more easily.” “That’s all right, sir,”
responded the boy, rather crisply, “but if you’d give me less
advice and more shoving, I’d like it better.”

(712)

DEEP-DOWN THINGS

Sam Walter Foss, in “Songs of the Average Man,” is the author of this assuring verse:

The deep-down things are strong and great,
Firm-fixt, unchangeable as fate,
Inevitable, inviolate,
The deep-down things.

The deep-down things! All winds that blow,
All seething tides that foam and flow
May smite but can not overflow
The deep-down things.

The surge of years engulfs the land
And crumbles mountains into sand,
But yet the deep-down things withstand
The surge of years.

Behind the years that waste and smite,
And topple empires into night,
God dwells unchanged in changeless light
Behind the years. (Text.)

(713)

DEEP THINGS

It is folly to think that only those things are of value to us
which we can intellectually understand. Is the vast deep of
the ocean nothing to me, since I can not move about freely and
closely examine its depths? And if I must confess that ’way
down are untold mysteries which human eye has never seen, what
matters it? Can not I rejoice in the roar of the waves, in the
ebb and flow of the tides, and in the flight of the clouds?
Why will men insist, with their poor, finite reasoning, on
fathoming the deep things of God, instead of drinking to the
full from the inexhaustible source of assurance and consolation?
(Text.)--E. F. STROTER, “The Glory of the Body of
Christ.”

(714)

DEFACEMENT OF SOUL

If a drunkard knew that a certain number of drinks would make
his face permanently black, how many men would drink? And shall
we be less careful about the face of our soul?

(715)

DEFEAT

This incident corroborates the truth of the poet’s thought, “We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.”

A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination
on which he thought his future depended.

“Never mind,” he said to himself. “What is the next thing to
be done?” and he found that policy of “never minding,” and
going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies
for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest
scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat
and wrote:

“It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long
as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people
who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”

(716)

See SUCCESS IN FAILURE.

=Defective Memory=--See MEMORY AND DISEASE.

DEFECTS OF THE GREAT

Handel, whose seraphic music lifts us to the gate of heaven, and
whose faith was so clear that when he was dying, on Good Friday,
said that his wish was fulfilled, and that he looked forward to
meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Savior, on Easter day,
was yet a man with a very earthly, irritable temper--so much so
that he had a quarrel with a brother composer which ended in a
duel.

(717)

=Defense=--See RESISTANCE.

DEFORMITY

There died recently in Stockerau, Bavaria, at the age of
twenty-eight years, a dwarf, Maria Schuman, who was at one time
a celebrity, says _La Nature_. She passed her whole life
in the cradle where she slept her first sleep, twenty-eight
years ago. Up to the day of her death, this strange creature
preserved the height and general appearance of an infant of a
few months; but, wonderful to say, her intellect was normally
developed and nothing could have been odder than to hear this
tiny baby in the cradle talk like an adult, with much vivacity
and intelligence! Maria was born in 1875, at Brigittenan, near
Vienna. Her parents were of normal development, and so were her
brothers and sisters. (Text.)

(718)

DEGENERACY

Before Lord Shaftesbury began his work among the poor of England, he tells us that he witnessed this occurrence:

I must have been fourteen years old, or a little more, and I
was walking down from the churchyard, just as we are to-day,
when I was startled by hearing a sudden yell, a drunken voice
singing, and a noisy sound of laughter coming up from the main
road below; then they turned the corner, and I saw four men
staggering along under a coffin, and jesting with song and
horrible laughter as they drew near me. I looked at the coffin.
I could see the rough boards were hastily nailed together; great
cracks half revealed what was inside. Just as they passed me
one of the men slipt, and the coffin fell from their shoulders
and rolled over into the road. It was horrifying to me; and
then they began to swear at one another, using foul language.
I thought they would have fought over the poor dead creature’s
corpse. I came away feeling that if God preserved my life I
would do something to help the poor and him that had no friend.

(719)

* * * * *

Perhaps too much attention is being paid to various theories concerning evolution and development. It might be well sometimes to devote at least a little consideration to the serious possibilities of devolution and degeneracy.

Dr. Carpenter, a London zoologist, speaks thus of certain
organisms brought to light by the scientific Atlantic dredging
expedition: “This little organism is clearly a dwarfed and
deformed representative of the highly developed _Apiocrinus_ of
the Bradford clay, which, as my friend Wyville Thomson said,
seems to have been going to the bad for millions of years.” Thus
we learn that a lowly creature living on the ocean floor is the
degenerate result of that which has been going to the bad for
millions of years.

But if such a vast course of degradation is possible in a sea-worm, what are the possibilities of degradation in a soul?

(720)

See DEGRADATION; EARLY PROMISE; SELFISHNESS.

=Degeneracy, a Figment=--See SCIENCE SHATTERING SUPERSTITIONS.

DEGENERACY THROUGH DISUSE

It is a recognized fact that the disuse of faculties inevitably leads to deterioration.

There is a curious little plant called the sundew which grows in
marshes. A small fly alights on one of the leaves attracted by
the crimson hairs, and by the sticky liquid called the “dew.”
When the fly struggles to get free the hairs slowly curve round
him and trap him, at the same time pouring out more of the
dew. Presently the poor insect dies in that trap. Why does the
plant do this? Simply because it wants to eat the fly. The dew
is acid and dissolves the insect’s body, so that the plant can
absorb the nitrogen which it contains. The sundew once lived
in harmless plant fashion, for it belongs to the saxifrage
family, of which the other members are quite respectable and
hard-working plants, getting their living by honest root-work
in extracting their nitrogen out of the ground. When we examine
the sundew we find it has scarcely anything worthy the name
of a root. Long ago it seemed to dislike the wear and tear of
thrusting rootlets into the ground and seeking for food, so it
settled into a bog, where it could get water at least without
any trouble. There, as the roots had next to nothing to do, they
slowly dwindled away, as all things will dwindle which are not
used, whether they be plant-roots, or the limbs of animals, or
the minds of men.--“A Mountain Path.”

(721)

DEGRADATION

A doctor was once riding from Yezd to Kerman, in Persia, to
make a visit. Arriving at a post-house, and finding no horse,
he demanded a mule. On this beast he made the next stage, to
be told on arrival that there was only a donkey available.
Accepting this mount from necessity, he reached in time another
stage, where he met the announcement that nothing in the shape
of an animal was obtainable but a cow! The story stops there,
drawing the veil of silence over the rest of the journey.

An evil life is successively degraded, declining in guilt and misery to depths lower than the brute. (Text.)

(722)

* * * * *

The early Christians did not despise the dance; but as monkish
asceticism drew away from the simple, natural teaching of
Christ, the dance fell into disfavor and was frowned upon as a
manifestation of the evil one. And just so it was with artistic
perception and artistic appreciation. Where they were highest,
in Hellenic antiquity, dancing had its place among the arts and
was revered as the oldest of them all, that art upon which all
the others were based. Dragged down to pander to luxury and
profligacy, as were all the arts during the period of Roman
triumph and Roman decadence, the dance fell under a cloud with
the rest, and seemed to disappear during the dark ages, as did
the others. (Text.)--GRACE ISABEL COLBRON, _The
Cosmopolitan_.

(723)

=Degradation Inciting Philanthropy=--See DEGENERACY.

=Degradation versus Transformation=--See MISSIONARY RESULTS.

=Degrees, Honorary=--See LABELS, MISLEADING.

DEISM

Deism of any type is morally impotent; and deism of the
eighteenth-century type is nothing but a little patch of
uncertain quicksand set in a black sea of atheism. It does not
deny God’s existence, but it cancels Him out as a force in
human life. It breaks the golden ladder of revelation between
heaven and earth. It leaves the Bible discredited, duty a guess,
heaven a freak of the uncharted imagination, and God a vague
and far-off shadow. Men were left by it to climb into a shadowy
heaven on some frail ladder of human logic.--Rev. W. H.
FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”

(724)

DELAY

The limited express that spans the distance between New York and
Chicago in twenty-four hours accomplishes the feat not so much
by increasing the speed as by reducing the delays. In the main
the train does not travel much faster than the other trains that
take a third more time do at their maximum; but it makes fewer
stops, it attends more strictly to its through business. Chicago
is its objective point.

It is much so on the railroad of life. How young we would all be at sixty--ay, at eighty--if we would avoid the petty, useless, the unnecessary delays, the unprofitable business at the side-stations along the road. (Text.)--VYRNWY MORGAN, “The Cambro-American Pulpit.”

(725)

* * * * *

A newspaper item has the following:

At an annual dinner of the Architectural League of New York the
venerable artist, John La Farge--who certainly belongs among
the first half-score of painters that America has produced--was
presented with a medal of honor.

Then a singular thing happened.

Mr. La Farge got upon his feet and, in a gentle tone of
expostulation, protested that the honors now offered him were a
little empty--and very much belated.

He said he had “only three or four more years left to work in,”
and that through all the years of his vigorous manhood the great
city of New York, with all its vast enterprise of building, had
offered little opportunity to his hand.

The kind word should be spoken to the friend and not engraved on his tombstone. The work that is thought of should be performed in the day of opportunity, for it may be so belated as to lose much of its meaning.

(726)

=Delay, Expensive=--See NATURALIZATION.

=Delay in Religious Instruction=--See RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

DELAY, THE TRAGEDY OF

Charles Biedinger, an inventor, was found dead in his room in
a cheap lodging-house. He had been in extreme want, and had
learned that the Superior Court at Cincinnati had decided
a patent-right claim in his favor, awarding him $93,000 and
interest upon it for several years. His invention, a machine for
making paper wrappers, was patented while he was in a sanatorium
by his financial backer, who refused an accounting when the
inventor was discharged from the sanatorium. The suit followed,
with the verdict of a fortune which came too late. Biedinger was
so reduced in circumstances that he was recently employed as a
dish-washer in a restaurant. (Text.)

(727)

=Delaying Religious Instruction=--See RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.

=Delaying the Gospel=--See FATHER, OUR.

=Deliberation=--See PAINSTAKING.

=Deliverance=--See TRANSFORMATION.

DEMAGOGY

“Yes,” said the candidate, “I’m going out among the farmers
to-day--to a pumpkin show, or jackass show, or something of that
sort. Not that I care for pumpkins or jackasses, but I want to
show the people that I am one of them.”

(728)

DEMONOLOGY

St. Thomas Aquinas used to hold that angels and devils made the
atmosphere their battle-ground--the angels that live in the calm
upper spheres, the devils that fill the immensity of space;
and thus he accounted for the injurious changes of weather to
be experienced in certain countries. For the mortification and
the rout of these demons bells were consecrated and hung in
the church-spires, usually inscribed, “_Vivos voco, mortuos
plango, fulgura frango_” (I summon the living, I mourn
the dead, I scatter the thunder-storm); and their ringing
was thenceforth considered to be one of the potent means of
dispelling evil influences and of abating tempests. These evil
powers, according to medieval legend and belief, were able to
produce hail, thunder, and storms at their will, and those among
them called witches took aerial voyages exactly as the witches
of much later days were held to do, altho more particular
detail is given of their operations, as it is known that they
smeared their broomsticks with witch-salve, after which mounting
them, they could sail where they would through so much of this
atmosphere as was within their jurisdiction. “The air,” says
Rydberg, speaking of those days of the Dark Ages, “was saturated
with demoniacal vapors,” and specters, ghosts, and vampires
multitudinous added their horrors to the fertile imaginations of
the people.--_Harper’s Bazar_.

(729)

* * * * *

In the Kongo district insane people are treated by the native
doctors in the following manner: The patient’s hands are secured
by stout cords, and he is led to the doctor with a fowl and a
lighted firebrand balanced on his head. The doctor takes five
twigs from five different trees and strikes the patient with
each in turn, bidding the evil spirit depart from him. The
lighted stick is then plunged into some water, and as the fire
is quenched the evil spirit is supposed to leave the man’s body.
He may reenter it, however, so the fowl is killed and placed
on a stick at a cross-roads for an offering to the deposited
spirit. Then the man’s bands are loosened and he is free to go
as he chooses; but if he shows signs of the demon appearing in
him again, any one may kill him if his relatives do not object.

(730)

DEMONSTRATION

John W. Gates, the “Wire King,” is described as “an extreme type
of the American ‘hustler.’” The Texas cattlemen had never seen
barbed wire before, and they ridiculed it.

“That stuff wouldn’t hold a Texas steer a holy minute,” said
they.

Gates was put on his mettle. “I’ll show you whether it will or
not,” said he.

This was in the picturesque town of San Antonio, which is dotted
liberally with small open spaces, or plazas. Gates hired the
nearest plaza, and got together a drove of twenty-five of the
wildest Texas steers that could be found. Then he fenced his
plaza with barbed wire, put the steers inside, and gave the
cattlemen a free show. The steers charged the wire, and were
pricked by the barbs. They shook their heads and charged again,
with the same result. After two or three of these defeats they
huddled together on the inside and tried to think it over. Gates
sold hundreds of miles of his wire that day at eighteen cents a
pound.--_Munsey’s_.

(731)

* * * * *

Men are sometimes condemned on hearsay, who would be approved if their critics gave them an actual and fair hearing.

When Chief Justice Holt was on the bench, a society had
sprung up called “The Society for the Suppression of Vice or
the Reformation of manners” (and probably it still exists),
and they resolved to prosecute for indecency one of the famous
singers of the day named Leveridge. This artist used to sing
Dryden’s ode, “The Praise of Love and Wine,” so as to excite
great enthusiasm among the depraved votaries of the theater
by his peculiar manner of execution. The judge saw the craze
under which the prosecutor acted, and resolved to defeat them
by the following course: He said to the jury that he had read
carefully the words of the song, and he could see nothing very
culpable in the words, and therefore he could only come to the
conclusion that it must be the manner in which the ode was
sung that had occasioned this prosecution. The fairest manner,
therefore, to all parties would be for the defendant to sing the
song in presence of the court and jury, when they could readily
determine the matter in a satisfactory way. The performer took
this hint, and, of course, sang with his very greatest power
and good taste, so that not only the jury, without leaving the
box, acquitted him, but the mob insisted on carrying him home on
their shoulders. (Text.)--CROAKE JAMES, “Curiosities of
Law and Lawyers.”

(732)

* * * * *

Tolstoy, in his “Coffee-house Parable,” tells of how some men of
different faiths had met in a place of public resort and had,
after a time, begun to argue about God, each claiming alone to
possess a true knowledge of Him, to have alone received His
revelation. One, wiser than the others, led them all forth at
last till they stood in the sunlight. That sun is a great fact
and manifests itself to every creature on earth. Man sees it,
or does not see it, being blind, yet is ever cheered by it; the
earth is kissed by its rays till it blossoms and brings forth
its fruit; even the hard, inanimate things, like the rocks, are
warmed by the sun’s rays. And God is the great central fact of
life.

(733)

See APPEAL, A LIVING; PROOF.

DEPENDENCE

There are many, like John Wesley, who fear to trust their Christian faith to guide them, but must lean on the faith and strength of others. But faith thus treated is certain to fail the soul in any great crisis.

Wesley’s first consideration, he declares, is “which way
of life will conduce most to my own improvement?” He needs
daily converse with his friends, and he knows “no other place
under heaven, save Oxford, where I can have always at hand
half-a-dozen persons of my own judgment and engaged in the
same studies. To have such a number of such friends constantly
watching over my soul” is a blessing which, in a word, Wesley
can not bring himself to give up. “Half Christians,” he
declares, would kill him. “They undermine insensibly all my
resolutions and quite steal from me the little fervor I have.
I never come from among these ‘saints of the world’ but faint,
dissipated, and shorn of all my strength.” Except he can
crouch beneath the shelter of a stronger faith than his own,
John Wesley protests he must die; so he will not venture from
Oxford.--W. H. FITCHETT, “Wesley and His Century.”

(734)

DEPENDENCE ON GOD

The will of God is like a rope thrown to us as we struggle
among the untamed waves. To remain “independent” is to repulse
all succor, all salvation; it is to wander without a compass
and without a chart through the fury of the storm. To obey
is to seize the rope, to face the blast, to brave the storm,
to advance against the confederate waves, to let oneself be
irresistibly drawn toward the invisible harbor where our
heavenly Father awaits us.--MONROE.

(735)

=Depopulation=--See BIRTH-RATE IN FRANCE.

DEPORTMENT

One effect of the high standard of deportment enforced by the
railroads is seen in the extent to which women and children
travel alone, without fear. An illustration of this is the
experience of a Western woman who was coming to New York for
the first time. With her husband, she left Buffalo for New York
on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. When they reached Mauch Chunk,
Pa., the husband got out to walk up and down the platform, and
somehow the train pulled out without him. The woman, left alone,
never having been east of Chicago before, was on the verge of
panic. Her husband had all the money; the train was to reach New
York in the night; she didn’t know what hotel to go to, and,
if she had known, couldn’t have found her way there. So the
conductor took her in charge, had her carried to a good hotel,
and arranged to have the bill guaranteed. The husband, when he
arrived, was so grateful that he hunted up the conductor and
presented to him a handsome ring.--Buffalo _Evening News_.

(736)

DEPRAVITY

That sin so easily besets and so dangerously deceives its subjects is accounted for by the declaration that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

The anemone, or “windflower,” as its Greek name means, is
fascinating to botanists and to all lovers of flowers because
of two highly contrasted characteristics. One of these is what
gardeners call its “sporting” tendency in color. The other is
a constant quantity, which never varies. As for the former,
all who know the anemone are well aware that this flower is
so variable that the cultivator never knows what will be the
tint of the blossoms on any plant. But the constant quantity
is the great black spot in the heart of the flower. No matter
what may happen to be the color of the petals, the dense dark
center is always there. So it is with this our human nature.
Education, culture, refinement, high accomplishments, hereditary
advantages, natural amiability, may and do contribute toward the
charm of many a personality; but the black spot of the depravity
which is innate is not expunged by any of these expedients.
(Text.)

(737)

See BIBLE AND HUMAN NATURE.

=Depravity a Disease=--See CHARACTER CONDITIONED BY THE PHYSICAL.

DEPRIVATION

We can best estimate the value of common blessings by imagining ourselves deprived of them.

What would it mean for you and me
If dawn should come no more;
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.

Think what it means to see the dawn!
The dawn, that comes each day!
What if the East should ne’er grow wan,
Should never more grow gray!
That line of rose no more be drawn
Above the ocean’s spray! (Text.)

--MADISON CAWEIN, _Ainslee’s Magazine_.

(738)

DEPTH OF RESOURCES

Some splendid pines were found, after a heavy gale, lying
prostrate, tho they were strong trees in their full prime. To a
questioner an old woodman said: “They got their water far too
near the surface. If they had had to strike their roots deeper
for moisture no winds could ever have uprooted them.”

Many folks are easily upset because all life has been too easy with them. Their roots have never struck deep because there was no great compulsion to make them go deeper for the sources of life. Our very wants, if we do not succumb to them, but go deeper until we find the heart’s need, may become the means of our strength. (Text.)

(739)

DEPTH, THE SECOND

As we drift along in a boat on the smooth surface of a river, we
note many familiar appearances. Delicate winged creatures dart
about, swallows flash to and fro, here and there fishes leap up,
and zephyrs waft petals of flowers and seeds of plants over the
placid mirror. In the shallow pool we note aquatic creatures and
weeds growing among the pebbles, and thus we see the material
depth. But suddenly there is a change. The bottom of the river
vanishes, and there comes into view a second depth. The arched
heavens are mirrored there, and we look down into measureless
azure. When darkness comes the moon and stars are reflected in
the depths.

It is so when we come under higher spiritual influences. These soon supersede the view of the things that are merely of the earth earthy. There is a second and heavenly depth of meaning below the whole superficies of this mundane sphere of experience.

(740)

=Derelicts=--See CONSERVATION.

=Descent to Evil=--See EVIL, BEGINNINGS OF.

=Design=--See VOICE, THE HUMAN.

=Design, A, Removed=--See REMINDERS, UNPLEASANT.

DESIGN IN MAN’S ACTIVITY

The fin of the fish does not more evidently convey the power
and betoken the function of moving in the sea or the wing of
the bird that of sailing on the air, than do these quickening
and propellent forces, inherent in man’s being, proclaim
him ordained for wide-reaching operation.--RICHARD S.
STORRS.

(741)

DESIGN IN NATURE

A student of the phenomena of vision, Professor Pritchard, speaks thus of the argument from the structure of the human eye:

From what I know, through my own specialty, both geometry and
experiment, of the structure of lenses and the human eye, I do
not believe that any amount of evolution, extending through
any amount of time consistent with the requirements of our
astronomical knowledge, could have issued in the production of
that most beautiful and complicated instrument, the human eye.
There are too many curved surfaces, too many distances, too many
densities of the media, each essential to the other; too great a
facility of ruin by slight disarrangement, to admit of anything
short of the intervention of an intelligent Will at some stage
of the evolutionary process. (Text.)

(742)

=Design in the Soul=--See WORK DIVINELY INTENDED.

DESIGN OF GOD

We are told that on one occasion Napoleon was shut up in an
island of the Danube, hemmed in by the Archduke Charles.
He was able to maintain himself there, but he sent word to
Italy and Spain and France, and he ordered his marshal with
such minuteness that every day’s march was perfect. All over
the north of France, and from the extreme south of Spain and
Portugal, the corps were, all of them, advancing, and day by
day, coming nearer and nearer. Not one of them, on the march,
had any idea what was the final purpose, and why they were
being ordered to the central point. But on the day the master
appointed the heads of the columns appeared in every direction.
Then it was that he was able to break forth from his bondage and
roll back the tide of war.

How like our life, as it moves on, to the command of the Master. Its forces seem confused to us, without cohesion, ofttimes antagonistic. Joy and sorrow, health and sickness, prosperity and adversity--all march in their appointed paths and to their appointed ends. But at last we shall see behind them all the one will and the one power, and we shall be able to say on the day of final emancipation and victory, as said Joseph of old, God meant it unto good, to bring it to pass.--JOHN COLEMAN ADAMS.

(743)

DESIRES INORDINATE

An adventurer waits upon you one of these days and offers
you on terms absurdly easy some diamond-field in Africa, or
silver-mine in Nevada, or ruby-mine in Burmah--a few shares at
a trifling cost will make you a millionaire. You are smitten;
your brain is filled with pleasant dreams; and without the least
investigation, you invest your good money to find ere long
that you have been cruelly deceived. Will the public greatly
pity you? They will not. There was a personal moral fault at
the bottom of your misfortune. You were willingly ignorant,
you were easily blinded, because of your inordinate desires.
So is it in all temptations of life to which we fall a prey. A
certain morbid disposition of soul is the secret of our loss or
ruin.--W. L. WATKINSON, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”

(744)

=Despair Relieved=--See EXTREMITY NOT FINAL.

=Desperate Remedy=--See LAST RESORT OF A WOMAN.

DESTINY

The tissue of the life to be
We weave with colors all our own,
And in the fields of destiny
We reap as we have sown;
Still shall the soul around it call
The shadows which it gathered here,
And painted on the eternal wall
The past shall reappear.

(745)

* * * * *

Rev. Frederick Lynch tells in _Christian Work_ the following story of Henry Ward Beecher:

In a public assembly a minister arose and said: “Mr. Beecher,
my congregation has delegated me to ask this question of you:
We have in our congregation one of the purest and most lovable
men you ever saw. He is upright, honest, generous, the heartiest
supporter of the church we have--the friend of the poor, the
beloved of little children, a veritable saint--but he does not
believe the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, where do you think he
will go after death?” Mr. Beecher was equal to the occasion.
Hesitating a moment, he said: “I never dare say where any man
will go after death, but wherever this man goes, he certainly
has my best wishes.”

(746)

* * * * *

A polliwig swims about in a muddy pool and appears happy and
contented. It is in its element. After a while it develops into
a frog and climbs up on the bank. Altho it has attained to a
higher state of existence, it has a tendency for the old life.
It does not go very far away from the muddy pool. It stays near
it, that it may take an occasional dip. A boy comes along and
stones it, and it leaps back into the muddy pool. The boy looks
about for some other moving object. He sees a lark not far away
and hurls a stone at it. The skylark spreads its wings for
flight. As it soars upward, it sings clearer and sweeter until
it is far above the reach of its tormentor.

The contrasted tendencies of men resemble those of the polliwig and the lark. There is a world of meaning in the brief statement about Judas, “that he might go to his own place.” (Text.)

(747)

DESTINY OF NATIONS

The destiny of nations! They arise,
Have their heyday of triumph, and in turn
Sink upon silence, and the lidless eyes
Of fate salute them from their final urn.

How splendid-sad the story! How the gust
And pain and bliss of living transient seem!
Cities and pomps and glories shrunk to dust,
And all that ancient opulence a dream.

Must a majestic rhythm of rise and fall
Conquer the peoples once so proud on earth?
Does man but march in circles, after all,
Playing his curious game of death and birth?

Or shall an ultimate nation, God’s own child,
Arise and rule, nor ever conquered be;
Untouched of time because, all undefiled,
She makes His ways her ways eternally?

--RICHARD BURTON, _The Century Magazine_.

(748)

DESTRUCTION, GRADUAL