Chapter M: B. Banks writes a missionary lesson after the style of “Mother (10)

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

(1777)

LETTER OF GOD

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

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

(1778)

LEVELING

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

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

(1779)

=Levity=--See GRAVITY.

LIAR EXPOSED

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

(1780)

=Liberality=--See GENEROSITY.

LIBERALITY IN RELIGION

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

(1781)

=Liberty=--See FREEDOM CHOSEN.

=Liberty, A Spider’s Struggle for=--See INGENUITY.

LIBERTY, INDIVIDUAL

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

“As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.”

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

(1782)

=Liberty, Promoting=--See EMANCIPATION.

LIBERTY, SPIRITUAL

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

“My cage confines me round:
Abroad I can not fly;
But tho my wings are closely bound,
My heart’s at liberty.
My prison walls can not control
The flight, the freedom of the soul.
And in God’s mighty will I find
The joy, the freedom of the mind.” (Text.)

(1783)

LIBERTY SYMBOLIZED

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

(1784)

=Liberty, Workers for=--See EMANCIPATION.

LIES IN BUSINESS

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

(1785)

LIFE

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

Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?

--_Young_

Life’s a short summer--man is but a flower;

--_Dr. Johnson_

By turns we catch the fatal breath and die

--_Pope_

The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh!

--_Prior_

To be is better far than not to be,

--_Sewell_

Tho all man’s life may seem a tragedy;

--_Spencer_

But light cares speak when mighty griefs are dumb--

--_Daniel_

The bottom is but shallow whence they come.

--_Raleigh_

Your fate is but the common fate of all,

--_Longfellow_

Unmingled joys here to no man befall;

--_Southwell_

Nature to each allots his proper sphere.

--_Congreve_

Fortune makes folly her peculiar care.

--_Churchill_

Custom does often reason overrule

--_Rochester_

And throw a cruel sunshine on a fool;

--_Armstrong_

Live well--how long or short permit to heaven,

--_Milton_

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

--_Bailey_

Sin may be clasped so close we can not see its face;

--_French_

Vile intercourse where virtue has no place.

--_Somerville_

Then keep each passion down, however dear,

--_Thompson_

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear:

--_Byron_

Her sensual snares let faithless pleasures lay,

--_Smollett_

With craft and skill to ruin and betray.

--_Crabbe_

Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise;

--_Massinger_

We masters grow of all that we despise.

--_Crowley_

Oh, then, renounce that impious self-esteem.

--_Beattie_

Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.

--_Cowper_

Think not ambition wise because ’tis brave--

--_Davenant_

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

--_Gray_

What is ambition? ’Tis a glorious cheat.

--_Willis_

Only destructive to the brave and great.

--_Addison_

What’s all the gaudy glitter of a crown?

--_Dryden_

The way to bliss lies not on beds of down.

--_Quarles_

How long we live, not years but actions tell.

--_Watkins_

That man lives twice, who lives the first life well.

--_Herrick_

Make, then, while yet ye may, your God your friend.

--_Mason_

Whom Christians worship, yet not comprehend.

--_Hill_

The trust that’s given guard, and to yourself be just.

--_Dana_

For live howe’er we may, yet die we must.

--_Shakespeare_

--_Good Housekeeping._

(1786)

* * * * *

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

(1787)

LIFE A CYCLE

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

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

(1788)

LIFE, A DEVOTED

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

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

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

(1789)

LIFE, A NOBLE

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

(1790)

LIFE A TREE

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

(1791)

LIFE A VOYAGE

Into this world we come like ships,
Launched from the docks and stocks and slips,
For fortune fair or fatal.
--THOMAS HOOD.

O Neptune! You may save me if you will; you may sink me if you
will; but whatever happens I shall keep my rudder true.
--SENECA’S “Pilot.”

Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward sail unharmed;
The port, well worth the voyage, is near,
And every wave is charmed.
--R. W. EMERSON.

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

(1792)

=Life and Faith United=--See RELIGION ALLAYING FEAR.

LIFE, APPRECIATION OF

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

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

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

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

“What is the matter, Asa?”

I said: “I wish I was never made!”

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

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

(1793)

=Life as Testimony=--See NATIVE CONVERTS.

=Life, Brevity of=--See BREVITY OF LIFE.

LIFE CHEAP

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

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

(1794)

LIFE, CLINGING TO

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

(1795)

LIFE, CONTINUED

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

(1796)

LIFE, DESIRE FOR LONG

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

(1797)

=Life, Fecundity of=--See PROPAGATION, PROLIFIC.

LIFE, FEEDING THE

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

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

(1798)

LIFE FROM DEATH

Clinton Scollard, in _The Outlook_, draws a lesson from the new-fallen snow:

The evanescent wonder of the snow
Is round about us, and as in a cloud--
A vestiture inviolate--we walk.
Earth seems bereft of song and shorn of sun,
A cloistral world. Even the lyric throat
Of the rapt brook is like a pulse-beat faint.
The wood--white architrave on architrave--
Is as a temple where the lips of prayer
Tremble upon the verge of utterance.
Hush! In the heart of this great gulf of sleep,
This void abysmal, may we not divine
The inscrutable Presence clothed about with dreams,
The immaculate Vision that is death yet life,
For out of death comes life: the twain are one! (Text.)

(1799)

=Life, Inward=--See CHARACTER MORE THAN CLOTHING.

LIFE LEARNED FROM DEATH

Prof. G. Currie Martin draws this suggestive picture:

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

(1800)

=Life-line, A=--See INGENUITY.

LIFE-LINE HYMN

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1801)

=Life-material=--See MATERIAL FOR A GREAT LIFE.

LIFE, NEW, FROM GOD

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

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

(1802)

LIFE, ORIGIN OF

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

(1803)

LIFE, PASSION FOR

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

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

(1804)

LIFE, PERSISTENCE OF

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

(1805)

=Life Pictures=--See REALISM.

LIFE PROLONGED

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

(1806)

LIFE PURPOSE

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

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

(1807)

* * * * *

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

To face each day of life
Nor flinch from any task;
To front the moment’s strife
And only courage ask.
To be a man unawed
By aught but heaven’s command;
Tho men revile or plaud,
To take a stand--and stand.

To fill my life with toil,
With God’s free air and light;
To shun the things that spoil,
That hasten age and night;
To sweat beneath my hod,
Nor ask a better gift
From self or man or God
Than will and strength to lift.

To keep my spirit sweet
Tho head and hand be tired;
Each brother man to greet,
Nor leave him uninspired;
To keep my spirit fed
On God unceasingly,
That none may lack his bread
Who walk this way with me. (Text.)

(1808)

LIFE RECRUDESCENT

Edith M. Thomas is the author of the lines below, found in the _Canadian Presbyterian_:

The apple-tree said,
“You think I’m dead,”
“Because I have never a leaf to show,
Because I stoop,
And my branches droop,
And the dull, gray mosses over me grow;
But I’m alive in trunk and shoot,
The buds of next May
I fold away,
But I pity the withered grass at my root.”

“You think I’m dead,”
The quick grass said,
“Because I have parted with stem and blade,
But under the ground
I’m safe and sound,
With the snow’s thick blanket over me laid.
I’m all alive and ready to shoot
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here,
But I pity the flower without branch or root.”

“You think I’m dead,”
A soft voice said,
“Because not a branch or root I own.
I never have died
But close I hide
In a plump seed that the wind has sown,
Patient I wait through the long winter hours.
You will see me again,
I shall laugh at you then
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers.”

(1809)

LIFE, RESPONSE OF

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

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

(1810)

LIFE-SAVING

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

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

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

(1811)

See KNOWLEDGE APPLIED.

=Life-saving Attachment=--See ECONOMY OF ENERGY.

LIFE-SAVING BY WIRELESS

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

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

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

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

“KENTUCKY.”

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

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

(1812)

LIFE, SELF-PROPAGATING

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

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

(1813)

LIFE, SOURCE OF MAN’S

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

(1814)

LIFE, SPENDING

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

A life spent with a purpose grand
Has simply not been “spent”;
It’s really an investment, and
Will yield a large per cent. (Text.)

(1815)

LIFE, THE SIMPLE

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

(1816)

=Life, The Whole, the Test of Character=--See CHARACTER, UNSEEN
PLACES IN.

LIFE, THE WINGED

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

(1817)

LIFE, USES OF

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

(1818)

LIFE AS AN ART

These verses are from a poem by John Kendrick Bangs in _The Century_:

He’d never heard of Phidias,
He’d never heard of Byron;
His tastes were not fastidious,
His soul was not aspirin’:
But he could tell you what the birds were whisp’ring in the trees,
And he could find sweet music in the sounding of the seas,
And he could joy in wintry snows,
And summer’s sunny weather,
And tell you all the names of those
Who frolic in the heather.

He nothing knew of sciences,
Of art, or eke of letters;
Nor of those strange appliances
That fill the world with debtors:
But happiness he knew right well; he knew from A to Z
The art of filling life with song, and others’ souls with glee;
And he could joy in day and night,
Heart full of pure thanksgiving--
I am not sure he was not right
In using life for living.

(1819)

LIFE, VALUE OF

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

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

(1820)

LIFE, VENERATION FOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1821)

=Life versus Business=--See RELIGION VERSUS BUSINESS.

LIFE VERSUS CHURCH

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

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

(1822)

LIFE, WASTING

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

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

(1823)

LIFE, WATER OF

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

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

(1824)

LIFE WHAT WE MAKE IT

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

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

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

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

(1825)

LIFE WORK, CHOOSING A

In a current book a college president tells this story:

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

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

(1826)

=Life Yet to Be=--See FUTURE, THE.

=Life’s Furrow=--See SYMBOL OF LIFE.

LIFE’S MELODY

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

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

(1827)

LIFE’S TURNING TIDE

Does the tide ever turn in the land of the dead?
Shall we stir at the kiss of the wave rolling back,
And lift, like the sea-weed, the death-draggled head,
And toss with life’s flood, like the tangles of wrack?

We trust it is so; for the sea that God turns,
And sends flooding back into river and bay--
Is the sea more divine than the spirit that yearns?
And we will not believe that life’s tide ebbs for aye.

--JAMES BUCKHAM, _Frank Leslie’s_.

(1828)

LIFTERS AND LEANERS

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

We may depend upon it that it is the lifters and not the leaners who have the joy, and the peace, and the triumph of the Christian life.--LOUIS ALBERT BANKS.

(1829)

LIGHT