of the sowing, and he says, "I have harvested, I have raised so many bushels of corn to the acre." Oh, no, he has not. He has sown so many seeds, he has cultivated so many acres, he has put in his sickle or his harvesting machine, and he has gathered so many stalks. But he could not have done it if some forces of nature had not been at work perfecting that which he began. He and nature, as we say—he and God, as I say—have worked together to raise the harvest. (Text.)—Lyman Abbott.
(586)
See Gratitude.
COPYING VAIN
It would never make an arithmetician of
a boy at school if he merely copied the solution
of arithmetic problems from his neighbor's
slate or paper, even tho the solutions
thus copied should be the correct ones. To
become an arithmetician the boy must himself
learn to solve problems; and this means
that he must understand thoroughly every
step in the process of solution. The process
must go through him, or through his intelligence,
as well as that he must go through
the process. He must know what he is
aiming at, and why it is that he adds, subtracts,
multiplies, and divides, every time
that he does any of these. Merely to put
down figures on his paper, even should they
be the right figures by chance, unless he
understands the why and the when, would
do him no good whatsoever. And it would
not make the matter one whit better if he
imagined the schoolmaster would be pleased
with seeing him put down right figures without
understanding what he was doing, or
why he was doing it. The whole would only
show that he was far back in intelligence,
and would hardly ever become an arithmetician.
We can not become truly religious
either by being mere copiers of the
religion of others, or by fetish worship.—Alexander
Miller, "Heaven and Hell Here."
(587)
Cordiality—See Hospitality in Church.
CORN VERSUS GOLD
Drop a grain of California gold into the
ground, and there it will lie unchanged to
the end of time, the clods on which it falls
not more cold and lifeless. Drop a grain
of our gold, of our blest gold, into the
ground, and lo! a mystery. In a few days
it softens, it swells, it shoots upward, it is a
living thing. It is yellow itself, but it sends
up a delicate spire, which comes peeping,
emerald green, through the soil; it expands
to a vigorous stalk; revels in the air and
sunshine; arrays itself, more glorious than
Solomon, in its broad, fluttering, leafy robes,
whose sound, as the west wind whispers
through them, falls as pleasantly on the husbandman's
ear as the rustle of his sweetheart's
garment; still towers aloft, spins its
verdant skeins of vegetable floss, displays
its dancing tassels, surcharged with fertilizing
dust, and at last ripens into two or
three magnificent batons like this [an ear of
Indian corn], each of which is studded with
hundreds of grains of gold, every one possessing
the same wonderful properties as
the parent grain, every one instinct with the
same marvelous reproductive powers. There
are seven hundred and twenty grains on the
ear which I hold in my hand. I presume
there were two or three such ears on the
stalk. This would give us one thousand
four hundred and forty, perhaps two thousand
one hundred and sixty grains as the
product of one. They would yield next
season, if they were all successfully planted,
four thousand two hundred, perhaps six
thousand three hundred ears. Who does not
see that, with this stupendous progression,
the produce of one grain in a few years
might feed all mankind? And yet with this
visible creation annually springing and ripening
around us, there are men who doubt,
who deny the existence of God. Gold from
the Sacramento River, sir! There is a sacrament
in this ear of corn enough to bring
an atheist to his knees.—Edward Everett.
(588)
CORRUPTION, INNER
Athenian society decayed at last, not at
all because its artists had reached the limit
of human invention, or its philosophers the
necessary term of human thought, but because
the moral faculties and tastes which
should have presided in that society were not
developed in proportion to the esthetic and
intellectual powers which added to its ornament.
It was outwardly like the statue
of Minerva in the Parthenon, of costly ivory,
overlaid with gold; but it was wood within;
and the wood rotted; that is all that can be
said of it. Then the cunning of the ivory,
and the splendor of the gold, fell and were
broken, and the nations gathered the shining
fragments.—Richard S. Storrs.
(589)
COSMOLOGY, PRIMITIVE
Knowing nothing of the planetary system,
early man had to account in his own way for
the apparent fixity of the earth, and as the
