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
