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.
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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.)
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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.
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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."
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Despair Relieved—See Extremity Not Final.
Desperate Remely—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.
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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
