to the solid rock. So the chain was cut and the anchor left in its chosen resting-place.
(802)
See Atrophy; Degeneracy Through Disease.
DIVERSE INFLUENCES
Man, after all, is not ripened by virtue
alone. Were it so, this world were a paradise
of angels. No; like the growth of the
earth, he is the fruit of all seasons, the accident
of a thousand accidents, a living mystery
moving through the seen to the unseen;
he is sown in dishonor; he is matured under
all the varieties of heat and cold, in
mists and wrath, in snow and vapors, in the
melancholy of autumn, in the torpor of winter
as well as in the rapture and fragrance
of summer, or the balmy affluence of spring,
its breath, its sunshine; at the end he is
reaped, the product not of one climate but
of all; not of good alone but of sorrow,
perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps
stricken and withered and sour. How, then,
shall we judge any one?—how, at any rate,
shall we judge a giant, great in gifts and
great in temptation, great in strength, and
great in weakness? Let us glory in his
strength and be comforted in his weakness,
and when we thank heaven for the inestimable
gift of Burns, we do not need to
remember wherein he was imperfect, we can
not bring ourselves to regret that he was
made of the same clay as ourselves.—Lord
Rosebery.
(803)
DIVERSION BY SMALL THINGS
The story of the way in which John Wesley partly failed in an attempt to gain back certain seceders from his following is told by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett, as follows:
According to the Moravians themselves,
the dramatic effect of Wesley's departure
from the building was spoiled by a petty but
ingenious trick. As the persons present came
into the room they placed their hats all together
on the ground in one corner; but
Wesley's hat had been—by design—carried
off. When he had finished his paper and
called upon all who agreed with him to follow
him, he walked across the room, but
could not discover his hat! The pause, the
search which followed, quite effaced the impressiveness
of his departure, and, as
Southey puts it, "The wily Molther and his
followers had time to arrest many who
would have been carried away in his wake."—"Wesley
and His Century."
(804)
Diversity Desirable—See Talents Differ.
Diversity in Work—See Headwork.
Diverting the Mind—See Offended Feelings.
Divine Wisdom Best—See Playthings,
Earth's.
DIVINITY
All things are mine; to all things I belong;
I mingle in them—heeding bounds nor bars—
Float in the cloud, melt in the river's song;
In the clear wave from rock to rock I leap,
Widen away, and slowly onward creep;
I stretch forth glimmering hands beneath the stars
And lose my little murmur in the deep.
Yea, more than that: whatever I behold—
Dark forest, mountain, the o'erarching wheel
Of heaven's solemn turning, all the old
Immeasurable air and boundless sea—
Yields of its life, builds life and strength in me
For tasks to come, while I but see and feel,
And merely am, and it is joy to be.
Lo, that small spark within us is not blind
To its beginning; struck from one vast soul
Which, in the framework of the world, doth bind
All parts together; small, but still agreeing
With That which molded us without our seeing;
Since God is all, and all in all—the Whole
In whom we live and move and have our being. (Text.)
—Samuel V. Cole, The Critic.
(805)
DIVINITY IN PHENOMENA
Not a planet that wheels its circle around
its controlling flame, not a sun that pours
its blaze upon the black ether, not one of all
