foot, while a treated pile costs between ninety cents and one dollar. But it pays to go to the extra expense. Creosoted piling that has been in the Galveston bridge for nearly fifteen years is still sound and in a good state of preservation; while the average life of an untreated pile is less than one year, many of them being unfit for service after being in the water thirty days. This quick destruction is caused by the attacks of the teredo, a salt-water mollusk that honeycombs the wood to such an extent that in a short time it will not bear its own weight.
(964)
EVIL, PURGING FROM
What would not the patient give to have
the last fiber of the dreadful cancer removed,
for while that fiber is there every
possibility of the malady is there! Air, sunshine,
fragrance, are all said to be fatal to
destroying germs; let us saturate our soul
day by day in the atmosphere and light and
sweetness of the upper worlds, so shall all
evil things die in us, and all good things
live and grow in us.—W. L. Watkinson,
"The Transfigured Sackcloth."
(965)
EVIL, REPELLENCE OF
There was a white plant growing by the
entrance to a coal-mine. One of the miners
took a handful of the coal-dust and threw
it on the leaves, but not a particle adhered.
The plant was covered with a wonderful
enamel on which nothing could leave a
stain.
It is not the Master's plan for us
that we should be taken out of the sinful
world, to live our life where no
evil can touch us. But God, who can
make a little plant so that no dust can
stain it, can by His grace also make our
lives impervious to sin's defiling.
(966)
EVIL SELF-DESTRUCTIVE
Dr. Walter Kempster, of Milwaukee, Wis.,
suggests that as all the nations will probably
soon agree to exclude anarchists from their
territory, an island should be purchased in
some healthy climate, to which they should
all be exiled. Vessels should patrol the coast
to prevent any leaving, but no attempt should
be made to govern the colony. The
anarchists would then have precisely what
they demand—a colony free from government.
They could then practise their heartless
methods on one another and throw
bombs with impunity. A better scheme to
disgust them with anarchy could not be devised.
It is on the same principle that the
Bible tells us God will act, to extirpate
evil from His universe by giving the
evildoer opportunity to act out his nature.
(Text.)
(967)
Evils, Small—See Small Evils Hardest to Bear.
EVIL TURNED TO GOOD
The Mauruans told the missionaries that
they formerly attributed every evil that befell
them to the anger of their "evil spirits,"
but now they worshiped the living and true
God, and they pointed to the demolished
Maraes and mutilated idols as the proof of
the great change. The change in the name of
the gods, whom they now called "evil spirits,"
was an indication of the radical change in
their religious beliefs. In some cases the
spears which had been used in warfare were
found converted into staves to support the
balustrades of the pulpit stairs, and not a
vestige of idolatry was to be seen.—Pierson,
"The Miracles of Missions."
(968)
EVIL, VIRULENCY OF
In the history of the great calamity of Asiatic cholera in this country in 1832, mention is made of the emigrant steamer that brought the disease to these shores. The steamer touched at Quebec and at Montreal, and landed passengers infected with the disease at both points. Over this intervening distance of two hundred miles, the disease traveled in thirty hours. Pursuing the succeeding events of this history, the writer says:
Over this long distance, thickly inhabited
on both shores of the St. Lawrence, cholera
made a single leap, without infecting a
single village or a single house between the
two cities, with the following exceptions. A
man picked up a mattress thrown from the
Vogageur, and he and his wife died of
cholera; another man, fishing on the St.
Lawrence, was requested to bury a body from
the Voyageur, and he and his wife and
nephew died. But more than 4,000 persons
died of cholera in Montreal, and more than
