William Duncan, now known as "The Apostle of Alaska," whose missionary triumphs among the Indians of the Alaskan coast have won the admiration of the world.
To win the one is sometimes to win
the many. (Text.)
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Open Allegiance—See Church Membership. Open Door to China—See Chinese Progress. OPENNESS OF MIND The Mediterranean is practically a tide-*less sea, and yet the visitor to its waters is puzzled at the discovery of what appears to be a tide. But the explanation is that there is a connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, so that what seems to be a tide at Gibraltar is simply the rolling waves from the tide of the mighty Atlantic into the sea that washes the shores of southern Europe and northern Africa. As long as the channel at the Straits of Gibraltar is open, so long will there be this rolling in, and so there will be a constant influx of blessing while communication with God is unhindered.
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See Source of Blessing. OPINION, CHANGED When General Ewell was asked what he thought of Jackson's generalship in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, he replied: "When he began it, I thought him crazy. Before he got through, I thought him inspired." —The Sunday Magazine.
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Opinionatedness—See Individualism, Excessive.
OPINIONS
Wesley himself said once to his preachers,
"I have no more right to object to a man
for holding a different opinion from my own
than I have to differ with a man because he
wears a wig and I wear my own hair, tho I
have a right to object if he shakes the
powder about my eyes."—W. H. Fitchett,
"Wesley and His Century."
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OPPORTUNITIES, IMPROVED
Whitefield preached under conditions and
to audiences known to no other orators.
Passing over Hampton Common, he finds a
crowd of 12,000 people collected to see a man
hung in chains. Here is an audience, a pulpit,
a text; and straightway he captures the
crowd! He preaches to another vast multitude
assembled to see a man hanged, and
the hangman himself suspends his office while
Whitefield discourses. Some wandering
players have set up their stage at a country
fair; the crowd rushes together to grin and
jest. But Whitefield suddenly appears, turns
the whole scene to religious uses, spoils the
players' harvest, and preaches a sermon of
overwhelming power.—W. H. Fitchett,
"Wesley and His Century."
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OPPORTUNITIES UNUTILIZED
The Macon Telegraph says that Macon men
in Florida laugh to see natives opening canned
tomatoes in sight of tomato plants loaded with
ripe fruit. Then the said Macon men go to
their own homes and buy Florida shad, at
Washington Market prices, altho their own
river is full of them; and the Telegraph
asks: "Is it not a little singular?" Bless
you, no! The same sort of thing is going
on all over the country. There is not a year
when hams and bacon do not bring higher
prices in some great pork-producing counties
of the West than they do in New York.
There are Southern counties where the
watermelon grows so easily that the small
boy scorns to steal it, yet in some towns in
these counties a watermelon costs twice as
much as in any Northern city. There are
cattle-ranches in the West where milk, when
there is any, brings fifty cents a quart, and
great grain farms on the prairies whose
owners never in their lives tasted an ear of
sweet-corn. And, coming back to the shad,
there are times when these fish are running
up our own river by tens of thousands that
a breakfast of shad costs more than one of
beefsteak, altho the shad comes right to
town and needs only to be taken from a net,
while the beef has to be fed at least three
years and then brought half-way across the
continent by rail. No, there's nothing singular
about it, except in the fact that where food
products most abound human nature seems
most incompetent to make full use of its
opportunities. America is, above all others,
a land of plenty, but no one would imagine
it after looking at a price-list of family supplies.—New
York Herald.
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OPPORTUNITY
Senator J. J. Ingalls wrote the first of these poems not long before he died, the only poetry he is known to have
