and the great master of music missed it.
So in life's chorus, the least man can
make or mar it by faithfulness or
neglect. (Text.)
(2377)
PLACE, IN THE RIGHT
The rainbow is one of the most beautiful
things in nature. It is made by a series and
succession of falling drops, the series
stretching across the sky, and the successive
drops catching the reflection and refraction
left by the drop below. Each drop has but
a minute ray among the millions, and has
this but for an instant as it comes into the
right angle with the sun; but all together
and in succession spread wide the beautiful
arch of hope and promise. Each of us is
among God's creatures only as a single drop
in the broad shower, and only for a little is
our opportunity; but if we are in our place
and in the right angle toward God, we may
help spread His glory far and wide.—Franklin
Noble, "Sermons in Illustration."
(2378)
PLAGIARISM, DETECTION OF
A man might as well hoist a ladder in a
village at noonday and try to steal the town
clock without being observed as to expect to
carry off literary ware in our time and not
be found out. The newspaper editor,
scissors in hand and mucilage on the table,
sits up to his chin in exchanges from the
four winds of heaven. Beside that, all the
world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap
and transportation so rapid that before every
preacher, and before every lecturer, and before
every religious exhorter, there may sit
persons from the most unexpected quarter,
and if they heard three years ago something
delivered in New Orleans which you delivered
in Brooklyn, the discovery will be
reported. Quote from all books you can
lay your hands on. Quote from all directions.
It is a compliment to have breadth of
reading to be able to quote. But be sure to
announce it as a quotation. Ah! how many
are making a mistake in this thing; it is a
mistake that a man can not afford to make.
Four commas upside down—two at the beginning
of the paragraph, two at the close of
the paragraph—will save many a man's integrity
and usefulness.—T. De Witt Talmage.
(2379)
PLAN IN NATURE
There are several hundred thousand different
kinds of animals living on this globe of
the different types. Every one of them has
its line of development. Every sparrow begins
with the egg, and goes through all the
changes which are characteristic of sparrow
life, until it is capable of producing new
eggs, which will go through the same change.
Every butterfly comes from the egg, which
produces the caterpillar, which becomes a
chrysalis, and then a butterfly, laying eggs
to go through the same changes. So with
all animals, whether of higher or lower
type. In fact, the animal kingdom as it is
now, is undergoing greater changes every
year than the whole animal kingdom has
ever passed through from the beginning until
now; and yet we never see one of these animals
swerve from the plan pointed out, or
produce anything else than that which is
like itself.—Prof. Louis Agassiz.
(2380)
PLAN, LACK OF
Emerson tells that when on a trip to New
Hampshire he found a large building going
up in a country town. Struck by its ungainly
and rambling appearance, he asked a
man who was working at it, who the architect
was. And the reply was, "Oh, there isn't any
architect settled on as yet. I'm just building
it, you see, and there's a man coming from
Boston next month to put the architecture
into it."
(2381)
PLANS, HUMAN, TRANSCENDED
The Rev. W. H. Fitchett says of John Wesley:
Had Wesley done nothing more than
preach or write his memory might have
failed. But at this stage Wesley links himself
by one great achievement, not merely to
English history, but to the history of religion.
He creates a church! He did not do
this consciously, or of deliberate purpose.
He strove, indeed, not to do it; he protested
he would never do it. But as history shows,
he actually did it! And since history is not
so much philosophy teaching by examples as
God interpreting Himself by events, we are
entitled to say that Wesley, in laying the
foundations of a new church, did something
that, no doubt, outran his own human vision,
but which fulfilled a divine purpose.—"Wesley
and His Century."
(2382)
PLANT WORSHIP
The plant worship which holds so prominent
a place in the history of the primitive
races of mankind, would appear to have
