for a piercing sense of the danger and the sinfulness of it. 2. Take care how you ingratiate yourself with any people by slackness of discipline. 3. Or by any method which another preacher can not follow. 4. Warn the people among whom you are most of esteeming or loving you too much. 5. Converse sparingly with those who are particularly fond of you.
Times and men are strangely changed since those words were written. What preacher to-day has to study anxiously "how to avoid popularity," or finds any necessity for warning the people among whom he labors against "esteeming him or loving him too much!"—W. H. Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."
(2407)
Population—See Cities of the World; City, Growth of a Great.
Population, Non-Church and Church-Membership—See
Church Statistics.
Population, Over-.—See Survival.
Populations, Religious, of World—See
Religious Conditions of the World.
Position, Advantage of—See Favoritism.
Position and Worth—See Worth, Estimating.
POSSESSION
When the Australian miner was drowned
because he had heavy bags of gold round his
waist, while trying to swim ashore from the
wreck, it was an open question which possest
which. Just so I am quite convinced
that men stuffed with information or "the
science of the day" are not always possest
of true wisdom. Wisdom itself, anyhow, is
not an end but a tool to work with.
(2408)
Possessions—See Ambition.
POSSESSIONS, UNDESIRABLE
"The regular practise of the Christian is
exceptional with the world," says a writer
in the Pacific Monthly.
"Out in Kansas when the bottom dropt out of the great boom in real estate some years ago, men found it harder to get rid of property than to acquire it. A lawyer going through the country one day met an old friend leading a reluctant cow toward town. Inquiry brought out the information that the cow had been secured in exchange for a city lot. 'And do you know,' said the new owner of the bovine, 'that I turned a neat trick on the old granger! He can't read a word, and in the deed I worked off two lots on him instead of one.'"
(2409)
POSSIBILITIES, LATENT
The diamond unworn is still a diamond.
And the power unused is not therefore less
real, or less majestic. What men do, is by
no means the measure of what they might do,
if they used with a rational energy their
powers.—Richard S. Storrs.
(2410)
Posthumous Blessing—See Revenge, A Christian's.
POST-MORTEM CONSEQUENCES
The start of tuberculosis in France in a
serious sense may be traced to the great
importance of mummies and mummy-cases
at the time of the Napoleonic invasion of
Egypt, and this start gave the disease its
first great foothold in Europe, whence it
has spread all over the Eastern world and
throughout the Western hemisphere as well.
Dead bodies preserved in the manner peculiar
to the Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs
are undoubtedly favorite lodging-places for
the tubercular bacilli. (Text.)
(2411)
POVERTY
This letter was left by Miss Alice Law, aged 26, an editor employed by a local publishing firm in Chicago, who committed suicide by asphyxiation:
I am ending my life because I am seized
with an acute disinclination to live, and I
believe I have an absolute right to end my
life if I wish. The struggle is too hard.
There is too much work, too much monotony,
too much weariness and not enough art,
music, recreation and rest.
I am to change it. I am in my right mind. My reasoning powers are as good as ever. I go because I want to. The chief reason is because I am too near starved. Let the State pay my expenses. If I were blind, crippled or had an incurable disease the State would be obliged to take care of me. So I think I will take advantage of my rights and be buried at the public expense, as I have no money to defray the putting of me under ground.
The prices charged for a casket and burial are too exorbitant for persons in moderate circumstances. It just keeps the family in
