PROPAGATION OF THE GOOD
Great minds that are full of light; great hearts that are full of love—their light will go out into the ends of the earth, and their shining unto the ends of the world.
A recent history of the steam engine says
Stephenson knew "that if he could get his
engine perfected, the rest would take care
of itself." Certainly! That man who discovered
the lucifer match did not have to
force it upon poor men, shivering in the cold
and frost of winter. When James Watt has
an engine that will lift coal out of a mine,
he does not have to insist that it be accepted
by laborers bowed to the very ground by
sacks of mineral. Let Gutenberg get his
printing-press, and all these copyists, weary
of writing, and the millions of men hungry
for knowledge, will greet his printed page
with shouts and cheers. Get your seedless
orange, and it will take feet unto itself and
travel over the world. Get the new palm,
the new peach or pear, and millions will
stretch out their hands pleading for it. Get
Luther—the new Germany will follow. Get
Livingstone, and the Dark Continent will
soon be full of light. Get your Pilgrim
Fathers—the republic will tread closely upon
their heels. Get your twelve apostles, and
you will soon have a New Jerusalem, a new
Antioch, a new Ephesus, a new Rome. Get
your new Pentecost for the American
churches, and you will have a new era and a
golden age of industrial peace and commercial
prosperity.—N. D. Hillis.
(2555)
PROPAGATION, PROLIFIC
The May-flies, in their flying stage, make
up for their frailness and feebleness, their
inability to feed—they have really no mouth-*parts
and do not eat at all in their few hours
or days of flying life—by existing in enormous
numbers, and millions may be killed,
or may die from very feebleness, and yet
there are enough left to lay the eggs necessary
for a new generation, and that is success
in life for them. Nothing else is necessary.
Their whole aim and achievement in life
seems to be to lay eggs and start a new
generation of May-flies.—Vernon L. Kellogg,
"Insect Stories."
(2556)
Property, Church—See Church Statistics.
Property, Unvalued—See Appreciation,
Lack of.
PROPHECY
There have been many uninspired prophets,
but Joan of Arc was the only one who ever
ventured the daring detail of naming, along
with a foretold event, the event's precise
nature, the special time-limit within which
it would occur, and the place—and scored
fulfilment. At Vauchouleurs she said she
must go to the king and be made his general,
and break the English power, and crown her
sovereign—at "Reims." It all happened. It
was all to happen "next year"—and it did.
She foretold her first wound and its character
and date a month in advance, and the
prophecy was recorded in a public record
book three weeks in advance. She repeated
it the morning of the date named, and it was
fulfilled before night. At Tours she foretold
the limit of her military career—saying it
would end in one year from the time of its
utterance—and she was right. She foretold
her martyrdom—using that word, and naming
a time three months away—and again she
was right. At a time when France was hopelessly
and permanently in the hands of the
English she twice asserted in her prison before
her judges that within seven years the
English would meet with a mightier disaster
than had been the fall of Orleans. It happened
within five—the fall of Paris. Other
prophecies of hers came true, both as to the
event named and the time limit prescribed.
(Text.)—Mark Twain, Harper's Magazine.
(2557)
In the "Autobiography" of Albert Pell, that fine old English gentleman whose whole life was devoted to the reform of the English poor-laws and to the general uplifting and improvement of the condition, moral, social and political, of the English agricultural laborer, it is related that one of the first well-known men whom he met as a small boy was Wilberforce, who used to stay with his father, Sir Albert Pell, in the country.
When one of Pell's friends was an infant
in arms, his nurse was swept by an election
mob to the very foot of the York hustings at
a famous contest for the county in which
