PURIFICATION BY PRESSURE
The man in narrow circumstances, or prest severely with many cares may be purified by such pressure like the water described in this extract:
The best water is that which has gone
deepest in the earth, where there is the
tightest pressure, atmospheric and telluric.
Continued and intensified filtration has refined
it; but it is here, and not in its open-air
exposure, before or after, that the water
gets effective oxidation. The remarkable
fact that water absorbs oxygen in something
like a geometrical ratio to the increase of
pressure, coupled with the other equally important
fact that under a certain pressure
and temperature organic germs cease to
exist; both these conditions, protracted for
the water by a long detention in the depths
of the earth, secure the rarest refinement
and also vitalization of the element.—The Sanitary Era.
(2593)
PURITANISM, POETRY OF
How is it, then, that out of the hard soil
of the Puritan thought and character, out
of the sterile rocks of the New England
conscience, have sprung flowers of poetry?
From those songless beginnings have burst,
in later generations, melodies that charm and
uplift our land—now a deep organ peal
filling the air with music, now a trumpet
blast thrilling the blood of patriotism, now
a drum-beat to which duty delights to march,
now a joyous fantasy of the violin bringing
smiles to the lips, now the soft vibrations
of the harp that fill the eyes with tears.
What is it in the Puritan heritage, externally
so bare and cold, that makes it intrinsically
so poetic and inspired?—Samuel A. Eliot.
(2594)
PURITY
A pastor visiting in the home of a laundress
exprest admiration of the whiteness of
the linen hung out upon the lines. They
gleamed in beautiful purity as compared with
the dark slates on the roof of the house
behind them. But presently snow fell and
quickly covered the roofs and streets with
an absolutely unsullied mantle, and now the
linen clothes seemed actually to have lost
all their whiteness. The preacher said to
the laundress that the clothes did not look
anything like so white as before. She replied,
"Ah, sir, the clothes are just as white
as they were, but what can stand against
God Almighty's white?"
It is a fact that the whitest sheet of
paper looks yellow and dingy when
placed on freshly fallen snow. So looks
the morality of ordinary man beside the
sinlessness of Jesus. (Text.)
(2595)
The ermine, whose fur is so famed for its perfect whiteness, has been taken as the emblem of the integrity and incorruptibility that should characterize the judiciary. Thus a judge is spoken of as wearing the ermine. The dainty little creature makes it the business of its life to keep clean. So strong is this instinct that it will suffer capture or welcome death rather than defilement. Knowing this, trappers and others seeking its fur will smear the paths it might take to escape, and it keeps itself unspotted, tho it yields its lift. (Text.)
(2596)
See Associations Mold Men.
PURITY OF ASSOCIATIONS
Most people would like to be reckoned with the good and true of earth, but they often overlook the necessity of a change in their moral conditions before that which they hope for can come to pass. A mother, speaking on this point, says:
As a companion for my children there
was brought into the family a little lamb,
to which, in its helplessness, our hearts went
out in love. We were about to take it in
our arms to love and cherish when we discovered
it was alive with what are commonly
called "ticks." Horrified, I ordered
the lamb tied to a tree, and forbade the
children, or any one, in fact, to go near it
until it could be cleansed. I stood with my
children on the piazza, watching it with
mingled emotions. Its pathetic bleatings
made us long to take it in our arms and
caress it, "mother" it, in its separation and
loneliness. But I and my children were
clean. The lamb was not. Far from being
clean, it was alive with filth. The standard
of approach to me, as to all cleanly people,
was cleanliness. Much as we yearned over
the lamb and longed to care for it, until
purified with a cleansing wash, communication
could not be established. When the
conditions were fulfilled, children and lamb,
