When the first experiments upon the tulips and wild asters were undertaken, some said that it was a sin, because if God had wanted tulips to be double and have different colors, God would have made them that way. But scientists in Holland, and Burbank in California, and a thousand others, are standing over the grains and whispering, "Ye must be born again." The scientist has touched the wild aster, and it has become the chrysanthemum. He has touched the black tulip, and it has become a flower of many hues and quadruple size. He has whispered to the little field-daisy, and it has become the Shasta daisy, that waves in the fields like a bunch of women's hats. He has touched the wild sloe, and it has become a luscious plum. He has touched a bitter orange, and, lo! it has lost its seed, doubled its sweetness and quadrupled its size. And to-day the whole world is on tiptoe of expectancy.
There is no new fruit or flower that is not possible, for the horizons have been pulled down. A great, wide vista of possibility opens up. The berries, the vegetables, the fruits, the grains, must all be born again. Now all this is only a revelation of what is possible for the soul.—N. D. Hillis.
(2647)
REGISTER OF LIFE
"An apparatus called a 'pulse register' has
been devised by a Viennese physician, Dr.
Gartner. It is intended," says The Medical Times, "to watch and register the action of
the heart and pulse while the patient is under
the influence of chloroform, ether, or cocain.
The apparatus consists of a watch-like box,
to be attached to the patient's forearm. The
box has a graduated dial and hands, working
according to pulse and blood-pressure
vibrations, which are registered by an elastic
spring in the most precise manner imaginable.
The physician in attendance, or operator,
is all the time kept informed of the
exact degree of the unconscious person's
pulse and heart action. The controller,
furthermore, shows the action of pulses
which the physician's fingers can not feel nor
find."
(2648)
REGRET
Mrs. Marion M. Hutson writes a lesson as to appreciating the troubles of friends while they live:
Somewhere in the future, soon or late,
My weary feet will reach the outer gate,
Where rest begins, and earth's long highway ends,
And then, perhaps, through misty eyes my friends
Will see how rough the path has been, and say,
"Would we had tried to smooth the rugged way."
Oh, friends and loved ones! do not wait, but give
A little help and comfort while I live.
(2649)
See Lost Chords.
Regular Inspection—See Cleanliness.
REGULARITY, ECCLESIASTICAL
Butler, the famous author of Butler's "Analogy,"
himself, with all his high gifts, supplies,
in his own person, an expressive proof
of the spiritual blindness and death which
lay on the churches of Wesley's day. He
forbade Whitefield and the Wesleys to
preach in his diocese, tho all around his
cathedral city lay the most degraded and
hopeless class in England—the coal-miners
of Kingswood, as untouched by any of the
forces of Christianity as if they had been
savages in Central Africa. That the best,
the wisest, the most powerful, the most
earnestly convinced of the bishops of that
day should take this attitude toward Wesley
and his work shows what was the general
temper of the clergy of that time. Butler's
conscience was not disquieted by the lapse
into mere heathenism of a whole class within
sound of the bells of his cathedral; but he
grows piously indignant at the spectacle
of an ecclesiastical irregularity.—W. H.
Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."
(2650)
Regulation, Timepiece—See Synchronism.
REJECTION OF CHRIST
George Frederick Watts, the great symbolical
artist of "Love and Death," "Hope,"
"Time, Death, and Judgment," and other
famous pictures, painted "The Ruler."
Speaking of the picture afterward he said,
"Now I am doing a man's back—little else
but his back, to explain 'he went away sorrowful,
for he had great possessions.' Fancy
a man turning his back on Christ rather than
give away his goods! They say his back
looks sorry; I don't know. It is what I
meant his back to express." (Text.)
(2651)
