- rected by any jeweling of the case; painting
the organ-pipes will not improve the music; whitewashing the pump will not purify the water. Society in various ways seeks to gild the exterior, but what we need is beauty of life springing from truth in the inward parts. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."
(3276)
Transformation by Surgery—See Renewal. TRANSFORMATION OF SOULS The soul is stored with ungrown seeds and chilled roots and frozen sentiments, and they need only the light and warmth of the love and truth of God to turn bareness into beauty, ignorance into culture, sin into obedience and self-sacrifice. Travelers tell us about the sand wastes in Idaho, that under the soft touch of a stream of water they are turned into a garden, waving with flowers and fruit. All this is a symbol of the transformation of the soul. These far-off lands and darkened peoples that are now deserts shall to-morrow become pools of water, and oases, filled with palm-trees and fountains.—N. D. Hillis.
(3277)
Transformation Through Operation—See Character Conditioned by the Physical. TRANSIENCY OF THE EARTH He who said that "Heaven and earth shall pass away" uttered no meaningless hyperbole, as the changes of a few hundred years indicate: Coast erosion following severe storms within recent years has been so marked at many points on the English coast that after extended press discussion a parliamentary commission has been appointed to thoroughly investigate the subject, and if possible to devise means for the abatement of the injury. . . . There can be no doubt that coast erosion is causing serious loss of land at many points, particularly on the south and east coasts, notwithstanding that the areas gained artificially at other points almost compensate for it. It has been estimated that in the thousand years from 900 to 1900, an area of nearly 550 square miles has been worn away by the erosive action of the waves and ocean currents. (Text.)—The Scientific American.
(3278)
TRANSIENT, THE
The transient nature of all material things and of all mortal fame is exprest in this poem by Alfred Noyes:
No more, proud singers, boast no more!
Your high, immortal throne
Will scarce outlast a king's!
Time is a sea that knows no shore
Wherein death idly flings
Your fame like some small pebble-stone
That sinks to rise no more.
Then boast no more, proud singers,
Your high immortal throne!
This earth, this little grain of dust
Drifting among the stars
With her invisible wars,
Her love, her hate, her lust;
This microscopic ball
Whereof you scan a part so small
Outlasts but little even your own dust.
Then boast no more, proud singers,
Your high immortal throne!
That golden spark of light must die
Which now you call your sun;
Soon will its race be run
Around its trivial sky!
What hand shall then unroll
Dead Maro's little golden scroll
When earth and sun in one wide charnal lie?
Boast no more, proud singers;
Your high immortal throne
Will scarce outlast a king's! (Text.)
—Alfred Noyes, The Bookman.
(3279)
See Perishableness.
Transition—See Eternal, The, at Hand.
Transitoriness—See Permanency.
TRANSMISSION
Even among the lower orders of creation, a law of transmission obtains.
A writer in an Australian quarterly for
April, 1906, tells of a magpie near Melbourne,
which while a captive had been taught to
whistle "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife,
merrily danced the Quaker," and passed the
song on to its young, through whom, in a
more or less fragmentary way, it was transmitted
to subsequent generations, so that
there are "many now in the forest who still
