The World's Sunday-school Convention in Rome was a great occasion and a notable success. Poetically significant was the gathering amid the memorable ruins of the Colosseum. Here on the very sands that have been soaked with the blood of early Christian martyrs, where thousands have met the fierce Numidian lion and been torn to pieces for Christ's sake, over a thousand delegates peacefully assembled to bear witness to the very Nazarene in whose cause those martyrs suffered. The pagan Roman persecutors sought to wipe out the remembrance of His name from the earth; and here this great company of Christian delegates meet to celebrate His name, never before so widely worshiped and adored as to-day.
(3296)
TRIVIAL CAUSES
The clock of the Potsdam Garrison
Church, which Frederick the Great in his
day had placed in the tower of that cathedral,
and which hourly chimed familiar strains,
suddenly stopt. The cause of this sudden
cessation of both its works and its music
was the intrusion of a brown butterfly, which
alighted in its wheel-works.
Is it not often thus with the heart of
man, out of which well songs of joy
and praise—songs suddenly and unexpectedly
reduced to silence? The cause
of it often is so insignificant a thing as
a transient thought, a carking care,
which becomes entangled in the delicate
spiritual works and brings the heavenly
music to a standstill.
(3297)
TROUBLE
Blest is that person who can make the following lines part of his philosophy:
'Tis easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the one worth while
Is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And that always comes with years,
And the smile that is worth
All the praises of earth
Is the smile that smiles through tears.
(3298)
We must not always interpret our
destiny by the aspect of the present. If
we contend patiently and bravely with
current adversity, out of the darkness
prosperity may be brought to light.
A certain great company runs a copper-*smelting
plant. The sulfur fumes generated
in this plant were seriously injuring vegetation
in the surrounding country. The State
brought suit to compel the company to prevent
this injury to vegetation, and won the
suit. The company was put to much trouble
and expense, but in its effort to find some
method of preventing that injury to its
neighbors it discovered that the gases could
be captured and converted into sulfuric
acid. Thus, out of what was not only a
waste product but an injurious product, this
company has discovered a new source of
great profit. And all because it "got into
trouble." The "afterward" of all the troubles
that come to us in life has never yet
been dreamed of by the wisest seer. (Text.)
(3299)
TROUBLE, BORROWED
Dr. S. B. Dunn gives some good advice in this bit of verse:
The heart too often hath quailed with dread,
And quite its courage lost,
By casting its glance too far ahead
For the bridge that never was crossed.
The toughest fight, the bitterest dregs,
The stormiest sea that tossed,
Was the passage-at-arms—no, the passage-at-legs,
Of the bridge that never was crossed.
A wind that withers wherever it goes,
And biting as winter frost;
Is the icy blast that constantly blows
From the bridge that never was crossed.
What folly for mortals to travel that way,
As many have found to their cost—
To tempt the terrors by night or by day
Of the bridge that never was crossed.
The adage is old and worn a bit,
But worthy of being embossed—
Never cross a bridge till you come to it—
The bridge that must be crossed.
(3300)
Nobody is made so uncomfortable by borrowing trouble as the borrower himself, altho, of course, everybody in the region is
