Working Hard—See Encouragement.
Working Men and Church—See Christ
Approved.
WORKING TOGETHER
Faraday, the distinguished chemist, says:
The change produced by respiration so injurious
to us (for we can not breathe the
air twice over) is the very life and support
of plants and vegetables growing on the surface
of the ground. These latter absorb
carbon—the leaves taking up the carbon of
the air to which we have given it in the form
of carbonic acid, and grow and prosper.
Give them a fine air like ours, and they could
not live in it, but carbon and other matters
make them grow. All trees and plants
get their carbon from the air, which carries
off what is bad for us and at the same time
good for them—disease to the one is health
to the other. So we are made dependents
not only on our fellow creatures but on our
fellow existers as well, all nature being tied
together by the law that makes one part conduce
to the good of another. (Text.)
(3508)
WORKING WITH GOD
It may not be our lot to wield
The sickle in the ripened field;
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves,
The reaper's song among the sheaves.
Yet where our duty's task is wrought
In unison with God's great thought,
The near and future blend in one,
And whatso'er is willed is done. (Text.)
—John G. Whittier.
(3509)
Workmanship—See Beauty from Fragments.
WORKS DESTROYED
When Thomas Carlyle was writing his
famous history of the French Revolution,
and when he had the first volume ready for
the printer's hands, he one day loaned the
manuscript to John Stuart Mill, his intimate
and admiring friend. This friend's servant
girl, seeing the pile on the library floor one
day, and wanting some kindling, unceremoniously
put the whole of it into the stove and
kindled the fire with it. Thus the priceless
labor of many years was in a few moments
swept away.
Mill came himself, pale and trembling, to break the news to the author. When he heard it, his spirit fairly broke down under the terrible disaster.
If the loss of a book is such a calamity,
how unspeakably terrible will it
be to have the works of one's life-*time
burned? There are men of whom
the divine word says, "They shall be
saved, but their works shall be burned."
(3510)
Works, Immortality in One's—See Immortality of Influence.
WORLD IMPROVING
In the old days the bee-master to reach the
honey killed the bees, but now he contrives
to spare the bees, who continue to live on and
share their own sweetness. A similar transformation
is being effected in the hives of
human industry. There is an attempt to get
more justice, fairness, and even mercy, into
commercial rivalries; to substitute some plan
of cooperation for the existing competition,
if that is possible. That glove-fights are
being substituted for prize-fights is indeed a
slow approach to civilization, yet the thinnest
gloves are a concession to the rising sentiment
of humanity; so in business, modern
society is getting rid of certain naked brutalities
of antagonism, and giving to reason
and compassion a larger place. With aching
head and aching heart, thousands to-day feel
that the struggle for gold and bread is bitter
enough; yet a better spirit slowly emerges,
tempering the fiery law.—W. L. Watkinson,
"The Transfigured Sackcloth."
(3511)
World, Need of the—See You.
WORLD NOT INDISPENSABLE
During the latter portion of his life, declares a writer in Everybody's Magazine, Emerson seemed to live much in the world of souls, and came back with difficulty to take cognizance of physical affairs.
At the time of the Millerite excitement, he
was walking one day down Bromfield Street,
Boston, when he met one of his friends, who
remarked: "This is the day when the world
