Mabel Earle writes of a bridge flung across from a cliff to an opposite
shore as a symbol of man’s service, improving natural formations:
The cliff stood waiting, silent and alone,
After the rending shock which gave it birth;
Age upon age the waters wore the stone,
And the long shadows wheeled across the earth,
Swinging from west to east. Through sun and snow
It kept God’s secret whispered long ago.
Once from its topmost crag a cable swung,
And a face laughed against its frowning strength,
The life of man in splendid risk outflung
Fulfilling the slow centuries at length;
On the bare rock to stamp his signet clear,
God’s warrant witnessed by the engineer.
Then, with a flash of fire and blinding smoke,
A peal that shook the mountain, base to crest,
The silence of the waiting eons broke
Into the thunder of that high behest,
And on the steep where never foot had trod
Men wrought a pathway for the will of God.
God of the cliff, from whom the whisper fell
Of hope and hope’s fulfilment yet to be,
Make good Thy promise unto us as well;
Yoke Thou our pride in love’s captivity;
And, tho it come through fire and scar and throe,
Give us the crown of service, Lord, to know.
(1969)
* * * * *
The last ten summers have witnessed greater changes than the
previous 10,000, for man has learned to work with nature and
God. The old manuscripts and the grains and fruits depicted
in old frescoes, tell us that the ancient world had all our
grains and fruits. Centuries passed, but the same sheaves and
boughs were ripened. It could not be otherwise. The wheat had
no feet, the flowers had no hands. The tulip needed man. One
day man decided to work together with the fruit. He took the
most brilliant colors and carried the plants into a glass house
and sealed the room tight. Then he went one hundred miles and
brought another tulip, being feet thereto, and pollenized the
one flower with the seed of the other. When ten years had
passed, lo, there were 5,000 new flowers, never seen before,
brilliant in hue, and of an unwonted perfume, growing in the
fields of Holland. In Minnesota, using similar methods, the
scientists have produced 2,000 new kinds of wheat, and three
of these wheats have added enormous wealth to Minnesota and
Dakota. Out in Illinois a professor selected corn with reference
to the increase of the oil that heats, makes muscle and builds
tissue. He carried the percentage of oil in a grain of corn from
four hundredths to six hundredths, and this added some five
hundred millions to the wealth of the great corn States in a
single year. And he did it by tying tissue-paper over the tops
of his selected cornstalks, after which he journeyed several
hundred miles, to bring pollen with which to fertilize the
stalks.--N. D. HILLIS.
(1970)
=Manual-training and Culture=--See COMPREHENSIVENESS IN
EDUCATION.
=Many Strings Required=--See STRING, THE NEED OF MORE THAN ONE.
=Margin, The, and Character=--See CHARACTER, TEST OF.