And, marveling, hark to the quaint
Immemorial holiday legend
Of the beautiful reindeer-drawn saint.
Let us murmur it now, till the shadows of the desolate chamber
believe
That they fall, as of old, round the dear ones in the dusk of the
Christmas Eve!
Let us murmur it softly; who knows, wife,
But a whisper will float, in reply,
Clear and sweet through the compassing dimness
As proof that our darlings are nigh?
For if ever their footsteps may wander from the heavenly home,
I believe
They will seek us as visitant angels in the dusk of the Christmas
Eve!
EDGAR FAWCETT.
[_December 31._]
GOD MAGNIFIED IN HIS WORKS.[C]
By G. CHAPLIN CHILD, M. D.
In an outlying province of the Turkish empire, where sultan and firman
are often superseded by the lawless will of sheik or pacha, two famous
rivers—Tigris and Euphrates—gradually converge, and, after mingling
their waters together, glide gently onward to the Persian Gulf. In the
fork thus formed between them stretches a vast plain, made known to us
in early Scripture history as Shinar, Chaldæa, and Babylon, as well as
by other less familiar names, but to which the term Mesopotamia has
been more usually applied, as it aptly designates a district “lying
between rivers.” The general aspect of this plain is one of desolation.
Fertile strips here and there border the Euphrates’ banks, and willows
are still seen flourishing where the sorrowing Israelites once hung up
their harps; but away from those green fringes the eye wanders over
wild, dreary wastes from which the last traces of cultivation are
slowly dying out. Vast tracts lie soaked in permanent swamps, while
much of the remaining land is, at one period of the year, flooded by
the unheeded inundations of the neighboring rivers, and, at another,
baked into an arid desert by the burning rays of the sun. It need
scarcely be said that population has almost disappeared from those
melancholy plains; for the wandering Arab is little tempted to pitch
his tent or to pasture his flocks on so sterile a soil. The doom that
was so clearly foretold by the prophets has fallen upon it, and Babylon
now “lies desolate in the sight of all that pass by.” It has become the
“habitation of the beasts of the desert.” As the traveler plods onward
over its unfrequented tracts, the startled wild-fowl rises with quick
splash from the reedy pool, or a few scared gazelles may perhaps be
descried bounding over the distant plain. The “owl” and the “bittern,”
the jackal and the hyena add their testimony to the exactness with
which the words of Scripture have been fulfilled. More rarely a
solitary lion may be seen skulking among the strange, mysterious mounds
and “heaps” of stones that loom here and there above the plain.
Mournful and dreary though this land now be, it is and ever will
remain one of the most interesting spots on earth. It was not always
“desolate.” No other place, perhaps, claims with a better title to
be regarded as the scene where our first parents walked together in
paradise. Such, at least, has been the common tradition; and in a
well-known edition of the Bible, published in 1599, may be found a
map of the Garden of Eden, of which the site of Babylon forms the
center. But, be that as it may, there can be no doubt of its former
greatness and fertility, for the record is plainly written all over
the soil. Everywhere it is furrowed by ruined canals, of which some
tell us of departed commerce and wealth, others of skillful irrigation
and abundant crops. Heaps of rubbish are to be met with in which lie
hidden fragments of pottery which bear witness to the former presence
of a highly cultivated people; and uncouth mounds rise strangely above
the plain, in which the last relics of palaces and cities are buried
together. For centuries history appeared to have lost her hold upon
the great places of the past, and it is only within the last few years
that some of them have been rescued from the oblivion that was slowly
creeping over them. Questioned by the light of modern knowledge those
mysterious stones of the plains open up to us the first page in the
history of nations—transport us back almost to the dawn where antiquity
begins, and bring within our sight those to whom the deluge was a
recent event. They impart a substance to scenes we have often tried in
vain to realize. In imagination we see Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, busy
with the foundations of the city of Babel on the neighboring Euphrates’
banks, and piling up the “tower that was to reach Heaven.” Then it
was that the patriarchal dignity of early Bible records expanded into
royalty, and Babylon became the starting point in the long pedigree of
kingdoms.
Babylon touched the zenith of its grandeur two thousand four hundred
and fifty years ago, when Nebuchadnezzar sat upon the throne. He was
the great warrior of that age. After overrunning Egypt he had returned
to his capital laden with its spoil; he had chastised his rebellious
subjects and treacherous allies, and he had utterly crushed the power
of the Kings of Judah. The wicked and faithless Jehoiakim, blind to the
warnings he received, had brought a terrible doom upon his country;
for Nebuchadnezzar, not content with plundering the treasuries of the
temple at Jerusalem, carried the king himself a prisoner to Babylon.
Among the captives on this occasion were included Daniel the Prophet
and his three friends,—Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, who in the land
of their exile received the Chaldæan names of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego.
Nebuchadnezzar was no less great in the arts of peace than in those
of war. He, therefore, encouraged learned men to make his capital
their resort, and he also promoted the national prosperity by favoring
agriculture and commerce. He dug canals in all directions to fertilize
the land by irrigation. His merchants traded along the rich shores of
the Mediterranean, and penetrated even to remote China. He provided for
the security of Babylon by building or strengthening its walls, and he
made it beautiful by adorning it with palaces. Its “hanging-gardens”
were acknowledged throughout ancient times to be one of the wonders of
the world, and their fame has endured up to this very hour.
At the court of such a monarch, Daniel’s learning was sure to procure
for him distinction, and he soon became a member of the college of Magi
or wise men. His subsequent success in interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s
dream, after all others had failed, raised him to the first rank in the
tyrant’s favor, and we are told that “he sat in the gate of the king.”
Nor in his prosperity did he forget his three Jewish friends,—Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego,—who through his influence were promoted to be
governors in the province of Babylon.
The history of Nebuchadnezzar and the burning, fiery furnace—so
illustrative on the one hand of perfect trust in God, and, on the
other, of God’s power to deliver his servants from the assaults of
their enemies—is endeared to all as one of the interesting Scripture
narratives by which those who watched over us in the days of childhood
endeavored to attract us onward to the knowledge of our Bible. In the
book of Daniel it is related how Nebuchadnezzar, after having been
brought by the miraculous interpretation of his dream to acknowledge
the “God of Gods and Lord of Kings,” subsequently relapsed into
idolatry through the corrupting influence of worldly prosperity. In
the full swell of his pride he set up a golden image, and commanded
that all his subjects should fall down and worship it. The Babylonian
nobles were jealous of the favor shown to the three captives; and they,
therefore, encouraged this wicked fancy of the king, because it seemed
to open out the means of effecting their ruin. They rightly calculated
that the Hebrew Governors would never forsake the God of their Fathers,
nor worship the image which the king had set up. And we know that when
the hour of trial did come, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remained
true to their faith; and were forthwith bound and cast into the
burning, fiery furnace, as a punishment for their disobedience to the
tyrant’s will.
From the torments and dangers of this ordeal the three Hebrews were
miraculously preserved. Daniel tells us that Nebuchadnezzar himself saw
them “loose and walking in the midst of the fire.” “Not a hair of their
heads was singed, neither were their coats changed, nor had the smell
of fire passed on them.” Elsewhere, in the Song of the Three Children,
we are told that “they walked in the midst of the fire, praising God,
and blessing the Lord.” After so signal a deliverance, it is easy to
conceive the fervor with which their hymn of gratitude was poured
forth. The deepest consciousness of the merciful power of God welled
up in their hearts and burst from their lips, and the whole universe
was ransacked for illustrations to typify and express it. In whatever
direction they turned, they beheld Nature crowded with emblems of his
greatness and mercy, and they eagerly seized upon them as aids to bring
their thoughts up to the fervor of their adoration. Shall not we also
do wisely to profit by their example? Our daily obligations to God may
not be so miraculous, in the ordinary meaning of the term, but they
are, nevertheless, great and countless beyond our power to conceive.
Let us then, in humble consciousness of the poverty and imperfection of
our thanksgivings, gladly make this suggestive hymn our own; and let us
on this, as on all occasions, accept with joy every aid that helps us
to “bless, praise, and magnify the Lord.”
“BENEDICITE, OMNIA OPERA.”
O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him
forever.
O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord:
praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O let the Earth bless the Lord: yea, let it praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord:
praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him
forever.
O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him and
magnify him forever.
O ye Whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the
Lord: praise him, and magnify him forever.
O all ye Fowls of the Air, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and
magnify him forever.
O let Israel bless the Lord: praise him, and magnify him
forever.
O ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and
magnify him forever.
O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him,
and magnify him forever.
O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord:
praise him, and magnify him forever.
O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord: praise
him, and magnify him forever.
O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord: praise
him, and magnify him forever.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy
Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world
without end. Amen.
[_End of Required Reading for December._]
FOOTNOTE:
[C] Babylon—the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’
excellency!—Isaiah xiii: 19.
Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land
wherein no man dwelleth.—Jeremiah li: 43.
ATHEISTIC SCIENTISTS.
By JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
There is a sort of men whose faith is all
In their five fingers, and what fingering brings,
With all beyond of wondrous great and small,
Unnamed, uncounted in their tale of things;
A race of blinkards, who peruse the case
And shell of life, but feel no soul behind,
And in the marshaled world can find a place
For all things, only not the marshaling Mind.
’Tis strange, ’tis sad; and yet why blame the mole
For channelling earth?—such earthy things are they;
E’en let them muster forth in blank array,
Frames with no pictures, pictures with no soul.
I, while this dædal dome o’erspans the sod,
Will own the builder’s hand, and worship God.
* * * * *
“My friend, whoever has experienced misfortunes knows that when a
mountain-wave of ills comes upon mortals, they are wont to fear all
things; but when the gale of fortune blows smoothly, they are confident
that the same deity will constantly propel their bark with a favorable
breeze.”—_Æschylus._
POISON IN COMMON THINGS.
By PROF. P. A. SIMPSON, M. A., M. D.
POISON IN THE AIR WE BREATHE.
There are few words in the English language which produce a more
painful impression upon the popular mind than does the word Poison,
and there are at least two valid reasons why it should be so. In the
first place we find poison waging war against human life, sometimes
openly, sometimes insidiously, often successfully; and in the second
place, from remote ages down to the present day, we are accustomed
to see poison going hand in hand with crime as its chief companion.
But we must remember that poison is by no means an evil-doer, only as
the agent of the assassin or of the suicide. These are doubtless its
most hideous aspects, but there are many others where its effects are
produced as surely, though often very insidiously, without any evil
intention, and, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, clad in garments
which are intended for our good. It is to such cases that we wish to
direct attention, by pointing out a few of the modes in our every-day
life in which poison may enter the human body without our knowledge,
and wherein its presence is unnoticed until disease or death makes it
manifest.
Let us, then, consider in the first place the composition of
atmospheric air, and how it may become so vitiated that, instead of
supporting life and health, it may carry disease or death to those who
breathe it. It was long thought that air was spiritual, that it was
like the life, and that it was the soul of the world; but we now know
that it is just as material as a piece of iron, and that it will weigh
down the scales of a balance in the same way; and the time may yet come
when by means of immense pressure and intense cold it may be condensed
into a liquid, as carbonic acid and other gases have already been. We
find air present everywhere. There is scarcely a solid, however compact
it may appear, which does not contain pores, and these pores are filled
with air. It is to be found in abundance in the soil; indeed were it
not so, numberless worms and insects which inhabit the latter would
cease to exist. The most compact mortar and walls are penetrated by
it, and water in its natural state contains a large quantity of air in
solution. The atmosphere was formerly believed to extend no higher than
five miles above the earth’s surface, but meteorological observations
have since shown that it extends to a height of more than two hundred
miles. Owing to the force of gravity the air is much denser near the
earth, and gets thinner, layer by layer, as you ascend. If then the
atmosphere were possessed of color it would be very dark just round
the globe, and the tint would gradually fade into space. There is no
absolutely normal condition of the air we breathe; or, if there be, it
is not at present known. It contains, however, in all cases, unless
under purely artificial conditions, two _essential_ elements, which
are nearly invariable under normal circumstances, namely, oxygen and
nitrogen, and two accessory elements which vary extremely in amount,
but are practically never absent, namely, carbonic acid and water.
Without either of the first two, air could not exist, and without the
last two, air is scarcely found in nature. Their combination moreover
is not a chemical union but a simple mechanical mixture. But besides
these constituents the air contains an immense amount of life, and
small particles derived from the whole creation. In the air may be
found animalcules, spores, seeds, cells of all kinds, eggs of insects,
fungi and elements of contagion, besides formless dust, and sandy and
other particles of local origin. For example, no one can travel in a
railway carriage without being surrounded by dust, a large portion
of which may be attracted by a magnet, consisting as it does in a
great measure of minute particles of iron derived from the rails. The
purest air has some dust in it. There probably never fell a beam of
light from the sun since the world was made which would not have shown
countless numbers of solid particles. Roughly speaking, 100 measures of
air, if pure, should contain 78.98 parts of nitrogen, 20.99 of oxygen,
and .03 of carbonic acid. Without oxygen a candle will not burn, and
animals can not live; but for the purposes of animal life this gas
requires to be diluted, and this is effected in the atmosphere by a
large admixture of nitrogen. In fact, nitrogen seems to act in the
animal economy purely as a diluent or vehicle for the administration
of oxygen. Carbonic acid, as far as we know, is not essential to
the animal kingdom. To man it is simply a superfluous ingredient,
but harmless when in small quantity; to the vegetable world, on the
contrary, it is a food which together with water often suffices to
support the entire life of a plant. When, however, from any cause
the quantity of carbonic acid is much increased, it becomes highly
poisonous to man. When the amount reaches 10 or even 5 volumes per
cent. it produces fatal results, and even 2 per cent. occasions in most
persons severe headache. The balance between carbonic acid and oxygen
in the atmosphere, continually disturbed in one direction by the animal
kingdom, is constantly maintained by the vegetable kingdom; for while
the former consumes oxygen and gives off carbonic acid, the latter for
the most part performs the opposite function. Owing to certain local
conditions, however, which we shall presently consider, the quantity
of oxygen in the atmosphere sometimes falls below the normal amount to
the extent of over 3 per cent., while the carbonic acid proportionately
increases. In order to estimate the importance of what might otherwise
appear trifling differences in the composition of the air we breathe,
we must remember that we take into our lungs from 1,000 to 2,000
gallons of air daily. Now the presence of only a few grains of impurity
in a gallon of water would render it unfit for drinking purposes,
although as we only drink a comparatively small quantity of water the
whole of these few grains would not be swallowed in a single day.
We have spoken of carbonic acid as an impurity in the atmosphere;
and so it is, for it is unfitted to support animal life. An animal
will die from suffocation in an atmosphere containing plenty of
free oxygen if it contains over 10 or 12 per cent. of carbonic acid
gas. But a minute increase of this gas in the atmosphere is of most
importance from the fact that it always comes in bad company, and
is found to be a measure of the many impurities which accompany it.
Moreover, for every increase of carbonic acid there is a corresponding
decrease in oxygen, so that we have in such cases a double effect,
viz., a subtraction of the life-giving principle of the air, and the
addition of noxious substitutes. These noxious substitutes consist
for the most part of organic matter, either of animal or vegetable
origin. The exact nature of the organic substances, which constitute
the specific poisons of contagious diseases, still remains obscure.
Whether they consist of inconceivably minute particles of decaying
matter, or of living microscopic germs; whether in some instances they
are conveyed by particles of skin and pus-cells from the diseased to
the healthy, or are condensed with the watery vapor of the atmosphere
and thus disseminated; all these are questions which have yet to be
satisfactorily answered. It is, however, certain that almost invariably
the atmosphere is made the vehicle of the contagion or deadly agent,
whatever may be its nature; and hence the great importance of taking
such precautions as will prevent the contamination of the air; or
at all events, aid in dissipating or destroying its more hurtful
impurities. An estimate of the amount of organic impurity in the
air of our large cities may be formed by considering the enormous
quantities of carbonic acid gas that are daily and hourly poured forth
in these industrial centers. Dr. Angus Smith, whose investigations
regarding “Air and Rain” have won for him a world-wide celebrity, has
found that in the city of Manchester 15,066 tons of carbonic acid
are daily passed into the air that envelops it; and Dr. de Chanmont
states that 822,000,000 cubic feet of this gas are generated in London
per day, or more than 9,500 cubic feet per second. Fortunately the
operations of nature are in themselves calculated to restore a state
of equilibrium in the constitution of the air. Injurious gases become
diffused, diluted, or decomposed; animal emanations are absorbed in the
processes of vegetation; suspended matters are washed down by rain, or
fall by their own weight, while many organic substances are so acted
on by oxygen as to render them innocuous. Thus the vast aerial sea
maintains a uniformity of composition, owing to the mighty forces of
nature, without which all our sanitary measures would be futile. But
if nature be so powerful as a sanitary agent, how is it that we still
require to cope with that formidable enemy which we call foul air? It
is because we ourselves are constantly vitiating the atmosphere around
us whether we live, or work, or die, and because the impure products
thus generated are not sufficiently provided against by efficient
ventilation. Let us glance briefly at the principal sources from which
these impurities rise. These may be grouped under three heads, viz.:
(1) Respiration; (2) Putrefaction; (3) Trades and Manufactures.