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of the sowing, and he says, "I have harvested, I have raised so many bushels of corn to the acre." Oh, no, he has not. He has sown so many seeds, he has cultivated so many acres, he has put in his sickle or his harvesting machine, and he has gathered so many stalks. But he could not have done it if some forces of nature had not been at work perfecting that which he began. He and nature, as we say—he and God, as I say—have worked together to raise the harvest. (Text.)—

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See.

COPYING VAIN

It would never make an arithmetician of a boy at school if he merely copied the solution of arithmetic problems from his neighbor's slate or paper, even tho the solutions thus copied should be the correct ones. To become an arithmetician the boy must himself learn to solve problems; and this means that he must understand thoroughly every step in the process of solution. The process must go through him, or through his intelligence, as well as that he must go through the process. He must know what he is aiming at, and why it is that he adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides, every time that he does any of these. Merely to put down figures on his paper, even should they be the right figures by chance, unless he understands the why and the when, would do him no good whatsoever. And it would not make the matter one whit better if he imagined the schoolmaster would be pleased with seeing him put down right figures without understanding what he was doing, or why he was doing it. The whole would only show that he was far back in intelligence, and would hardly ever become an arithmetician. We can not become truly religious either by being mere copiers of the religion of others, or by fetish worship.—, "Heaven and Hell Here."

(587)

Cordiality—See.

CORN VERSUS GOLD

Drop a grain of California gold into the ground, and there it will lie unchanged to the end of time, the clods on which it falls not more cold and lifeless. Drop a grain of our gold, of our blest gold, into the ground, and lo! a mystery. In a few days it softens, it swells, it shoots upward, it is a living thing. It is yellow itself, but it sends up a delicate spire, which comes peeping, emerald green, through the soil; it expands to a vigorous stalk; revels in the air and sunshine; arrays itself, more glorious than Solomon, in its broad, fluttering, leafy robes, whose sound, as the west wind whispers through them, falls as pleasantly on the husbandman's ear as the rustle of his sweetheart's garment; still towers aloft, spins its verdant skeins of vegetable floss, displays its dancing tassels, surcharged with fertilizing dust, and at last ripens into two or three magnificent batons like this [an ear of Indian corn], each of which is studded with hundreds of grains of gold, every one possessing the same wonderful properties as the parent grain, every one instinct with the same marvelous reproductive powers. There are seven hundred and twenty grains on the ear which I hold in my hand. I presume there were two or three such ears on the stalk. This would give us one thousand four hundred and forty, perhaps two thousand one hundred and sixty grains as the product of one. They would yield next season, if they were all successfully planted, four thousand two hundred, perhaps six thousand three hundred ears. Who does not see that, with this stupendous progression, the produce of one grain in a few years might feed all mankind? And yet with this visible creation annually springing and ripening around us, there are men who doubt, who deny the existence of God. Gold from the Sacramento River, sir! There is a sacrament in this ear of corn enough to bring an atheist to his knees.—

(588)

CORRUPTION, INNER

Athenian society decayed at last, not at all because its artists had reached the limit of human invention, or its philosophers the necessary term of human thought, but because the moral faculties and tastes which should have presided in that society were not developed in proportion to the esthetic and intellectual powers which added to its ornament. It was outwardly like the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon, of costly ivory, overlaid with gold; but it was wood within; and the wood rotted; that is all that can be said of it. Then the cunning of the ivory, and the splendor of the gold, fell and were broken, and the nations gathered the shining fragments.—

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COSMOLOGY, PRIMITIVE

Knowing nothing of the planetary system, early man had to account in his own way for the apparent fixity of the earth, and as the