Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/187



The fin of the fish does not more evidently convey the power and betoken the function of moving in the sea or the wing of the bird that of sailing on the air, than do these quickening and propellent forces, inherent in man's being, proclaim him ordained for wide-reaching operation.—

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DESIGN IN NATURE

A student of the phenomena of vision, Professor Pritchard, speaks thus of the argument from the structure of the human eye:

From what I know, through my own specialty, both geometry and experiment, of the structure of lenses and the human eye, I do not believe that any amount of evolution, extending through any amount of time consistent with the requirements of our astronomical knowledge, could have issued in the production of that most beautiful and complicated instrument, the human eye. There are too many curved surfaces, too many distances, too many densities of the media, each essential to the other; too great a facility of ruin by slight disarrangement, to admit of anything short of the intervention of an intelligent Will at some stage of the evolutionary process. (Text.)

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Design in the Soul—See.

DESIGN OF GOD

We are told that on one occasion Napoleon was shut up in an island of the Danube, hemmed in by the Archduke Charles. He was able to maintain himself there, but he sent word to Italy and Spain and France, and he ordered his marshal with such minuteness that every day's march was perfect. All over the north of France, and from the extreme south of Spain and Portugal, the corps were, all of them, advancing, and day by day, coming nearer and nearer. Not one of them, on the march, had any idea what was the final purpose, and why they were being ordered to the central point. But on the day the master appointed the heads of the columns appeared in every direction. Then it was that he was able to break forth from his bondage and roll back the tide of war.

How like our life, as it moves on, to the command of the Master. Its forces seem confused to us, without cohesion, ofttimes antagonistic. Joy and sorrow, health and sickness, prosperity and adversity—all march in their appointed paths and to their appointed ends. But at last we shall see behind them all the one will and the one power, and we shall be able to say on the day of final emancipation and victory, as said Joseph of old, God meant it unto good, to bring it to pass.—

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DESIRES INORDINATE

An adventurer waits upon you one of these days and offers you on terms absurdly easy some diamond-field in Africa, or silver-mine in Nevada, or ruby-mine in Burmah—a few shares at a trifling cost will make you a millionaire. You are smitten; your brain is filled with pleasant dreams; and without the least investigation, you invest your good money to find ere long that you have been cruelly deceived. Will the public greatly pity you? They will not. There was a personal moral fault at the bottom of your misfortune. You were willingly ignorant, you were easily blinded, because of your inordinate desires. So is it in all temptations of life to which we fall a prey. A certain morbid disposition of soul is the secret of our loss or ruin.—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

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Despair Relieved—See.

Desperate Remely—See.

DESTINY

The tissue of the life to be We weave with colors all our own, And in the fields of destiny We reap as we have sown; Still shall the soul around it call The shadows which it gathered here, And painted on the eternal wall The past shall reappear.

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Rev. Frederick Lynch tells in Christian Work the following story of Henry Ward Beecher:

In a public assembly a minister arose and said: "Mr. Beecher, my congregation has