This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1912 Excerpt: ... CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER AS IN CHEMICAL ANALYSIS E cannot too steadily keep before us the marvelous changes in modern life--wrought in less than a century--from extreme simplicity to ever more entangling complexity. The rude wagon of the country village required little adjustment of wheels, axles, or shafts; all could be loose and rattling, as "Old Bones," the farmer's slow horse, dragged it along with its load. But the mammoth one-hundred-and-twenty-ton locomotive, made to run seventy miles an hour, or the automobile speeding one hundred miles an hour, must be adjusted almost as perfectly as the parts of a gold watch or they will have blazing axles or a fatal crash in their first hour. So in the old oaken bucket the clear crystal water needed no analysis; it was far away from contamination of congested populations. The city well, however, if still permitted to exist, or the city reservoir, where modern filtering is not yet done, often has water looking just as clear, but reeking with germs of typhoid or other diseases. Only a chemical analysis frequently made will guard against poisonous or diseased elements. In a similar way food is adulterated or poisoned by greed of manufacturer and greed of merchant, and only chemical analysis detects for us the unwholesome parts. But no one considers it unimportant, though the deleterious element be only a fraction of one per cent or in small traces. All this is a parable of Christian character because of the complications and diversified responsibilities of life now. The elements of sin, in selfishness, in mixed motives, and in subtle evil spirit, exist in some of the best Christian people--in very minute traces, perhaps, yet they are sufficient to destroy personal power and to paralyze influence; often they are suffi...