icroscope "the last discernible particle dies out of sight with the
same perfect glory on it as on the last orb that glimmers in the skirts
of the universe." If God is throned in the clouds He is also
tabernacled in the dewdrop and palaced in the bud and blossom.

The history of nations and individuals teaches us that the greatest
gifts are poor and empty and the most signal talents worthless if the
small things be not done, the two mites be not given. For life is
marred by little infelicities and ruined by little errors. The broken
columns and marble heaps in lands where once were cities represent
destructions not so much through tornadoes and earthquakes as through
small vices and unnoticed sins. In modern life also, journeying
through city and forest and field, the economist returns to tell us
that life's chief wastes are through little enemies and foes. It is a
minute bug that steals the golden berry from the wheat; it is a tiny
germ upon the leaf that blights the budding peach and pear, it is a
rough spot upon the potato that fills all Ireland with fear of famine;
it is a worm that bores through the planks of the ship's hull and
alarms old seacaptains as approaching battleships could not.

The enemies of human life are not enemies that fill man's streets with
banners and charging cannon. We wage war against the dust mote
ambushed in the sunbeam; we fight against weapons hurled from those
battleships called drops of impure water; we wrestle with those hosts
whose broadsides invisible rise from streets foul, or fall from
poisoned clouds. Such enemies that lurk in dampness and darkness, a
thousand fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand. That
great catastrophe that overtook Holland a century ago is not explained
by a tidal wave that pierced through the dikes; the disaster was
through the crawfishes that opened tiny holes and, weakening the
bulwarks, let in the onrushing sea.

It was but a trifling error also that robbed the generations of one of
man's divinest pictures. Three hundred years ago the monks made tight
and strong the roof above the room where was Da Vinci's "Last Supper."
A thousand tiles were fastened down and all save one were perfect. The
one hid a secret hole. When months had passed and the driving storm
came from the right direction the rain found out that hidden fault and,
rushing in, a flood of drops streamed down o'er the wall and made a
great black mark across the noble pa