Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
"Ye're a dirty liar, Samoval, a muck-rake," said he. Samoval stepped back, breathing hard, one cheek red, the other white. Yet by a miracle he still preserved his self-control. "I have proved my courage too often," he said, "to be under the necessity of killing you for this blow. Since my honour is safe I will not take advantage of your overwrought condition."
"A man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand" and "did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor.... Then said Christiana, 'Oh, deliver me from this muck-rake." Bunyan.
We are sprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when the crown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake, in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor.
He is the man who apologizes for abuses that are profitable to himself. He prefers his petty interests to any ideal good. His character was most admirably drawn by Bunyan: "The Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand.
But the space has been too closely built; many of the houses front the wrong way, intent, like the Man with the Muck-Rake, on what is not worth observation, and standing discourteously back-foremost in the ranks; and in a word, it is too often only from attic windows, or here and there at a crossing, that you can get a look beyond the city upon its diversified surroundings.
He speaks soft words to persuade; but if that is not enough, he does not scruple to knock the muck-rake out of sordid hands with a fine, sudden stroke, if so he may make men look up from the rubbish under their feet to the flowers that bloom around them and the stars that glow above and the God that reigns over all.
The man with the muck-rake in the old parable, who raked together the straws and the dust of the street, was faithful enough if he was set to do that lowly work; but had he only cared to look up, had he only had a moment's leisure, he would have seen that the celestial crown hung close above his head, and within reach of his forgetful hand.
At the same time and in the same publication Lincoln Steffens was exposing the seamy side of municipal affairs in "The Shame of the Cities." Between 1901 and 1906 one of the muck-rake periodicals increased its sales threefold, another four and another seven.
"'Thou hast said right, said he.... "'Then, said Christiana, 'O deliver me from this muck-rake. "'That prayer, said the Interpreter, 'has lain by till it is almost rusty. "Give me not riches," is scarce the prayer of one in ten thousand."
A rabbi who will help me to these is the rabbi for me. John Bunyan's 'man with the muck-rake' had his eyes so glued to the ground and the muck that he did not see the crown hanging above him. How many of us find the sermon time a good opportunity for thinking about investments and business! Christ's answer is intentionally abrupt and short.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking