Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/238



roadway—a sharp, slippery declivity called "The Devil's Slide." How terrible, indeed, is the devil's slide! How tempting it is!—a short cut, a very short cut, to fame, wealth, power, pleasure. How graduated and smooth it is! What a specious name it often has! Strangely enough, that declivity in London was called "Mount Pleasant"; and the downward roads of life often are known by charming names. But enter on that slide, and you soon attain a startling velocity; sooner or later you arrive at an ignominious doom. Let no man think himself safe. The circles of crime dipping to very murky depths of hell are not far from any one of us. (Text.)—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

(954)

EVIL BY DEGREES

Many a man grows so accustomed to his evil environment that he fails to realize how he is being spiritually ruined.

In a certain laboratory experiment a live frog was placed in water heated at the rate of .0036 of a degree Fahrenheit per second. The frog never moved or showed any sign of distress, but was found at the end of two hours and a half to be dead. The explanation was that at any point of time the temperature of the water showed such little contrast with that of a moment before that the attention of the frog was never attracted by it. It was boiled to death without noticing it.

(955)

EVIL DEFLECTED

Surmounting the tower of the City Hall, Philadelphia, is a colossal statue of William Penn. During a thunder-storm sometimes the lightning plays about its surface of bronze, like oil on water. Electricians say that it can not be damaged because a two-inch copper cable runs down into a well beneath the foundation-walls, conducting the dangerous current harmlessly away.

Still more immune from evil is the man whom God protects. (Text.)

(956)

EVIL DEVELOPMENT RAPID

Evil grows of itself, grows vigorously. With infinite care we rear the rare roses, but how spontaneously and luxuriantly spring the weeds! By costly culture we ripen the golden sheaf, but how the noxious poppies bloom! Very tenderly must we nourish things of beauty, but how the vermin breed and swarm! And so, while the germs of good in our heart come to fruition only after long years of vigilance and devotion, the tares are ever springing up in a night, dashing the beauty with their blackness, and bearing the hundredfold of bitterness and blasting.—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

(957)

EVIL, DISGUISED

If destructive moral evils were shown in their real hideousness, no one would be drawn toward them! Vernon L. Kellogg describes the disguise of a certain insect:

The whole front of his [a water insect's] face was smooth and covered over by a sort of mask, so that his terrible jaws and catching nippers were invisible. However, we soon understood this. The mask was the folded-up "catcher," so disposed that it served, when not in use, actually to hide its own iniquity as well as that of the yawning mouth behind. Only when some small insect, all unsuspecting this smooth masked face, comes close, do the long tongs unfold, shoot out, and reveal the waiting jaws and thirsty throat. A veritable dragon, indeed; sly and cruel and ever hungry for living prey. (Text.)—"Insect Stories."

(958)

EVIL, ERUPTIVE

Solfatara, a semi-extinct volcano near Pozzuoli, has opened a new crater two hundred and fifty feet from the ancient one. It is emitting a voluminous column of sulfurous gases. The activity of Solfatara always is supposed to coincide with the inactivity of Vesuvius.

To stop one bad habit is not to transform the nature. The wicked are like a troubled sea that can not rest. If there are evil fires in the heart when you choke off one evil course the evil breaks out in some other way.

(959)

EVIL, ESCAPE FROM

The saying which Rev. W. H. Fitchett attributes to John Wesley's sister reminds one of Christ's petition, "I pray not that thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou wouldst keep them from its evil."