Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/245



"Because he knows exactly what questions to ask when he wants to know what I have been doing." (Text.)

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I once met a veteran sailor, one of the old Hull and Decatur breed, who had been to sea forty years, and he told me he had never known a mutiny on board ship where the captain had risen from before the mast, implying that such an officer had acquired experience, and knew how to manage men as well as vessels.—

(990)

It is better to be singed by the flame and suffer than not to know the experiences of living deeply. This seems to be the lesson in Helen A. Saxon's verse below:

Hast singed thy pretty wings, poor moth? Fret not; some moths there be That wander all the weary night Longing in vain to see The light.

Hast touched the scorching flame, poor heart? Grieve not; some hearts exist That know not, grow not to be strong, And weep not, having missed The song.

—The Reader.

(991)

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EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER

Everything in the Eskimo dress has a reason for its existence. The members of Captain Amundsen's expeditions had become accustomed to the Eskimo dress and had adopted it, but many of them thought it ridiculous for grown-up men to go about wearing fringe to their clothes, so they cut it off. The captain had his scruples about this, as he had already learned that most things in the Eskimo's clothing and other arrangements had their distinct meaning and purpose, so he allowed the fringe to remain on his garments in the face of ridicule. One bright, sunny day the anovaks, a variety of tunic reaching below the knee, made of deerskin, from which the fringe had been cut off, began to curl up, and if the fringe had not been put on again quickly, they would soon have looked like mere shreds.

There is a purpose in every ordinance and ceremony of the Church. Observance of established forms is for the upbuilding of faith in the believer. (Text.)

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EXPERIENCE AND BIBLE

As the finger feels the smart when it touches the flame that stands airily quivering in its golden invitation, so the will which first touches a lie or a lust is conscious of a pang. Not outward in the Word, but inward in its life, is this warning against vice. When afterward it reads and meditates the Word, it finds symbols interpreted, precepts enforced, admonitions illumined, by this its prior inward experience.—

(993)

Experience as Proof—See.

EXPERIENCE DECISIVE

A physician once remarked to S. H. Hadley, after having listened to his earnest appeals to drunkards to come to Jesus, "You would not talk to those men like that if you had ever seen inside a drunkard's stomach." "But I had a drunkard's stomach," quickly responded Mr. Hadley, "and Jesus saved me."

(994)

Experience, Spiritual—See.

EXPERIENCE TESTING THEOLOGY

As for Wesley, an unrelenting thoroughness marked at every stage his temper in religion. He would have no uncertainties, no easy and soft illusions. Religion as a divine gift, as a human experience, was something definite. No intermediate stage was thinkable. And with a wise—but almost unconscious—instinct he put his theology to the one final test. He cast it into the alembic of experience. He tried it by the challenge of life; of its power to color and shape life. He spent the next thirteen years in that process, trying his creed with infinite courage, with transparent sincerity, and often with toil and suffering, by the rough acid of life, till at last he reached that conception of Christ and His gospel which lifted his spirit up to dazzling heights of gladness and power.—, "Wesley and His Century."

(995)

See.

EXPERIENCE THE BEST ARGUMENT

William Duncan, who later became "The Apostle of Alaska," when a young man newly converted, encountered an