Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/427

 But no river is more fed by confluent currents than is that of a life which draws to itself all resources of knowledge and grace. (Text.)

(1798)

LIFE FROM DEATH

Clinton Scollard, in The Outlook, draws a lesson from the new-fallen snow:

The evanescent wonder of the snow Is round about us, and as in a cloud— A vestiture inviolate—we walk. Earth seems bereft of song and shorn of sun, A cloistral world. Even the lyric throat Of the rapt brook is like a pulse-beat faint. The wood—white architrave on architrave— Is as a temple where the lips of prayer Tremble upon the verge of utterance. Hush! In the heart of this great gulf of sleep, This void abysmal, may we not divine The inscrutable Presence clothed about with dreams, The immaculate Vision that is death yet life, For out of death comes life: the twain are one! (Text.)

(1799)

Life, Inward—See.

LIFE LEARNED FROM DEATH

Prof. G. Currie Martin draws this suggestive picture:

In the gallery at The Hague there hangs a wonderful picture by Rembrandt. When the visitor first looks at it the horror that it inspires seems too great to be borne, for there, in the very forefront of the canvas, so that the spectator imagines he could touch it, is the grim and ghastly form of a corpse lying livid and rigid upon the dissecting-*table. To add still further to the sense of shrinking it evokes, the scalpel of the surgeon has been thrust into the flesh, and he is laying bare the muscles of the arm. But if the visitor has only patience and courage for a moment to overcome the first sense of repulsion, he will find that he goes away from an examination of the picture thinking no longer of death and its terror, but of life and its power. For the skill of the artist is shown in so presenting the great and eternal contrast between death and life that the latter triumphs. Above the figure of the corpse are grouped the faces of the great scientists and physicians who, as they listen to the words of the lecturer, are drinking in the new-found knowledge that is to make them the conquerors of disease, and those portraits are so wonderfully painted that the spectator finds himself ever afterward thinking of the power of life that they manifest and of the greatness of human knowledge that has wrested the secrets from death itself which make life more powerful and safe. (Text.)

(1800)

Life-line, A—See.

LIFE-LINE HYMN

A speaker at one of Evan Roberts' remarkable revival services in Wales, was telling of a "vision" he had had, and of a voice which exhorted him to "Throw out the life-line," when instantly the listeners sang the whole hymn together.

Mr. Ufford, the author of the lines, once sang them at a watch-service in California, and there he told how the Elsie Smith was lost on Cape Cod in 1902, showing the very life-line that saved sixteen lives from the sea, and by chance one of the number was present at the service.

From a room, in a building hired for religious services in a Pennsylvania city, and where a series of revival meetings was being held, rang out, one night, the hymn, "Throw out the life-line," in the hearing, next door, of a convivial card-party. It was a sweet female voice, followed in the chorus by other and louder voices chiming in. The result was the merriment ceased as one of the members of the card-party remarked: "If what they're saying is right, then we're wrong," and the revelers broke up. An ex-*member of that party is now an editor of a great city daily, and his fellows are all filling positions of responsibility. The lifeline pulled them ashore.

In a Massachusetts city, twenty years ago, this hymn won to Christ a man who is now a prosperous manufacturer.

At a special service held at Gibraltar for the survivors of an emigrant ship that went ashore there during a storm, this hymn was sung with telling effect.

The story of that life-line is long enough and strong enough to tie up a large bundle of results wrought by it.

(1801)

Life-material—See.