Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/65

 BIBLE AS A CHART

Dr. W. L. Watkinson, commending the Bible as the chart of life, gives this illustration:

A famous Swiss guide was once interviewed. He was a man who had never suffered an accident. Invariably he had brought his parties successfully through the most ambitious undertakings. The man who interviewed him spoke of the failures of other guides. His reply to that was, "There are guides and guides. One takes you up and trusts to luck. He is ready for anything, but he does not know what is coming. He guesses where he is when you ask him, 'Where is the top?' I never do that. Before I start on a new track, or one I have not made before, I study it thoroughly. I watch it through the glass until I know it. I make a map of it. When I say, 'Go,' then I can see what is before me. On the mountain I must always know where I am. If you come to me for science, it is no good; but I must carry my map with me and point, 'We are here.' I never start without my compass, my thermometer, and my aneroid; so that when you come to me at any moment and ask, 'Where are we?' I can say, 'Here! and it is so many feet to the top.'"

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BIBLE AS A COMPASS

Every ship has a compass. No captain would dream of going to sea without a compass, for there are times when neither sun nor stars appear and steering must be done by the compass alone. So every man should have a compass. The Bible is the Christian mariner's compass, and by it he must steer.

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Bible as a Mind-cure—See.

BIBLE AS BREAD

A year ago in Austria a Bible was baked in a loaf of bread. Some wicked men came into the house to find the Bible and burn it, but the good woman of the home, who was just going to bake bread for her family, rolled up her Bible in a big loaf and put it in the oven. When the intruders went away she took out the loaf, and the Bible was uninjured.

The Bible is bread. A good loaf to hide the Bible in is a warm heart. The Bible is best baked in a good life. (Text.)

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BIBLE CUSTOMS TO-DAY

How far away the Bible seems to us when it tells of sack-cloth and ashes, and about Jacob and Mordecai and Isaiah, who marked their desolation by these signs! In Korea sack-cloth is still such a mark, and with hair unbound and their persons wrapt about with these coarse folds of bagging they sit like Job and cry, "Aigo, aigo." "And the mourners go about the streets." From the writer's house we look out on one of the main thoroughfares of the city; and frequently, as the sun goes down, there comes a procession bearing lanterns and a long line of mourners in sack-cloth following the dead with mournful wailings. Is there not a thought and a providence underlying the oneness of these things with all the settings of the Scripture?

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"Take up thy bed and walk," seemed to the writer in his boyhood days as a most extraordinary expression. He pictured a four-posted bed being tugged out of a bed-*room by one poor man only just recovered of his sickness; but when he came to Korea, he understood it all. The bed was just a little mattress spread out on the floor of the living-room, and to roll it up and put it away was the common act of every morning when the sleeper awoke. Morning light and consciousness had come into the life of the poor invalid, so he would roll up his sleeping-*mat and walk off to where it was put for the day. So, in many of the common acts of life in Korea we were in touch with the days of our Lord on earth.

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Then there is the foot-gear or sandals. Neither China nor Japan so markedly reflects Scripture in this respect as Korea. Here are the strings tied over the instep, here the humble servant is called to bow down and unloose them. As in Judea, they are never worn indoors, but are dropt off on the entrance-mat.

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The expression, "Girt about the breasts with a golden girdle," is never quite clear to a young Bible reader at home, and China and Japan cast no special light upon it; but in Korea there was the long white robe down to the feet, and round the breast the embroidered girdle. It remained until after the missionary arrived, and then in the changes of the new century the girdle was swept away. The white robes, too, find their corresponding part in Scripture, and the ex