Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/67



trust Him. Once again he visited the Buddhist temple, this time to tell his old friend of the grace of Christ, and Chang also became a believer. When some years later a Christian missionary went to this place, there was a community of saved men and women, and a little church gathered together through the agency of the message of that one little book.

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BIBLE, GRIP OF THE

At one time I gave a Mohammedan a New Testament on condition that he would read it. He was a Turkish official, but he promised that he would do so. I saw him a year later, when he came to me like Nicodemus by night. I said to him, "Have you read the book I gave you?" He replied, "Yes, I have read it through four times, and it gets hold of me every time right here"—putting his hand upon his heart. "I believe that is the religion which must ultimately be accepted by the world as the true religion; it seems to me that it is the only religion." He went out and away and he is to-day an official of the Turkish Government. He is a representative of a great class in the Mohammedan world who are beginning to have an intelligent knowledge of Christianity.—, "Student Volunteer Movement," 1906.

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BIBLE, INTEREST IN

A laboring man had come up from the country for a holiday in London. He seemed strong and active, tho his hair was gray; and standing in the Roman Gallery, he looked wonderingly at the long line of statues and busts of the Roman emperors. As I pointed out one and another to a friend with me, he stept forward and said, "Have they got Julius Cæsar here?" I at once told him that the bust stood at the end of the gallery and he walked toward it, but soon came back again, evidently not quite satisfied. I asked him if he had found it.

"No," he said, "I couldn't see him." So I took the old man back to where it stood, and pointed it out.

"You are interested in these things?" I inquired.

"Yes," he replied, "and now I can tell folks when I go home that I've seen him. Which is the one that was alive when Jesus Christ was crucified?" I soon showed him Tiberius Cæsar, and then Augustus, telling him how God had through his means set the whole Roman world in motion, in order that according to prophecy Christ might be born in Bethlehem. And then I asked him if he knew the Lord Jesus Christ. With a bright, satisfied look lighting up his fine old face, he said, "Ah, yes! one gets to know summat of Him in a lifetime."

There were many things to be seen in London, but evidently the British Museum stood first and foremost in his estimation, because he could there see portraits of those about whom he read in the Bible.—, "The Bible and the British Museum."

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BIBLE, LIVING ON THE

We never fully realize the value of the Bible till it becomes our very life. The way to deal with the Bible is not merely to study it or to meditate upon it, but actually to live on it, as that squirrel lives on his beech-tree.

A preacher, one day, resting under a beech-tree, pondering on the divine wisdom that had created it, saw a squirrel running round the trunk and up the branches, and he said to himself, "Ah! little creature, this beech-tree is much more to you than it is to me, for it is your home, your living, and your all." Its big branches were the main streets of his city and its little boughs were the lanes. Somewhere in that tree he had his house and the beechnuts were his daily food.

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BIBLE NOT OUT OF DATE

A trader passing a converted cannibal in Africa, asked him what he was doing. "Oh, I am reading the Bible," was the reply. "That book is out of date in my country," said the foreigner. "If it had been out of date here," said the African to the European, "you'd have been eaten long ago."

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BIBLE, OFFENSE OF THE

A New York City missionary, accustomed to speak in the lowest sections of the city, was going to hold an open-air meeting in Paradise Park. Before he began to preach he heard a man in the crowd say, "Damn the Bible, anyhow." He mounted his barrel and announced, "My text to-day is 'Damn the Bible, anyhow.'" That made that man and every other man eager to hear what he was going to say next. Then he told why the devil wanted the Bible damned: because it closed up all liquor stores and brothels,