Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/687



night she was accustomed to gather the daily papers after they had been thrown aside. Taking these to her room she used to cut from them the list of death notices, and laying these before her she knelt and in prayer commended those in sorrow to the gracious help of her Father in heaven. She did not know them, but they were in sorrow, and in the only way she could she ministered to them. We are not judges, but I much mistake if in the eyes of Him who judges not as man judges, such service as that does not rank high up above the princely gifts that attract the attention of the world.—

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SERVICE WITH HARDSHIP

In a recent number of Forward the story is told of a young Chinese slave girl whose mistress brought her to the Presbyterian Mission Hospital at Canton. She was doomed to blindness and lameness, so her mistress abandoned her. The doctors amputated her leg and gave her little tasks to perform about the place and taught her about the heavenly Father and Savior. She developed leprosy and was forced to leave these friends whom she had learned to love, and go to the darkness and horror of a leper settlement. But she went a Christian, and in two years that blind, crippled leper built up a band of Christians in that leper settlement, and in five years a church grew out of her work. That poor crippled invalid life is to-day a center of joy and service, and other leper villages are sending to her to ask about the wonderful good news which can bring joy even to outcasts.

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Service, Wrong Conception of—See .

SHADOW

In sylviculture the growth and fiber qualities of young conifers are artificially improved by shutting off the sunlight and leaving the trees in very dark places.

There are many virtues in human character that seem to develop more robustly and come to finer strength in the shadows of adversity.

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SHADOW AND SUNSHINE

A terrible shadow in Coleridge's life was the apparent cause of most of his dejection. In early life he suffered from neuralgia, and to ease the pain began to use opiates. The result on such a temperament was almost inevitable. He became a slave to the drug habit; his naturally weak will lost all its directing and sustaining force, until, after fifteen years of pain and struggle and despair, he gave up and put himself in charge of a physician, one Mr. Gillman, of Highgate. Carlyle, who visited him at this time, calls him "a king of men," but records that "he gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings, a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other bewilderment."—, "English Literature."

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Shadow of a Great Life—See.

SHADOWS

We are made sure that the sun shines not necessarily by seeing it, but often by noting the shadows it casts.

So the presence of God in our lives may often be indicated by the shadows of sorrow and trial.

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SHAKING-UP

Many a man will confess that a sound thrashing at the hands of some other lad in the days of his youth was the beginning of his moral development; that, after the ache was over, it set him to thinking. Nature abhors monotony almost as much as a vacuum, and seems to have provided that at various times a general shaking up is necessary to maintain the proper standard.—, "The Fighting Saint."

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SHAME

If our deeds were all to be put on a canvas for men to see, should we be as much ashamed of some as them, as the man in this anecdote?

There was once a rich landlord who cruelly opprest a poor widow. Her son, then a little boy of eight years, witnessed it. He became a great painter, and painted a likeness of the dark scene. Years afterward he placed it where the cruel man saw it. He recognized himself in the shameful picture, turned pale, trembled in every joint, and offered a large sum to purchase it that he might put it out of sight. (Text.)—

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