Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/693



and had well-nigh swept me from my firmest footing. So have I seen a heedless youth gazing with a too curious spirit on the sweet motions and gentle approaches of an inviting pleasure, till it has detained his eye, and imprisoned his feet, and swelled upon his soul and swept him to a swift destruction. (Text.)
 * gered till its gentle notes grew into billows

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SIN, HIDDEN

Donald Sage Mackay, in "The Religion of the Threshold," writes in substance as follows:

Henry Drummond vividly describes the ravages of the African white ant. One may never see the insect possibly in the flesh, for it lives underground. But its ravages confront one at every turn. You build your house, perhaps, and for a few months fancy you have pitched on the one solitary site in the country where there are no white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post totters, and lintel and rafter come down together with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked timbers and discover that the whole inside is eaten clean away. The apparently solid logs of which the rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of bark, and through the thickest of them you can push your little finger. It is a vivid picture of the way in which concealed sins eat out the pith of the soul. To the outward eye everything may remain the same, but the fiber of character has been punctured through and through, till the whole nature is corroded.

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Sin, Ineffaceable—See.

SIN, ORIGINAL

What a strange misuse of language to speak of sacred writers as inventing original sin! Can we say that Jenner invented the smallpox, or that Pasteur invented the rabies, or that any of the celebrated physicians invented the maladies which are known by their names? What these famous men did was to successfully diagnose, characterize, and treat diseases which already existed, and which proved their malignant power by carrying thousands of men and women to the grave. (Text.)—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

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SIN, SENSE OF

It is popular in some quarters to pooh-pooh, the sense of sin, or to smile away the seriousness of sin.

Alfred de Musset, when he was young (the same fact is told of Merimee), once, being very much scolded for a childish freak, went away in tears, deeply penitent, when he heard his parents say, after the door was shut: "Poor boy, he thinks himself quite a criminal!" The thought that his misdeed was not so very serious, and that his repentance was mere childishness, wounded him deeply, and the impression remained engraved on his memory forever. (Text.)

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SIN, SUBTLETY OF

Our scientists, by the aid of powerful lenses, intense lights, exquisite adjustments, have succeeded in rendering visible the germs of several terrible maladies which decimate us, and these ardent naturalists hope ultimately to discover germs still more minute and obscure. But can any one believe that a bacteria of immorality will ever be revealed by the microscope as the germs of disease have been? Fever and cholera germs, germs of consumption, hydrophobia, erysipelas, have been disclosed by the fierce light of modern research; but no one will suppose that the germs of intemperance, impurity, anger, covetousness, deceit, pride, murder, foolishness, will ever be thrown on the screen, and an antidote be found for them in the pharmacopoeia. If it were thus possible to exhibit the secret of our sins, how we should shudder at the sight of the naked human heart, and shrink from the ghastly things which nestle there! But such a spectacle is not possible, and we are sure that it never will be. The germs of moral disease are in the soul itself; no glass of science may make them visible, no physician may deal with them, no medicine may purge them.—, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."

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SIN WITHOUT ATONEMENT

A writer, speaking of the wasteful use of coal in England, and the consequent diminishing of the national store, says:

Our stock of coal is a definite and limited quantity that was placed in the present storehouse long before human beings came upon the earth. Every ton of coal that is wasted is lost forever, and can not be replaced by any human effort, while bread is a product of human industry, and its waste may be replaced by additional human labor. The sin of bread-wasting does admit of agricul