Bible Truths Illustrated by J. C. Ferdinand Pittman

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BIBLE TRUTHS ILLUSTRATED
water. They came to feed, and needed no music. Let the
preacher give his people food, and they will flock around him,
even if the sounding brass of rhetoric and the tinkling cymbals
of oratory are silent."
674. Abraham Lincoln was once asked the secret of his
extraordinary power of putting things, and he answered: "I
remember, when a child, I used to get irritated when anybody
talked to me in a way that I could not understand. I don't
think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that
always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember
going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbours
talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part
of the night walking up and down, and trying to make out
what was the meaning of their, to me, dark sayings. So it
became a passion with me to put all I have to say into language
that cannot be misunderstood."
675. "A sailor just off of a whaling expedition asked where
he could hear a good sermon. On his return from the church
his friend asked him, 'How did you like the sermon?' 'Not
much ; it was like a ship leaving for the whale-fishing : everything
shipshape; anchors, cordage, sails, and provisions all
right, but there were no harpoons on board.' "
676. You cannot attempt to dislodge one object of earthly
affection or pursuit without having some other and better to
substitute in its room. It was a dictum of the old philosophy
that nature abhors a vacuum, and this is as true regarding the
moral as the material world. The dove of old, with weary
wing, would have retained its unstable perch on the restless
billow had it not known of an ark of safety. You cannot tempt
the shivering child of want to desert his garret or rude shielding
until you can promise him some kindlier and more substantial
shelter. You cannot induce the prodigal to leave off the husks
of his miserable desert exile before you can tell him of a
father's house and welcome; you cannot ask him to part with
his squalid rags and tinsel ornaments until you can assure him
of robe, and ring, and sandals. The husks and the tatters,
wretched as they are, are better than nothing.
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Guthrie.