roadway—a sharp, slippery declivity called "The Devil's Slide." How terrible, indeed, is the devil's slide! How tempting it is!—a short cut, a very short cut, to fame, wealth, power, pleasure. How graduated and smooth it is! What a specious name it often has! Strangely enough, that declivity in London was called "Mount Pleasant"; and the downward roads of life often are known by charming names. But enter on that slide, and you soon attain a startling velocity; sooner or later you arrive at an ignominious doom. Let no man think himself safe. The circles of crime dipping to very murky depths of hell are not far from any one of us. (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured Sackcloth."
(954)
EVIL BY DEGREES
Many a man grows so accustomed to his evil environment that he fails to realize how he is being spiritually ruined.
In a certain laboratory experiment a live
frog was placed in water heated at the rate
of .0036 of a degree Fahrenheit per second.
The frog never moved or showed any sign
of distress, but was found at the end of two
hours and a half to be dead. The explanation
was that at any point of time the temperature
of the water showed such little
contrast with that of a moment before that
the attention of the frog was never attracted
by it. It was boiled to death without noticing
it.
(955)
EVIL DEFLECTED
Surmounting the tower of the City Hall,
Philadelphia, is a colossal statue of William
Penn. During a thunder-storm sometimes
the lightning plays about its surface of
bronze, like oil on water. Electricians say
that it can not be damaged because a two-inch
copper cable runs down into a well beneath
the foundation-walls, conducting the
dangerous current harmlessly away.
Still more immune from evil is the
man whom God protects. (Text.)
(956)
EVIL DEVELOPMENT RAPID
Evil grows of itself, grows vigorously.
With infinite care we rear the rare roses,
but how spontaneously and luxuriantly
spring the weeds! By costly culture we
ripen the golden sheaf, but how the noxious
poppies bloom! Very tenderly must we
nourish things of beauty, but how the vermin
breed and swarm! And so, while the germs
of good in our heart come to fruition only
after long years of vigilance and devotion,
the tares are ever springing up in a night,
dashing the beauty with their blackness, and
bearing the hundredfold of bitterness and
blasting.—W. L. Watkinson, "The Transfigured
Sackcloth."
(957)
EVIL, DISGUISED
If destructive moral evils were shown in their real hideousness, no one would be drawn toward them! Vernon L. Kellogg describes the disguise of a certain insect:
The whole front of his [a water insect's]
face was smooth and covered over by a
sort of mask, so that his terrible jaws and
catching nippers were invisible. However,
we soon understood this. The mask was
the folded-up "catcher," so disposed that it
served, when not in use, actually to hide its
own iniquity as well as that of the yawning
mouth behind. Only when some small insect,
all unsuspecting this smooth masked face,
comes close, do the long tongs unfold, shoot
out, and reveal the waiting jaws and thirsty
throat. A veritable dragon, indeed; sly and
cruel and ever hungry for living prey.
(Text.)—"Insect Stories."
(958)
EVIL, ERUPTIVE
Solfatara, a semi-extinct volcano near
Pozzuoli, has opened a new crater two hundred
and fifty feet from the ancient one.
It is emitting a voluminous column of sulfurous
gases. The activity of Solfatara always
is supposed to coincide with the inactivity
of Vesuvius.
To stop one bad habit is not to transform the nature. The wicked are like a troubled sea that can not rest. If there are evil fires in the heart when you choke off one evil course the evil breaks out in some other way.
(959)
EVIL, ESCAPE FROM
The saying which Rev. W. H. Fitchett attributes to John Wesley's sister reminds one of Christ's petition, "I pray not that thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou wouldst keep them from its evil."
