"Because he knows exactly what questions to ask when he wants to know what I have been doing." (Text.)
(989)
I once met a veteran sailor, one of the old Hull and Decatur breed, who had been to sea forty years, and he told me he had never known a mutiny on board ship where the captain had risen from before the mast, implying that such an officer had acquired experience, and knew how to manage men as well as vessels.—James T. Fields.
(990)
It is better to be singed by the flame and suffer than not to know the experiences of living deeply. This seems to be the lesson in Helen A. Saxon's verse below:
Hast singed thy pretty wings, poor moth?
Fret not; some moths there be
That wander all the weary night
Longing in vain to see
The light.
Hast touched the scorching flame, poor heart?
Grieve not; some hearts exist
That know not, grow not to be strong,
And weep not, having missed
The song.
—The Reader.
(991)
See Confidence; Familiarity; Life, The
Winged.
EXPERIENCE A HARD TEACHER
Everything in the Eskimo dress has a reason
for its existence. The members of Captain
Amundsen's expeditions had become
accustomed to the Eskimo dress and had
adopted it, but many of them thought it
ridiculous for grown-up men to go about
wearing fringe to their clothes, so they cut
it off. The captain had his scruples about
this, as he had already learned that most
things in the Eskimo's clothing and other
arrangements had their distinct meaning and
purpose, so he allowed the fringe to remain
on his garments in the face of ridicule. One
bright, sunny day the anovaks, a variety of
tunic reaching below the knee, made of deerskin,
from which the fringe had been cut
off, began to curl up, and if the fringe had
not been put on again quickly, they would
soon have looked like mere shreds.
There is a purpose in every ordinance and ceremony of the Church. Observance of established forms is for the upbuilding of faith in the believer. (Text.)
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EXPERIENCE AND BIBLE
As the finger feels the smart when it
touches the flame that stands airily quivering
in its golden invitation, so the will which
first touches a lie or a lust is conscious of
a pang. Not outward in the Word, but inward
in its life, is this warning against vice.
When afterward it reads and meditates the
Word, it finds symbols interpreted, precepts
enforced, admonitions illumined, by this its
prior inward experience.—Richard S.
Storrs.
(993)
Experience as Proof—See Tests, Personal.
EXPERIENCE DECISIVE
A physician once remarked to S. H. Hadley,
after having listened to his earnest appeals
to drunkards to come to Jesus, "You
would not talk to those men like that if you
had ever seen inside a drunkard's stomach."
"But I had a drunkard's stomach," quickly
responded Mr. Hadley, "and Jesus saved
me."
(994)
Experience, Spiritual—See Spiritual Perturbation.
EXPERIENCE TESTING THEOLOGY
As for Wesley, an unrelenting thoroughness
marked at every stage his temper in
religion. He would have no uncertainties,
no easy and soft illusions. Religion as a
divine gift, as a human experience, was
something definite. No intermediate stage
was thinkable. And with a wise—but almost
unconscious—instinct he put his theology to
the one final test. He cast it into the alembic
of experience. He tried it by the challenge
of life; of its power to color and shape life.
He spent the next thirteen years in that
process, trying his creed with infinite courage,
with transparent sincerity, and often with
toil and suffering, by the rough acid of life,
till at last he reached that conception of
Christ and His gospel which lifted his spirit
up to dazzling heights of gladness and power.—W.
H. Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century."
(995)
See Theology Shaped by Experience.
EXPERIENCE THE BEST ARGUMENT
William Duncan, who later became "The Apostle of Alaska," when a young man newly converted, encountered an
