BIBLE AS A CHART
Dr. W. L. Watkinson, commending the Bible as the chart of life, gives this illustration:
A famous Swiss guide was once interviewed.
He was a man who had never suffered
an accident. Invariably he had brought
his parties successfully through the most
ambitious undertakings. The man who interviewed
him spoke of the failures of other
guides. His reply to that was, "There are
guides and guides. One takes you up and
trusts to luck. He is ready for anything,
but he does not know what is coming. He
guesses where he is when you ask him,
'Where is the top?' I never do that. Before
I start on a new track, or one I have not
made before, I study it thoroughly. I watch
it through the glass until I know it. I make
a map of it. When I say, 'Go,' then I can
see what is before me. On the mountain I
must always know where I am. If you come
to me for science, it is no good; but I must
carry my map with me and point, 'We are
here.' I never start without my compass, my
thermometer, and my aneroid; so that when
you come to me at any moment and ask,
'Where are we?' I can say, 'Here! and it is
so many feet to the top.'"
(219)
BIBLE AS A COMPASS
Every ship has a compass. No captain
would dream of going to sea without a
compass, for there are times when neither
sun nor stars appear and steering must be
done by the compass alone. So every man
should have a compass. The Bible is the
Christian mariner's compass, and by it he
must steer.
(220)
Bible as a Mind-cure—See Mind-healing.
BIBLE AS BREAD
A year ago in Austria a Bible was baked
in a loaf of bread. Some wicked men came
into the house to find the Bible and burn it,
but the good woman of the home, who was
just going to bake bread for her family,
rolled up her Bible in a big loaf and put it
in the oven. When the intruders went away
she took out the loaf, and the Bible was uninjured.
The Bible is bread. A good loaf to
hide the Bible in is a warm heart. The
Bible is best baked in a good life.
(Text.)
(221)
BIBLE CUSTOMS TO-DAY
How far away the Bible seems to us when
it tells of sack-cloth and ashes, and about
Jacob and Mordecai and Isaiah, who marked
their desolation by these signs! In Korea
sack-cloth is still such a mark, and with hair
unbound and their persons wrapt about with
these coarse folds of bagging they sit like
Job and cry, "Aigo, aigo." "And the
mourners go about the streets." From the
writer's house we look out on one of the
main thoroughfares of the city; and frequently,
as the sun goes down, there comes
a procession bearing lanterns and a long
line of mourners in sack-cloth following the
dead with mournful wailings. Is there not
a thought and a providence underlying the
oneness of these things with all the settings
of the Scripture?
(222)
"Take up thy bed and walk," seemed to the writer in his boyhood days as a most extraordinary expression. He pictured a four-posted bed being tugged out of a bed-*room by one poor man only just recovered of his sickness; but when he came to Korea, he understood it all. The bed was just a little mattress spread out on the floor of the living-room, and to roll it up and put it away was the common act of every morning when the sleeper awoke. Morning light and consciousness had come into the life of the poor invalid, so he would roll up his sleeping-*mat and walk off to where it was put for the day. So, in many of the common acts of life in Korea we were in touch with the days of our Lord on earth.
(223)
Then there is the foot-gear or sandals. Neither China nor Japan so markedly reflects Scripture in this respect as Korea. Here are the strings tied over the instep, here the humble servant is called to bow down and unloose them. As in Judea, they are never worn indoors, but are dropt off on the entrance-mat.
(224)
The expression, "Girt about the breasts with a golden girdle," is never quite clear to a young Bible reader at home, and China and Japan cast no special light upon it; but in Korea there was the long white robe down to the feet, and round the breast the embroidered girdle. It remained until after the missionary arrived, and then in the changes of the new century the girdle was swept away. The white robes, too, find their corresponding part in Scripture, and the ex-
