THEOLOGY SHAPED BY EXPERIENCE
The influence on John Wesley's theology of an escape as a child from a burning dwelling is thus described by Rev. W. H. Fitchett:
His theology translated itself into the
terms of that night scene. The burning
house was the symbol of a perishing world.
Each human soul, in Wesley's thought, was
represented by that fire-girt child, with the
flames of sin, and of that divine and eternal
anger which unrepenting sin kindles, closing
round it. He who had been plucked from
the burning house at midnight must pluck
men from the flames of a more dreadful fire.
That remembered peril colored Wesley's
imagination to his dying day.—"Wesley and
His Century."
(3221)
Theory, Erroneous—See Vitality Low.
THEORY VERSUS PRACTISE
A fellow has the cramp-colic and is tied
up in a double bow-knot. By and by an old,
dignified doctor comes in with a can of mustard
in one hand, and a dissertation on mustard
in the other. He walks up to the bed,
and says, "My friend, be quiet about an hour
and a half, and let me read you a dissertation
on mustard; this mustard grew in the
State of Connecticut; it was planted about
the first of June and cultivated like potatoes,
and vegetables of a like character."
About that time another paroxysm hit the fellow, and he said, "Good Lord, doctor; I don't care how it grew or where; spread some on a rag and put it on me."—"Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones."
(3222)
See Knowing and Doing.
THINGS
Among the causes of worry let us mention
an over-emphasis of things, an undue estimate
of wealth, equipage and luxury. When
men are once bitten with the desire for
abundance, worry inevitably follows. It is a
truism that the most beautiful things are the
simplest things. Witness a Doric column.
One substance, marble, and a fluted line,
giving form—no more. But, oh, how beautiful!
The lily has two colors, white with a
tiny stamen of gold, and then for contrast
a black mud-puddle in which it grows. The
two lovers have their happiest days in the
little cottage, with a tiny vine over the front
window, three or four great authors, one
big chair before the open fire, two or three
old familiar songs, a few friends—heaven
lies round about this little house. Twenty
years pass by. The man and woman are
bitten now with the love of many things.
Forgetting the few books that once he
digested, the man buys 5,000 volumes—many
people are under the delusion that they have
read a book because they have bought it.
Now also the man and woman buy twenty or
thirty chairs, and one sits in one chair in one
room, and the other in another chair in
another room. There used to be one chair.
They begin to collect things for things' sake;
curios and clothes and rare editions, until
the house becomes a museum, and the palace
is as cold as a storage-plant, where love
chilled to death twenty years ago. And the
man and woman are mere care-takers of the
things they have collected, mere drudges,
hirelings; in fact, this man and his wife are
the only servants in the house that work for
nothing.—N. D. Hillis.
(3223)
THINGS, NOT BOOKS
The tragedy of the race was when men,
who had lived next to things, began to fancy
that if all that men knew could be gathered
into contrivances called books, and the children
shut in a building with these books,
they could learn all about the world on which
gravity chains us, without the trouble of ever
looking at the things themselves.
When I was a little boy I was once studying in geography the animals of the Rocky Mountains. Just then a boy rushed in breathless, and said that there were "four men outside with three big bears." The teacher shut the door and cracked me on the head for looking out over the high window-sill. And yet these men had brought to our door the very real things concerning which we were studying. But school was about book bears, not real bears.
Once in the University of Cincinnati I saw a young woman assiduously studying an oyster. Perplexed, she looked up and asked the professor a question about the thing which she was studying. The professor walked to her table, looked carefully at the oyster, and answered her. Why didn't she ask the oyster? Even the professor had to do so. The oyster was the court of last resort, and it was in session before her; but the old view-point had so walled in her vision that she could not even see the decision before her eyes.
To read things out of books requires a
