Read Ebook: The Bible object book by Woolston C H Clarence Herbert Rodeheaver Homer A Homer Alvan Author Of Introduction Etc

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OPPOSITE PAGE A Group of Children Just After a Happy Hour Service at Winona Lake, Indiana; These Represent the Children to Whom This Book is Dedicated .............Frontispiece

Rev. C. H. Woolston and Professor Homer Rodeheaver ............... 18

A Meeting of Children in the East Baptist Church, Philadelphia Giving Attention to Object-lessons Described in This Book ..................... 98

Atlas, the Big Lion, a Docile, Friendly Beast, Performing for the Children ............................................. 216

A Baby Lion, Six Weeks Old, Receiving the Name of the Youngest Baby in the Audience ................................ 218

A Baby Leopard, Seven Months Old, Used to Illustrate the Scripture Reference to the Leopard's Spots ................... 220

The Bear Is Called the Clown of the Animal Kingdom. This Baby Bear, Visiting a Children's Meeting in Doctor Woolston's Church, Was Used to Illustrate the Sin of Stubbornness ................................................... 222

JUST A FEW WORDS TO THE CHILDREN

Many a great preacher meets his Waterloo here. Will he retire beaten dragging the white flag of surrender after him, and hang low his head because of the conscious defeat, or will he with flying banners put it over in these "few words," and take his place in line with the world's greatest conquerors?

He must remember all children will not prick up their ears and listen hard just because he is a great preacher. Children are great critics. Their criticism takes the form of not listening. They know perfectly the art of withdrawing attention when they are not interested in the "few words," but their minds are not vacant during the unheeded "few words." They are counting the number of people present in the pews directly in front of them. They are watching the inattention of the members of the choir. They are thinking of their games of yesterday, or something they received at Christmastime, or of some book just given them as a birthday gift. They may be whispering or nudging each other, or if they have a bit of pencil with them they may be sketching caricatures of the deacons before them or even of the minister who is addressing them.

The little girl's motherly thought may be straying home to a sick doll, or may be smiling at the funny ways of puppy or kitten that she just happens to remember. The boy may be smiling over some funny situation he saw yesterday at the "movies." They are all very resourceful in themselves to save them from being bored by an address that has lost its way in its pilgrimage from the minister to their pews in which they are seated. The "just a few words" like birds have taken to their wings, and gone over the children's heads to the "land of nowhere." The minister, if he has normal eyes and a common mind, is conscious of the fact he has "missed fire," and wonders what he can do to put it over so it will stay "put"! If he thus thinks, there is large hope for him, because he has not graduated from the learner's bench. Let him be a child again and think as a child. Let him learn how to talk to them and not about them, and then his "just a few words" will become as interesting to their mind as the toys they left behind them. This is worth the effort; even the adults who are only "tall kids" will like the talk better than "the preaching at" in which they have only a feeble interest. Even the "polar bear" deacon will thaw out and catch himself smiling at the "few words" of the preacher that just "talks."

Happy is the man who can interest the child in his "few words" and can also interest the child in its efforts to translate the "few words" into big acts on the inside building of a child's character.

WHEN THE BABY DISCOVERS AMERICA!

A Study of the Object as Well as the Subject

This does not mean that we are to talk down to them and use "baby" or silly talk. Children know when they are being "talked down to," and resent it. When the preacher arrives to address the children in a "few words," he should be of the same age as the child in his words in order to establish contact. Why not? The Mother talks to the children in words of their age. Let the preacher be like the Mother when he stands to address his words to the little folks. Let him use short words, plain sentences, pictureful words, and objects which the children know, and thus become a child again. Let him see the big world through the eyes of the children, and he will know what stories the children like and do not like, and when he arrives in the pulpit, their eyes will be fastened on him, and they will hear him gladly because he is one of them.

So, as baby discovers America, you discover baby.

A MILLION DOLLAR CIGARET

Some months ago in Jersey City, N. J., a large warehouse and its contents were destroyed by fire. This was the dreadful blaze known as the Great Triangle Fire which finally destroyed a million dollars worth of property. The deadly cigaret was believed to have been the cause of this disaster. An employee walking about the place tossed or allowed to drop from his hand a lighted cigaret.

A cigar thus dropped goes out at once; a cigaret continues to burn until it burns itself out, and so this cigaret continued to burn and ignited other material, and thus the great fire had its start, and one million dollars worth of property was thus destroyed. That was a Million Dollar Cigaret.

All cigarets are costly. They destroy things much more valuable than personal property or real estate. They destroy health, character, and the chances of good success in life. These things are more valuable than hills of gold. The cigaret is more deadly than natural death, for it produces a living death and at last flings the ruined soul on the bank of the Lost River in the Kingdom of Eternal Darkness.

Sir Christopher Furness has found that cigaret smoking among boys not only causes deterioration of physique, but "tends to develop lounging habits, with the result that the juvenile smoker's work is less conscientiously done, and he is lacking in sprightliness and alertness. Where, as is often the case," Sir Christopher adds, "the boy smokes clandestinely, habits of deceitfulness will probably be formed." Sir George William's experience as an employer has conclusively proved to him that a boy is a far from satisfactory worker if he smokes, and he says:

The effects of smoking, with its tendency to encourage drinking, are to reduce a lad's energy, to lessen his intellectual capacity, and to weaken his moral character.

The fact that every great public school prohibits smoking among its boys, and punishes offenders with a strong hand, is eloquent of the evil effect tobacco has on the young mind. The Leeds School Board some time ago enlisted the services of eminent medical authorities in its battle against the cigaret, and the Plymouth Board circularized the teachers and parents of the children on the subject. A Committee of the Liverpool School Board which investigated the matter declared that "cigaret smoking affects the system generally, and arrests physical development," and it would be possible to quote thousands of such opinions from the educational side.

It goes without saying that the doctor is the strongest enemy of the cigaret for boys. "All the evidence," says Dr. Andrew Wilson, "points to the undermining of a growing lad's physique by indulgence in tobacco," and Doctor Wilson continues:

Add to this the moral effect--that of rendering the already precocious boy still more precocious, and of turning him into an insufferable prig, and you thus condemn the habit from another point of view.

Sir Henry LittleJohn, the veteran medical officer of health for Edinburgh, has used his great influence against the boy smoker on many grounds, and there is much force in his argument that

the practise is fraught with dangers to society at large, owing to the secrecy with which the habit is carried on, the assembling at nights, the tendency to visit ice-cream shops to assuage the heat of the mouth that has been engendered by the filthy practise, and, in addition, we have ultimately that disregard of the proprieties due to the other sex which is introducing in our midst a laxity of morals, which, in the future, must bear fruit.

Magistrate Crane of New York City says:

Ninety-nine out of a hundred boys between ten and seventeen years of age, who come before me charged with crime, have their fingers disfigured by yellow cigaret stains... The poison in the cigaret seems to get into the system of the boy and destroys all moral fiber.

Tobacco interferes with the functions of the eye, of the heart, and of the kidneys. Tobacco smoking interferes with the development of the boy.

Professor McKeever says the cigaret-smoking boys of several schools, the records of which were investigated, were described by his informants by such epithets as sallow, sore-eyed, puny, squeaky-voiced, sickly, short-winded, and extremely nervous.

The greatest danger of the cigaret habit is its insidious nature. The boy does not realize the danger until it is too late to correct it. Hundreds of tombstones today bear silent testimony to this fact.

A chemist took the tobacco used in an average cigaret and soaked it in several teaspoonfuls of water and injected a portion of it under the skin of a cat. The cat almost immediately went into convulsions and died in fifteen minutes. Dogs have been killed with a single drop of nicotine.

Investigation shows that prominent business men positively refuse to engage men for responsible positions who smoke cigarets. The cigaret smoker, sooner or later, proves to be unreliable either physically, mentally, morally, or all three.

In Detroit alone, sixty-nine merchants have agreed not to employ cigaret-users. Chicago firms such as Montgomery Ward & Co., Marshall Field & Co., Morgan & Wright Tire Co., all prohibit cigaret smoking among employees, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, are both opposed to the cigaret.

The manager of one of Ohio's largest mercantile houses, when asked for a job for a boy who smoked cigarets, said:

I'm sorry, but I can't use cigaret smokers. First, they smell bad, and I don't want to put them in contact with the nice young ladies who work here or the nice ladies who trade here. Second, cigarets prevent the development of strong, clear, reliable moral character. They excite the lower passions and dull the sense of right and wrong.

Judge Ben Lindsay of Denver says:

I have been in the Juvenile Court nearly ten years, dealing with thousands of boys who have disgraced themselves and their parents, and I do not know of any one habit which is more responsible for the troubles of these boys than the vile cigaret habit.

Superintendent, Mervine of the Wells Fargo Express Company, issued a letter to all agents of the company, in which he said:

Any one who habitually smokes cigarets, in this climate especially, has something connected with his record or his qualifications that makes him a dangerous person.

Dr. Sims Woodhead, professor of pathology in Cambridge University, says that cigaret smoking, in the case of boys, partially paralyzes the nerve-cells at the base of the brain, and this interferes with the breathing or heart action.

Now produce a flag made of black muslin which you call the Cigaret Flag, on which you have pinned small slips of paper on which you have written some of the short sayings herewith given, Read these lines from the flag and say, "We will now listen to the message of the Cigaret Flag."

If you blow a mouthful of cigaret smoke through a clean white handkerchief, it will leave a dark brown slimy stain. In this carbon deposit are the different poisons which eat on the delicate spongy membrane of the back of the throat like acid on a piece of cloth.

Conclude by warning the boys not to smoke the deadly cigaret, never to begin; and if they have smoked, then first urge them to make the last cigaret the last forever. Tell them that Jesus wants boys with clean lips and pure hearts. The cigaret habit has roots which go deep into the heart. This is what makes the grip of the habit so strong. Jesus said that "Every plant my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up." So this is one of the plants doomed by God. Let him pull it out from your heart by the roots; only thus can it be taken away to stay.

HEALING LEAVES

Secure from a regular drug-store a few dried leaves of the eucalyptus tree which grows in California. Mount them on cardboard or hold them up in a cluster so all the hearers may see them. Then open your Bible and read Revelation 22:2, "and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." This can be used as a text for this lesson.

This great tree is to remind the saved in heaven that there is no sickness there, for the cure of the nations and the ages is under the shade of the leaves of this healing tree. This tree with its healing leaves is to remind us of Jesus. He is the great Tree of Life, "a root out of the dry ground." His leaves of truth have been for the healing of the nations. This collection of leaves which you now hold in your hand has healing power. An oil is extracted direct from these leaves which has great medicinal value.

Secure some of this oil from your regular druggist and ask him as to how it is used by the local doctors.

In Africa the natives do much of their curing by leaves. They believe that all diseases can be cured by leaves, and when a person is ill or bitten by a serpent they hasten to the jungles and secure a healing leaf. This was one of the most primitive means of healing known to men.

There is another great Tree of Knowledge which we call the great Bible. The leaves of this tree have long been healing the nations. Every leaf has a healing word in it. As you say this hold up the Bible with the other hand and read what some of the leaves say. Read John 3:14 and 16. These words on the leaves of the Bible have healed the millions. They have been and are for the healing of the nations also, and thus a countless number have received the eternal Health of Salvation and are now in heaven, well forevermore.

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