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PREFACE.

THE series of volumes, of which this is the first, is entitled SUGGESTIVE ILLUSTRATIONS, because its object is quite as much to suggest other illustrations as to furnish material ready for use. It is not only sifted wheat gathered into the granary for daily consumption, but seed-grain for another and larger harvest.

We often think best while hearing or reading the thoughts of others whose words are fruitful in suggestions, and are to the mind what spring sunshine and shadows are to the seeds dormant within the soil.

This series has had a double origin. In the first place it has grown out of my own personal experience. There are certain subjects that I never see with perfect clearness and satisfaction till I see some corresponding illustration in Nature; "which is, as it were, its double." Almost everything in Nature has its counterpart in the spiritual world. Mrs. Browning sings,

"Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God."

Nature seems to have been created with a purpose to express in visible and concrete forms the spiritual truths we most need in our daily lives. A very large number of our words expressing unseen things are metaphors drawn from physical nature.

"Every-day life," H. Burton says, "to those who have ears to hear, is full of tropes, metaphors, and parables. Take up the commonest words of daily speech, and put them to your ear, and they will sing like shells from the sea. There are whole poems in them, epics, idyls of every sort."

Hence it is natural that what small success I have had as a preacher or teacher, or writer for teachers, has come largely by means of a certain kind of illustrations; not stories, for those I seldom use, but illustrations which illumine a subject as a light within a cathedral illumines the windows, while dull and vague to the out

side observer, become, to one within, pictures exquisitely beautiful in form and color.

In this respect as well as in others, SUGGESTIVE ILLUSTRATIONS differs so far as I am acquainted, from all other volumes which seek to illustrate the books of the New Testament.

In the second place this series may be called "Chips from the Teacher's Workshop." For the illustrations have been gathered and sifted during all my life as student, pastor, teacher in the Sunday-school, and writer for teachers. It is the summing up of my whole life in this department. May you

"read between the written lines

The finer grace of unfulfilled designs."

This book is intended fo be especially helpful to those who lead prayer meetings, particularly the members of Christian Endeavor Societies and Epworth Leagues, to Sunday-school teachers who desire further illustrations than can be found in Select Notes and the other Helps; to pastors and to parents who gather their children for Scripture reading and prayer.

AUBURNDALE, MASS.,

September, 1897.

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