Experience in Christian preaching refers to the practical knowledge gained through living and spiritual trials, shaping wisdom and faith (Hebrews 5:14). Illustrations often portray experience as a guide for others, a clarifier of scripture, and a source of tested truth, contrasting it with uncertain experimentation. It underscores the value of learned lessons in the believer's journey toward maturity.
Marking dangers benefits future travelers, illustrating how experience aids others.
There was an Indian, who, whenever he reached a dangerous bog in the swamp, would put up a stake to mark the spot. By this means, he not only guarded his future movements, but furnished a warning to others who might pass that way. This is the benefit one generation derives from another.
Experience is true wisdom, illuminating only the path already traveled.
All is but lip-wisdom which wants experience. — Sidney. — To most men, experience is only like the stern-lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed. Coleridge.
Though experiences differ, all believers share common spiritual features.
The experiences of no two persons are precisely alike in every feature or in any one feature. No two have faces alike. All have faces, however, if they are human. No two have any one feature precisely the same; yet all have the same features. He who should have two mouths, or three eyes, or two noses, would be a monster, not a man. And he who should have no mouth or nose or eyes at all would be a deformed man at best. So, in religious experience, all have the same general experience, all have the same general features, though no two are exactly alike.
— W. E. Boardman
Experience can reveal the true meaning of a scripture previously not understood.
I well know now what it is to have preached from a text which I did not so much as understand till it was thoroughly opened to me by experience.
— Cecil
Experimentation leads to progress and improvement despite many failures.
Barbarism is marked by a state of society in which the tendency is downward, and civilization by the reverse. Experiment is found only with the latter: it is the herald of improvement. By this, Archimedes learned the power of the lever; Watt how to apply steam; and Morse how to make the lightning carry his messages. Many experiments fail; but the grand result is great gain to the arts and industries of the world.
Experience is certain; experiment is uncertain but serves future purposes.
Experience is that which has been tried; experiment is the thing to be tried: experience is certain, as it is a deduction from the past for the service of the present; the experiment is uncertain, and serves a future purpose: experience is an unerring guide, which no man can desert without falling into error; experiments may fail, or be superseded by others more perfect. G. Crabb.
True spiritual experience leads to finding the living water of God's grace.
In my house there is a well of extraordinary depth which reminds me of something better than the boasted deep experience of certain censorious professors, who teach that to feel sin within is the main thing, but to be delivered from it of small consequence. When this well was commenced, the owner of the place resolved to have water, cost what it might. The well-sinkers dug through mud, and clay, and stone, but found no water; here was the deep experience of the corruptionist, all earth and no living spring, the filth revealed but not removed, the leper discovered but not healed. Another hundred feet of hard digging deep in the dark, but no water—still deeper experience. Then a third hundred feet, and still dirt, but no crystal—the very finest grade of your deeply experimental professor, who ridicules the joys of faith, as being of the flesh and presumptuous. Still on, on, on went the workers, till one day leaving their tools to go to dinner, upon their return they found that the water was rising fast, and their tools were drowned. Be this last my experience—to go so deep as to reach the springs of everlasting love, and find all my poor doings and efforts totally submerged, because the blessed fountains of grace have broken in upon me, covering all the mire, and rock, and earth of my poor, naturally evil heart.
Personal experience of God's truth firmly establishes individual faith.
An infidel once sneered at a poor woman, and said, "How do you know the Bible is true?" She answered, "I have experienced the truth of it." He replied, "Your experience, that is nothing to do with me." "No," she said, "that's very likely, but it's all to do with me." And so it is. My experience may not convince another man, but my experience has rooted, grounded, and settled myself.
Sometimes accidental events produce better results than deliberate efforts.
See DISCOVERY, ACCIDENTAL; INSULATION.
ACCIDENTAL SUCCESS
Protogenes, the Greek painter, was an impatient man. In painting a picture of a tired, panting dog, he met with satisfactory success except that he failed in every attempt to imitate the foam that should have been seen on the dog’s mouth. He was so much provoked over it, that he seized the sponge with which he cleansed his brushes, and threw it against the picture with the intention of spoiling it. It happened to strike on the dog’s mouth, and produced, to the astonishment and delight of the painter, the very effect that he had labored so persistently to imitate.--FRANK H. STAUFFER, _The Epoch_.
Suffering through trials leads to growth and strength, unlike avoiding experience.
* * * * *
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._
Respecting established church practices builds faith, as experience shows their purpose.
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.)
Personal experience helps believers understand and apply Scripture’s warnings and teachings.
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
Wesley tested his theology through life experience, refining faith by trial and suffering.
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.”
Personal experience confirms truth and removes doubt more than secondhand reports.
* * * * *
We doubt many theories that are recorded by others, but when we see them proved for ourselves we doubt no longer. A writer, after describing Franklin’s first disappointment in investigating the action of oil on water, records his later experiments:
Franklin investigated the subject, and the results of his experiments, made upon a pond on Clapham Common, were communicated to the Royal Society. He states that, after dropping a little oil on the water, “I saw it spread itself with surprizing swiftness upon the surface, but the effect of smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first upon the leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side, where they began to form; and there the oil, tho not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond (perhaps half an acre) as smooth as a looking-glass.”
Long-forgotten memories can return vividly during moments of excitement or near death.
Instances are on record in which those who had heard passages from a foreign and perfectly unintelligible tongue, which seemed, of course, to have passed at once from out their recollection, as the breath fades off from the polished mirror--have afterward recalled these in delirium or death, or at some moment of extraordinary excitement, with the utmost clearness and fullness of detail. And the instances are frequent, within our observation, in which aged men recall with vivid distinctness the poetry they recited, the problems they studied, the games they played, in the freshness of youth, or the arguments they made in the prime of their manhood; altho a thousand intervening events had taken a prominence before them since that, these never had seemed to have submerged those forever in their thoughts
— RICHARD S. STORRS
Unexpected success often comes from works initially doubted or undervalued.
There are the “pleasant surprizes” of publishing--books undertaken with the expectation of about paying expenses that have soared away to the hundred-thousand mark. Others are “undertaken because they are known to be works of great merit, and while the publisher may not have much hope of a satisfactory result, there is a chance that the merit of the book may in time make an impression on the public.” Then there are those undertaken because “they strike a new note in literature, which may receive the appreciation of the public.” “David Harum” is called “the greatest surprize.” Seven or eight publishers had declined the book, and only two persons in the house accepting it had much hope that it would pay expenses. For six months after publication a few thousand copies were disposed of; its ultimate sale was nearly a million.--_Appleton’s Magazine._
Experience:
One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first time.
"Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake when you are about to make it again."
- Unknown
George Bernard Shaw: "We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience."
[see also HolwickID #16633]
Skeptics don't need arguments so much as they need to hear what Jesus has done for us personally.
William Barclay tells a story about how, at the turn of the century, Thomas Huxley, the great agnostic, was attending a party at a country mansion. Rich people do parties different than us - the guests stayed for several days. Sunday came around, and most of the guests prepared to go to church.
Very naturally, Huxley did not get ready. Instead, he approached a man known to have a simple and radiant Christian faith. Huxley said to him, “Suppose you don't go to church today. Suppose you stay at home and you tell me quite simply what your Christian faith means to you and why you are a Christian.”
“But,” said the man, “you could demolish my arguments in an instant. I'm not clever enough to argue with you.” Huxley said gently: “I don't want to argue with you. I just want you to tell me simply what this Christ means to you.”
The man stayed at home and told Huxley most simply of his faith. When he had finished there were tears in the great agnostic's eyes. “I would give my right hand if only I could believe that.”
It was not clever argument that touched Huxley's heart, but the simple story of a man's faith. The best argument is to say to people, “Come and see!”
Pastor Jack Hinton from New Bern, North carolina, was leading worship music at a leper colony in Tobago; time allowed for one more congregational selection.
A woman in the congregation, who’d been turned away, turned to face Hinton, revealing a most "hideous" face. The lady’s nose and ears were gone; most of her lips had worn away as well. She lifted a hand, more stub than hand, and asked, "Can we sing ‘Count Your Blessings’"?
Overcome by the situation Hinton fled the room, followed by another team member. The man tried to comfort the distraught song leader, "I guess you’ll never be able to sing that song again?"
"Oh, yes I will," he responded, "but never the same way."
Comments: Warren Wiersbie is credited for saying, "Life...is a school in which God trains us for eternity. Trials are...God’s textbooks in this school of Christian experience."
It often takes the deficiency of another to reveal our own; but in the revelation, we can find fruit for nourishment.
________
Source/Attribution: Pastor’s Update; FMB of the Southern Baptist Convention; Richmond, VA, May 1996, p.4.
============================================
Another version from Preaching Now, 9/25/06:
In a recent blog entry at www.joemckeever.com, Joe shares, “Some years back I read in THE COMMISSION magazine an incident I will never forget. A church group from New Bern, North Carolina, had traveled to the Caribbean on a mission trip. Their host took them to visit a leper colony on the Island of Tabago. While visiting with these sad patients, they held a worship service in the campus chapel. The lepers filed in and took their seats on the pews and the Carolinians led them in hymns. The pastor of the group, Jack Hinton, noticed that one patient was sitting on the back row, facing in the opposite direction. How unusual.
Jack said, “We have time for one more hymn. Does anyone have a favorite?” Now for the first time, the leprous woman on the back row turned around to face the front. Jack said, “I found myself staring into the most hideous face I had ever seen. She had no nose and no lips. Just the bare teeth, like a skull.” As she turned, she raised her hand in the air. Except it wasn’t a hand. It was the bony end of her arm, just a nub. As poor Jack was trying to take this in, she spoke. “Could we sing ‘Count Your Many Blessings’?” That’s when the pastor lost it. He stumbled out of the pulpit and through the door into the yard, with tears in his eyes. Someone else stepped up and led the hymn and a friend walked outside and put his arm around Jack. “You’ll never be able to sing that song again, will you, Jack?” “Oh, yeah. I’ll sing it,” Jack said, “but not in the same way.”
"Never confuse a single mistake with a final mistake."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
Writer
Cited in BITS & PIECES
______________________________
"Learn from the mistakes of others – you can never live long enough to make them all yourself."
Cited in The Best of BITS & PIECES
(sometimes atributed to Eleanor Roosevelt)
______________________________
"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Poet
_____________________________
"Smart people learn from their own mistakes.
Smarter people learn from the mistakes of others."
Cited in BITS & PIECES
_____________________________
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)
Physicist and Nobel laureate
Cited in BITS & PIECES
_____________________________
"The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does."
Herbert Prochnow
Helmut Thielicke points out that we often wonder if the celebrities who advertise foods and beverages actually consume what they are selling. He goes on to say that this is the very question most pressing for those of us who speak for Christ. Surely something has gone wrong when moral failures are so massive and widespread among us. Perhaps we are not eating what we are selling.
(Dallas Willard, “The Divine Conspiracy” p.39)
Experience may be the best teacher, but sometimes it is the most costly! Better sometimes to learn from other's experience. Martin R. DeHaan II tells of being in the first grade and watching a classmate, at the prodding of another student, stick his tongue to an iron bar on a bitterly cold day. Kid panicked and bled all over the place. Martin DeHaan said he decided right then he would never do what his classmate had done!
Columbus was once stranded on Jamaica with dwindling supplies. Natives were not friendly. C. happened to know a lunar eclipse occurred that PM. Told chief: "Unless you help me my God will curse
you & moon will lose its light!" Cheif refused but changed his mind when eclipse began. In early 1900s
a British explorer who had read C.'s biography, tried same trick on African cheiftan. "Unless you obey me
you will be cursed and the moon will lose its light!" Cheif: "Oh, you're talking about the lunar eclipse that's happening day after tomorrow."
There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.
The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.
The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his services. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
A noted brain surgeon, Dr. Bronson Ray, was taking a stroll when he saw a boy on a scooter smash head-first into a tree. Realizing that the boy was seriously injured, the doctor told a bystander to call an ambulance. As he proceeded to administer first aid, a boy not much older than the injured one nudged through the crowd that had gathered and said to Dr. Ray, “I’d better take over now, sir. I’m a Boy Scout and I know first aid.”
As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s no worse than someone in the church trying to do something for which someone else is better qualified.
Education is what you get from reading the small print; experience is
what you get from not reading it.
- Opel Smith, {The Courier-Journal, }May 12, 1997, p. H7
All Christian parents know that when their children head off to college, they face a host of new temptations -- not least of all, sexual temptations. With co-ed dorms and decreased adult supervision, young people need to know how to defend themselves against the standard "lines" they will encounter.
Even more important, they need to understand that many of the most common lines actually express a false worldview. As Professor J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas points out, this is especially true at college, because ideas are the stock and trade of higher education. Students are challenged not only by sexual temptations but also by sexual ideologies.
For example, consider a common argument for sexual experimentation: "In order to make wise choices about sex," it is often said, "you have to experience it." This isn't just a "line" a guy might use with a girl, it's a false theory of knowledge. It says that personal experience is the only way to know anything, and that the test of experience is how you feel.
It's a principle many people rely on when they make decisions. Is abortion wrong? Depends on how it makes you feel. Is God real? Try it and see how it makes you feel.
But as a theory of knowledge, the principle of personal experience is clearly inadequate. The truth is, experience sometimes limits our ability to make wise choices. Consider drug addiction or suicide. We can't become addicts to find out whether it's a good idea to be addicted. And we can't commit suicide to learn more about it. In fact, in these cases, experience prevents you from being able to choose wisely. The addict can't choose wisely because he's hooked, and the suicide can't choose wisely because he's dead.
Over the centuries the human race has come across quite a number of cases like this -- experiences that make it harder rather than easier to choose wisely, behavior that subtracts from our wisdom rather than adding to it. That's one reason Scripture calls some behavior sin and vice, and warns people to turn away from them and not even to try them out.
Sex outside marriage is one of these cases. The best way to understand it is to stay out of it -- to avoid experience and instead to determine what's right and wrong through rational evaluation in the light of Scriptural revelation. Of course, it's true that we get a different kind of knowledge of sexual relations from the "inside," but that means "inside" a marriage -- a relationship sealed by promises, in which each partner has an irreversible commitment to the good of the other person.
At college, where learning to think is the name of the game, temptations gain most of their strength from false ideas. God has provided a way out of every temptation, and part of the way out is to prepare our minds to refute false ideas.
___________________
Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
"Building a deck is NOT as hard as you think! I've watched TV personality Bob Vila do it many times, and he is a regular 'do-it-yourselfer' just like you, except that he has knowledge, skill, an unlimited budget and a large staff of experts."
-- Dave Barry
"The good times we put in our pocket. The hard times we put into our heart."
-- Les Brown
"One mistake will never kill you. The same mistake over and over again will."
-- Harvey Mackay
"Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience."
-- Denis Waitley
"You must learn from your past mistakes, but not lean on your past successes."
-- Denis Waitley
"We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present."
-- Adlai E. Stevenson
"Time is the wisest counselor."
-- Pericles
"We enjoy warmth because we have been cold. We appreciate light because we have been in darkness. By the same token, we can experience joy because we have known sadness."
-- David L. Weatherford
"A wise person learns by the experience of others. An ordinary person learns by his or her own experience. A fool learns by nobody's experience."
-- (unknown)
"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."
-- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), writer
"We learn from experience that not everything which is incredible is untrue."
-- Jean-Francois-Paul-Gondi de Retz (c. 1614-1679), clergyman and politician
"We learn from experience that we never learn from experience."
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), cited in BITS & PIECES
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
-- John Wooden, cited in The Best of...BITS & PIECES
"Experience ... is simply the name we give our mistakes."
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), writer
"Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't."
-- Pete Seeger, singer and composer
"The time for extracting a lesson from history is ever at hand for those who are wise."
-- Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.), orator and statesman, B&P 8/19/02
"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."
-- Aldous Huxley
"The years teach us much the days never knew."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, QFTM 2/29/04
*
A five-year-old comes crying to his mommy because his little sister pulled his hair.
"Don't be angry," the mother says, "Your baby sister doesn't know that pulling hair hurts."
A short while later, there's more crying, and so, Mom goes to investigate.
This time baby sister is bawling and her brother says, "It's OK, Mom... She knows now."
*
”And not only [that], but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4 NKJV)
The Outcome of Tribulation
• not…so — the future is not the only thing we glory in
• tribulations — Matt 5:11-12, Acts 5:41, Jam 1:2, 12 — these trials of the present
• knowing — from God’s Word, and our relation to Him
• worketh — supplies the occasion
• patience [perseverance] — Jam 1:3, Rom 2:7, Heb 12:11, Ps 11:1-3, Rom 8:31, 35-37, 2 COr 4:17 — needful to perfection of Christian character
• experience [character] — tried and proved character. “The state of one who has stood a trial” (Vaughan).
“The quality of him who is approved” (Bengel). “approbation” (Macknight)
• hope — Hos 2:15, Lam 3:29, 2 Cor 1:5, 1 Pet 1:7 — or hopefulness. Hope of eternal life.
Faith’s estimate of affliction — Rev. R. Cecil, M.A.
I. Who these people are who glory in tribulation — true Christians alone.
II. Why do they thus glory?
III. Here is a reason assigned for this glorying in tribulation. Improvement: Let me address those who –
1. Have lately come to Christ, but who may not, as yet, have been exercised with tribulation;
2. Are even now wading through the deep waters of affliction;
3. Have lately experienced deliverance from trouble;
4. May be exercised with affliction, but who have not patience to bear it, because they see not the hand that sends it;
5. Who account themselves safe from trouble.
Experience taught by trial — A gardener, wishing to construct a new trellis for a favourite vine, took the opportunity, after fruitgathering, to disengage it from the old frame, and substitute the new. But the work, he found, required more time and patience than he had provided for; the branches more closely interlaced the paling, the tendrils clung with more tenacious grasp, and the points of contact, which had looked so few, seemed numberless. When at length the work was completed, many a leaf was lying on the ground, many a tendril torn and drooping, and here and there a broken branch. So in the disruption of our social ties, the actual experience often overruns our expectation, and we find, when the time of trial comes, how bard it is to loose ourselves from them. (The Shady Side)
Tribulation — We all know, in a general way, that this word means affliction, sorrow, anguish, but it is worth our while to know how it means this. It is derived from the Latin “ tribulum,” which was the threshing instrument or roller whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and tribulatio, in its primary significance, was the act of this separation.
But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for separating in men of their chaff from their wheat, of whatever in them was light, and trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true ; therefore he called their sorrows and their griefs — tribulatio — threshings, that is, of the inner, spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. — Abp. Trench
“It was a saying of the Rabbis that Providence produces alacrity; alacrity, innocence; innocence, purity; purity, abstinence; abstinence, sanctification; sanctification, reverence; reverence, fear of wickedness; fear of wickedness, piety; piety, the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the dead.”
“Hope never affords more joy than in affliction. It is on a watery cloud that the sun paints those curious and beautiful colours in the rainbow.” — Curnall
I speak of the things which I Have made touching the king. — Psalm 45:1.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things. Matthew 12:34, 35.
Nothing is easier than to catch up the phraseology of others, and to use it without real exercise of heart in the presence of both God and man. Oh, for divine originality! Whether the language be eloquent and grammatical, or neither, let it be ourselves who speak. But this can only be as we give ourselves to the divine exercise of meditation.
Yea, blessed is he who makes God’s Word
His portion and delight,
And meditates upon that Word,
With gladness day and night.
Skeptics don't need arguments so much as they need to hear what Jesus has done for us personally.
William Barclay tells a story about how, at the turn of the century, Thomas Huxley, the great agnostic, was attending a party at a country mansion. Rich people do parties different than us - the guests stayed for several days. Sunday came around, and most of the guests prepared to go to church.
Very naturally, Huxley did not get ready. Instead, he approached a man known to have a simple and radiant Christian faith. Huxley said to him, “Suppose you don't go to church today. Suppose you stay at home and you tell me quite simply what your Christian faith means to you and why you are a Christian.”
“But,” said the man, “you could demolish my arguments in an instant. I'm not clever enough to argue with you.” Huxley said gently: “I don't want to argue with you. I just want you to tell me simply what this Christ means to you.”
The man stayed at home and told Huxley most simply of his faith. When he had finished there were tears in the great agnostic's eyes. “I would give my right hand if only I could believe that.”
It was not clever argument that touched Huxley's heart, but the simple story of a man's faith. The best argument is to say to people, “Come and see!”
Experience and courage matter more than formal education for success in life.
The following dispatch from Washington recently appeared in the New York _Sun_:
Uncle Joe Cannon was in fine form to-day when he received twenty-five young men, representing the Intercollegiate League, now in session here. Uncle Joe complimented his callers on their advantages, but he told them that knowledge gained in college was of little value unless it was crossed by experience and courage.
Years ago, the Speaker said that he received a degree in a law college in Indiana. He started to Chicago to make his fortune, accompanied by his diploma and $6. He was put off the train in central Illinois when his money gave out and that was why he wound up at Danville, instead of Chicago.
Uncle Joe said that he hung up his diploma in his little law office and waited for clients. For six months he had little to do aside from looking at the diploma and twirling his thumbs. Finally, one day, in a fit of rage, he pulled down the diploma and destroyed it.
“The diploma in itself was of no use to me,” said Uncle Joe. “I kept my courage, however, and by and by began to make my way in the world.”
"Never confuse a single mistake with a final mistake."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
Writer
Cited in BITS & PIECES
______________________________
"Learn from the mistakes of others – you can never live long enough to make them all yourself."
Cited in The Best of BITS & PIECES
(sometimes atributed to Eleanor Roosevelt)
______________________________
"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Poet
_____________________________
"Smart people learn from their own mistakes.
Smarter people learn from the mistakes of others."
Cited in BITS & PIECES
_____________________________
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field."
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)
Physicist and Nobel laureate
Cited in BITS & PIECES
_____________________________
"The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does."
Herbert Prochnow
There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multi-million dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine fixed, but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.
The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and proudly stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again.
The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his services. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.
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