He knew every thing about it. Dental surgery is almost as old as the Earth. The mummies of Egypt, thousands of years old, are found today with gold filling in their teeth. Ovid, Horace, Solomon and Moses wrote about these important factors of the body. To other provoking complaints, I think Job had added an exasperating toothache, and, putting his hand against the inflamed face, he said: “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” A very narrow escape, you say, for Job’s body and soul; but there are thousands of men who make just as narrow escape for their soul. There was a time when the partition between them and ruin was no thicker than a tooth’s enamel; but, as Job finally escaped, so, thank God, have they. Paul expresses the same idea by a different figure when he says that some people are “saved as by fire.” A vessel at sea is in flames. You go to the stern of the vessel. The boats have shoved off. The flames advance; you can no longer endure the heat on your face. You slide down on the side of the vessel, and hold on with your fingers, until the forked tongue of the fire begins to lick the back of your hand, and you feel that you must fall, when one of the life-boats comes back, and the passengers say they think they have room for one more. The boat swings under you--you drop into it--you are saved. So some men are pursued by temptation until they are partially consumed, but, after all, get off--“saved as by fire.” But I like the figure of Job a little better than that of Paul. With God’s help, some men do make narrow escape for their souls, and are saved as “with the skin of their teeth.” JONAH. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh on an unpleasant errand. He would not go. He thought to get away from his duty by putting to sea. With pack under his arm, I find him on his way to Joppa, a seaport. He goes down among the shipping, and says to the men lying around on the docks: “Which of these vessels sails today?” A sailor answers: “Yonder is a vessel going to Tarshish. I think, if you hurry, you may get on board her.” Jonah steps on board the rough craft, asks how much the fare is, and pays it. Anchor is weighed, sails are hoisted, and the rigging begins to rattle in the strong breeze of the Mediterranean. Joppa is an exposed harbor, and it does not take long for a vessel to get out on the broad sea. The sailors like what they call a “spanking breeze,” and the plunge of the vessel from the crest of a tall wave is exhilarating to those who are at home on the deep. But the strong breeze becomes a gale--the gale a hurricane. The affrighted passengers ask the captain if he ever saw any thing like this before. He answers: “Oh, yes. This is nothing.” Mariners are slow to admit danger to landsmen.