Lloyd C. Douglas

Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; but, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view--and feel exalted--and your eyes are full of happy tears--and you want to sing--and wish you had wings! And then--you can't stay there, but must continue your journey--you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten.

I never thought much about flowers until I made the close acquaintance of a man who knew all about them. You would have thought that the butterflies and flowers were friends of his. 'See how richly they are clad,' he said. 'Even King Solomon did not have such raiment.

Hoarded things might easily become a menace; a mere fire-and-theft risk; a breeding-ground for destructive insects; a source of worry. Men would have plenty of anxieties, but there was no sense in accumulating worries over THINGS! That kind of worry destroyed your character. Even an unused coat, hanging in your closet__t wasn't merely a useless thing that did nobody any good; it was an active agent of destruction to your life. And your LIFE must be saved, at all costs. What would it advantage a man__esus had demanded__f he were to gain the whole world, and lose his own life?

Perhaps this general degradation was the result of too much crowding, too little privacy, too much noise. You couldn't be decent if you weren't intelligent; you couldn't be intelligent if you couldn't think__nd who could think in all this racket? Add the stench to the confusion of cramped quarters, and who could be self-respecting?

An understanding of Jesus is not a mere matter of intelligence. He has to be accepted by faith.

If a man harbors any sort of fear it percolates through all his thinking damages his personality makes him landlord to a ghost.

For many years a tree might wage a slow and silent warfare against an encumbering wall, without making any visible progress. One day the wall would topple--not because the tree had suddenly laid hold upon some supernormal energy, but because its patient work of self-defense and self release had reached fulfillment. The long-imprisoned tree had freed itself. Nature had had her way.

So much the better. The higher the price you have to pay, the more you will cherish it.