Sympathy is a key that fits the lock of any heart.
Soul health will not come by taking religion as a dose.
Many a cloud that we call sorrow is but the shadow of our own selfishness.
To live wholly for possessions is to paralyze the life to the possibility of permanently possessing anything.
It takes more than willingness to be nothing to make you amount to something.
This is never a wrong world to him who is right with its heart.
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL
It is probable that from the age of sixteen up to thirty Jesus of Nazareth spent His life in mechanical toil; He made wooden plows, ax handles, and yokes; He served as a carpenter. Then for three years He gave Himself to the ministry of ideal things, exclusively to the service of the spirit.
There is a wonderful satisfaction in making things, in looking over some concrete piece of work accomplished when the day ends. It is a satisfaction that belongs to the artisan. Is it not probable that many said that it was a great pity when Jesus gave up so useful a trade as His? To them He seemed to be but chasing the rainbow.
But to-day who possesses a single one of the things that young carpenter made? And did we possess them all what better off would the world be? Yet, on the other hand, how ill could this world afford to lose what He gave it by those three years of the service of the ideal.