Obstacles are the power stations on our way south!
And where the most obstacles are, there you find the most power to be developed. So many of us do not understand that. We look southward and we see the obstacles in the road. "I am so unfortunate. I could do these great things, but alas! I have so many obstacles in the way."
Thank God! You are blessed of Providence. They do not waste the obstacles. The presence of the obstacles means that there is a lot of light and power in you to be developed. If you see no obstacles, you are confessing to blindness.
I hear people saying, "I hope the time may speedily come when I shall have no more obstacles to overcome!" When that time comes, ring up the hearse, for you will be a "dead one."
Life is going on south, and overcoming the obstacles. Death is merely quitting.
The fact that we are not buried is no proof that we are alive. Go along the street in almost any town and see the dead ones. There they are decorating the hitching-racks and festooning the storeboxes. There they are blocking traffic at the postoffice and depot. There they are in the hotel warming the chairs and making the guests stand up. There they are—rows of retired farmers who have quit work and moved to town to block improvements and die. But they will never need anything more than burying.
For they are dead from the ears up. They have not thought a new thought the past month. Sometimes they sit and think, but generally they just sit. They have not gone south an inch the past year.
Usually the deadest loafer is married to the livest woman. Nature tries to maintain an equilibrium.
They block the wheels of progress and get in the way of the people trying to go on south. They say of the people trying to do things. "Aw, he's always tryin' to run things."
They do not join in to promote the churches and schools and big brother movements. They growl at the lyceum courses and chautauquas, because they "take money outa town." They do not take any of their money "outa town." Ringling and Barnum & Bailey get theirs.