It is folly to think that only those things are of value to us which we can intellectually understand. Is the vast deep of the ocean nothing to me, since I can not move about freely and closely examine its depths? And if I must confess that ’way down are untold mysteries which human eye has never seen, what matters it? Can not I rejoice in the roar of the waves, in the ebb and flow of the tides, and in the flight of the clouds? Why will men insist, with their poor, finite reasoning, on fathoming the deep things of God, instead of drinking to the full from the inexhaustible source of assurance and consolation? (Text.)—E. F. Stroter, “The Glory of the Body of Christ.”
(714)
DEFACEMENT OF SOUL
If a drunkard knew that a certain number of drinks would make his face permanently black, how many men would drink? And shall we be less careful about the face of our soul?
(715)
DEFEAT
This incident corroborates the truth of the poet’s thought, “We rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things.”
A young Englishman once failed to pass the medical examination on which he thought his future depended.
“Never mind,” he said to himself. “What is the next thing to be done?” and he found that policy of “never minding,” and going on to the next thing, the most important of all policies for practical life. When he had become one of the greatest scientists of the age, Huxley looked back upon his early defeat and wrote:
“It does not matter how many tumbles you have in life, so long as you do not get dirty when you tumble. It is only the people who have to stop and be washed who must lose the race.”