I want the books that help me out of the vacancy and despair of a frivolous mind, out of the tangle and confusion of a society that is busied in bric-a-brac, out of the meanness of unfeeling mockery and the heaviness of incessant mirth, into a higher and serener region, where through the clear air of serious thoughts I can learn to look soberly and bravely upon the mingled misery and splendor of human existence, and then go down with a cheerful courage to play a man’s part in the life which Christ has forever ennobled by His divine presence. (Text.)—Henry Van Dyke, The British Weekly.
(890)
ELEVATION AND VISION
A man once brought a young eagle home for his boys to play with. They were delighted and took it out to the barnyard to see it fly. But the eaglet would rather walk about among the hens and pick up wheat. The boys tossed it up in the air, but all their efforts were only in vain, for it flapped its great wings awkwardly, as if not knowing what to do with them and dropt back to the earth. The boys told their father of their inability to make the bird fly. Taking the eaglet under his arm, he called the boys with him to the mountain. As they were ascending the summit the bird began to open its eyes wider and wider. When they reached the peak, the eaglet began to expand its wings, and as it caught a vision of the unfettered blue bathed in the light of the rising sun, it soared away out of sight.
So it is in human life. It requires a vision of the heights to inspire a soul to its best flight. (Text.)
(891)
Climbing the stairs into the helmet of the Statue of Liberty gives one a splendid view of the harbor and lower section of New York. It is a toilsome, knee-straining business. But the vision is worth the effort.
One must reach the high places if he would get a vision of the King in His beauty and an outlook over the kingdom that is to be.—C. J. Greenwood.
(892)
ELOQUENCE