Onward and Upward!
A discouraged and downcast fellow, struggling with obstacles and fighting with failures, will often deliberately attribute all his misfortune and difficulties to some trifling mistake in his youth, or to some insignificant blunder or minor transgression in later life. There recently came into our clinic a young man whose life was a perfect failure; he … Read more
The value of science lies in its generalization and relation of fact to fact by means of which the mind builds a universe of sequences and connections, applying these generalizations to the needs of life…. The scientist, indeed, has no more right to be a materialist than an idealist. Neither of the foregoing presuppositions is … Read more
[I]n life there are so many factors involved that mathematical enumeration is the smallest and often the least important element involved. No illustration is more apt than the time-worn example of the logics, wherein it is presumed that if one man could dig a well in ten days, ten men could dig it in one. … Read more
It has been said that modern civilization could not have been built upon any such foundation as the words of Jesus. That may be true. Quite imaginably it is also true that what could be built upon his words would be a better thing than modern civilization is. —W. R. Bowie (1928)
When we recall what keen interest children take in all work with tools, how they follow eagerly each process, and what pleasure they derive from using chips, blocks, and shavings as playthings, we may be sure that however humble the carpenter’s shop of Joseph, it afforded inexhaustible delight to the child Jesus and his playmates. … Read more
Somehow, in all this, the significant destiny of man begins dimly to be seen—only dimly, indeed, for the ultimate destiny is doubtless beyond us. But dimly we can see man, the curious dreamer of dreams, casting his dreams ahead of him—catching up to them—and again casting them ahead. —H. A. Overstreet (1931)
Vultures soar into the blue until they are invisible, mounting in a spiral, but never moving their wings. Their outspread wings, while motionless, are kept adjusted to the upper currents of air in such a way that they are lifted ever higher…. Prayer is adjusting the personality to God in such a way that God … Read more
Renunciation really taught a great life-policy, though no one was aware of it. It is the method, in its refined form, of increasing life’s fraction by lowering the denominator of demands instead of striving always to increase the numerator of satisfactions. It comes to be one of the great life-philosophies. —Sumner & Keller (1927)
The boastful records of a Rameses III are worthy of credence. In a reign of thirty-three years, he had given to the various temples 113,433 slaves, 493,386 head of cattle, 88 barks and galleys, and 2,756 golden images. Further contributions were 331,702 jars of incense, honey, and oil; 228,380 jars of wine and drink; 680,714 … Read more
Prayer is efficacious, never as a substitute for action, but as a guide and stimulus to action. —William Kelley Wright (1922)