Those Who Plant Trees Plant Hope.

It Is A Conquest When We Can Lift Ourselves Above The Annoyances Of Circumstances Over Which We Have No Control; But It Is A Greater Victory When We Can Make Those Circumstances Our Helpers,--when We Can Appreciate The Good There Is In Them. It Has Often Seemed To Me As If Life Stood Beside Me, Looking Me In The Face, And Saying, "child, You Must Learn To Like Me In The Form In Which You See Me, Before I Can Offer Myself To You In Any Other Aspect.

The True Idea Of A Church Has Not Yet Been Shown The World, A Visible Church, I Mean, Unless It Was In The Very Earliest Times; Yes, The Twelve Disciples Bound To Their Lord In Love, To Do His Work Forever, That Was A Church, A Christian Family.

Labor, In Itself, Is Neither Elevating Or Otherwise. It Is The Laborer's Privilege To Ennoble His Work By The Aim With Which He Undertakes It, And By The Enthusiasm And Faithfulness He Puts Into It.

The Religion Of Our Fathers Overhung Us Children Like The Shadow Of A Mighty Tree Against The Trunk Of Which We Rested, While We Looked Up In Wonder Through The Great Boughs That Half Hid And Half Revealed The Sky. Some Of The Boughs Were Already Decaying, So That Perhaps We Began To See A Little More Of The Sky Than Our Elders; But The Tree Was Sound At Its Heart.

If An Apple Blossom Or A Ripe Apple Could Tell Its Own Story, It Would Be, Still More Than Its Own, The Story Of The Sunshine That Smiled Upon It, Of The Winds That Whispered To It, Of The Birds That Sang Around It, Of The Storms That Visited It, And Of The Motherly Tree That Held It And Fed It Until Its Petals Were Unfolded And Its Form Developed.