FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 



Don't be afraid of a closer examination. Here is the grain. What a 

 character must be there— rooting, germinating, growing,, harvesting. Oh, 

 how beautiful, and how divinely consistent; for, at last, it is corn — golden 

 consistency out of months of inconsistency. It began in corn and ends in 

 corn. 



All the fine liberties of life are inside the law of life. All the victories 

 worth having are transformations inside a changeless purpose of God. 



Long ago there came to a household, over yonder, many many years ago 

 a little child. Oh, how beautiful was that little child. They called the 

 little child Asa— Asa Gray. He went through his studies; he developed, and 

 became a correspondent of Charles Darwin. He became one of the greatest 

 botanists in the world. Ideas swept through his brain as the wind sweeps 

 through the flagdays of the corn. He developed his entire self more nearly 

 than any scientist I ever knew. I saw Asa Gray in his old age. What was 

 he? Well, he begin at the first a little child, and, at the last he was a little 

 child. Though all years of glory had fallen upon him, and though he stood 

 in the forefront of the scientists of our time, here he was — God's little child. 

 Through how many obvious inconsistencies did there move this childhood 

 of his unto God, toward a consistent victory. 



At the last, at the last, there shall be ears of corti. They will reward you 

 freely, and without any sort of a reproach. Ever graciously, but how, how 

 simply will life be its own reward. 



Say then to your Father, ' 'Here God; here there is all there is of me. I 

 put myself into Your world. I put myself where the ambitions, and the 

 desires, which seem to be simply mine, shall die; and I put myself in league 

 with the sun; I put myself in league with the rain; I put myself in the soli- 

 tude and the darkness of that experience by which I die out of myself. My 

 human dies; my divine self belongs to Thee. Here, God, here I am, I will 

 root myself in this world, and open myself out in my growth upward and 

 heavenward." 



As sure as man, the seed, shall die, he shall bring forth harvests. God 

 will furnish the sunshine; God will furnish rain; God will furnish all the 

 divine outpourings from above; and the soul will live, because he is rooted, 

 and is true to this world; and because of the fact that he lives upward, and 

 takes his resources and experiences from above. 



Oh, my friends, do not yearn for heaven, except as your yearnings for 

 heaven are the result of your faithfulness to the glorious earth in which we 

 live. 



Nature is God's story of how he works with souls. For example, a man 

 came into the car the other day, and brought in some oak roots; and he 

 showed the branch of an oak tree. And he said, " Sir, do you know that 

 inside the terminal and lateral buds of this oak there are clearly defined 

 rudiments of leaves for next summer? " And he showed me the oak branch, 

 and I saw the rudiments of leaves for next summer. That oak tree will 

 begin just where it left oflf. And that beginning will be the harvest of a 

 large impulse to which that oak tree has been entirely true through all the 

 years of its past. We must learn God's ways of leading us from the life 

 here to the life yonder. We have rudiments of eternal being. 



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