Life thoughts, gathered from the extemporaneous discourses of Henry Ward Beecher. By one of his congregation.

292 LIFE THOUGHTS.
with the wheat, and say, " When the grain is ripe,
I will go in with sickle, and cradle, and winnowing
machine, and separate them." Would it not be easier
to sow clean wheat than to cleanse dirty wheat?
You who are young are now at the sowing end of
the harvest field. Scatter only pure seed, that when
you reach the reaping end you may find no tares,
but only the golden grain.
WHAT a thrifty, robust plant is the potato when
out in the field it grows beneath the sun! Its leaf
so coarse and green, its stem so stout and succulent,
it is a pleasure to look upon a thing which seems so
to take hold of all the elements of life. But when
it has sprouted in the cellar, which has but one
north window, half closed, it is a poor, cadaverous,
etiolated, melancholy vine, growing up to that little
flicker of light; sickly, blanched, and brittle.
Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who
lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let
him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light
of love, and he will be like the plant in the field,
healthy, robust, and joyful.
As the pilot boats cruise far out, watching for
every whitening sail, and hover through day and