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

12 LIFE THOUGHTS.
"IF any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross and follow me."
This is only one meaning of religion.. If I should
say of a garden, "It is a place fenced in," what
idea would you have of its clusters of roses, and
pyramids of honeysuckles, and beds of odorous
flowers, and rows of blossoming shrubs and fruitbearing trees? If I should say of a cathedral, "It
is built of stone, cold stone," what idea would you
have of its wondrous carvings, and its gorgeous
openings for door and window, and its evanishing
spire? Now, if you regard religion merely as selfdenial, you stop at the fence, and see nothing of
the pleasantness of the garden; you think only of
the stone, and not of the marvellous beauty into
which it is fashioned.
ONE might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits
of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the
tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
WE sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and
the pattern which was weaving when the sun went
down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow.