Have some of you had sorrows you could not harmonize with the logic of life?  Leave them with Him who “notes the sparrow’s fall.”  Some one has said:  “There are angels in the quarries of life only the blasts of misfortune and chisels of adversity can carve into beauty.”

Doctor Theodore Cuyler said:  “God washes the eyes of His children with tears that they may better see His providences.”

Doctor Gutherie said:  “Because I am seventy, my hair white and crows’ feet around my eyes, they tell me I’m growing old.  That’s not I, that’s the house in which I live; I’m on the inside; the house may go to pieces but I shall live on eternally young.”

  “This body is my house, it is not I;
    Herein I sojourn, till in some far off sky,
  I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last,
    Till all the carpentry of time is past.

  “When from heaven high, I view this lone star,
    What need I care where these poor timbers are;
  What if these crumbling walls do go back to dust and loam,
    I will have exchanged them for a broader better home. 
  This body is my house, it is not I;
  Triumphant in this faith, I shall live and die.”

Since I cannot live life over, since the gate at the end of life’s journey swings but one way, and of all the millions who have passed through, not one but the Crucified Son of God has returned, why should I select such a subject for a lecture?  When one is on a journey he has never made before it is well to consult one who has traveled the road and from him learn the things best to be done, and the places to shun.

For more than three-score years and ten I have been making life’s journey, and for more than forty years have been mingling with the masses and meeting with varied experiences.  To those who are climbing the hill toward the noon of the journey my advice should be of value.

With those who with me are facing the sinking sun, and the lengthening shadows falling behind, I thank God for that faith which comes from a diviner source than human science, that tells us,

  “There’s a place, called the Land of Beginning Again,
    Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches,
  And all our griefs and pain,
    Will be left in the boat, like a shabby old coat,
  And never put on again.

  “I’m glad there’s a place for the redeemed of the race,
    In the Land of Beginning Again,
  Where there’ll be no sighing, there’ll be no dying,
    And where sorrows that seemed so sore,
  Will vanish away like the night into day,
    And never come back any more.”

It is said “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”  It is useless for me to wish to live life over or expect an extension of many more years of borrowed time, but I hope yet that along the shortening path I may open up here and there a spring that will refresh some thirsty soul and plant a flower that will brighten the path of some weary one.