Life’s Surprises

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 59, 2 December 1933, Page 20

Life’s Surprises

“1 question if any man could live his life if It were robbed of power to | surprise him. You know how much ! of the charm of auy character lies in | the sweet surprises of its outflow. j You know how much of the charm of | any road lies in turn and unexpected j prospect. And if our life, in all its dreary level, lay open to our gaze to- | night, the loss of interest would be t incredible.

“Every sorrow would be doubly bitter because of the shrinking of a thousand yesterdays. Every joy would have its plumage tarnished because we had handled it before its summer. So would w’c weary in our brightest June, and tremble when the storm was on the sea. and be less glad and brave than we are now under God’s great kindness of surprise.

“Shall I tell you why it is that child- I hood is generally happier than age? I It isn’t merely that the life is fuller, | though that, of course, has got its part j to play. It is that in childhood every- | thing is strange—every window opens j

on the infinite—every day that breaks, even in rain, is big with a whole world of possibility. “In middle age we are past the unexpected. IVc have almost lost the power to be surprised. That is why many a man in middle age is haunted by a lack of interest in things. Now just suppose that all life wore like that —that it could never surprise us any more-—and tiihne it would become, unbearable.”—The late Rev. Dr. G. £l. Morrison, of Glasgow, in a book of sermons just published. “The World Wide Gospel’’