Little Rivers

"It is not required of every man...to be, or to do, something great; most of us must content ourselves with taking small parts in the chorus, as far as possible without discord. Shall we have no little lyrics because Homer and Dante have written epics? Even those who have greatness thrust upon them will do well to lay the burden down now and then and congratulate themselves that they are not altogether answerable for the conduct of the universe. 'I reckon', said a cowboy to me one day, as we were riding through the Badlands of Dakota, 'there's someone bigger than me running this outfit. He can tend to it well enough while I smoke my pipe after the round-up.'

There is such a thing as taking ourselves and the world too seriously, or at any rate too anxiously. Half of the secular unrest and dismal sadness of modern society comes from the vain idea that every man is bound to be a critic of life and to let no day pass without finding some fault with the general order of things or projecting some plan for its improvement. And the other half comes from the greedy notion that a man's life does not consist, after all, in the abundance of the things that he possesses and that it is somehow or other more respectable and pious to be always at work making a larger living that it is to lie on your back in the green pastures and beside the still waters and thank God that you are alive.

And so I wish that your winter fire may burn clear and bright while you read these pages and that the summer days may be fair and the fish may willingly rise to your hook whenever you follow one of these little rivers." - Henry Drummond (1851-1897), Scottish writer and evangelist