FOREWORD
FOREWORD
WHEN one’s thoughts are running on any special line—I expect we have all noticed this—many little rays fall upon it. I had been thinking of “figures of the true,” those lovely shadows of heavenly things which are everywhere about us, when I came upon this sentence in Amiel’s Journal Intime: “Everything is growing transparent to me. I see the types, the foundation of beings, the sense of things”
Just then some photographs of the Austrian Tyrol and the Bavarian Highlands were given to me. These, as I looked at them, fell into a kind of order, and became for me figures of the true, transparent, full of the sense of things. Then came the thought of others, and so this book.
“And therefore if any word be therein that stirreth thee or comforteth thee more to the love of God, thank God, for it is His gift and not of the word. And if it comfort thee not, or else thou take it not readily, study not too long thereabout, but lay it beside thee till another time, and give thee to prayer or to another occupation. Take it as it will come, and not all at once.”
A. C.
Dohnavur Fellowship
Tirunelveli District, South India