• Author: Unknown
• Editor:
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 12 25 1918
• Tags:
• poetry
• father

A CHILD'S FAITH In the highlands of Scotland there is a mountain-gorge, twenty feet in width and two hundred feet in depth. Its perpendicular walls are bare of vegetation, save in their crevices, in which grow numerous wild flowers of rare beauty. Desirous of obtaining specimens of these mountain beauties, some scientific tourist once offered a highland boy a handsome gift if he would consent to be lowered down the cliff by a rope and gather a little basketful of them. The boy looked wistfully at the money, for his parents were poor; but when he gazed at the yawning chasm he shuddered, shrank back, and declined. But filial love was strong within him, and after another glance at the gifts and at the terrible fissure, his heart grew strong, and his eyes flashed, and he said: "I will go, if my father will hold the rope!" And then with unshrinking nerves, cheek unbalanced, and heart firmly strong, he suffered his father to put the rope about him, lower him into the wild abyss, and to suspend him there while he filled his little basket with the coveted flowers. It was a daring deed, but his faith in the strength of his father's arm, and the love of his father's heart, gave him courage and power to perform it. Know, that your thoughts rule your life, Be they pure or impure in the strife? As you think so you are; And you make or you mar Your success in the world By your thoughts.—