GUM TREES AND SNAKES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 8

GUM TREES AND SNAKES

THE QUIET CORNER.

(I Written for THE SUE by the Rev. Charles Chandler.) rp HERE'S just this about these ticain—they both shed their baric. Gum trees are perennially fresh in appearance, and snakes, with all their venom, change their skins annually. There is such a thing as shedding of one’s mental bark, ynd, by so doing, keeping fresh in thought and abreast of truth. The keen edge of our intellects is soon dulled by a corrosion of ideas which jostle with each other for control of the centre of consciousness. Unless we can shed some of them, peacefulness of mind becomes impossible, hike the prophets of Baal, we find ourselves continually halting between two or more opinions. Never being able to make up our minds upon any issue brings, in its train, a weakening of character. Indefiniteness and a lack of precision in expressing our thoughts are a sure indication of a carelessly ordered intellect. It is just as important to be able to forget as it is to remember; to discard as to pick up. It is only the mental miser who gloats over his intellectual hoard, smothered with cobwebs, and musty with age; who is afraid to let go his much-treasured conservatisms. Human development is going on at such a pace today that many of us are mentally old this side of forty, while others, through the continual shedding of their mental bark, are able to preserve such a freshness of mind that neither hoary head nor wrinkled brow detracts from their youthfulness. NEXT WEEK: THE PLATYPUS lANS