HIGHLANDS OF THOUGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 980, 24 May 1930, Page 8

HIGHLANDS OF THOUGHT

THE QUIET CORNER.

(Written for THE SUB by the Rev. Charles Chandler.) JjV the realm of serious thinking there is one icho “takes the high road” and one who “takes the low road” and it would be difficult to say just which of the twain will be the first to reach their haven or heaven of rest. Coming clown from the Blue Mountains of Hew South Wales recently, and looking out across those hills and deep ravines to where the sun had bathed the far horizon in purple, blue, ahd gold, I fell on this consideration. There is a close geographical and geological relationship between the highlands and the lowlands. Those mountains, with all their beauty, were yet thrown up to , serve a more useful purpose titan to provide something for artists and poets to go into raptures over, or for restful eyes to feast upon. in their deep recesses there are springs and waterfalls which form the small beginnings of more or less mighty rivers. These rivers, in turn, irrigate the plains and lowlands —richly carpeted with verdure for the help of man and beast. Where there are no mountains there ate no rivers, and the country round about is barren and dry, as is the case in Central Australia. Were there no Jesus and Buddha, no Plato and Aristotle, there would surely be no richness of thought and conduct on the lowlands of human endeavour. They represent the highlands of thought, whence our inspiration springs. Love, with its various ingredients of kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness for others and so forth, as it is expressed in our everyday affairs, has surely flowed from such spiritual altitudes as one or other of those that we have hinted on. No economic theory that man has ever devised for the better ordering of our social life can be of any avail unless those who seek to translate that theory into practice have drunk deep from the spiritual draughts that flow from the highlands of thought. Highlands of Thought are as necessary to the Lowlands of Endeavour, as rivers are to arid wastes, and as mountains are to fertile plains. NEXT WEEK: NINEVEH AND TYRE.