Immensity is magnificent medicine ... We lose life's shallow worries in the vision of unplumbed depths.In Florence Barclay's Rosary the heroine, in the crisis of her life, determined to consult her physician: and, after having realized the fearful strain to which her nerves had been subjected, he exclaimed: ‘Here is a prescription for you! See a few big things!’ He urged her to go out west, and see the stupendous Falls of Niagara, to go out east and see the Great Pyramid. ‘Go for the big things,’ he said; ‘you will like to remember, when you are bothering about pouring water in and out of tea-cups. "Niagara is flowing still!"'
John Bunyan says, ‘Upon a day the good providence of God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling, and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door, in the sun, talking about the things of God. I heard, but understood not, for they were far above, out of my reach. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God in their hearts; they talked how God had visited their souls with His love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, and comforted, and supported' ... ‘The things of God—far above—out of my reach.’
The soul of the poor tinker was tired of the microscopic and hungry for the majestic. He craved ‘a tonic of big things,’ and the talk of the four poor women sitting in the sun was like a banquet to his famished spirit.
There are times when we get so tired of the plain; we love to get among the mountains. The soul makes its own pilgrimage among great, rugged, snow-clad ranges. She loves the peaks that pierce the sky; she enjoys ‘the tonic of big things’.
Frank Boreham, The Luggage of Life, pp 178-81.
Image: ‘See the stupendous Falls of Niagara.’