A tree grows in two ways. Its roots
take up food from the ground, its leaves take up food from the air.
Its roots are its mouth, we may say, and its leaves are its lungs.
Thus the tree draws nourishment from the earth beneath and from the
heaven above; and so must our souls, my friends, if they are to live
and grow, they must have food both from earth and from heaven. And
this is what I mean--Why has God given us senses, eyes, and ears,
and understanding? That by them we may feed our souls with things
which we see and hear, things which are going on in the world round
us. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch people and
their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we must try
and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we shall,
by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, and
experience, and knowledge, from the world round us--such as Solomon
gives us in his Proverbs--and so our eyes, and ears, and
understandings, are to be to us like roots, by which we may feed our
souls with earthly learning and experience. But is this enough?
No, surely. Consider, again, God's example which He has given us--a
tree. If you keep stripping all the leaves off a tree, as fast as
they grow, what becomes of it? It dies, because without leaves it
cannot get nourishment from the air, and the rain, and the sunlight.
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