Goes Down to Get Higher
By C. L. Taylor
OVER and over again, the mountain climber finds that what he regarded as the summit is only one of the lesser peaks. Beyond him lie great stretches and greater heights. To gain the higher altitudes, he must first go down into some yawning gulf, and thus apparently lose ground. But the descent into the chasm is as much and truly a part of the great climb upward as is the ascent to the crest of the lesser peak. Just so it is in climbing the mountains of life. “Almost there,” we often say. But a little later, we are obliged to pass down into the very abyss of trouble and distress and disappointment; and as the dark and the damp shut us in, we are tempted to doubt, and maybe come to believe that we are retrograding. Not so. The sorrow and the adversity are as much a part of the heavenly journey as are the joy and the prosperity. “The valley of the shadow of death” is but a slight depression in the great mountain of providence. Keep on! The weeping is only for a moment. Just beyond are the heights of everlasting day. The valley experience will help you to reach them. C. L. TAYLOR.