More quotes. Highlights from "The Shining Highway" by H. L. Gee

(I haven't quite finished the book, but I'm really enjoying it so far.)

"In life," said the preacher, "it isn't enough to be a signpost, just pointing the way to righteousness. We have to walk that way ourselves."


"Perhaps I'm a bit old-fashioned," she said quietly. "But I feel His presence so wonderfully. He often comes into the scullery with me. I never feel ashamed of His seeing me with my coarse apron on. He understands. You see, I just trust Him, so I know it's all right. I used to worry a lot years ago, but now I find it all so simple. All you have to do is to take Him at His Word."


"And for myself, sir, why every day I take out of my mind whatever is unwholesome - or I should say I have it taken out for me."
"How?"
"By prayer. Every night I am still for a bit."
"But it is not always easy to be still. I have little time for doing nothing."
"Ah, but a man isn't doing nothing if he's waiting on the Lord. That is praying, and God can do anything with a man on his knees. He can do anything with any of us when we'll let Him."
"You let Him?"
"To be sure. A man cannot go through the day without a bit of himself rotting, so every night I ask that the rottenness may be cut away as I cut out the rotting wood in this fence."
"And in the morning?"
"In the morning, sir, I go down on my knees again... and I pray for a right spirit to be renewed within me. I ask for new power to serve and to do right, and for new grace, and new and stronger faith, and a new vision of God in place of the old one that sometimes grows dim. It always comes. I am born again every day, and though the outward body decay, the inward spirit keeps young..."
"So he talked, this simple, old-fashioned, God-fearing man, and I wondered greatly that in the twentieth century this simplicity and purity should still be found."


"We may as well be honest with each other and agree that we sometimes come to drab patches in life. Then it is that we need more than ever something within us, for when there are few riches to be gathered along the road it is good to have some already in our minds and hearts. Happy are we if there is a gladness springing up inside us, a song singing in our thoughts when no lark sings in the sky, a portrait gallery of memories to look on when the way is across a countryside with few striking features, a close friendship for the lonely miles with One who is nearer than hands and feet."