Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

The Path of Least Resistance and Greatest Persistence

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A common phenomenon in nature is “the path of least resistance.”

Electricity moving through a circuit will always travel where it is easiest to go.
Cars are developed aerodynamically so there will be a minimal wind resistance.
Water always travels under a bridge because it is far easier to go under the bridge than over it.

Frequently this is what people are like also.

It is easier to sit in front of the TV rather than to care for our neighbor’s needs.
It is easier to get angry at your mate and let that anger diminish over the course of time rather than sitting down and working the problem through.
Thumbing through a Reader’s Digest is much easier than a time of personal Bible study.

And so we find that we too, just like water under the bridge are prone to take the “path of least resistance.”

But there is one difference between ourselves and water. Water will never have to give an account of what it has done.

Ought not we examine ourselves and get on the “path of greatest persistance?’

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