I used to pass daily a very pretty and well-formed tree. I admired it so much and saw it so often that, at length, I came to feel toward it as though it were a friend. I often reflected that the reason why it was so lovely a thing was the fact that it had not possessed the power to refuse to obey the bidding of its Maker. I thought that if a man were will-less, as is a tree or a flower, his life would be as harmonious and as beautiful as theirs. But there is within him that voice which so often speaks against the divine command that he is robbed of much that is godlike within him. I thought that the dictates of that stubborn and willful voice had spoiled so many of God’s plans and man’s prospects that we might all be better without it. One morning, after there had been a windstorm during the night, I walked as usual past the tree. It lay prostrate and helpless on the ground. I was surprised to see that what had been so well-formed without had been hollow and rotten within. This had so weakened it that, when the test came, it had been the first to fall. Others—not so lovely—had stood because they were sound. The tree had possessed no will with which to disobey its Creator. Neither had it possessed a will with which to stand in the face of the storm. Least of all had it possessed a will to rise again. I had seen men have the will to disobey, yet when they had wandered into a far country and had become sick of the husks of sin, I had seen them have the will to come back again and give themselves to a noble purpose. The will of man is not only his danger, but it is also his hope. By it he may fall, but by it he may rise again to better things. It may whisper to him the word of temptation, but it may also become his strength for an hour of triumph. He needs not a life without a will which can lead him astray. He needs a will subjected to a high ideal and to the traversing of the highway of truth and right. The Sword that Keeps the Past (1916) At the gateway of every Eden from which one has gone forth fallen and disgraced, there hangs a sword of flame to keep the way of a misspent past. We control the present. The future will be what we choose to make it. But there is no hand strong enough to lay hold upon the gate of the day that is gone. The past is what we have made it, and such it must forever remain. The most fruitless of all wishes is that one might go back and retrace the way he has come, that he might travel with surer feet. There are points all along the way where we would prize an opportunity to undo some wrong, unsay some word, or perform some omitted deed of helpfulness. We feel that we could do infinitely better if we had another chance. Heaven may be willing to grant most of our wishes to do better, but this is one which has never yet been granted to a child of earth. The voice with which we cry into the past is echoless, and ineffectual are the hands with which we beat against its closed portals.