ient and very human tendency. Paul wrote the Epistle to
the Galatians to reprove in them the same sad blunder. 'O foolish
Galatians, who hath bewitched you?' They had abandoned the
simplicities under the lure of the complexities. The Church that was
urged by her Lord to return to her first love had made the same
mistake. We are too prone to scorn the simple and the obvious. We
forsake the fountain of living water, and hew out to ourselves clumsy
cisterns. We neglect the majestic simplicities of the gospel, and
involve our tired brains and hungry hearts in tortuous systems that
lead us a long, long way from home. The landlord is right. The
simplest course is almost always the safest.

VI

THE CORNER CUPBOARD

Is there a case on record of a really unsuccessful search? I doubt it.
I believe it to be positively and literally true that he that seeketh,
findeth. I do not mean that a man will always find what he seeks. I
do not know that the promise implies that. I fancy it covers a far
wider range, and embraces a much ampler truth. Yes, I doubt if any man
ever yet sought without finding. When I was a boy I lost my peg-top.
It was a somewhat expensive one, owing partly to the fact that it would
really spin. I noticed this peculiarity about it whilst it was still
the property of its previous possessor. I had several tops; indeed, my
pockets bulged out with my ample store, but none of them would spin.
After pointing out to the owner of the coveted top the frightful
unsightliness of his treasure, and in other ways seeking to lower the
price likely to be demanded as soon as negotiations opened, I at length
secured the top in return for six marbles, a redoubtable horse
chestnut, and a knife with a broken blade. My subsequent alarm, on
missing so costly a possession, can be readily imagined. I could not
be expected to endure so serious a deprivation without making a
desperate effort to retrieve my fallen fortunes. I therefore
proclaimed to all and sundry my inflexible determination to ransack the
house from the top brick of the chimney to the darkest recesses of the
cellar in quest of my vanished treasure. I began with a queer old
triangular cupboard that occupied one corner of the kitchen. And in
the deepest and dustiest corner of the top shelf of that cavernous old
cupboard, what should I find but the cricket ball that I had lost the
previous summer? My excitement was so great that I almost fell off