r a bit of conversation. Two men, chance acquaintances, were
talking. One of them had his home in Elkhart. The other asked him where
Elkhart is. By the side of the Elkhart man there sat a little sweet-faced
boy. Instantly, as the question was asked, he looked up with surprised
eyes, and said, "Don't you know where Elkhart is? Why, Elkhart is down
where I live."

The amusing childish words seemed to have a familiar sound. I seem to have
run across a few people whose idea of God's world is about on the level of
the small boy's. The world is where they live. The rest is a hazy, vague
something, or--nothing. It exists for them, if it exists at all in their
thoughts.

"Living for self, for self alone, for self and none beside;
Just as if Jesus had never lived, as if Jesus had never died."

It would be pitiable and pathetic enough if only these people themselves
were concerned in their poor, stunted, narrow-alley living. But it is more
than that; it is tragic, because of the multitude of brothers, here and
abroad, sorely needing the help that was meant to go out to them through
us.

Then most men live narrow lives so far as the daily round is concerned.
The home, or shop, or store, or office is their daily horizon, with
practically the same round of duties day after day, year in and year out.
The very narrowness of the round tends to make narrow people. They get
into as much of a rut in their thinking as their daily action is apt to
become. Their work runs in fixed grooves that are apt to become fixed
ruts. And this makes ruts in their thinking. Their souls seem to grow
small by the very smallness and sameness of the daily tread. That is the
life of the great crowd of men all over the world.

It's an immense relief to see something big Big things always attract. Is
it partly because our daily round is so narrow and small? Jesus plans a
bigness that shall refresh us constantly. We have hearts big enough to
hold a world, and brains able to plan for a planet, even while our feet
tread the same old shut-in path.

A young man may be going a commonplace, treadmill sort of grind, in a
small corner of some great manufacturing concern, and be at the same time
carrying on a bigger enterprise than the president of his concern. For he
may be planning and praying for a world, and actually lifting it up in the
arms of his strong purpose toward the level of God.

The shipping clerk may be hammering in barrel-heads all day lon