“Where go they?” he asked. “And why go no two in the same direction?”

And the voice within him answered, “They seek the breath of life. Ride thou thither. Mount and be gone.”

And the rich man put his left hand on his breast and with his right smote his hip, and there befell a strange life and peace within him, so that he moved with exceeding swiftness into the city of his idolatry. Then came he into the place where men buy and sell on paper, and he began to speak to them, and he spoke in this wise:

“I have come forth from a far city where I saw a rider on a white steed that breathed forth the breath of life you seek. Come and I will take you thither.”

But no one listened to him, and when he would have caught them to hold them, they broke away and hurried as in a frenzy. But the rich man felt no anger, and he knew only the peace of the life within him.

“The time is not yet here,” he said. “But I am here and thou art come, O God. I am at peace.”

And he went out from the market-place and bought him a tiny basket into which he poured the seed that he took from out his breast; good seed, ripe for planting, early ripening, and full of promise of a rich harvest.

“I shall reap what I sow. I shall sow only true seed.”

And even as he spoke, a seed fell from his basket into the street of the market-place, and a wind caught it up and carried it to the tower of the highest building of all the high buildings, and where it found lodgment, there it took root.

No place in all that city, high places or low and hidden places, but came to harbor the seed that the rich man carried in his basket.

“Each seed is winnowed by the breath of life,” he said, “There is no chaff.”

The above story is taken from Living Waters, and is one of the many stories and parables contained in the book. Among them are a number of illuminating stories of Jesus that seem as if they must have been taken from the Bible, so like those in the Gospels are they.

Many treasure this little book as one of their most helpful and precious possessions.