It is thus that God has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many a drear league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.
Frederick William Robertson