The characters in this story are, of course, personifications of the unhappy and tormenting attitudes of mind, heart, and temper whose names they bear. In Hinds’ Feet on High Places they were the enemies of Much-Afraid who sought to hinder her journey to “The High Places.” In this book I have tried to show as clearly as possible that the very characteristics and weaknesses of temperament with which we were born, which often seem to us to be the greatest of all hindrances to the Christian life, are, in reality, the very things which, when surrendered to the Savior, can be transformed into their exact opposites and can therefore produce in us the loveliest of all qualities.

I have described the transformation of the deformities of character which have been the greatest problems in my own life and about which, therefore, I can speak with the most authority. I was born with a fearful nature—a real slave of the Fearing Clan! But I have since made the glorious discovery that no one has such a perfect opportunity to practice and develop faith as do those who must learn constantly to turn fear into faith. One must either succumb to the fearing nature altogether and become a “Craven Coward” for the rest of one’s life; or by yielding that fearful nature wholly to the Lord and using each temptation to fear as an opportunity for practicing faith, be made at last into a radiant “Fearless Witness” to his love and power. There is no middle course.

In the same way a moody temper, a sharp, spiteful tongue, or a dismally anxious and foreboding habit of mind, as well as the other temperamental characteristics personified in this book, can all be gloriously transformed into their exact opposites. Love takes our defects and deformities, and out of them, as out of “crooked Jacob,” fashions princes and princesses of God.

It must not be supposed that in the conversations between the Shepherd King and Grace and Glory up on the Mountains of Spices, that I am “putting words into the Savior’s mouth,” which he never spoke and claiming for them the authority of inspired truth. The conversations are simply meant to suggest the natural and sincere communion possible between any loving soul and the Lord of Love, and the way in which we can learn of him by asking him to give us light on all the problems which perplex us, just as surely as we can be made aware of the personal guidance each one of us is to follow.

I have simply shared the way in which my own mind and understanding have been illumined as I have sought day by day to open them wide to the Savior’s love and teaching. I have no doubt whatsoever that my thoughts on these things are still so ridiculously inadequate that they fall far short of the real, unspeakably glorious, truth. But then, there are endless high places still to ascend, and one can only describe glimpses seen on the way up. Of course all the best and loveliest things must still lie ahead!