Excerpts from "Mountains of Spices" by Hannah Hurnard

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Excerpts from Mountains of Spices   by Hannah Hurnard,  Living Books,  1977

P. 34,  That person is so angry and (Dismal) and yet they are so starved for love and they don’t even know it. Just keep on loving them; it always wins in the end.

P. 35,  In that room (as we all fellowshipped together) was the most mirthful and contented (atmosphere) in the whole Valley (City), just as though a little bit of the Kingdom of Love had been transplanted down from the High Places (Heaven) to the Valley (Earth). Which of course was the case.

P. 45,  Why is everyone so wretched, miserable and dreary in this Valley? (Grace asked the Shepherd?) It is because they have broken the royal law of love. Love is the one basic law on which the whole universe is founded. A holy people are those who are set apart to love.

P. 46,  What is love? (Grace asked the Shepherd?) What I have shown you and what you have seen in me (the Shepherd). To accept all other human beings just as they are, however blemished and marred by sin they may be.

P. 48,  Flowers give whether they are seen or not. Fruit trees give whether they are thanked or not. The meaning of their existence is in the ministry of giving The sun gives warmth and light, waters come down from the mountains to give drink to all.

P. 49,  Find a way to become one with others (when you give love you seek to become one with the recipient).

P. 50,  You must not love some but love all.

Pgs. 70 and 71,  There is absolutely no experience, however terrible or heartbreaking or unjust or cruel or evil which you cannot meet in the course of your earthly life that can harm you (out of my will) if you will let me teach you how to accept it, it is only another opportunity granted to you of conquering an evil thing and bringing out of it the glory of God. (The Lord may allow physical harm to you or even death for His glory. This is hard to grasp completely but many hard things have been planned by God for some of the greatest saints of the past and can we today be open to how He may want to glorify Himself through us?) The Word says we are perfected through suffering.

P. 118,  Though the crocuses in this field are stepped on (there was no where to step, they covered the ground). But the flowers bounced back up after they were stepped on as though they were not trodden upon. The Shepherd said true longsuffering (the suffering of love) bears all chastisements, it bears quite happily everything that is done against it, reacts to the wrong doing of others as though no wrong has been done at all or that they had forgotten all about it. For longsuffering is really the lovely quality of forgiveness and bearing contentedly and joyfully the results of the mistakes and wrong doing of others. 

P. 119,  Nothing can true love destroy, she will suffer all with joy. It triumphs over wrong. Oh to love more-not less, strength to pardon and forget. 

P. 120,  Why must love suffer and why must it suffer long? It is because the very essence of love is oneness. I (the Shepherd) must suffer with them until they have become one with me.

P. 121,  Our Head (The Lord) feels all that we (the Body) feel. He is so one with us that He will not part even from the hardest, self-willed heart (until it is too late).

P. 133,  An empty altar is each soul, whereon the Eternal Love would place a quenchless, living coal from His own heart of love; to burn and yearn back where it came to union with the parent flame. Each person must make their choice, if the soul is left empty it will be hell, but it will become heaven where God and man unite. Christ is the Loving, Purging Flame, forth from the love of God he came, and seeks the empty heart. Receive the Lord from heaven above, in thee to live his life of love.

P. 134,  To love is to share oneself with others. As the grass gives itself to the cattle, and water to the thirsty, and as the sun gives light and warmth freely to the good and bad alike.  

P. 135,  You are afraid to die because deep down you know you have broken the law of life which is love. You have not forgiven and so you will not be forgiven by the Judge (before whom all will stand). 

P. 138,  Thy gentleness has made me great. Tis love that plans my lot, not fate. When gales and storms thy love does send, that I with joy may meekly bend (like reeds in the wind). Though others should resent my love, may I be gentle as a dove.

P. 139,  The fragrance that comes from these reeds (as they bend to the ground and then back up again) men call gentleness, sympathy and loving understanding. But this fragrance was developed by bending submissively to life’s hard and difficult experiences without bitterness, resentment or anger. (This takes the Lord’s patient training and His grace)

P. 140,  From start to finish as I have led you up to the High Places, it has been my perfect understanding of all her weaknesses and fears, and I have felt with her all that she has suffered. 

P. 142,  Love is gentle but love is terrible too. The greater the love the less it can tolerate anything that is hurting the beloved. For the perfection of the beloved (us) the Shepherd may have to allow much terrible suffering to perfect the beloved. (He is a consuming fire)

P. 143,  Can love be cruel? Yes. He loves thee far too well to leave thee in thy self made hell. 

P. 163,  Love comes into our hearts by accepting people as they are and bearing all that they do against you with forgiveness.

P. 171,  I led you by a strange and bitter path from that day on. What did you say to your self when I led you (to the end of yourself)? I said to myself, It is His love which plans this way for me, and I will trust Him and follow where He leads.

P. 227,  Humility is willingness to accept humiliation sweetly and unresentfully. 

P. 225,  Do not hold life’s joys but make room for so much more, with a willing heart let go, God will richer gifts bestow. He will lead to a wealthier place, let the old things go, we shall reap in some glad way, fairer joys than lost today.