Article December 28, 1899 Issue

From the Religious Press

with contributions from Louis Albert Banks

In the very nature of things an intelligent, genuine Christian must be the happiest person in the world. Discouragement to a Christian must always mean a falling away of faith in some way, for if we really believe that this is God's world and that all things work together for good to them that love Him, and we are sure we love Him, then we must carry round with us happy faces and hopeful hearts.

Above everybody else the Christian has a right to look on the bright side of things. The world should not only look beautiful to us because it is beautiful, but because it is an indication of the kindness and love of our Father. It is a failure of faith and a certain indication of practical infidelity when we give way to some temporary defeat and say with gloomy faces that there is no use trying, as everything is against us.

On a very slippery day last winter a young Negro was making his way home with a large market basket on his arm, full to the brim with all those hard and ball-like vegetables peculiar to winter. Treading unwarily on a bit of glare ice he came down suddenly, with a crash that emptied his basket out into the street. Surrounded by garden products he lay at full length, his head supported on his hand, looking calmly about him. Seeing him still prostrate a gentleman hurried to him anxiously. "Are you hurt?" "No." "Then why don't you get up?" " 'Taint worth while." A good many of us, having spilled our little basket of plans and purposes in the street, are as absurd as was that colored man when we say that it is not worth while to continue the struggle because we have caught a fall and find ourselves momentarily confused. After all, this suggests one of the chief methods of keeping cheerful, and that is not to magnify trifling difficulties. It is a sure way to be always filled with misery to exaggerate In the lens of our own imagination, or in our conversation, the difficulties which we all have to meet, and the troubles and sorrows with which we have to contend. Let trifles take their place as trifles and we shall often find that we have nothing but trifles in the way, and that compared to the mammoth mercies of God they are as nothing.

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