Article January 17, 1914 Issue

Discouragement

LOUISE KNIGHT WHEATLEY

We read that there was once a time when Moses was discouraged. In spite of the innumerable proofs which he had had of God's power to save, even in the face of what seemed like overwhelming disaster, he had become so utterly heart weary that he longed to die. For the children of Israel were again complaining; they were tired, it appears, of eating manna. Recollections of "the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick" of Egypt filled them with discontent, and they cried: "Our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. ... Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent."

It was not the first time that they had rebelled. Again and again had they bitterly reproached their faithful leader for taking them from their Egyptian taskmasters only to let them die in the wilderness; and again and again their reproaches had been turned to songs of gladness as the emergency of the moment was met and overcome. But this time the voice of their lamentations seemed to enter into Moses' consciousness and so fill him with discouragement that he could only cry out in his misery, "Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? ... kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, ... and let me not see my wretchedness."

One of the Christian Science lecturers has aptly termed discouragement "the devil's most useful tool," for this little implement can often effect an entrance where everything else would fail. A man who is discouraged is mentally unfitted for clear thinking; while he is standing still, in a state of helpless apathy, a horde of wrong thoughts, unseen by him, rush through the door in his consciousness which the mortal sense of discontent has opened. So it was with Moses, so it may be with some of us. If one who seems to be struggling against a similar sense of mental depression will study this incident as recorded in the eleventh chapter of Numbers, he will perhaps gain some light on his own problem; for the phases of thought through which he is passing are quite likely to be those which assailed Moses, so little has mortal mind changed its methods since the day when it listened to the wailing suggestions of something which was lacking to make its happiness complete.

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