Part 44

Adversity is the touch-stone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give forth their sweetest odors, so some natures need to be tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Grief is a common bond that unites hearts. It can knit hearts closer than happiness can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. The visitations of sorrow are universal. There beats not a heart but that it has felt the force of affliction. There is not an eye but has witnessed many scenes of sorrow.

They are always impaired by sorrow who are not thereby improved. Some natures are like grapes—the more they are downtrodden the richer tribute they supply. It may be affirmed substantially that good men reap more real benefit from their affliction than bad men do from their prosperities; for what they lose in wealth, pleasure, or honor they gain in wisdom and tranquillity of mind. "No creature would be more unhappy," said Demetrius, "than a man who had never known affliction." The best need afflictions for the trial of their virtue. How can we exercise the grace of contentment if all things succeed well? or that of forgiveness if we have no enemies?

At a superficial view it appears that adversity happens to all alike, without regard to rank or condition. The good are apparently as little favored by fortune in this respect as the bad, the high as the humble. People are continually rising and falling in all the grades of society. We often see men of high expectations suddenly cut down, and left to struggle with despair and ruin. If the happiness of mankind depended upon the caprice of fortune, their condition would be wretched. But it is possible to possess a mind which will not lose its tranquillity in the severest adversity, or at least such a one as, being disturbed and deprived of its wonted serenity by a sudden calamity, will recover in a short period, and assume its native buoyancy by the shock which it has experienced.

How uncertain is human life! There is but a breath of air and a beat of a heart betwixt this world and the next. In the brief interval of painful and awful suspense, while we feel that death is present with us, we are powerless and he all powerful. The last faint pulsation here is but the prelude of endless joys hereafter. In the midst of the stunning calamity about to befall us, when death is in the family circle, and some loved one is about to be taken from us, we feel as if earth had no compensating good to mitigate the severity of our loss. But we forget that there is no grief without some beneficent provisions to soften its intensities. Thus in the presence of death there is also a consolation. Has the life been stormy? There is now rest; rest for the troubled heart and the weary head. And it can be known only by experience with what a longing many hearts thus look forward to the rest of death. Many whom the world regards as peculiarly blessed by Providence carry with them such corroding, anxious cares that it is with a feeling of relief that they contemplate the approach of death. To them death comes in its most beautiful form. He borrows the garb of gentle sleep, lays down his iron scepter, and his cold hand falls as warm as the hand of friendship over the weary heart now ceasing to beat.

Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of intelligence, energy, and virtue. The trials to which humanity are subject are necessary to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose their character. Afflictions even have the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Suffering, indeed, seems to have been as divinely appointed as joy, while it is much more influential as a discipline of character. Suffering may be the appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined and developed. Sometimes a heart-break rouses an impassive nature to life. "What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?"

No soul is so obscure that God does not take thought for its schooling. The sun is the central light of the solar system; but it has a mission to the ripening corn and the purpling clusters on the vine, as well as the ponderous planet. The sunshine that comes filtering through the morning mists with healing on its wings, and charming all the birds to singing, should have also a message from God to sad hearts. No soul is so grief-laden that it may not be lifted to sources of heavenly comfort by recognizing the Divine love in the perpetual recurrence of earthly blessings.

Afflictions sent by Providence must be submitted to in a humble spirit. Otherwise they will not conduce to lasting good. The same furnace that hardens clay liquefies gold; and the manifestation of Divine power Pharaoh found his punishment, but David his pardon. As the musician straineth at his strings, and yet breaketh none of them, but maketh thereby a sweeter melody and better concord, so God, through affliction, makes his own better unto the fruition and enjoyment of the life to come. Afflictions are the medicine of the mind. If they are not toothsome, let it suffice that they are wholesome. It is not required in physic that it should please, but that it should heal.

Let one of our loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave can not hide the white face of the one who sleeps. The coffin and the green mound are cruel magnets. They draw us further than we would go. They force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when he looks over a wife's or a mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear then, and he sees as never before what it is to love and be loved, what it is to injure the feelings of the beloved.

When death comes into a household, we do not philosophize; we only feel. The eyes that are full of tears do not see, though, in the course of time, they come to see more clearly and brightly than those that have never known sorrow. Perhaps the heaviest affliction of life is that of the mother who has lost a child. As the waters roll in on shore with incessant throbs—not alone when storms prevail, but in calms as well—so it is with a mother's heart, bereaved of her children. Death always speaks with a voice of instruction and reproof; but when the first death happens in a home it speaks with a voice which scarcely any other form of tribulation can equal.

Some of the saddest experiences of life come without premonition. Yesterday life went well; hope was in the ascendant; it was easy to be content. To-day all is reversed. The crushed heart can scarcely lift itself to pray; speech seems paralyzed. It seems cruel that such calamity should be permitted, when we might have been so happy. Was there not some way by which it could have been avoided? What are life's compensations now? What are its ambitions worth in the face of this? In a great affliction there is no light, either in the mind or in the sun; for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no darkness, though clouds should cover the sun. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.

Why should body and soul be plunged into sorrow's dungeon when God sees fit to afflict? Is not the world as bright as of yore? Are there not still some happy phases to life's weary pilgrimage? We should not complain of oppression, but, with submission and love, perform the duties of life; and though sorrow and grief come, we must not let darkness obscure the talents which God has given to promote our own and others' happiness, or bury them with the brighter past, but nobly use them, and count all sorrow as naught in comparison with the future great reward of right actions. After this life of sorrow and pain, where we are continually weighed down with care, there is a home of perpetual rest, the streets of which are thronged with an angelic host, who, "with songs on their lips and with harps in their hands," tell neither the sorrow nor grief which perhaps wasted their lives. To bear the ills of life patiently is one of the noblest virtues, and one that requires as vigorous an exercise of the will as to resent the encroachments of wrong.

It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the eager pursuit of ambitious plans are baffled; for they are very like a train on down grade—pulling on the brake is not pleasant, but it keeps the car on the track. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding in our failures our real successes.

Disappointments seem to be the lot of man. From the little child with golden hair attempting to catch the glancing sunbeams to the old man who, with whitened locks and bent frame, pursues some scheme of wealth, disappointment is the almost inevitable consequence. Well it is for us that the future is veiled from our eyes, else we would weary of the trials and allurements that make up the sum of our existence. The child looks forward to manhood; his dreams are speculative; the man looks back to childhood, and thinks of the happy days of old. From the time he sits on his mother's knee, with the sunlight streaming in through the open window, until the last hours of life, when the sunlight glances in through closed shutters, he is playing with shadows.

And one of the saddest thoughts that come to us in life is the thought that in this bright, beautiful, joy-giving world of ours there are so many shadowed lives. If disappointment came only to the lot of the sinning, even then we might drop a tear over him whose errors wrought their own recompense. But it is not so. The most pure lives are sometimes those that are the fullest of disappointments. With one it is the wreck of a great ambition. He has builded his ship, and launched it on the sea of life freighted with the richest jewels of his strength and manhood. Behold, it comes back to him beaten, battered, and torn by the fury of the gale—the wreck of a first trial.

Many are disappointed because they do not look for happiness and success either in the right spirit or by the proper methods. There is a legend told of a knight who,—

"In the brave days of old,"

journeyed far away in search of the Holy Grail. He engaged in great pursuits. He sought the most arduous undertakings. But failing to seek in the right spirit his search and his efforts were in vain. At length, wearied and disappointed, he sought his native land. Here, in the work of daily, trifling duties, humbly seeking to do what was right, he unexpectedly found that for which he had so long searched. In life we all seek happiness and success. There is but one way in which we can succeed; when we admit that happiness is but a state of the mind, and that success is the faithful performance of known duties, then shall we acquire both. Though we may wander the wide world over, and gather wealth and fame, they will be found impotent to confer happiness, and life to us will seem full of disappointments; but it is so simply because we failed to seek for life in that spirit of quiet content which alone conducts us to its portals.

It never yet happened to any man since the beginning of the world, nor ever will, to have all things according to his desires. And there never was any one yet to whom fortune was not at some time opposite and adverse. Those who risk nothing can, of course, lose nothing; sowing no hopes they can not suffer from the blight of disappointment. But let him who is enlisted for the war expect to meet the foe. It is with life's troubles as with the risks of the battle-field; there is always less of aggregate danger to the party who stands firm than to the one who gives way. To give way to disappointments is to invite defeat. To bravely cast about for means to resist them is to put them to flight, and out of temporary misfortune to lay the foundation of a more glorious success. Send disappointments to the winds; take life as it is, and, with a strong will, make it as near what it should be as possible.

Dark and full of disappointments may be our lot, and we may not be able to fathom the reason for them; but if we can only bring ourselves to see that they are for our good, that we need their chastening influence, all will be well in the end. In the trials of life we must look more for consolation within than from without. The surest consolations of life are those which we thus derive from our own thoughts. For this end it matters not so much whether we spend time in study or toil; the thoughts of the mind should go out and reach after higher good. In this manner we may improve ourselves till our thoughts come to be sweet companions that shall lead us along the paths of virtue. Thus we may grow better within, whilst the cares of life, the losses and the disappointments lose their sharp thorns, and the journey of life be made comparatively pleasant and happy.

It is generally known that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectations. It is human to err; so it is the lot of mortals to be disappointed, for never yet did error secure the end wished. It is, however, the better philosophy to take things calmly and endeavor to be content with our lot. We may at least add some rays of sunshine to our path if we earnestly endeavor to dispel the clouds of discontent that may arise in our bosom, and by so doing enjoy more fully the bountiful blessing that God gives to his humblest creatures. The great secret of avoiding disappointment is not to expect too much. Despair follows immoderate hopes, as the higher a body rises the heavier it falls to the ground.

Time is the great consoler of the world, inasmuch as he heals our sorrows and trials. But time, in dashing to pieces our most cherished plans and brightest dreams, also brings us to many disappointments which in turn disappear with the passage of years. While sagacity contrives, patience matures, and labor industriously executes, disappointment laughs at the curious fabric formed by so many efforts and gay with so many brilliant colors, and when the artist imagines the work arrived at the moment of completion, brushes away the beautiful fabric, and leaves nothing behind.

We thus see that life is, indeed, a variegated scene, full of trials and full of joys—bright dreams, some fulfilled, more disappointed. What is the lesson for us to learn from this? Perhaps the truest philosophy is not to expect much, to be moderate in our plans and hopes. In youth especially are we apt to be over sanguine. Reflect that life is full of disappointments, that it is vain for you to expect to escape them. But also learn to go forward with a brave face. You may fail, but from this failure you can organize future success. Because disappointed in one particular plan, it is no reason why you should abandon all plans, and settle down to the conviction that life itself is a failure. Show yourself a man, and rise superior to misfortune, and you will be rewarded by a final victory made more glorious by temporary discouragement, just as the sun bursting from behind the clouds lights up the landscape with a more glorious light because of the storms of the morning.

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure. By far the best experience of men, experience from which they gain the most of lasting value, is gathered from their failures in their dealings with others in the affairs of life. Such failures, for sensible men, incite to better self-management and greater tact and self-control, as a means of avoiding them in the future. Ask the successful business man, and he will tell you that he learned the secret of success through being baffled, defeated, thwarted, and circumvented, far more than from his successes. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done. It has disciplined and taught them what to do as well as what not to do. And this latter is often of more importance than the former.

Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again before they finally succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their energies, and stimulate them to renewed efforts. Failure in one direction has sometimes had the effect of forcing the far-seeing student to apply himself in another, which latter application has in many instances proven to be in just the line that they were fitted for. No one can tell how many of the world's most brilliant geniuses have succeeded because of their first failures. Failures in many instances are only means that Providence takes to work an otherwise too pliable disposition into one fitted to confront the stern duties of life. Even as steel is tempered by heat, and, through much hammering and changing of original form, is at last wrought into useful articles, so in the history of many men do we find that they were attempered in the furnace of trials and affliction, and only through failures in first attempts were at length fitted for the ultimate success that crowned their efforts.

They are doubly in error who suffer themselves to give up the battle at one, or even two successive, failures. As in the military field he is the greater general who from defeat organizes ultimate victory, so in the battle of life he is the true hero who, even while smarting under the sting of present failure, lays his plans and summons his forces for a triumphant victory. We must not allow our jaundiced views to prevail over our knowledge of men and affairs. The world is not coming to an end, nor society going to destruction, because our petty plans have miscarried. The present failure should only teach you to be more wary in the future, and thus will you gather a rich harvest as the final outcome of your efforts.

Above all, do not sink into apathy and despair. Rouse yourself, and do not allow your best years to slip past because you have not succeeded as you thought you would. Is not the sun as bright, nature as smiling as before? Why, then, do you go about as if all hope had fled? Know you not that

"In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men."

As in the physical world, disease is but the effort nature makes to remove some pressing evil, so failure should be but the methods whereby we are enabled to eliminate those traits of character which are a hindrance to our lasting success. As the inventor subjects his production to the most rigorous tests in order that inherent defects may become known and, if possible, remedied, even so does Providence, in subjecting us to great trials, discover to us by our failures wherein we lack; and we are remiss in duty to ourselves do we not most earnestly endeavor to improve by these tests?