p. 12 | The Other Side

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 8, 1909

The Other Side

GEORGE MANSFIELD found many things that puzzled him. He went one evening, as he often did, to his best friend, Lyman Burton. Burton was thirty years older than George. His hair was a little gray, but his clear blue eyes were full of youth and peace.

“I have always been told and have often read that the Heavenly Father takes care of his children.”

“Yes.” Burton’s eyes were turned to a spot of sun that lingered on the hill east of the valley.

“Well, it does not look like it.”

“Why?” Burton still watched the sunlight.

“Well, it doesn’t. I have seen too many cases where the wicked prospered, and the righteous were poor; where the evil were happy, and the good wretched. It does not look as if religion helps very much in this line, after all. Of course, I know the arguments,” he hurried on, as Burton turned his eyes to him, “about our not knowing what really is prosperity, and that health and money and comfort are not what they seem. But that kind of argument does not satisfy.

“Take the case of old Mr. Monroe, who lives down the creek here. If there was ever a good man, Monroe is one. He surely is a faithful Christian. He has always wanted to have money enough to educate his children, but never has it. He has prayed every day for years that Charley might get well, but he has not; he gets worse all the time. Last year the lightning killed one of his horses—he had only two. This spring the wind blew down his barn, and his cow was drowned in a flood. The family has always lived on the ragged edge. I suppose they have enough to eat and wear, but that is all. How do you account for a case of that kind?”

“There was a time,” said Burton, gravely, “when they did not have enough to eat and wear. They were hungry and cold most of the time for ten winters—the neighbors had to give them food. That was in the days before Monroe became a Christian. He was a bad man then, and could not hold a job, and wasted what little he did make.

“It seems very good to them to have a dry roof, three rooms, and plenty of good food out here where the air is clean and the world at peace. I have heard

them thank God for it many times. Have you talked with him since the lightning killed his horse, and the wind blew down the barn?”

“Yes,” answered George.

“Did he complain?”

“No.”

“Was he out of heart?”

“No.”

“Did he speak bitterly of his fellow men? of luck? of Providence?”

“No.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said the young man.

“You see, George,” Burton explained, gently, “you are looking in the wrong place. The Spirit works inside instead of outside. When a man is born again, it is his spirit that is changed.

“He has the same body and brain. It may be an inefficient body and an incapable brain; it may be a body cursed by heredity and weakened by habit, a brain undisciplined, untrained. The Spirit will help him make the best of that body and brain, but it will not make them over for him. He may still be as subject to disease and pain and failure as before.

“The world outside is not changed,—there will still be storms and pestilence and famine,—but his attitude toward it is changed.

“Instead of making his body and the world over so that these difficulties may be removed, the Spirit makes the real man—the inside man—over, so that he can face them and conquer them by getting good out of them. When pain and misfortune come, they bring, instead of bitterness and despondency, sweetness of spirit and renewed faith.

“And to know this, that the spirit has been quickened into life that evil can not quench nor disaster embitter, is to possess that peace ‘which passeth all understanding.’” — Youth’s Companion.