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Beautiful Thoughts

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 23, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 4.

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Beautiful Thoughts

LIFE'S real heroes and heroines are those who bear their own burdens bravely, and give a helping hand to those around them.
The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every one the reflection of his own face. Frown at it and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a kind and pleasant companion; and so let all take their choice.
Never cast aside your friends if by any possibility you can retain them. We are the weakest of spendthrifts if we let one drop off through inattention or let one push away another, or if we hold aloof from one through petty jealousy or heedless slight. Should you throw away a diamond because it scratched you? One good friend is not to be weighed against the jewels of the earth. When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature. It is easily done. A left-off garment to the woman who needs it, a kind word to the sorrowful, an encouraging expression to the striving,—trifles in themselves as light as air,—will do it, at least for the twenty-four hours; and if you are young, be assured it will tell when you are old; and if you are old, it will send you gently and happily down the stream of human time to a blessed eternity.
It is a perilous and doubtful task to unveil the depths of the human heart; to reconcile the complex and often unconscious duplicities of human nature; to decide where delusion ends and deception begins; to estimate the force of temptations and the degrees of resistance to them; to discern the subtle harmony which binds all the parts of life together, and may unite general purity and noble appetences to grievous frailties and ignoble crimes. None but the All-seeing One, “to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid,” can pierce the obscure mazes of human motives. The harsh, censorious, confident, sweeping, unrestricted judgment will blunder, whether it praise or blame.—Selected.