The Silver Lining by W. R. Rutherford

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 30, 1908

The Silver Lining

By W. R. Rutherford

No moral person can be content who has not a task to do. Idleness is a great curse. When one's thoughts and energies are not made to expend themselves upon some outside interest, the mind and heart will turn inward, and become self-consuming. “There is no poison like an ingrowing soul,” which consumes itself in fret, worry, lamenting, or remorse.

Worry kills more people than work; better to wear out than to rust out. All human experience goes to indorse the maxim that would bid us ever have a task to do.

“A clean inside” may be, and should be, both physical and moral. Disease is a poor concomitant to cheerfulness, and a poor stepping-stone to success; not that a person can not maintain a cheerful disposition in spite of a sickly constitution, or make a brilliant success of life notwithstanding the heavy handicap of ill health; but the sound body is essential to the best development of the sound mind. Hence the advisability of shunning all habits that tend to make the body in any part less sound, in any organ less efficient, than it might be.

And what applies to the cleanness of the inside physically, applies with even greater force, if that can be, to its cleanness mentally and morally. Ignorance and vice are implacable foes to real cheerfulness and genuine happiness.

He who would have friends must show himself friendly. Who would not have friends must be of a warped or evil nature, shunning the light of companionship, the gleam of recognition and appreciation in the eyes of friends, because of evil ways that love to shrink into the darkness. But every naturally-disposed man and woman desires and enjoys friendship. What a selfish thing it would be to expect others to be friendly with one who would not go out of his way, or one who would not exert himself gladly, to be on friendly terms with those among whom he mingles.

As for “the sunny side,” any one who did not believe in that would scarcely be reading this article, so it appeals to every reader. How often you and I have proved the worth, the advantage, the helpfulness to ourselves and to others, of looking on the sunny side of even the darkest clouds.—W. R. Rutherford.