p. 423 | IT'S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 21, 1882

IT'S WHAT YOU MAKE IT.

—A lady desirous of finding a boarding-place consulted two different persons about No. 23——. "Don't go there," said the first person addressed, "I never was in a place so full of gossip. The conversation never amounts to anything. The inmates of the house are dissatisfied, and altogether you would be exceedingly unhappy."

The second person said: "I find No. 23——very pleasant indeed. We are all very happy and united. You will be very welcome."

And what was the secret? The first person let circumstances make her; the second made circumstances. The latter introduced pleasant topics of conversation at table. If others found fault she always saw the good side of things. She made people about her cheerful. She would not talk gossip, and the others soon learned to speak of something else, and were the better for it. No. 23——was just what she made it.

The home is usually to us just what we make it, cultured, cheerful, elevating, or gloomy and forbidding. The church is cordial, or earnest, or one with the pastor, if our hearts are right; or cold and critical if our hearts are wrong. Life itself is a glad song or a wail, a place in which to work for the Master or a loitering-ground, a door to Heaven or a broad way to ruin, as we choose. Home, the church, life itself, even, are what we make them. 'Tis a great gift, or it may be a curse, this wonderful power within us.—Congregationalist.