A SUNNY TEMPER

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 11, 1876

You gain nothing by fretting; you only waste your strength by it. Choose your work, plan as skillfully as you can, put your whole heart into what you are about to do, and leave the rest to a kind Providence that overlooks not a single one of us. Do you know how many years of your life and happiness are mortgaged by this habit of worrying? And after all, what does it accomplish? How does it help you on? How much strength does it bring to you in your labors and exertions? None, none whatever. A ruffled temper all the time throws to the surface the “mire and dirt” of the nature; it does not combine the best elements, and help them to work together to the best advantage, but only the worst, and gives them alone all the chance. A beautiful, sunny temper is no sign of weakness, as many suppose, but of strength and harmony of character. It shows that there is a power seated at the center of the being, that knows how to administer the government.