p. 131 | DISAPPOINTMENTS by Eliza H. Morton

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 26, 1876

DISAPPOINTMENTS

By Eliza H. Morton

In the morning of life everything seems beautiful. Fancy paints the future with glowing colors; and the world seems a pleasant abiding-place forever. But in the course of time the child-heart becomes chilled by disappointments; and even the face of nature seems changed. The youth is buoyant, full of life and animal spirits, and thinks it easy to win a laurel wreath, secure the praise of his fellow-men, and become of great consequence in the world; but he soon finds that he occupies but a very small space in the world, and that his likes and dislikes, and his opinions and desires, are of but little consequence to other people. Sooner or later he sees the frown and the sneer, hears the jeer and the laugh, and is made to feel most keenly that the world is cold and unsympathizing.

Children who have been petted and indulged at home, find themselves, when they leave the parental roof, poorly prepared to meet the disappointments of life. The world is full of people, all of whom have by nature hearts filled with envy, jealousy, strife, and selfishness; and as a natural consequence we see much crowding and pushing, and but little attention is paid to aught except number one. When children leave their home, and enter life for themselves among strangers, then they are snubbed and crossed and made to feel most sensibly their own littleness and unimportance. The hardest lesson they have to learn is, that they are nobody. I mean by that, that their interests are, in one sense, of no interest to the world at large, and that even their presence in the world is as a drop of water in a river.

We see the rich and influential man die, hear the rumble of the carriage wheels that bear him to his last resting-place; and we observe that business goes on the same as before, and none appear to miss him. It comes home to our hearts as a startling reality, that our death would not cause even a ripple upon the great sea of human life.

Although we may be forced to learn life's lessons with tears, heart-aches, and sorrow, yet let us not be discouraged. The thought, that God cares for even the “sparrows of the field,” is enough to buoy our spirits up. His blessing is more comforting than the praise of the whole world.

Let us, then, keep our hearts happy, drive gloomy looks from our faces, cultivate cheerfulness, live lives of sobriety and usefulness, bear patiently whatever God sees fit to send, regard this world as simply a place in which to perfect character, and make it the great object of life to gain that eternal home where disappointments never come. ELIZA H. MORTON. Allen's Corner, Me.