p. 199 | Keep Cheerful

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 4, 1878

Keep Cheerful.

THE majority of mankind need no caution against overwork. Where work kills one, the want of work kills ten, the fires of passion consumes twenty, sinful indulgence destroys fifty. In cases where work seems to undermine health, it is not so often that the labor is too much, as the faulty way in which it is done, the spirit in which it is performed. Labor, to be permanently endurable, must be healthy; that is, it must be adapted to the mental and physical capacities of the worker, and especially if brain labor, it must be pleasing. It must not be allowed to trench upon sleep, to interfere with the regular and deliberate taking of food, nor prevent a proper amount of recreation and exercise. Those who write upon this subject rarely look beyond the surface of the matter. Dyspepsia is traced to hasty meals and want of exercise; softening of the brain, to excessive thinking, and so on. Why the meals are hasty, or the brain overtaxed, seems to escape notice.

The healthiest men we know are those who do not work the hardest, but do the most work. There is no paradox about this. Every business man sees among his employees examples of men who work hard, yet accomplish but little; others who easily accomplish much. How is this to be explained? Much is attributable to the want of system on the part of the inefficient; more to the want of the proper spirit. Nervous irritability is the great weakness of American character. It is the sharp grit which aggravates friction and cuts out the bearings of the human machine. Nine out of every ten men we meet are in a chronic state of annoyance. The lest untoward things sets them into a state of ferment.

The machinist, when he finds his machinery squeaking, applies the oil; if the bearings have become so hot as to endanger the works, he stops and allows them to cool.

The human machine should be treated in like manner. It should be kept well oiled and cool. Good humor is what will keep digestion perfect and the brain from softening, while it will, at the same time keep the heart from hardening.—Scientific American.