Cheerfulness by Jos. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 28, 1864

Cheerfulness.

By Jos. Clarke

SORROW cannot long exist in the mind without more or less injury to the person indulging it. It is true Paul speaks of sorrowing after a godly sort, but we know that such sorrow is soon turned into joy.

One may well mourn over the evils and follies of the past, but even in this it is evil to dwell long upon such gloomy subjects; it injures the tone of the mind, and would finally sour the best temper in the world. Christ says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Christ had an agency in the first formation of man, and he knew that a state of sorrow was not the normal state of the mind; and however necessary it may be for us to mourn; however unavoidable it may be, yet it will not do to continue such an exercise of the mind beyond bounds. It would produce finally disease and often insanity; and it tends, if long continued, to despair, murmuring, cowardice and irresolution.

Deep regrets and sorrow and grief are inseparable from the present state, as the long line of mourners follow the lovely and the true to the tomb; as the once virtuous yield to the siren voice of the seducer; or as the defenseless fall under the oppressor’s hand; or as we often see virtue trodden down in the streets, while vice is put in the place of honor, and surnamed virtue; as we find our props falling, and those we loved and venerated sinking down in the mire of vice and sin, or ranking themselves with the opposer of truth; as we see ourselves often falling in coming up to the standard of truth; or as we see the rising generation of youth associating itself with the minions of foul crime; as we see honesty falling not only in the streets but in high places; as we see the teacher making his school-room a theatre of unhallowed desire, and as we see the pulpit itself made a rostrum for the spiritualist and fornicator; a thousand thoughts like these would cause one (if very much given to mourning) to send up wails like Jeremiah, and, if it were possible, to turn the eye into a fountain of tears; one might well turn the hours of rest into groaning, and those of labor into weeping: but what would it avail? those for whom we agonize would be loudest in derision. Then let us be cheerful as possible; and though our hearts burst almost with agony, yet shall not the scorner see it. We will smile away each others tears, in hope of a future, when all tears shall be wiped away in that land where sorrow shall never come.

Like the practiced and good surgeon, who looks with equal coolness and cheerfulness upon death and life, so must those amid the terrific scenes of earth’s last struggles, learn to be unmoved and calm. Always with an encouraging smile for the sorrowing, and a strong arm for the weak, a stout heart to comfort the despairing, and a balm for the wounded. For this, one must be habitually cheerful. Sorrowful hours will come, but let them not be days of grief. Let our periods of mourning be short. Jos. CLARKE.