| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 6 |
Page 4 |
One writes: “A single word spoken under the influence of passion, or rashly and inconsiderately spoken, may prove a source of abiding pain and regret; but the suffering of an act of injustice, of wrong, or of unkindness, in a spirit of meekness and forbearance, never renders us unhappy. The remembrance of a sinful of even a hasty word is not infrequently the cause of very deep mortification. The reflection that our words betrayed a weakness, if not a lack of moral and spiritual balance, humiliates us. It is a wound to our self-respect, and the consciousness that the regret is now unavailing adds a sting to the pain. But in the feeling that in our exercise of the meekness and forbearance inspired by the love of Christ we went further than we were bound to go, is not often a cause of distress. In a clam review of the act we do not feel that we wronged ourselves by making too large a sacrifice, or that our failure to resent the injury and to attempt to retaliate was a mistake. Reason and conscience approve the course, and it is a source of satisfaction and comfort.”
The lesson applies also to whatever in our environment makes life hard. Sometimes we find ourselves in places and conditions of living in which it seems impossible for us to grow into strength and beauty of character. This is true of many young people in the circumstances in which they are born, and in which they must grow up. They find about them the limitations of poverty. They cannot get the education they seem to need to fit them for anything better than the most ordinary career. They envy other young people who have so much better opportunities. But these limitations, which seem to make fine attainments impossible, ofttimes prove the very blessings through which nobleness is reached. Early hardship is the best school for training men. Not many of those who have risen to the best and truest success began in easy places.
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