CHEERFULNESS.—GOOD ADVICE.—REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.—WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.—WHINING.—LOVE AND HEALTH.—AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.—SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.—THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.—SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.—ACTION AND IDLENESS.—IDLENESS AND CRIME.—BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.—SLEEP.—DAY AND NIGHT.—“WHAT SHALL WE EAT?”—A STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.—“FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS.”—ANCIENT DIET.—COOKS IN A “STEW.”—THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.—CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.—ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.
Cheerfulness.
I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and happiness; before “diet,” for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats will injure him.
“How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?” asks the diseased and despondent man or woman.
Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and assume a cheerful countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don’t like it, and begins to withdraw his sombre person. Keep on “keeping it up,” and the most happy results will soon follow your exertions.
Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine. “℞—A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting.”
Christian Cheerfulness.
The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:—
“Cheerfulness as a Medicine.—Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to cast gloom over the spirit than disease. The mind sympathizes with the body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the other. Each to a certain degree determines the other’s condition. If the mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. ‘A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.’ But if the body is injured, or the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and, by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. ‘A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.’
“Borrowing Trouble.—Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness. ‘Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,’ says Tupper. Casting our glance ahead, we see ‘lions’ in the way; difficulties which we are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise. ‘Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’—Prov. xxvii. 1. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’—Matt. vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’