“The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts, and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.
“Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom, and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness. Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the stars through the darkness.”
Whining.
This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results. It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don’t fret and whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight, but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. “O, what a cross face that lady has got!” I heard another female exclaim but yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don’t induce such a look.
Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:—
“There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine because they have ‘no luck,’ and others’ prosperity exceeds theirs; they whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains because they whine, no one can tell why.
“Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining. It’s of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding, scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that ever lived.
“Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing.”
Love.
“Well, what has that to do with health and long life?” ask the cynic, the bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.