"A young man beside me must have seen the discontent on my face. He touched my arm, and said, 'You wish you were one of those boys, do you?' 'Yes, I do,' I answered quickly. 'They have everything and I have nothing.'
"Quietly he said, 'God has given them money, education, and health that they may be of some account in the world. Did it never strike you that he gave you your lameness for the same reason, to make a splendid man of you?'
"I did not answer, but I never forgot the words. 'My lameness given me by God to teach me patience and strength!'
"At first I did not believe the words, but I was a thoughtful boy, taught to reverence God, and the more I considered the words, the clearer I saw their truth. I decided to accept the words. I let them work upon my temper, my purposes, my actions. I now looked on every difficulty as an opportunity for struggle, every situation of my life as an occasion for good. If a helpless invalid was cast on me for support, or whatever the burden that came to me, I resolved to do my best. Since then life has been sweetened and growth into peace and usefulness has come."
Soon after the death of Carlyle two friends met: "And so Carlyle is dead," said one. "Yes," said the other, "he is gone; but he did me a very good turn once." "How was that," asked the first speaker, "did you ever see him or hear him?" "No," came the answer, "I never saw him nor heard him. But when I was beginning life, almost through my apprenticeship, I lost all interest in everything and every one. I felt as if I had no duty of importance to discharge; that it did not matter whether I lived or not; that the world would do as well without me as with me. This condition continued more than a year. I should have been glad to die. One gloomy night, feeling that I could stand my darkness no longer, I went into a library, and lifting a book I found lying upon a table, I opened it. It was Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle. My eye fell upon one sentence, marked in italics, 'Do the duty which lies nearest to thee, which thou knowest to be a duty! The second duty will already have become clearer.' That sentence," continued the speaker, "was a flash of lightning striking into my dark soul. It gave me a new glimpse of human existence. It made a changed man of me. Carlyle, under God, saved me. He put content and purpose and power into my life."
"The duty lying nearest" was the duty Joseph magnified. He accepted that duty as divine, and he performed it under God faithfully, serviceably, and cheerily. Any and every life that meets duty as Joseph did, will make the best of its life. We may be placed in low position or in high position; we may have menial or kingly responsibilities; we may have temptations of all possible kinds about us; but if we look to God for guidance, and carry faithfulness, serviceableness, and cheer into each and every duty, we shall have made of life the best.
Putting the Best into Others.