Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.”
If you would be really successful you must have faith in your fellow men. No doubtful or suspicious person was ever a benefactor of his race. The person who can help you most is the one who has most faith in you. So if you would help others, you must have faith in them. The power to see the best in a person in spite of his faults is a precious power. If you have it not, cultivate it. Never look for a mean motive in another. Always recognize the germ of goodness, small though it be, and always help it to grow. Nothing inspires us like the knowledge that some one expects good things of us.
By believing in people we make them believe in themselves. There is no greater service we can render our fellow men than to increase their faith in themselves and in their own powers. To be a faith-inspirer is a privilege we should all earnestly covet. We all know people from whose presence we come away feeling that all things are possible. They encourage us, they stimulate us, they compel us to believe in ourselves. This rare and precious power belongs only to those whose lives are fed from deep spiritual sources. To be a faith-inspirer one’s own attitude toward life must be right; one must be in tune with one’s self. The very atmosphere about such a person is charged with hope and cheer. No pessimist, no cynic, no misanthrope was ever a faith-inspirer. The possession of this quality depends not upon what we do, but upon what we are.
Some people, as they grow older and meet with more or less selfishness and deceit, as we all do, grow cynical. They conclude that there is no such thing as honor or constancy or disinterested kindness. Cling with undying faith to your belief in the goodness of human nature. Has some one deceived you? In spite of that, be just as ready to trust again.
“Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving.
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one’s life with true believing.”
It would be difficult to find any one who has had real success in life and yet does not believe in God. How can I keep my own life serene and hopeful if I believe that the world is ruled only by blind chance, that there is no meaning or purpose in life, that wrong may eventually triumph over right? But belief in a wise and beneficent Ruler of the universe should be the greatest element of strength in my own life; it should give me assurance that the forces of the universe are in league with righteousness and that good will finally triumph over evil.
What a comfort it is to believe, when the forces of evil seem to be in the ascendant, that it is only for a moment! Perhaps you are troubled because justice does not always seem to be done in the world. You know that the wicked often prosper and the righteous suffer, and perhaps you are troubled to understand why. Doubtless this is not easy to comprehend fully, but far better than comprehension is the acceptance of it in the right spirit and as a part of the divine plan. We all need a working theory of life, a philosophy of life, if you will, or we cannot live strong lives. One who has faith in “that Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness” can be optimistic and serene, and can believe that things everywhere are gradually working themselves out for good. No matter what happens, such persons never believe that the world is going to destruction. Even the most cruel and needless war since time began cannot shake their faith that the world is gradually getting better and that it will continue to grow better. When they stand for the right, it is in the confidence that they are fighting on God’s side and that in the end He is always victorious.