Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1908-09-18

PLEASURES OF APPRECIATION.
BY Henry F. Cope.

And God saw everything that He
made, and, behold, it was good."-Gen-
esis, t.. 81.
1t would be strange world in which
pleasure and piety did not go hand in
hand. Appreciation brings delight be-
cause it is a duty and it is duty be-
cause it brings delight. He is doing
good to this world who is finding all the
good there is in it, who is cultivating
the power to see the good where others
often see only i'll.
Optimism, even that perverted type
which blinks many of the facts, is bet
ter for this world than the dour pess-
imism that dooms all things to perdi-
ton, crying out that the race is in a
headlong career to ruin and misery. 1t
is better to laugh at our miseries than
to mourn over all our circumstances.
1t is the duty of every man to make
this world as bright, as happy and as
good a place to live in as he can. No
man has a right to nurse crouch
against the universe, for he cannot keep
it to himself. A sour disposition never
is an individual affair; it becomes so
cial; it Saturates the thinking Of 9th
ers
There are two broad ways of thinking
of life and the universe. One is to de
termine that man is set down in
wholly bad world, where all things fight
against his good, where all his fellows
are worthless and his own nature is
depraved. The other is to find and fos-
ter the good in life and to believe that
through all purposes of good, far be-
You'd our dreams, are working out.
Professional religion has been largely
of the former type of thinking. 1t
has been pessimistic. 1t has seemed to
think it necessary to prove the goodness
! of God by establishing the utter bad
ness of man and the moral character or
the universe. 1t has relegated God to
some far off heaven and left this world
to the tender mercies of the devil.
After all, each makes his own world.
The doctrine Of the total depraVity OF
| humanity is grounded i'll the common
dyspepsia OF theologians. We read into
our outer world the colors of the world
within The heart turning over IN
iquity, brooding over real and fancied
sins, looks out and the fair scene is
changed to gloom, the cloud of sin rests
| over all.
Yet it would be hard to do greater
| wrong. both to ourselves and to our
| fellows, than this of giving up hope
| and setting our faces toward despair.
! These silent sentences we pronounce on
our world go long ways toward seal
ing it's doom. we live according to our
faith and our way of living determines
| the character Of all life.
No matter how dark the day it is our
business to find some cheer, no matter
| how our faith in our fellows may be
! tried it is our duty to seek out the
good in them, and no matter how
strange the ways of life may seem still
to hope on for their issue in good, in the
fulfillment of purposes perhaps too high
| for our present understanding.
Step out into the light, there always
is a patch somewhere. Fix your
thought on the good in others, there is
| always much if we would but look for
| it. Live as though this world were or
dered in love, with law working out
purposes of the highest good, and life
| itself will give you the reward of
| faith. the good you yourself believe in.
Faith in God is just faith in good
| ness; to believe that there is Father
! of us all must mean to believe that He
| is the father Of every good desire, every
high thought, every worthy purpose,
! that the best in us is but the faint, far
off reflection Of the good in Him, and
therefore that this world, the world
and home of His family, is being or
dered governed for the best good we
know and for the good that lies beyond
our knowing.
Some people have a good deal more
faith In the devil than they have in
their God; they think of the world as
having been made good, but somehow
the evil one got the best of the situa-
ton and has ever since succeeded in
making it wholly evil.
Believe the best and the best shall be.
The facts always answer back to our
faith. Life always becomes what we
believe it really is. The good of all
comes from the high faith and high liv-
ing of those men and women who be-
lieve ever that goodness is greater
than badness, that love is better than
hate, that the universe is not made to
mock US, but to make us and to make
us after the pattern of infinite affection.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE ASSURED.
BY Junius B. Remensnyder.
Thou shalt call me, My Father
Jeremiah ill.,, 10.
If the world owed nothing more to
the Bible than this one truth-that
God is our Father-it would outweigh