Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1909-03-12
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DUTY AND DESIRE,
By Henry F. Cope,

| Eph. 3 10.
Almost all the lives that reach any
measure of right elf-consciousness re-
! gard themselves as in a constant strug-
! gle between the things they must do
and the things they fain would do. Sell
| dom indeed does it happen that one can
| find his living in the things he loves
| most Of all happy are those who may.
| The rest, however, are not necessarily
| justified in regarding their unwelcome
| work as the foe of their highest well
| fare.
| 1t is true that many lives are lily adj
| justed. Poets are working in brick
| yards and ploWmen are trying to make
! poems for a living. We owe it to life
| and to our world not less than to our
| selves to discover our own aptitudes,
| to cultivate our best powers in the
| tasks for which we are best suited. We
| have no right to drift; we ought to
| summon every power we have i'll order
| to select a work that we can do and do
! we'll
Even then with each man at the
! task he could do best, we would still
! have the conflict between the things
| we must do and those we would do.
| Perhaps you have heard it said that in
| the good time coming every man will
| have to do only the things he would
| most like to do. None would for long
| be satisfied with that arrangement.
| Even the people who believe they were
| born to wear wings and play on harps
would soon be signing for less exalted
| duties.
| 1t would be an easy matter to say to
| all who feel the rasp and grind of each
days dull tasks, who realize keenly the
| seeming conflict between the duties
! that necessity lays on US and the high
bidding of our aspirations: Be con-
| tent; life is short; heaven awaits you
| times disparities will be adjusted in
| eternity. That leads people to take
time as a dose for the sake of eternal
health hereafter.
None of the problems of living are
solved by a mechanical content, by an
assumed, apathetic Indifference to the
facts that fret u.s. An absolutely GER
tain present will not be rightly lived
until it is more than a probation for 8
problematic future. Folks will endure
all kinds Of discomfort and even wrong
on the bleak threshold when they know
the door to warmth and cheer will soon
be opened.
The world needs those who are liv-
ing full life in the present, who are
doing their share toward making condi-
| lions right here. Better the one who
is wrong in his discomfort than he who
is content with wrong. If life seems
wrong to you it is your duty to seek
| the way Of righting it. 1t is better to
| make the mistake Of thinking you must
mold your times than to be but dull
clay to be nodded by your times.
How then can we learn to live our
| lives so that, with all this seeming con-
f1ict, they will be right? How can we
| reconcile all the opposing necessities
and aspirations? May we find our way
| into the meaning of the necessity upon
us to wear SO much of ourselves away
in the greedy wheels of the worlds
great machine?
After all, could we ever dream of the
higher tasks but for the lower duties
Could we ever fit ourselves for any
greater work but by the faithful doing
of that which seems so little? Are we
| not learning the greater by means of
the less? And, beside, can we be al
ways quite sure which is the greater
and which the less?
It may be that the plOWman is really
doing a finer work than the poet, for
what is the real measure of all our
work? Is the chief executive Of a rail
road system necessarily doing that
which is more sublime than the work
of some father who for the love Of lit
tie ones, bears the yoke Of servitude?
Neither the wage nor the work itself is
| the measure but the worker.
Often the burdens that seem to
| threaten to break us are the ones that
make u.s. The discipline of the dull
task is the refining pot where the gold
of life itself is produced. But for their
only dull pebbles the jewels are dis
covered by the lapidary called some
| times duty and sometimes adversely.
Only as we see life in the light of
these higher values does the necessity
| for the conflict between duty and de-
| sire appear and the meaning of the toll
and hardship become evident. Because
man belongs to a nobler order which is
| in the making he learns not simply TO
endure but TO delight in the tolls of
the present, to fight circumstance, to
show himself master of his fate. and to
find the life that strikes its roots so
deep into eternity that neither parching
drought nor rising flood affect its pros
perity.
QUIET RETREAT URGED.
By Rev. Ernst A. Tappert.
REST in the Lord and wait patient
" for Him. Psalms xXxvii: {.
W. GRO q huStIinQ DeODlo We are