Norwich bulletin., 1916-09-23
Sunday Morning Talk
THE HEAVENLY BLUES,

If one must have the "blues" by all means let them be of the heavenly va riety! For then depression will give way to cheer and smiles will van- Quish tears. A fit of the heavenly blues is, indeed, 8 first rate eNperi- ence for us, and, if the fit can develop into a permanent mood of the soul 1t is so much the better. That our lives may be bathed. all the time in the celestial tint iso a consummation de- voutly to be wished. raal= -EAs s44 3
 Blue is the color of the sky over arching our earth, which is the most spiritual object on which the eye can gaze. It is, as the philosopher Delitsch tells us, the color of the at- mosphere, illurnined by the sun, of space; the color of the finite per- vaded by the infinite; the color taken by that which is most heavenly as it comes down to the earthly" When one looks into the marvellous blue of heaven, transparent as sapphire, he beholds the symbol of the High and Lofty One Who inhabiteth eternity. He turns his face to the abode of power and of peace. It is that kind of blue that we are talking about. Thousands of people are creatures of moods, without realizing that they may, to a large extent, choose the kind of mood they shall live in. Or dinarily, we mean by our moods those uncertain and reprehensible states of mind which are opposed in their tendency to the settled convictions of | our happier hours and the resolutions 1 of our better will. It is thus that many of us find our moods holding us | back and running our better aspira- l tions, even as mariners find it dif1- | cult to sail in dull and foggy weather. | All people, for illustration, are will l ing to do their duty, when they feel l like it." It is probable that there is no criminal behind prison bars in all l the land who does not intend to do
 right when he or she gets good and | ready. The trouble is that we, so
 rarely do feel like it." The impulses | to good and to bad in the average l life wayer like the lines the nurse | draws on the chart of a fever patient | Now we're up and now we're down, | and no one can predict the hour of | our depression or our exaltatfon. | No one can study the biographies of
 men and women of great faith with | out discovering how little ? account
 they have taken of bad moods. In | crises where others would be swayed
 almost completely by feelings of fear l anger, or discoura cement, these have 1 held their steady course, intent only | on doing Gods will In blackest hours | they have learned to pierce the fog to l the blue above and to see the sun | shining in splendor.
 The Psalmist writes, on enc occa- | sion, My flesh and my heart faileth.'
 His personal energies both Of body l and of spirit are gone He is, as we
 say, "all in" Yet what might be his
 black mood is overcome in the power l of a supreme confidence. His son. bre situation is illunined by 8 splen-
 did beam of light in the religious faith
 that abides unshaien, My flesh ano my heart faileth, but God is the | strength of my heart and my portion l forever" The dark mood is dissipat-
 ed in brightness The blue becomes that of heaven rather than of earth.
 The opportunities and the obliga.
 tions of fife persist, no matter how
 we "feel' about them. Above the heaviest clouds reaches the blue sky
 It is the truth that rarely beaut1-
 full spirit, Maltbie Babcock expressed
 in familiar lines:
 A fallen leaf on flowing stream ana on the water a moments glear Of sunshine-and the chilling grey o'erspreads more coldly the au tumn day.
 me, @ sense of pain in my hear to see,
 The 1eaf1ess trees and the stubble sere and the darkening face of th' dying year.
 It Is not so now. My heart is glat though every sight and soun' be sad.
 For I have come to realize that Jo. depends not on the skies. The path of my duty holds alonl through winters stream an' springtime's song. s7 tt.
 And cloudy the day, or stormy tn
 night, the sky of my heart 1