Norwich bulletin., 1917-12-08
Sunday Morning Talk
MAKING THE BEST OF TT.

Human lives are not lived under ideal conditions. That we think so,' as regards some cases, is only because we lack imagination. There is some fly or other in the sweetest ointment sometimes good many of them, could the whole truth be known. If one were asked to accept the entire lot of any other mortal in exchauge for his own, he might well hesitate to close with the offer. Perhaps the other fellows troubles, fully known, would overlap anything in his own experiences.
 here are almost as many ways of taking trouble there are kinds of trouble. In general terms, one may make the worst or. the best of it. A given situation may be made to yield all it's gall or all it's honey. Some birds will beat their very lives out against the bars of their cages. while others submit gracefully to limitations, learning contentment with lot that cannot be changed. People are. sim i1ariy, wise or. unwise.
 There is an ideal, as Carlyle remind ed us, in every human condition, and that ideal is always properly to be stfiven for. Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same idea out of; what matters 1t whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic" Heroism. then, is not open alone to the select circle. It is possible to anyone who is minded 10 take HIS own S1tUatlOn anu dcl1D- erate1y-to make the best of it."
 Years ago a little girl of eight years was an inmate of the New York In- stitution for the Blind. One day the child wrote some lines not great per- haps as poetry, but containing a phil "Oh, what happy soul am I,
 Although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world Contented I will be; .L -~+s- How many blessings I enjoy s~.@ That other people don't
 To weep and sigh because I'm blind, cannot, and I won't"
 That was the spirit of Fanny Crosby, maintained all through her long life. She never allowed her loss of sight to dismay, her. God only knows how many nforfa1s in the treadmiil of the world tlais brave singer has helped to make the best of it."
 When Jeremy Taylor had lost all his worldly goods, when his house had been p!undered and his family driven en into the hands of the publicans and sequesfrators and they have taken alf from me. What now? Let me look about me They have left me the sun and moon, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me. and some to relieve me; and can stiH discourse, and, un- less I list. they have not taken away my merry ceuntenance, and my cheer fuI spirit, and a good conscience. They have still left me the providence of God and all the premises Of the gospel and my religion, and my hopes of heaven and my charity to them, too; and still I sleep and digest. I eat and drink, I read and Haeditate. And he that has so many CRUISES. Of joy. and. so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevfsh- ness who loves all these pleasures and chooses to. sit down upon his little handful of thorns."
 If one cannot have the things he likes. it surely Is. wisdom to like the things he has. Coptentnmeat, after all, does not depend 50 much on where one is, or what one has, but upon what one is: The Kingdom Of heaven, or of hell, is within us,
 THE PARSON.