The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Sunny Side
THE SUNNY SIDE.
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here could be no shadow were there no light, no eclipse were there no luminary to be obscured, no dark side to things spiritual and natural, were there no bright; and the former implies and testifies to the existence of the latter.
To discover that moon beneath its thickest shroud, to have perfect faith in the reality of this sunny side to all creation, to seek it out with unflagging hope, to draw it forth from the gloomiest abyss, until it rise radiant as Truth from the depths of her fabled well,—oh! that is one of the most joy-imparting, peace-producing, of all life's secrets.
Doubtless, Dr. Johnson meant to convey a very impressive counsel when he said that the habit of looking at the best side of every event was "far better than a thousand pounds a year," but we think he made a very low estimate of the value of that blessed faculty which lines all the clouds with silver.
Wealth cannot be computed by our actual possessions, but by the exorbitance or moderation of our desires; nor happiness gauged by the enjoyments within our grasp, but by those after which we aspire. Sunny temperaments smilingly deem whatever they receive sufficient, and neither their affluence nor their felicity have regard to pounds and pence, weights and measures. To them Poverty wears the graceful robes of Content, and would look no fairer in the diadem of luxury. To them the stream of sorrow is like that fountain of Anletus, which rose salted from the earth, but sweetened in its course, for their grief can have no lasting taste of bitterness. There is a clear, blue firmament in their souls where the star of Hope always shines, piercing the most noisome vapors that ascend from a pestilential world beneath.
Alas! how few is the number of these bright and brightening natures! How countless are the hosts of those who resolutely turn their eyes from the golden lights gleaming through the darkness of life's picture; who, with irrational perversity, augment all its shadows! who, when calamities threaten, experience all their anguish in anticipation; who, when sorrows really arrive, magnify their sum; and who, even when griefs are removed, cling to their sombre remembrance, and torture themselves with evoking phantoms of departed wo!
Sometimes this morbid tendency of the mind to "take trouble on interest," to multiply its actual amount, and conjure up its vanished ghosts, is inherent and hereditary. Then it gives birth to a demon, difficult, indeed, to exorcise, for his feet are planted among the deepest fibres of the heart, and his murky form rises in giant strength, and possesses the soul as a lawful home. Religion, Reason and Philosophy must unite in a powerful triad, and wage fierce war against the fiend before he can be cast out, and life's sunny side can be revealed to the spirit he has enslaved.
Sometimes this despondency of character is the offspring of sheer ingratitude, and a disregard of, or disbelief in, the perpetual guidance of an overruling Providence. Then is the daily punishment it entails no heavier than its sin, and the sunny side shall never be disclosed to these unthankful hearts until they are cleansed and illumined.
Sometimes this mental gloom springs from purely physical causes. D'Israeli takes a very prosaic, but common sense and useful view of the subject, when he says, "Our domestic happiness often depends upon the state of our biliary or digestive organs, and the little disturbances of conjugal life may be more efficaciously cured by the physician than the moralist." Happily the bilious mists that veil the sunshine from the eyes of this dismal class of beings may be dispelled by a few strokes of the cabalistic pen, and the sufferer find an open sesame to the sunny region conveyed in a medical prescription.
Oh! if we only believed that on the stormiest sea, in the dreariest night, the mysterious finger of Divine Providence is always pointing to some faint, far-off, beacon flame, which will grow larger and larger the more steadily we gaze, and become brighter and brighter as Faith takes her seat at the helm and guides our bark nearer and nearer, until we behold a luminous harbor of consolation rising out of the chaotic gloom, from how much hopeless anguish we should be shielded! If we could only be convinced that the saddest event has its sunny side, how many hours of groping in despairing darkness we should escape! If we would only resolutely use our eyes to search for that sunny side, how many tears they would be spared! If we could only accept the interpretation of the term happiness, which supposes it (in the words of Diana Muloch) "to consist in having our highest faculties most highly developed, and in use to their fullest extent," how quickly we should be numbered with the dwellers upon that glorious sunny-side of the earth!