Living for the Best

r Best Under

the year before his death, "I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary. I have written in bed, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written worn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness. I am better now, and still few are the days when I am not in some physical distress.

d useful life is very similar

escott struggled with blindness as he prepared his volumes. Kitto was deaf from

d pressure. The most costly perfume that is known is the pure attar of roses, and one drop of it repr

best

earth about him

ade for contest," Stevenson said. We all are made for it. As we let the

nard in Switzerland. The snow was deep on every side, excepting on one little slope a few feet in width, exposed to the eastern sun. There, so close to the snow as almost

gh he came of religious ancestry, and though he heard much of the religious exercises of the temple, this call from God to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right, broke in upon his life as a disturbing force. The times were worldly, and even wrong. Nobles and princes, merchants, scholars, and priests had put the fear

ficulties after difficulties therefore, as they developed, must be faced. He stood at what we name "the parting of the ways"; if he did as God wished, his whole life must be give

ter. It was a choice with Jeremiah whether he would live unselfishly for God or selfishly for himself. That choice ordinarily is the supreme choice in every on

rove any one. Severe words were the last words he wished to speak. It would have been a relief to him if God had simply let him alone and imposed on others this duty of trying to make the people better. Some men

. Almost all the best workers in God's cause came into it reluctantly, and against the feeling that they were fitted for it. We are bidden ask the L

that he was different from themselves. They chafed under the contrast of their carelessness and his earnestness. He found himself left out of their pleasures and chilled by the

or a beginner in the religious life to resist the insinuating and depreciating remarks of near acquaintances than to face a mob. It must have cut Christ to the heart's core when his brethren said o

ssages of God. In Jerusalem he assured the people that if they did injustice, oppressed the poor, built themselves rich houses out of wages withheld from servants, made sacrifices to base idols, and strengthened the hands of evil-doers, God would bring a terrible overthrow upon them. Hi

no man stood with him," but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, he stood alone! It is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the deepest test of his

usury; yet every one of them doth curse me." Sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born! Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" But glad as he would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and glad as he would have been to h

. He therefore wrote his message on a roll, put it in the hands of a messenger, Baruch, and in due time that roll was carried into the king's presence by Baruch and read to the king. The king was sitting in his winter house. The weather was cold. A fire was burning before him in a brazier. As the king heard the words of Jeremiah that called him and the people to p

victions in estrangement or in opposition who give way when they hear that their words and actions are the subject of twitting and ridicule. "Who is this Jeremiah, and what are his words, that we should think of them a seco

est and most characteristic features of Jeremiah's character. The ordinary man, if he has made up his mind to retort or to ridicule, says to himself, "Now I will pour out my wrath on my adversary." But such was Jeremiah's self-control and peacefulness of temper that perhaps he would have erred on th

e there were cells. This was not very bad. Then, when Jeremiah still was true to his testimony, the king put him in the court of the guard, giving him a daily allowance of one little eastern bread-loaf. This also was not very bad. But later the king, when the princes claimed Jeremiah for the

ping up all about him. It never has been easy to die slowly and alone for the faith; to die for a testimony; to die for a message that involved others much more than one's self. All that was needed to protect him from pain and to preserve his life was silence. If Jeremiah would keep quiet all would be well. But for Jeremiah to keep quiet would be to prove disobedient to a sense of duty

n perish so terribly, and who realized, too, the desirability of preserving alive so wise a counselor, secured permission from the vacillating king to take rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the pit. "Put now these rags and wor

s bearing his full brunt of burden and loss. Then he was forced to go away from the land of his love and his tears to Egypt! He did not wish to go. H

the land of one's birth and of one's sacrifices becomes very dear. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" Into that deportation we cann

all his words predicting the destruction of the holy city and the captivity were fulfilled. They learned to revere his fidelity. They even called him "the greatest" of all their prophet

of faults." So was this man molded to his best out of faults of hesitation and unwillingness and impatience. N

this same order? And does not He realize all the stress through which a soul must pass that would fight its contest and advance to its best? Certainly He does. And when He lays a cross upon us,

es the best of himself under difficulties. We may well believe that to Christ likewise there is no h

Retaining th