| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 2 |
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We shall never become of much use in the world until we learn this lesson of always finding and encouraging the best. We shall never lift up any one to a higher, better life until we have found in him something to approve and commend. There are some men and women who wish to help others, to be of use to them, but work after a wrong method. They think they must eliminate the faults and defects which they find, and so they watch for things they cannot approve. They have keen eyes for specks – none are too small for them to see – but they never see the beautiful things in another. The Master refers to such persons in his teaching about motes and beams. He would have us look for the good, not the evil, in others.
There is not life so devoid of beauty and good that it has init nothing worthy of commendation. Ruskin found even in the mud of London streets the elements out of which gems are formed – the opal, the sapphire, the diamond. The love of Christ finds even in the moral refuse of this world possibilities of loveliness in character and heavenliness in life. We cannot do anything to help men by indulging in criticism and denunciation. We can call out the good in others only as the sun woos out the plants and flowers from the cold earth in the springtime – by its warmth. If the friends of Christ would cease their fault finding and become true friends of men, finding the smallest beginnings of virtue and encouraging them, the earth would soon be changed into a garden.
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