LIFE’S PERSPECTIVE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5179, 27 October 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

LIFE’S PERSPECTIVE.

{Public Ledger- - Philadelphia.) The importance of little things is often and wisely urged. In one sense, indeed, nothing is little or trifling, for nothing is so small or insignificant as to exert no influence, or demand no attention. Yet much of the non-success and disappointment of life comes from a failure to discriminate between, things of vital and of minor importance. The habit of exaggerating little things, and allowing them to consume the energy that belongs to the weighty and serious business of life, is fatal to roal greatness in any direction. 'Everyone who has become eminent in any walk of life has been able to see the important points, and separate them from the web of details in which they may be involved. Life may bo said to resemble the painting of a landscape, in which no beauty of form or coloring, no delicacy of toflch or force of expression can atone for the lack of true perspective. . Unless the objects represented assume such proportions as to convey to the mind a sense of their relative distance, the picture is {v failure; and unless our lives show asimilar

discrimination, they will be equally worthless. The value of our time and talents will greatly depend upon the degree to which we observe these proportions. There are people of good abilities and great diligence who rarely seem to reap the natural fruits of their labor, beCfttisc tli6V ar© bo intent up©n. little „d©t&ils tuiit they lose sight of their main objects. The merchant who occupies every moment in the minuti® of his business that his subordinates can do as well ; the master mechanic who works so hard with his own hands that he overlooks the dilatoriness of 100 others; the mother so engaged in providing needless luxuries for her family that she has no energy left to develop the minds and affections of her children ; the teacher who is so intent on conveying technical instruction that ha has no time to instil the love of knowledge ; the statesman so occupied with local politics that he forgets the best interests of his country—all in fact, who employ themselves continually in what is .inferior, to the neglect of the superior, are guilty of this lack of perspective. They confuse the small and the great, the near and the remote, and their lives are to that extent flat and unmeaning. So it is with expenditure. How few there are who carry the laws of prospective into their disbursements, who place in the foreground the more important needs of our nature, and pencil lightly in the distance the least worthy, who spend for health and comfort rather than for fashion and luxury, who plan to feed the mind as well as the body, to beautify the character as well as to adorn the dwelling, to place in rightful order, with a firm hand, all these many claims that rise up, each so anxious to maintain its own supremacy! Then, too, it is by giving prominence to the little vexations and troubles of life that so many lives are worn out, so many friendships broken, so many miseries inflicted. Great troubles call for strong self-control, and are often borne with equanimity, when petty irritations are suffered to corrode the temper and embitter the soul. Yet when wa compare them with the real griefs of human existence how trifling do they appear, and how unworthy a part do we seem to have played in thus bringing them into the foreground of our lives ! Had we been true artists we should have gently drawn them iu shadow, or put them far into the background, where they could not have marred the beauty of our life’s landscape. An even greater injury results from the confused ideas which are prevalent in estimating right and wrong actions. Mistakes and errors are put upon a par with grave faults. Children are often censured more severely for a thoughtless act that gives trouble or mortification than for a serious offence against truth or justice. Thus they also learn false perspective, and acquire the habit of measuring their actions by the immediate trouble or pleasure which results, instead of by their intrinsic qualities and the motives which prompt them. A clear view of the true character of actions would at once put an end to most of the backbiting, slander, and gossip which now pollute so many lips. The smaller faults of our neighbors on which we descant with so much fluency would then sink to their true level of insignificance, and we should stand abashed at having drawn them into such unjust prominence. The chief cause of this confusion and false arrangement is that we drift, instead of stemming the current of our lives. We accept without question the popular standard we see erected, and the first crude impressions we receive. Did we but pause to examine, to sift, to investigate, to put all things to the test of sound reason and a pure heart, we should soon become able to recognise the relative proportion of truths and duties, and to give them their just places in the perspective of life.