ON BEING STUNG

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 460, 15 September 1928, Page 8

ON BEING STUNG

THE QUIET CORNER.

Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner. / have been stung on innumerable occasions. Once, over the left eye ichen walking into an apiary near Mudgee, New South Wales, and again just below the crown of the head, one half an hour later, walking out. The greater number of the remainder of the stings I have received were not of the kind that responded to the application of a blue-bag. They ivere from my fellow-men, who, being up against it, or on the “outer,” as it is more commonly called, thought I was good for a few shillings. The only antidote 1 have found for these kind of stings has been from the contemplation of two lines, - inscribed upon a brass tablet on my study table: — Of all the sad thoughts which come to men , The saddest is this, Vm stung again. Now, there is another way of being stung, and that is with the splendour of a sudden thought which, out of the void comes and robs the very pollen from your soul. Such a thought as, for instance, must have stung Paul when he rightuibout-wheeled on the Damascus Road; or as put the inflammation of a burning seal into the heart of blind Milton, as he conceived the idea of “Paradise Lost." None so slow of thought but that once in a while such an experience is theirs, in proportion to their capacity for thinking. Last of all comes the sting to which Shakespeare referred when he said: — Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head. These stings are mostly for our good, providing we have the wisdom to discern, that “behind a froivning Providence, He hides a smiling face.” NEXT WEEK: SALESMANSHIP.