Some imaginations are trouble manufactories. They seem to have all the machinery for making trouble, and making the largest amount out of the least material. They have low spirits, sensitive nerves, self-distrusting dispositions, a wavering faith, a cautious heart, a faltering courage and a quick conscience. All this machinery running together will work up first-class troubles out of meager materials when put to this work. And any portion of this machinery is helpful in producing imaginary troubles when the world does not go quite well with us. We probably all of us have some of this machinery in our minds, so that when a little sick or discouraged, or over burdened, or weary, or unfortunate, we easily magnify our little trials into large ones and multiply the number of them in a similar ratio; then, by the weight of these imaginary burdens, our strength is sorely tried.

It must be admitted that many men make trouble for themselves out of whole cloth. They climb hills before they get to them, fall into snares that are never set for them, dread sicknesses that do not come, and suffer in fear accidents and misfortunes that never become real.

This is a tendency of some minds which ought to be resisted. Here is where ought comes in to help us look at things as they are, to shame us for our alarm and show us how we are well able to bear all real trouble with the Lord's help, and remind us we are not called upon to bear any that is unreal. If we could only have done away with making misfortunes, or fearing sickness when we are well, of dreading droughts and floods, frosts and heats, failure and poverty, when all signs and prospects are good, it would be such a lighting up of our way as would of itself give us merry hearts. To cure these sick imaginations, what is better than to stop and think of the folly and wrong of so torturing ourselves, and of the good cheer that would be always with us, if we would resolutely keep within us the "merry heart that maketh the cheerful countenance?" First Published: 1884