oncerned primarily with being and
secondly with doing. It is righteousness inspired by love. It is
recognition of our responsibilities to do God's will.

Hence the best life is that which accepts life as opportunity, and
faithfully, happily seeks to make the most of it. It seeks to follow the
right, and to do the best it can, in any circumstances. It accepts all
that life offers, enjoying in moderation its varied gifts, but in
restraint of self-indulgence, and with kindly consideration of others.
It subordinates its impulses to the apprehended will of God, bears
trials with fortitude, and trusts eternal good.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

One of the most impressive sights in the natural world is the
difficulties resisted and overcome by a tree in its struggle for life.
On the very summit of the Sentinel Dome, over eight thousand feet above
sea-level, there is rooted in the apparently solid granite a lone pine
two feet in diameter. It is not tall, for its struggle with the wind and
snow has checked its aspirations, but it is sturdy and vigorous, while
the wonder is that it ever established and maintained life at all. Where
it gains its nourishment is not apparent. Disintegrated granite seems a
hard diet, but it suffices, for the determined tree makes the best of
the opportunities offered. Like examples abound wherever a crevice holds
any soil whatever. In a niche of El Capitan, more than a thousand feet
from the valley's floor, grows a tree a hundred feet high. A strong
glass shows a single tree on the crest of Half Dome. Such persistence is
significant, and it enforces a lesson we very much need.

Reason should not be behind instinct in making the most of life. While
man is less rigidly conditioned and may modify his environment, he, too,
may nourish his life by using to the full whatever nutriment is offered.
Lincoln has been characterized as a man who made the most of his life.
Perhaps his greatness consisted mostly in that.

We are inclined to blame conditions and circumstances for failures that
result from our lack of effort. We lack in persistence, we resent
disparity in the distribution of talents, we blink at responsibility,
and are slothful and trifling. Our life is a failure from lack of will.

Who are we that we should complain that life is hard, or conclude that
it is not better so? Why do we covet other opportunities instead of
doing the best with those we have? What is the glory of life but to
accept it wi