Despondency Its Quick Eye For Evils – Charles H Spurgeon

My friend Smith told me, that once on a time he had Mr. Jones to preach in his church. Smith’s church holds fifteen hundred people, and is perfectly filled by its congregation, of this circumstance Smith is pardonably proud. When Mr. Jones preached, the church was quite crowded, save that three seats (not pews, seats for a single person each) were vacant in a front gallery. But so keen was Mr. Jones’s eye for darks, to the oblivion of lights, that after service he merely said to Smith that he had remarked three seats empty in the gallery. Not one thought or word had he for the fourteen hundred and ninety-seven seats that were filled. Smith was a little mortified. But by-and-by he remembered that the peculiar disposition of Mr. Jones was one that would inflict condign punishment upon itself. Then he was sorry rather than angry. Yes, my friend, let us be glad if we have an eye for the lights of life, rather than for its darks!–Autumn Holidays of a country Parson.