---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Christenson, A. B.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 22
number: 4
published: 1919-02
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Christenson, A. B., "The Chronic Doubter," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 4 (February 1919): 313.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2204unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera2204unse
start_page: 313
end_page: 313
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1919-02)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2204unse
  publication_year: 1919
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1919, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Chronic Doubter

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The Chronic Doubter

"I    know not what betides me           Till every hope   seems blighted,
     Or why my soul, depressed,            And life a wilderness,
Yearns on amid the shadows               Mirage and mist united;
  Of life and finds no rest;               Few friends     to cheer or bless."
Or why the sun when shining
     Sends not his cheering ray
                                         ^    rf     gad ffiend     ^    j   ,




Into    my heart, repining,               Your clouds are but the billows
     As on through life I stray.           Of fog and mist and haze,
                                         Which rise from doubts within you,
"I find no joy in service,                  And darken all your days;
  To 'common' man so sweet,               Like motley fish in ocean,
Though flowers in twining garlands          Pursued by aught of harm,
     Lie on and at at my feet.            Sends out an oose to hide it,
I see   not with my neighbor,               You drift through sea and storm.
  Nor feel the ruddy glow                 If y'd see the light   and glory
That comes from love and labor              of heaven and earth anew,
     To mortals here below.               And read life's teeming story
                                            Of conquests real and true;
"My days are but the setting              Then banish now, forever,
     Of suns that never rise,               Your myths of doubt and fear,-
And all my studied getting                And fight life's storms and battles,
     But makes me more unwise;              In faith, out in the clear.
                                                          A. B. Christenson
Hinckley, Utah