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Contents

Chapter 1: An Invitation

Chapter 2: Try Love’s Way

Chapter 3: The Greatest Thing in the World

Chapter 4: Making Life A Song

Chapter 5: The Dream of Brotherhood

Chapter 6: Driving Away What We Long for Most

Chapter 7: Employers and Employees

Chapter 8: Spite Fences

Chapter 9: Work and Happiness

Chapter 10: Practising Love’s Way

Chapter 11: Training the Child

Chapter 12: How to Lighten Your Burdens

Chapter 13: Survival Value

Chapter 14: The Miracle Worker

Chapter 15: Our Little Brothers and Sisters

Chapter 16: The Thing That Makes A Home

Chapter 17: "Stranger, Why Should I Not Speak to You?"

Chapter 18: "I Serve the Strongest"

Chapter 19: The Daily Orientation

Chapter 20: Scatter Your Flowers As You Go

Chapter 21: Love Letters from God

Chapter 22: The Harmony Bath

Chapter 23: Heroism at Home

Chapter 24: What the Bee Teaches Us

Chapter 25: Love's Way and Christmas Giving

Endnotes

NEW YORK

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Chapter 1: An Invitation

If your life were wasting away from a painful disease which physicians pronounced "incurable," and a master physician should appear who declared there was no such thing as an "incurable" disease, and that he would heal you and all sufferers who would go to him, would you not go to him?

Did you ever realize that you have a personal invitation from One who can lift you out of all your sufferings, physical and mental; who can solve all your problems and difficulties?

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Is not that a personal invitation from the divine physician, Love? And if you accept it, with all that it means, you will realize that peace which "passeth all understanding." Your cares and difficulties will melt and dissolve as snow melts and dissolves under the sun's rays.

Are you suffering from a painful disease, from dire poverty, from crushing disappointments, from injustice or persecution, from disgrace, merited or unmerited — from any of the thousand and one things that fill the world with misery and unhappiness — then listen to Love's call, accept the divine invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Modern thought is putting a new meaning into the invitation. It is extending the application of Christ's words to every human problem. He put no limitations to his invitation, which is the voice of Divine Love, calling to us. It says:

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will relieve you from the drudgery of your labor, because I will put a new spirit in you. I will replace your sense of drudgery with joy in your task, with love of service; I will turn you about so that you will face the light and your shadows will no longer haunt you because they will fall behind you.

"Come unto me and I will give you rest from that incubus of fear that has made you a slave in the past; I will relieve you from anxiety and worry which have cut down your efficiency and made a pygmy out of a possible giant. I will take away the fear of death, the fear of sickness, the fear of inherited disease, all the fears that hold you down and break your spirit.

"Come unto me all ye who are unhappy and I will make you glad. No matter what darkens your horizon or troubles your life, come to me, and I will give you rest. I will satisfy your yearnings, the longings of your heart; I will show you your divinity.

"Come unto me all ye who are disappointed in life, whose ambitions have been thwarted and I will show you how to overcome your disappointment. I will show you how to use your divine power so that you may still make good.

"Come unto me, ye who are held back by ill health, by bodily weakness, by physical handicaps from doing what you longed to do, and I will show you how to be well, how to be strong. I will show you that being God's child, and therefore one with your Father you cannot be sick, you cannot be weak or miserable except through wrong thinking. The truth of your being, the reality of you, being divine, cannot suffer pain, or defeat.

"Come unto me all ye who have botched your lives and I will show you how you may still triumph. I will show you that the reality of you is always triumphant, masterful. I will show you that one who holds the right mental attitude, who realizes his divine power can rise above all his mistakes and failures.

"Come unto me all ye that have been discouraged, defeated in life, and I will give you the truth that makes free from all limitation, free from the limitations of poverty, of failure, the limitations of the flesh, for I will show you the mind triumphant, the victorious attitude.

"Come unto me all ye whose aspirations have been blighted, whose ideals have been blurred, whose visions have faded out, and I will revive them, bring them back to the brightness and promise of your palmier days.

"Come unto me all ye that are dejected, despondent, wandering in the darkness, and I will put a new spirit in you, a new lamp in your path. I will flood your souls with glory, with the light that never was on land or sea.

"Come unto me all ye who feel friendless and alone and I will fill your lives with a new interest, with new friendships, which will never fail, never grow wearisome.

"Come unto me all ye who are diffident, self-conscious, bashful, timid, or self-depreciatory, who do not believe in yourselves, and I will show you how to rid yourself of all of these weaknesses. I will show you how to eliminate all defects which strangle self-expression, rob you of power and happiness, and hinder you in your effort to do your best and to appear at your best.

"Come unto me all ye that worry and fear and I will give you a prescription which will heal you. I, Divine Love, will show you that it is ignorance of your locked-up powers in the great within of you that makes you a worrier, a coward, or a weakling; that all who trust me, who come to me, have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. "Come unto me all ye that bicker and fight, all ye that backbite and hate, all ye that are torn with jealousy, hatred, envy, and I will show ye that you are brothers and cannot fight when you know the truth of your kinship, or envy or hate or injure one another without fighting, hating, envying or injuring yourselves.

"Come unto me all ye that are greedy, grasping, selfish, and I will show you a better way, something that pays better than greed, something infinitely more satisfying than selfishness. I will make you so ashamed of your selfishness that you will hate it, that it will pain you to live in luxury while your brothers and sisters are hungry and cold.

"Come unto me all ye who are victims of indecision, who doubt and hesitate, who weigh and balance and reconsider things all the time, and I will show you how to strengthen your will, how to conquer vacillation.

"Come unto me all ye who have yielded to temptation, who have made grievous mistakes, and been punished by society for your wrong-doing, and I will wash your souls whiter than snow. I will show you that no matter what you may have done in the past you can retrieve your mistakes, and still make good; I will show you that the image of your Maker is still intact, that it has never been marred, scarred or stained, that the reality of you today is perfect, pure and true as it ever was.

"Come unto me all ye who are the slaves of habits which have blasted your hopes, blighted your happiness, thwarted your ambition, and cast their black shadows across your life, and I will show you how to break away from the things which are ruining you. I will show you how to free yourself from all evil habits — intemperance, impurity, lying, dishonesty, gambling, the drug habit, whatever it is that is thwarting God's purpose in you.

"Come unto me all ye who are down and out, homeless, moneyless, friendless, outcasts from society, and I will show you that you are right now living in a paradise of a world, that perpetual miracles are being performed all about you, more wonderful than the raising of the dead, that you have wealth in yourself, untold wealth. I will show you that you still have that which will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, will show you that your real wealth can never be lost because this is God-wealth, divine riches."

Love is the great leveling up force of the world. Nothing else has ever made such a tremendous appeal to those who have botched their lives and thrown away their chances, those whose lives have been blasted by ignorance, by sin or other unfortunate conditions. Love does not condemn, does not criticize, does not judge, does not punish, does not ostracize, does not exclude. This is not love's way. To the worst criminal, to the most degraded sinner, it simply says "Go and sin no more." This is its only condemnation.

Love's way is Christ's way. It says, "Love your enemies, bless those that curse you;" "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone"; and on this condition no one can cast a stone because there is no one without sin, no one without some weakness as unfortunate as his neighbor's.

Love is the only force in the universe that can say:

"I am that marvelous force which has made civilization possible. I have led the human race un from the ape stage to its present development, and I will lead it to heights yet undreamed of.

"I am that power which causes human beings of the most diverse temperaments to live together in peace and harmony; which makes home so beautiful, a heaven on earth.

"I am that force which enables a man to find his real self, which transforms a brutal, ignorant man into a tender-hearted, sympathetic, loving husband and father.

"I am that spirit which is getting into great business establishments and making them cleaner, lighter, more wholesome, more liveable places; that spirit which is making employees happier, more efficient, more contented.

"I am that leaven which is changing the spirit of mankind, bringing men nearer and nearer to the Christ spirit, the Golden Rule ideal. I am making brothers of former enemies, and bringing the realization of the great dream of brotherhood of man ever nearer.

"I am that power which is making comfortable and happy deformed and crippled children; little ones who in former ages would be thrown to wild beasts, or left to the mercy of fate, to die of neglect and starvation. I am that power which establishes orphan asylums, insane asylums, and all sorts of homes, for the aged, for the dependent, and for helpless dumb animals.

"My mission on earth is to help, to heal, to uplift, to bring cheer and comfort, happiness to every one of God's children. I am the good Samaritan who heals the wounds which the selfish, the hard-hearted pass by with indifference. I am the spirit behind the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and all other organizations of mercy. I am the power back of all movements which are for the betterment of the world, the upliftment of man.

"I am the great fundamental law of progress, the truth that shall make you free. I am the essence of all true religion, of all that is valuable in all creeds. I am the Christ spirit, the Golden Rule; I am that force which is tying human beings together in one grand cooperative, solidarity.

"I am the spirit of courage, that which keeps men from playing the coward when sorely tempted to do so, which bids them go on when they would turn back. I appeal especially to the down and outs, to those who are discouraged, those who think they are nobodies. I am a friend to the downtrodden, to the neglected, the despairing. I bring them new hope, new courage, new life.

"I am that force which has liberated the slaves of all the nations; of the earth, which has given freedom of conscience and freedom of thought to all men. I am that which is humanizing the hard-hearted, slave-driving employer, killing his selfish grasping greed, and showing him that all men are brothers. I am that which shows you that your neighbor is yourself, and that you, therefore, must love him as yourself.

"I am that which takes the sting out of sorrow and the bitterness out of disappointment; that which heals the broken heart, breathes hope to the discouraged, and good cheer to the despondent.

"I am that which blesses where others curse, loves where others hate, forgets and forgives where others remember and condemn. I am that which yields where others strive; that which makes people enjoy what others own, because I neutralize envy and covetousness. Anger, hatred, bitterness, jealousy, envy, discontent, cannot live an instant in my presence, because I neutralize everything which is unlike myself.

"I am the great miracle worker in the world's history. I am that which lifts ideals; which takes the sordidness out of life, which urges people to be and to do instead of to have and to hold.

"I am that benign power which transforms quarreling, jealous, envious neighbors and makes them live together like brothers and sisters. I heal family discords, jealousies and hatreds. I make quarreling, discordant partners friends. I neutralize the sting in cruel sarcasm and bitter invective. I take the dagger out of insults and quench the fire of hot temper. I cure all resentment, all feeling of hate, bitterness and malice.

"I am that which dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High. I am the healing balm for the nations. I am the balm in Gilead for all human woes. I am that divine understanding which makes the mother see in her wayward son not the criminal, but the divine man that God planned, and that it is still possible for him to be. When everybody else condemns the outcast, I call halt, and say, 'Wait, there is a God in that man somewhere.' "I am the comforter of the condemned, who visits the prisoner in his cell, and lifts him out of his despair. I light up the darkness of all condemned, assuage grief, give hope to the forlorn. I am here especially for those who have lost hope. I revive their courage, give them heart to make a new start.

"I am the voice of God, crying to his children — 'Come unto me all ye that are downcast, discouraged, despairing, who think your ambitions are thwarted, and that there is no more hope for you, come unto me and I will renew your lives. I am a reviver of lost visions, a renewer of faded dreams, a resurrector of dead ambitions, a savior for all who accept my invitation.'

"I am that sacred messenger who was detailed at your birth to go with you through life as your counsellor, your protector, your guide, your friend. If you have wandered away from me, lost your way on the life path, come back, and I will give you strength to make a fresh beginning and to be the man or woman God intended you to be. I will never fail you.

"I will show you that the divinity of man is beyond the reach of poverty or failure, or any possible disgrace or crime; that the God image in man is perfect, immortal; that it never had beginning and will never have an end; nor can any power in heaven or earth take it away from a man, contaminate or injure it, because the God in man is immune from any disaster or misfortune that could possibly come to him. It is indestructible.

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you the rest for which your soul yearns."

Chapter 2: Try Love’s Way

One who has tried love's way in working out life's problems says, "I find it a charm. It is a preventive against sin, disease, unhappiness, and brings with it health and prosperity."

If those of us who are living in inharmony of any sort would only try love's way, even for a short time, we never could be induced to go back to the old way of living. We could never again be satisfied with the old scolding, jealous, anxious, fault-finding, slave-driving, worrying ways.

Why not try the experiment? You who have been tortured and torn to pieces for years with hot tempers, with worry, with fear, with hatred and ill will; you who have already committed suicide on many years of your life, why not turn your back on all this and try love's way?

You whose home life has been a bitter disappointment; you husbands and wives who have quarreled, who have never known what peace and comfort are, give love's way a trial. It will not disappoint you. Love will smooth out all your wrinkles, it will put a new spirit into your home that was never there before, it will bring a new light into your eyes, new hope and new joy into your heart.

You whose lives have been lonely and barren, who, perhaps, have soured on life; you doubters, you skeptics, you pessimists, you who have tried the selfish way, the greedy way, who have sought only your own happiness, you who have tried the fretting way, the worrying way, you whose lives are filled with fear and jealousy and all sorts of discords, why not try love's way?

All other ways than love's have failed to bring happiness. The selfish way always will fail, because it is not in harmony with the law of God, with eternal principle. Love's way is. It harmonizes with all that is real, all that is true and beautiful, and it always works. It will unravel all your snarls and solve all your problems.

There is a better way for all you, who, so far, have found life a bitter disappointment. There is a better way for all who bear the scars and stains of strife, who have been battered and buffeted by the old way, in which there has been no rest, no harmony, no sweetness. It is love's way. Try it for every trouble, for every hurt and sorrow, for every difficult problem that confronts you.

You mothers who have worn yourselves to a frazzle and prematurely aged yourselves in trying to bring up your children by scolding, nagging, punishing, driving, why not try love's way instead? You can love your boys and girls into obedience and respect much more quickly and with far better results to them and to yourself than by driving them; appeal to their best and noblest instincts instead of their worst, and you will be surprised to see how quickly and readily they will respond to your appeal.

There is something in human nature which protests against being driven or forced. If you have been trying to force your boys and girls in the past, give it up and try the new way, love's way. See if it does not work wonders in your home. See if it will not make your domestic machinery run much more smoothly. See if it will not wonderfully relieve the strain upon yourself. Give love's way a trial.

Forced work, forced obedience, never brings the best results. I know a man who is so wrought up all the time by trying to regulate everybody and everything to his individual pattern, to bring everybody to his way of thinking, and to do things just as he does them, that there is no living in peace with him. His children fairly dread his home coming. No matter what they are doing it is wrong. He is sure to blame his wife and the servants for something they did or did not do. He makes himself and everybody else in the home miserable by his narrowness and his domineering spirit.

The same thing is true in his business. Nothing suits him. He is always grumbling, finding fault, nagging, discouraging his employees. He doesn't know that a little bit of encouragement and praise when they do well would accomplish infinitely more than all his scolding, fretting, stewing and fault-finding, to which they have become so accustomed that it has no effect other than to disgust and make them uncomfortable.

The habit of trying to control people, bossing them, trying to make them do things our way, the habit of keeping everlastingly after our children, with don'ts and shouldn'ts, and musts, trying to force our life partner, our associates, our employees, to do things according to our ideas, the habit of contradicting and calling people down, of trying to regulate everybody and get all into line, is destructive of all mental harmony. It saps your energies, injures your disposition, and antagonizes all who come in contact with you.

Love's way is the very opposite of this. It is broad and generous, just, magnanimous. It respects the rights and feelings of others. Love does not try to correct defects, to change undesirable qualities or tendencies by continually calling attention to them and finding fault. It simply neutralizes them. Love drives those defects and bad qualities out of the nature just as the sun drives the darkness out of a room when the shutters are flung open.

If there is discord in your home, you will be delighted to find how quickly love's way will drive out the darkness, and let in the light of harmony. It will change the atmosphere in your family as if by magic. It will bring a new spirit into your home, and soon helpful relations will take the place of antagonistic ones. Let sympathy and kindness take the place of scolding and nagging, and you will work a revolution in your household. Generous, wholehearted, unstinted praise, now and then, will act like lubricating oil on dry squeaky machinery, and its reflex action on yourself will be magical.

Try love's way, you men who have been lording it over your families, bullying and browbeating your wives and children, using slave-driving methods in your home. You know that this old brutal way has not brought you happiness or satisfaction; you have always been disappointed with it, then why not try the new philosophy, try love's way? It is the great cure-all, it is the Christ remedy which is leavening the world.

Try it, you fault-finding, scolding housewife. Instead of nagging your family, fretting and stewing from morning till night, blaming, upbraiding, complaining, try love's way. Instead of berating a maid before your guests when she accidentally breaks a piece of china, put yourself in her place, try to realize her embarrassment, and pass over the mishap cheerfully. Then, in private, give her a gentle word of caution. She will be more careful in the future. If your laundress returns a piece of smirched linen, or if her work is not quite so well done as it was the last time, don't give her a brutal scolding. Harsh treatment will only make her sullen and unhappy, but you will find her very susceptible to kindness and gentle words.

You men and women who have never been able to get good help, who are driven to desperation with the wicked breakage and wastage of your employees; you who have suffered torture in your struggle with dishonesty and inefficiency, whose faces are furrowed with cruel wrinkles and prematurely aged in trying to fight evil with evil, try love's way.

Try it, all you who are worn out with the discord and the hagglings, the trials and tribulations you encounter everyday in your business. It will create a new spirit in your store, your factory, your office. Whatever your business, whatever your trials and difficulties, love will ease the jolts of life and smooth your way miraculously. Try love's way all you who have hitherto lived in purgatory because you did not know this better way.

Near Grant's Tomb in New York, on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson, is a little marble monument over a century old. It was erected to a little four-year-old boy who was so genial and lovable that everybody who knew him loved him, and it bears this simple inscription, "An amiable child." This is the whole story of the little life, which must have been a beautiful illustration of love's way, for love is always amiable.

Love's way includes everything that is beautiful, everything that is kind and good and clean and true, everything that is worth having. It carries no regrets, it never leaves us sorry. It is pure as the life of a little child. There is always an Amen of the soul to all its acts. Love's way always leads us aright, because it is the God way.

Try love's way, it holds the great secret of happiness.

Chapter 3: The Greatest Thing in the World

Love is the life of the soul, It is the harmony of the Universe. — Channing.

Dictionaries give half a column to the definition of love. In three words, the Bible gives us all its limitless meaning: "God is love.”

God is infinite; therefore love is infinite, and includes in itself all God's attributes. Life without love is valueless.

By the common consent of mankind in all the ages, the most beautiful thing on this earth, that which every human being has ever craved most, is love. It is, as Henry Ward Beecher said, "the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths — not until then can you know what love is.”

Somewhere I have read the story of a sunbeam that had heard there were places on the earth so horrible, so dark, dismal and gloomy that it was impossible to describe them. The sunbeam resolved to find these places, and started on its journey with lightning speed. It visited the caverns of the earth. It glided into sunless homes, into dark alleys, into underground cellars; it wandered everywhere in its quest to see what the darkness was like, but the sunbeam never found the darkness because wherever it went it carried its own light with it. Every spot it visited, no matter how dark and dismal before its entry, was brightened and cheered by its presence.

The sun is a beautiful symbol of love. It sends its cheering, life-giving ray into the wretched hovel, into the prison cell, as impartially as into the palace; it gives itself as unstintingly, as joyously to the worst criminal, to the poorest wretch who crawls the earth in rags, as to the monarch on his throne. It is no respecter of persons. It shines upon the just and the unjust alike. It does not ask whose corn, whose potatoes, whose roses, whose homes it shall shine upon. It asks no question about earth's races, about our principles, our politics, our religious beliefs or convictions. It shines upon good and bad, upon believer and unbeliever, upon all nationalities, all races, the white, the black, the brown, the yellow. It has no hatred of, no prejudice toward, any human being. It simply floods every nook and corner of the earth it can get into. The most poisonous swamps, the most miasmatic bogs, the filthiest holes, the haunts of the vilest creatures, — it pours its light and beauty and joy unstintedly upon all.

Like the sun love irradiates and warms into life all that it touches. It is to the human heart what the sun is to the rose. It brings out all the fragrance and beauty, all the color and richness, all the possibilities infolded in it. Love brings out all that is best in us, because it appeals to the noblest sentiments, the loftiest ideals. True love elevates, purifies, and strengthens every heart it touches. It lifts us above ourselves because it sees only the best in us. It looks back of weakness, back of criminality, back of our deficient image of ourselves, back of our conviction of our weakness, of our inferiority, and sees the divine that is within us, waiting to be called out. It unlocks our nature and releases wonderful powers which had been buried so deep that we were unconscious of them.

Love sees God in the worst human ruin. It gives everybody a chance. No human being has ever yet forfeited the chance to try again. When nothing else is left, when life is full of bitterness and anguish, the thief, the murderer, the failure, the outcast, turns to love and finds a refuge, for "Love never faileth." It is to every human being what mother love is to the erring child. No son or daughter has ever fallen so low as to get beyond a mother's love. No man or woman can ever get beyond the redemptive power of love. It is the sovereign remedy for all ills.

The mother doesn't ask "Which is my best child?" and confer her favors upon that one above all the others. No, she loves them all. If there is any difference, she gives the most love to the one who needs it most, — the weakest, the most delicate, the one least favored by nature, the cripple, the deformed or defective. Love's delight is in helping the unfortunate and raising the fallen. When troubles come and fairweather friends have deserted you; when your business is ruined; when you have made fatal mistakes and society Has closed its doors on you; when everybody else rejects and denounces you, when everything else has failed, then love comes and stands by you, pours oil on your wounds, and helps you get on your feet again.

Love judges no one, condemns no one. It always pleads for mercy for the man or the woman who has gone astray on the life path. It says, "don't condemn that poor wretch, there is a God in him somewhere"; and to the fallen woman, "Neither do I condemn thee: Go and sin no more." It follows the worst sinner and the most hardened criminal to the grave, and beyond.

Love has worked the greatest miracles in the world's history. We have all seen the transformation it has wrought in a coarse, ignorant, brutal life, when a youth on the very toboggan slide toward destruction has fallen in love with some sweet, beautiful girl, who returns his love. In a short time his life has cleared up; it has been lifted up by the regenerating power of love. One by one his vicious habits have been replaced by their opposites, and he has become a new man.

Where every other reformative agency fails, love succeeds, because it touches the higher springs of life, as nothing else can. It is intuitive because it is sympathetic, and has a way of reaching down to the heart of things impossible to the soul not guided by it. Again and again it transforms the most vicious natures, eliminates the brute, and calls out the finest and highest qualities in a man or woman. No power can resist the love force; nothing can destroy it. Poverty cannot stifle it; neglect cannot weaken it; disgrace cannot kill it. The drunken, brutal sot cannot blot it out of the heart of the devoted wife; ingratitude' cannot quench its flame in the. mother's heart.

It is performing miracles in our prisons; and on the battlefield it is a ministering angel. Its representative, the Red Cross organization, is showing us the meaning of God's love, in binding up the wounds of friend and enemy alike. Right or wrong, no matter on which side they fight, love recognizes no nationality, sees only God's children in all the wounded and dying soldiers.

Love overcometh fear, because it is the antidote of fear. It is the only power that can conquer this, the greatest human curse, which has caused man more suffering than any other one thing. Love blesses where others curse; remembers where others forget; forgives where others condemn; gives where others withhold. "Love takes the sting from disappointments and sorrow; it breathes music into the voice, into the footsteps; it gives worth and beauty to the commonest office; it surrounds home with an atmosphere of moral health; it gives power to effort and wings to progress, it is omnipotent."

Love is the great mind opener, the great heart opener and life enricher, the great developer. It is what holds society together; it is the Christ spirit which is leavening the world. The only thing which is universally understood, which speaks all languages, all dialects, which is an open book to the most ignorant, those who do not know their letters, who cannot write their own names, is love. Even though they do not understand each other's native tongue, two people meeting anywhere on earth understand the language of love as spoken by each other. The only thing which makes life endurable, which takes the drudgery out of work, the suffering out of pain, the deprivation out of poverty, is love.

There is no other experience in our lives that ever gives the satisfaction, the joy that comes from loving and being loved in return. What greater happiness can there be than giving happiness to those who appreciate it, those who love us and are devoted to us? The human heart was made for love, — and everyone can draw to himself as much as he sends out. Love's happiness lies in making others happy. Love was born a twin and cannot be happy alone. It must share everything it has with others. It is never selfish, never envious, never grasping or greedy. In business, love always takes account of the man at the other end of the bargain. It is always fair, and just. It never takes advantage of, or injures another. Love is always generous, helpful, kind.

In his incomparable little book, "The Greatest Thing in the World," Henry Drummond analyzes the love spectrum. "Love is a compound thing, Paul tells us," he writes. "As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors, red and blue and yellow and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow, so Paul passes love through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements.

"The Spectrum or the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common names; that they are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up? Patience; 'Love suffereth long.' Kindness; 'And is kind.' Generosity; 'Love envieth not.' Humility; 'Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.' Courtesy; 'Doth not behave itself unseemly.' Unselfishness; 'Seeketh not her own.' Good Temper; 'Is not easily provoked.' Guilelessness; 'Thinketh no evil.' Sincerity; 'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.'"

Drummond said that Paul's thirteenth chapter, First Corinthians, is the greatest love poem ever written. When he lectured to Evangelist Moody's students in Northfield, Massachusetts, he asked, "How many of you students will join me in reading this chapter once a week for the next three months? A man did that once and it changed his whole life. Will you do it? Will you?"

There are only thirteen short verses in this chapter on which Henry Drummond lays so much stress. It can be committed to memory in a very short time; and if anyone will do this and repeat it understandingly everyday, there is no doubt that it will revolutionize his life.

Chapter 4: Making Life A Song

At a symposium in St. Andrew's Methodist Church in New York, the pastor asked opinions on the best safeguards to temptation in the city. Among the written replies to the question by many well-known people, including Rabindranath Tagore, Andrew Carnegie, Oscar L. Strauss, Arthur Brisbane, Lyman Abbott, Misha Applebaum, Henrietta Crosman, and others, this of Henrietta Crosman was pronounced the best, — "Recognizing God as a present and practical help."

"Henrietta Crosman puts it well," said the pastor, "when she says, 'recognizing God in all our affairs.'" In other words, when we recognize God, who is love, in all our affairs, our life is stabilized and strengthened; we are protected against evil and magnetized to draw all that is good to us.

If Miss Crosman's suggestion were adopted, not only by young people struggling amid the temptations of a great city, but by all people, young and old, in every condition, in city and country alike, what a lot of misery would be avoided! How much happier we should all be!

How many of us make our lives miserable by continued grumbling about our environment, our work, our neighbors, our condition generally, because we don't recognize God in all our affairs!

I know a woman who is always running down her town and the people in it. She has no kinship with them. She feels above them. She never has become reconciled to her environment; she says it is a shame to be obliged to bring up children in such a dead, God-forsaken place, where people have no ideals, and, of course, she is discontented and unhappy.

Now, the trouble is not with the town, but with the woman. She does not hold the right mental attitude toward her neighbors; she is not animated by the love spirit. She has lived in a number of towns which other inhabitants thought were very good, but in which she was no happier than she is now.

The root of this woman's discontent, as it is of many others, is petty social ambition. She is a climber; always trying to break into the society of people socially above her, those who have a great deal more money than she has. And because she cannot keep up with them, she makes herself and her family miserable by condemning the whole place and the people in her own class. She considers herself above them, and we all know how a woman who holds herself superior to everybody in her neighborhood will be treated. Her neighbors, naturally enough, dislike her, and show their resentment in all sorts of disagreeable ways.

Many people are always in discord with their environment because they do not recognize God in all their affairs. Instead they waste an immense amount of time and energy in fretting and useless resisting, which could be used in bettering their condition.

If you are a fretter, a worrier, a pessimist, you will succumb to your unfortunate environment and be a nonentity in the world. If you are cheerful, hopeful, and an optimist in spite of hard conditions, your life will not be a failure no matter how inhospitable your surroundings. To recognize the God in yourself and your environment is to be already a winner.

No matter in what environment we are compelled to be, we should try to get into harmony with it sufficiently to enable us to work smoothly, without the friction which exhausts and tears down. Friction in the human system is like sand in a piece of delicate machinery, which grinds and wears out the bearings much more quickly than the regular work which the machine is intended to perform.

No one can be happy or do good work while holding an antagonistic, pessimistic mental attitude. Pessimists are always knockers, and knockers are destroyers, not builders. The optimist is the builder, the one who holds the right spirit, the mental attitude that improves conditions and attracts sympathy and helpfulness from others.

If your work or your environment is distasteful, begin at once to change it by fitting yourself for a better position or a higher sphere. Antagonizing, worrying, fault-finding will only make things worse, may drive you from that which you feel is beneath you, to a still lower strata of work, a poorer, more uncongenial environment.

To go through life fretting, fuming, knocking your environment, your neighbors, your work, is to drive away the very things you want to attract. The way to change conditions is to make friends with them. The non-resistance philosophy helps you to economize your life forces, to store reserve energies, instead of dissipating them. It helps you to do the thing you want to do. It is working with God instead of against Him. It is recognizing Him in your affairs.

I recently came across the following lines somewhere, and they made a strong impression on me:

"I am not fighting my fight, I am singing my song."

They express all the difference between those who have soured on life, who are always complaining of their lot, and look upon their work as hateful drudgery, and those who, whatever happens, sing their song, look upon life with a cheerful eye and find joy in their job.

The optimist makes life poetry, a song, the pessimist, with the same material, makes it dry, dreary prose.

What we get out of life depends upon how we look at it. Our mental attitude determines whether we shall be happy or miserable, whether we make life music or discord.

Some people have a faculty for touching the wrong keys; from the finest instrument they extract only discord. They sound the note of pessimism everywhere. All their songs are in a minor key. Everything is looking down. The shadows predominate in all their pictures. There is nothing bright, cheerful or beautiful about them. Their outlook is always gloomy; times are always hard and money tight. Everything in them seems to be contracting; nothing growing or expanding in their lives.

With others it is just the reverse. They cast no shadows. They radiate sunshine. Every bud they touch opens its petals and flings out its fragrance and beauty. They never approach you but to cheer; they never speak to you but to inspire. They scatter flowers wherever they go. They have that happy alchemy which turns prose into poetry, ugliness to beauty, discord to melody. They see the best in people and say pleasant and helpful things about them.

One man will put his very soul into the most unattractive calling and not only lift it to dignity, but by infusing into it the soul of an artist, make it radiant with beauty, while another will degrade the loftiest and most dignified vocation into drudgery, and make the grandest profession seem undesirable.

Some women shed such a radiance of good cheer, comfort and beauty through the humblest homes, homes with bare floors and pictureless walls, that they are transformed into palaces. They radiate a light through the poverty of their surroundings that never was on sea or land. They radiate the sweetness of love, which transforms and beautifies the humblest and homeliest surroundings, while other women cannot make an attractive home with a million dollars. In the midst of their expensive tapestry and costly works of art there is an inharmoniousness, a lack of that brightness and cheerfulness which come from an exquisite taste, born of a sense of the fitness of things, and a heart that beats warm with helpfulness and love.

If the heart is right, we can make the most trifling thing, the simplest act or duty beautiful, but if the heart is not right, nothing in the life will be true, or fine, or uplifting.

The one who faces life the right way, who is cheerful, hopeful, always expecting the best to come to him because he believes in the fatherhood of God, from whom all good things come, will increase his ability tremendously. His mental attitude will call out resources which the calamity howler, the pessimist loses, because his mental attitude closes his nature instead of opening it up. He negatives his mind, and hence greatly lessens his productive power. If we would only cultivate the optimistic spirit, the hopeful way of looking at things that should be natural to the children of an all-powerful Father, we could increase our efficiency a hundred per cent., and also reduce to a minimum the disagreeable things of life.

Half of our troubles and trials come from our gloomy outlook, from anticipating evil instead of good. Nine-tenths of the people we meet look as though they might be coming from a funeral instead of being on their way to life's great festival of joy and gladness.

The habit of anticipating evil, of always fearing that some unfortunate thing is going to happen, destroys one's peace of mind and happiness, and hence mars, one's health and efficiency. It is a proof that we do not recognize God in our affairs, but rather some evil force more powerful than God.

Have you ever noticed how many times a day you use the expression, "I'm afraid?" A great many of us use it habitually without realizing the injurious mental effect the words have. I tried to keep count one day of the number of times the expression was used by a somewhat pessimistic friend of mine. I was not with him all day, but here are some of the instances which I recorded. In the morning when I met him, he said, "Do you know, I'm afraid that we are going to have a very cold winter, and I'm afraid that it's going to have a very bad effect upon my business?" A little later he remarked "I'm afraid we're going to have serious trouble with Mexico." Switching on to family affairs he said, "I'm afraid my boy, who is away at school, is going to the bad. I'm afraid we're going to have trouble with all the children.”

I lunched with him the same day, and the first thing he said when we sat down was "I'm afraid to eat these things. I've got dyspepsia. In fact, I have gotten so I'm afraid to eat almost anything," and so he went on fearing something all through the meal. He must have said "I'm afraid" at least twenty-five times in my hearing that day.

There is scarcely a human being who doesn't use this or some other pessimistic expression two or three, perhaps many more, times a day. Few of us realize that every time we say "I'm afraid" we are confessing a lack of faith in ourselves, and thereby weakening our faith in our ability to stand up against the thing we fear. Every time we say we are afraid of poverty, afraid of disease, afraid of conditions, afraid of this or afraid of that, we are undermining our confidence in ourselves, undermining our disease-resisting power. We are introducing a poison into our minds that will react on our health and efficiency.

Let us quit doing the things which we know injure us. Let us have done with fear, with pessimism, with the pessimist who seems to think that the pathway of human life always leads to the jungle! Let us look at life from the viewpoint of the optimist, who believes that it leads to the Paradise of the Promised Land. Let us recognize God in all our affairs, and say,

"I am not fighting my fight, I am singing my song."

Chapter 5: The Dream of Brotherhood

In ancient Rome the matrons used to take their sewing to the Colosseum, and sit there and gossip while the Christian martyrs were thrown into the arena to battle for their lives with wild beasts, kept without food for many days to increase their ferocity.

Children were also taken to witness those awful spectacles, and would clap their hands delightedly while their mothers looked on with equal enjoyment at the writhing agonies of the Christians, as they were torn to pieces by the wild beasts.

Nero used to have the lake in front of his golden palace lighted up with torches made of Christians covered with tar. It was a common practice to expose in desert places crippled or sickly infants to die of starvation or to be devoured by wild animals. The old, who had become useless for active service, were treated in the same way.

With all the might of the great Roman empire pitted against them, the Christians persisted in acclaiming their gospel of love, in carrying on the work of the Christ. And behold, in spite of persecution, in spite of torture and death, slowly, but surely, the leaven of the Christ teaching worked until that same old pagan Rome became later the center of Christianity. It is full today of its most precious monuments.

But what of the persecutions in the name of Christianity? What of the horrors of the world war? Of the unutterable barbarities and atrocities that are being perpetrated by so-called Christians? The answer is that, side by side with all the evils of war, the leaven of love is still working.

One who has been on the European battlefields says, "You will see hell wide open on the battlefield, but you will see heaven likewise. Such heroism, such patience, self-devotion, cheerfulness under affliction, readiness to fling life away to save a comrade, surely these mean more, are worth more, than the immediate objects of their exercise." Another says, "True Christianity is being exhibited on the battlefield in a most marvelous way. Love is working there."

Although we are in the midst of the most frightful war in history, yet there are multitudes of signs of the reign of love. We see the most selfless love animating the great army of Red Cross surgeons and nurses, who, regardless of creed or country, racial or social differences, are treating all the wounded soldiers on the world's battlefields as brothers, binding up their wounds and nursing them back to health and life.

Many a time has it happened that soldiers of different nations who were bitter enemies in battle and tried in every way to kill each other, have found while convalescing side by side under the care of Red Cross nurses that they were really one in sympathy and feeling, brothers at heart and did not know it. Removed from the atmosphere of hate and discord these men have become fast friends and learned to feel their brotherhood.

Pessimists see in the war only the overturning of civilization and the letting loose of all the demons of hate. But love is stronger than hate and will bring life out of death. Even on the battlefields it is sowing the seeds of a great new life that will transcend anything the world has seen before.

Never before in history has the motto of the French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" come into more universal use than since the war began. The great calamity has leveled all class and party distinctions. The sharp social, political and religious lines which were drawn so tightly in the warring countries before the war cloud burst have in many instances disappeared. The people have been drawn together by the needs of a common cause. Men and women of all classes, ambitions and creeds, work together for the one great end. In France, women of the old noblesse have taken into their homes the destitute wives and children of private soldiers, and are treating them as brothers and sisters. Highbred ladies have gone into the shops as clerks, as waiters in hotels and restaurants, and as drivers of busses and automobiles. Women who had not known work before have cheerfully taken up the tasks dropped by their men when they answered their country's call to arms. The same is true in England, in America, and all the other countries involved in the war.

The barriers leveled by love, by the great spirit of human brotherhood, will never be re-established. When peace comes the warring nations will be re-born on new lines.

Seven years ago on July 21, 1911, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Bull Hun, there was enacted in our own country a memorable scene. On that day the remnants of the armies of the blue and the gray met and buried forever the last shred of sectional feeling that shadowed the relations of the North and the South. "The veterans formed in battle array," says a writer, "and marched up Henry Hill toward one another, repeating the movement of the battle fifty years ago. When the two long lines met, they halted and clasped hands. A mighty cheer went up, and many of the grizzled old soldiers wept."

It may take some time to heal the hurts and to blot out the memory of the cruel wrongs committed in this great war, but the day is coming when all the nations of the earth will clasp hands in brotherhood and work together for the universal good. Love will take the place of hatred, and love's way will banish wars and human strife, revenge, selfishness and greed from the world. Nations have tried the hatred way, the way of war, the butchering way all up through the centuries, and they have never worked. Force has always been a failure. There is no place in twentieth century civilization for the rulers or the people who seek advancement and world dominion by the sword. In our age the way of peace is the way of progress.

Julia Ward Howe, who with her husband Dr. Samuel Howe, and for many years after his death, had worked unceasingly in the cause of humanity, had a remarkable vision of a new era for mankind. Telling of the vision some time before she passed to the beyond, she said:

"One night recently I experienced a sudden awakening. I had a vision of a new era which is to dawn for mankind and in which men and women are battling equally, unitedly, for the uplifting and emancipation of the race from evil.

"I saw men and women of every clime working like bees to unwrap the evils of society and to discover the whole web of vice and misery, and to apply the remedies and also to find the influences that should best counteract evil and its attending suffering.

"There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, ever-permeating light, the glory of which I cannot attempt to put in human words — the light of new-born hope and sympathy blazing. The source of this light was human endeavor — immortal purpose of countless thousands of men and women, who were equally doing their part in the world.

"I saw the men and the women, standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, in a common and indomitable purpose lighting every face with a glory not of this earth. All were advancing with one end in view, one foe to trample, one everlasting good to gain.

"And then I saw the victory. All of evil was gone from the earth. Misery was blotted out. Mankind was emancipated and ready to march forward in a new era of human understanding, all-encompassing sympathy and ever-present help. The era of perfect love, of peace, passing all understanding."

This is the dream of the ages, the hope of man from the beginning; and every century, every year, brings us nearer to its realization. In spite of contradictions and many glaring evils in our midst, many setbacks and discouragements, the spirit of the Christ, of human brotherhood, is slowly gaining ground and leavening the human mass. The altruistic spirit has made greater headway during the last twenty-five years than in the previous two centuries. This is evident in all the ramifications of life. We see it in the greater sympathy and interest which men and women everywhere are taking in their less fortunate brothers and sisters. In every part of the civilized world the sick, the poor, the old, the bruised and suffering, the fallen, the criminal, are receiving more humane treatment, more kindness than ever before in human history.

Think of the improvement in the treatment of the insane alone. It is not so very long ago since those unfortunates were treated in the most inhuman manner, chained, flogged and abused in all sorts of ways, as though they had no claim whatever on our love and sympathy.

The change in our prison system, too, is most significant. In olden times criminals were punished in the most barbarous way — their ears cut off, their eyes burned out with hot pokers, their bodies mutilated with the rack and the thumbscrews, their limbs actually pulled apart, and they were often put to death by slow torture, perhaps lasting for days.

Today, in many of our prisons, the kindly, considerate treatment that is being substituted for the old cruel system of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is really helping to reform criminals, to make them useful citizens again. The old system killed men, broke their spirit, or made them more hardened in crime. It rarely, if ever, reformed. The new system is giving them a chance to make good again.

Love is showing us how to treat crime as Christ treated sin, as a disease to be cured by the love balm instead of brutal treatment. Love will ultimately banish not only the old cruel prison-methods, but the criminal himself. For when the world is run on the Golden Rule plan, the temptation to crime will be largely eliminated and crime will die a natural death.

The injustice and inequalities that persist among us, fostered by individual greed for wealth and power, are responsible for much of the crime and misery of society. When justice rules and every man has an equal opportunity with his brother man, schools and social centers will supplant prisons and poorhouses.

The hope of the future of mankind is in the universal practice of the Golden Rule. The one brief season in the year when an attempt is most generally made to put it in practice gives us some idea of what a world run on the Golden Rule plan would be.

Along about Christmas time we notice that, with few exceptions, the stingiest, meanest characters, the most selfish and close-fisted, moved by the atmosphere of "good-will to men" tend to feel generous impulses. Though they may use all their ingenuity and cunning to get the advantage of one another and make the best bargain for themselves; though they may be cold-blooded, selfish, and indifferent to the sufferings and hardships of others the rest of the year, for one day they become helpful, kindly, magnanimous. Their pocketbooks, which they guarded so jealously yesterday, they open in the service of their fellowmen for this day. On Christmas Day the hearts that were dead live again. The world comes nearer to happiness than in all the other three hundred and sixty-four days.

Why? Because we realize the dream of brotherhood.

What a tremendous forward stride we should take if the Christmas spirit of brotherhood could be perpetuated throughout the year! If each one of us should elect to do unto others as he would have others do unto him, the dream would be quickly realized.

Chapter 6: Driving Away What We Long for Most

In an address over the grave of a little child, Robert G. Ingersoll said: "I had rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not. Another life is naught, unless we know and love the ones who love us here."

The most beautiful thing on this earth, that which every human being craves most is love. The mere suggestion of life without it is unthinkable, for life is love. Where love is not there is no life. There is only its semblance.

The saddest situation in life, one in which most of us would be tempted to play the coward, is the feeling that nobody cares what becomes of us, whether we win or lose in the great life game.

As long as there is someone who cares, the motive is not all gone. No matter how desperate or hopeless our outlook, the feeling that somebody cares, that someone would miss us, that there is somebody who believes in us — a wife, a mother, a child, a friend, even a dumb animal — enables us to struggle on. But to feel that we are absolutely alone, friendless, that nobody cares whether we go up or down in the world, win or lose, whether we live or die, is tragic. Under such conditions, it requires stern stuff to try still to do one's best.

If it be that there is any human being so forlorn, he must have shut love out of his heart. He must have given up trying to love or to be loved. He must have stifled the love instinct implanted by the Creator in every living creature. Something has twisted his nature. He is not normal; for God made us for love — to love and be loved.

Some time ago I had a letter from a man who said he had soured on love, that he never wanted to hear the word again, or to see it in print. In his reading he avoided the subject of love. If he came across anything about it, he would skip it. He vowed he would never have anything more to do with love. He was done with it forever.

He did not say what had caused this revulsion against love. Perhaps he had been jilted by some coquette. Perhaps he had been deceived or betrayed by one he had trusted as his friend. But whatever the cause, I could not help feeling sorry for the man. He was

trying to crush out of his heart the thing that lifts man nearest to God, that makes him divine — the one thing that makes life worth living.

A great many people are disappointed because they have so little love in their lives. I have heard one woman say that she does not believe there is any such thing as real unselfish love. She has found that what she thought was love in some of her so-called friends was only self-interest, for when she was unfortunate and was not able to pay what she owed them they turned against her. In other words, this woman believes that people love us only in proportion to what they think we have for them.

Without knowing it, her own mental attitude, her cold distrust of others, is driving love and sympathy away from her. In a general way, we get back as much love as we give. The feelings we arouse in others, the sentiments, the emotions, the passions we excite, are good indicators of our own disposition, our own character. If we arouse suspicion, distrust, jealousy, envy, these qualities must exist to some extent in ourselves. Like attracts like. We call out of others that which corresponds to our mental attitude toward them, our treatment of them.

Many people who are famishing for love, whose greatest disappointment is that their love instinct is not satisfied, make it impossible for love to burn in their hearts, because there is so little there that goes with love. A heart full of bitterness, of envy and jealousy, of greed, of cold selfishness, an overleaping ambition for place, fame, power, is no dwelling place for love. Love could not dwell in such an atmosphere. It would be chilled to death.

Most of us by our wrong mental attitude drive away the very things we long for and struggle to attain. Every normal being longs for love? and yet how many are constantly driving it from them by their mental attitude and their unlovely ways.

A mother who all her life has been hungry for love is alienating her children by the exactions of an unfortunate temperament. She makes the home so uncomfortable by her hard, critical, fault-finding spirit and her disagreeable disposition that her children are never happy there. They are always glad to get away from it and from their mother. Nothing they do pleases her. She is continually finding fault with their conduct, their dress, their manners, their habits. They never get a word of praise or commendation from her, no matter how hard they strive for it. The result is that she is driving what love they have for her out of their hearts.

True love is never exacting, or fault-finding. It cannot be unkind or querulous. If you want to be loved you must stop barking at the bad in others and look for the good. You will always find what you look for.

"In the heart of Africa, among the great lakes," says Drummond, "I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw before — David Livingstone; and, as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the love that beat in his heart."

Down in Kentucky, on the outskirts of a little back town, in a sassafras thicket, is a roughly hewn stone, overgrown with wild vines. Carved on the stone are these words: "Jane Laler. Ded Agus 1849. She wuz alius kin' to everybuddie."

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the great city of London, is another monument to one who had been kind to everybody. It is a very different sort of monument to the rough stone in the Kentucky town, but the sentiment that prompted it is the same. Over Lord Shaftesbury's body in Westminster Abbey are carved two words — "Love; Service." Not because of his wealth, his rank, his intellect and great statesman-like gifts, does this man hold an assured place in the hearts of his countrymen; no, what endears him to all ranks is that unselfish love which prompted him to give his life to the service of his fellowman.

Love is the golden key with which all hearts are opened. It is the magic door through which we must pass to the hearts of our fellow men as well as to success in work and life.

Even the best service without love lacks that which makes it divine. "We love them first," said a member of the Salvation Army in answer to my question as to what their first step was in endeavoring to reclaim the poor outcasts whom they rescue from the streets. This is the secret of the marvelous growth of the Salvation Army.

Into everything you do you must put this mighty, vivifying force, or you will not succeed on the highest plane. You may go into the slums of a large city, or out into the highways and byways, through a sense of duty, or because you are a church member, and do not wish to appear behind others, or for some other reason, to relieve the necessities of the poor, to instruct the ignorant and lead them to a knowledge of better things; but if you do not love the work, do not love the people you are trying to help, your efforts will be futile.

If we want to flood our lives with sunshine and love we must be real men and women; and to be real men and women there are some things besides getting a living which we must do. Whatever our vocations, we must make a business of humanity. There are many lines of this great business which we can carry on as side lines with our vocations, such as the cheering-up line, the encouraging line, the lend-a-hand line.

It will cost us nothing to scatter our flowers as we go along, and we shall never go over just the same road again. No matter how limited our means we can give a smile and a word of cheer to those who minister to our comforts, who help us in our daily work — the newsboy, the car conductor, the waiter, the clerk, the porter on the train, those who serve us in our home. Kind words, a smile, a bit of encouragement or inspiration may seem but little things, of no account to many of us, yet they may be worth everything to some lonely or discouraged soul famishing for sympathy and encouragement.

A few words of loving sympathy from a stranger encouraged a young English lad to pursue his studies and become a famous author.

"He is the most stupid boy in school. I can't drive anything into his head," said his teacher to a visitor to the school this lad was attending. The visitor made a little talk to the scholars and then passed into another room. In leaving the school, however, he made an opportunity to speak to the so-called stupid boy. Patting him on the head, he said, "Never mind, my boy, you may be a great scholar someday. Do not be discouraged, but try hard, and keep on trying."

The boy had been told so often that he was a stupid good-for-nothing that he began to think it was true. But the words of the great man who had spoken so encouragingly to him set his ambition aflame and filled him with a new hope. They kept ringing in his ears, and he said to himself, "I will show my teacher and others who have so long regarded me as a stupid good-for-nothing that there is something in me." The boy became the famous Dr. Adam Clark, author of the great Commentary on the Bible and other important works.

It is the easiest thing in the world to send a little sunshine into other lives, to radiate good cheer, kindliness wherever we go. Opportunities for this are never lacking, and the opportunities let slip today will never come back again. But the writing a kindly letter, the dropping a cheering word, the little kindnesses by the wayside, will come back to us in a thousand ways and give enduring satisfaction.

"Human beings," says Ruskin, "owe a debt of love to one another, because there is no other method of paying the debt of love and care which all of us owe to Providence.” In other words, the habit of passing along the good things that come to us, giving out the words of good cheer, giving the glad hand, the glad heart, saying the helpful word, is a service to the God who sent us here as well as to our neighbor. And these little offices and services which we can perform everyday without interference with our regular work will play a greater part in our happiness and satisfaction than the money that we earn or anything we receive from others.

"It is in giving, not in seeking gifts, we find our quest."

Says a writer: "If my love halts, my life limps. If I hate, I am wounded out of life. Only as I love with love universal, excluding none, can the Love Universal eternally make its beauties in me and through me laugh out its holiest joys.”

Only through the daily practice of love toward all with whom we come in contact can we win that which is the essence of God Himself — that beautiful, spontaneous love for which all hearts hunger.

Chapter 7: Employers and Employees

A manager of large manufacturing interests, who had a reputation for squeezing an enormous amount of work out of the employees under him, in explaining to his board of directors how he got results said: "I tell yer I can squeeze the work out of 'em. I just grind it right out of 'em. That's the only way to make these factories pay big dividends, just to grind results out of employees, and I keep 'em guessing. I keep right after 'em. They never know when I am coming and they all fear me. I keep 'em on the very verge of discharge. They never know when they are going to get the yellow envelope."

This man, who boasted of coining flesh and blood into big dividends employed thousands of women and children in his factories. Many of the women were, of course, very poor, mothers with large families, who were obliged after long hours in the factory to do the family cooking, washing and mending, all the family work. Some of this work was done in the morning before starting the day in the factory at six or seven o'clock, the rest when they returned late at night.

I was talking recently with a cold-blooded, overbearing, browbeating businessman of this type who told me that he was going out of business because he was so tired and sick of incompetent, dishonest help. His employees, he said, were always taking advantage of him — stealing, spoiling merchandise, blundering, shirking, clipping their hours. They took no interest in his welfare, their only concern being in what they found in their pay envelope. "I have enough to live on," he concluded, "and I don't propose to run a business for their benefit. I have tried every means I know of to get good work out of ignorant, selfish help, but it is no use, and now I have done with it. My nervous system is worn out and I must give up the game."

"You say you have tried everything you could think of in managing your employees, but has it ever occurred to you to try love's way?" I asked.

"Love's way!" he said disgustedly. "What do you mean by that? Why, if I didn't use a club all the time my help would ride right over me and ruin me. For years I have had to employ detectives and spies to protect my interests. What do these people know about love? Why I should have the red flag out here in no time if I should attempt any such fool business as that."

A young man who had been successful in employing Golden Rule methods in business management hearing of the situation saw in it a possible opening, and asked this man to give him a trial as manager before giving up his business altogether. The result was the disgruntled businessman was so pleased with the young man's personality that in less than half an hour he had engaged him as a manager, although he still insisted that it was a very doubtful experiment.

The first thing the new man did on taking charge was to call the employees in each department together and have a heart-to-heart talk with them. He told them that he had come there not only as a friend of the proprietor, but as their friend also, and that he would do everything in his power to advance their interests as well as those of the business. The house, he told them, had been losing money, and it was up to him and them to change all that and put the balance on the right side of the ledger. He made them see that harmony and cooperation are the basis of any real success for a concern and its employees.

From the start he was cheerful, hopeful, sympathetic, enthusiastic, encouraging. He quickly won the confidence and good-will of everybody in the establishment, and had them all working as heartily for the success of the business as if it were their own. The place was like a great beehive, where all were industrious, happy, contented, working for the hive. So great was the change that customers began to talk about the new spirit in the house. Business grew and prospered, and in an incredibly short time, the concern was making instead of losing money.

The Golden Rule method had driven out hate, selfishness, greed and dissension. The interests of all were centered on the general welfare, and so all prospered. When the proprietor returned from abroad, whither he had gone for a few months' rest and recuperation, he could scarcely believe in the reality of the transformation that "love's way" had effected in his old employees and in the entire establishment.

Some men will make good employees out of almost any kind of people. They pick up boys on the street, they take criminals released from prison, as Henry Ford is doing, and develop them into splendid men. They have the faculty of calling out the best in them, appealing to their manliness, their sense of fairness, of justice, in doing as they would be done by.

"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." All the philosophy of the ages is concentrated in this single sentence. It embodies the essential element in practical Christianity. All law lives in it, the principle of all reform. Its practice will ultimately swallow up all greed, and the time will come when every man will see that his own best good is in the highest good of everybody about him. The time will come when even in the business world the Golden Rule will be found by all to be the wisest and most businesslike policy.

Mr. H. Gordon Selfridge thinks that the labor problem would solve itself if employers treated their employees as they would like to be treated themselves, or as they would like to have their children treated. He says that the keeping these points in mind constitutes seventy-five per cent, of the secret of the success of his great department store in London, which, in the third year of his business there, made a profit of half a million dollars. Yet when he started his enterprise the best businessmen in London predicted that it would be a complete failure. Conservative people said: "He'll be broke within a year. It can't be done. We don't like this kind of pushing business over here." But by projecting the progressive spirit of Americanism into his business methods in the heart of London, where for centuries men had done business as their fathers and grandfathers and their remote ancestors had done, and by humane kindly treatment of his employees, he smashed old traditions and broke all business records.

"I have found the English employees exceedingly satisfactory to work with," said Mr. Selfridge. "They are not clockwatchers and they have been loyal."

There are few employees who would not be "satisfactory" and "loyal" if treated according to this great merchant's plan of campaign, which he sums up thus:

"Pay your employees decent living wages, and don't make them afraid of you. A smile and a pleasant word go a mighty long way. Instil into them a feeling of responsibility, make them feel that they are a necessary unit, a wheel, if only a small one, but a necessary wheel in the large system of the store. In short, treat them as you would wish to be treated yourself, or as you would like to see your children treated."

Henry Ford, John Wanamaker, Charles M. Schwab and others of our most prominent and successful merchants and manufacturers owe their success and their popularity with their employees to the same sort of business methods which won H. Gordon Self ridge his great London success.

Mr. Schwab told me recently that he is having wonderful results from his profit-sharing policy. He says that before any dividends are paid the first fifteen per cent, of all profits in the business are divided among his employees. One of his head men, in addition to his salary, received last year over a million dollars and another received four hundred thousand dollars on the profit-sharing plan.

Henry Ford, discussing his novel plan of profit sharing in advance, with an interviewer, said: "If I can further strengthen the good-will of the thousands of men working in our factories it stands to reason that they are going to do better work for us, does it not?"

Mr. Ford had been sharing profits with his employees in the usual way after the profits had been made, but when he announced his purpose of paying his men in advance their share of the profits the firm figured on making each year, the industrial world regarded his scheme as quixotic. Mr. Ford, however, insisted that it was only social justice, though he believed it was besides a matter of business in obtaining the good-will of his employees. "If men will work better," he reasoned, "in the mere hope of something better, how will they work with that something actually in hand? .... We have calculated to a definite certainty what business we shall do the coming year. We know the capacity of our plant and we know what the profits will be. Ten of millions of dollars of these anticipated profits will go to the men who work by the day. They are not to get this with an 'if' attached to it. They are to get their share every two weeks. We can do that because they are going to aid us in making the profits:

"Of course we, the members of the company, will derive a benefit from their better work, but even if we do not make an increased profit in dollars and cents, we would have the satisfaction of making twenty thousand men prosperous and contented, rather than making a few slave-drivers in our plant millionaires."

That is love's way in business. And it pays royally, not only in making better men and better workers, but also in making profits.

Andrew Carnegie says that if he were to start in the steel business again, he would adopt the profit-sharing plan with all of his employees, thus making them feel that they were really partners instead of employees.

The employer who can make his employees feel that they are virtually partners in the business instead of merely working for a salary is calling out of his employees a quality of work which can never be brought out in any other way. Really up-to-date, efficient businessmen know that the slave-driving, bull-dozing, domineering methods, the nagging, suspicious, fault-finding methods do not bring the desired results. All businessmen are finding that a one-sided bargain, whether with customer or employee, is a bad bargain.

Good fellowship between employers and employees is the very foundation of successful business management, and good fellowship cannot exist where there is injustice, bullying and constant fault-finding, or a spirit of superiority on the part of employers, where the employees do not have fair treatment and are made to feel that they are dependents of the employer.

It is human nature to resent unfairness, to resent being patronized, to resent injustice. Good fellowship means teamwork, and perfect teamwork is impossible where either employee or employer is dissatisfied, where there is a feeling of resentment or ill will. Good fellowship between employer and employee is one of the greatest assets in business.

This good fellowship or good-will spirit is one of the most noticeable features of the John Wanamaker stores. Mr. Wanamaker's employees have been heard to say, "We can work better for a week after a pleasant 'Good morning' from Mr. Wanamaker." His kindly disposition and cheerful manner, and his desire to create a pleasant feeling and diffuse good cheer among those who work for him have had a great deal to do with this merchant's remarkable success.

Another big employer who has a thousand employees in his factory recently said to a visitor: "I want you to take a walk through the place with me and see if you can find a sullen or discontented face. I know every one of my employees by their first name and they all know me. If anyone has a grievance, he or she can find their way to my office and no one can keep them out, and they know that they will get justice. I consider myself responsible for the moral and physical well-being of every girl in the place from the moment she enters in the morning until she leaves in the evening. I not only want my girls to be contented while they are working, but I want them to go home that way and arrive that way in the morning. You don't see any of these girls speeding up and looking unusually busy when I come round. They know that I am not that kind of man. When business is slow, I tell them to let up and take their time because we will have to work very hard in December. The result is that without a word from me they will turn out three times as much work in December as they do in April.

"My employees give me the kind of work that mere wages cannot buy. They are honest with me because I am honest with them, and they are honest with each other. A man found twenty-eight dollars on the floor in one of the rooms one day. I advertised through the factory that money had been found and there was only one claimant out of a thousand of employees, and he was the boy who lost it. Aside from the money-making interest I have in my concern, a decent man feels proud to know that there is that kind of a spirit among those who work for him."

I know a New York businessman who has won the love and respect of every employee in his large establishment by the use of similar methods. He says that if he notices a sad, sour, discontented face anywhere in his establishment he calls the owner of it into his private office and says: "Look here, you are not happy; there is something wrong. Now, be frank with me and tell me what the trouble is." The disgruntled employee then tells what the trouble is. Perhaps some other employee is abusing him; perhaps someone over him is not treating him right. Whatever the complaint the employer sends for the other person implicated. Then they talk the matter over together; it is usually adjusted easily, and the employer sends both employees away happy.

This is the only way to get the best out of employees, to make them happy and contented in their work, by kindness and sympathy and fair and honorable treatment in all respects. There is something seriously lacking in an employee who will not respond to such treatment, and he will pay the price for it as did that dishonest builder, "a foolish eye-servant, a poor rogue," of whom Edwin Markham tells this story.

"He and his little ones were wretched and roofless, whereupon a certain good Samaritan said, in his heart, 'I will surprise this man with the gift of a comfortable home.' So, without telling his purpose, he hired the builder at fair wages to build a house on a sunny hill, and then he went on business to a far country.

"The builder was left at work with no watchman but his own honor. 'Ha!' said he to his heart, 'I can cheat this man. I can skimp the material and scamp the work.' So he went on spinning out the time, putting in poor service, poor nails, poor timbers.

"When the good Samaritan returned, the builder said: 'That is a fine house I built you on the hill.' 'Good,' was the reply; 'Go, move your folks into it at once, for the house is yours. Here is the deed.'

"The man was thunderstruck. He saw that, instead of cheating his friend for a year, he had been industriously cheating himself. 'If I had only known it was my own house I was building!' he kept muttering to himself.”

I know a young man who is acting like this unfaithful servant, who also doesn't know that he is cheating himself. For several years he has been clipping his office hours, going to his work late in the morning, remaining away for half a day or more at a time under all sorts of pretexts — illness, or pretended blocks on the street-cars, and yet he thinks he has a grievance because he is not advanced more rapidly. He tells me that his salary has not been advanced for years, and that he sees no chance for promotion. He complains that many of his fellow workers with less ability have been promoted many times while he has remained stationary.

This "foolish eye-servant" seems to think that his employer is blind, and that he has been able to pull the wool over his eyes for years without arousing even a suspicion of his back-slidings. He brags of his ability, but he hasn't intelligence enough to see that the same qualities which have put his employer at the head of a large business enable him to read the character of his employees, to know those who are faithfully and loyally serving his interests, and those who are backsliding and serving only their own ease and pleasure. In the long run this young man and all employees of his type will find that, like the dishonest builder, they are cheating themselves.

Many young employees, just because they do not get quite as much salary as they think they should, throw away all of the other, larger, grander remuneration possible for them to get outside of their pay envelope, for the sake of "getting square" with their employer. They deliberately adopt a shirking, do-as-little-as-possible policy, and instead of getting this larger, more important salary, which they can pay themselves, they prefer the consequent arrested development, and become small, narrow, inefficient, rutty men and women, with nothing magnanimous, nothing broad, noble or progressive in their nature. Their leadership faculties, their initiative, their planning ability, their ingenuity and resourcefulness, inventiveness, and all the qualities which make the leader, the complete, well rounded man, remain undeveloped. While trying to "get square" with their employer, by giving him pinched service, they blight their own growth, strangle their prospects, and go through life half men instead of full men — small, narrow, weak men, instead of the strong, grand, complete men they might be.

There is another class of employees who by their disloyalty, both in and out of the office, factory or shop — wherever they are employed — in constantly "knocking" their employers, hurt themselves as much as the shirkers. I know one of those knockers who is always sneering at his employer, criticizing his methods and making slurring or insulting remarks about him. It is positively painful to hear this young man's querulous complaints and bitter criticisms of his "boss."

It always pains me to hear employees knocking the employer and the concern they are working for, criticizing their methods, turning up their noses at their policy. Apart from the lack of good-will, of sympathy in their attitude, it shows lack of principle and great weakness of character. If you do not like the people you are working for; if their methods are unfair, dishonest; if your conscience does not approve them, then you should leave them instead of finding fault and criticizing. You should get another job. Whatever the cause may be, the habit of knocking is very injurious to the "knocker." It keeps the mind embittered and tends to kill creative power. No one can do his best work while he nurses bitterness in his heart toward anyone.

There is yet another class of employees who are so thin-skinned and sensitive that they cannot stand any criticism or correction from employers, even though it be for their own good. A young man of this type threw up his job recently because, as he put it, he "couldn't stand the gaff." His manager, he said, was always criticizing his work, constantly prodding him for not doing better, and so he got tired of it and quit.

To be too thin-skinned or sensitive is also to be weak, and it will not pay either in business or in social life. If the climbing instinct is sufficiently strong in you, if you are determined to get on and up in the world, if you have backbone, you won't be afraid of a little criticism or correction, especially when it is intended for your improvement.

There are some employees that the meanest employers cannot find fault with, because their work is always carefully, conscientiously, and painstakingly done. And if your employer is always scolding you and criticizing your work, you will find, if you examine yourself carefully, that there is a reason for it. If you are honest with yourself, you will probably find that to attribute all of it to his meanness, to his unfortunate disposition or bad temper, is simply covering up the real reason and deceiving yourself.

But in the final equation the burden of responsibility for making a good or a bad employee rests largely with the employer, for we call out of others the qualities we appeal to. Whatever we awaken in another's nature has an affinity for the influence which awakened it. A magnet run through a pile of rubbish will draw out only nails, tacks, screws, or whatever has an affinity for it. We draw out of employees or others just the qualities which correspond with our moods, our motives, and our manner toward them. Every manager, every employer, is a magnet which calls certain things out of employees. Some men never touch the best in their employees, never arouse their best qualities, because the methods they use are not calculated to do so. Their character is expressed in their methods, and they appeal to the lowest, instead of the highest, in human nature.

It is astonishing how quickly the qualities of the head of a concern will trickle clear down to every employee on his force, so that they will take on his characteristics. If he has high ideals, if he is refined and cultivated, they will tend to reflect his ideals, his refinement, his culture. If he is low, coarse, animal in his tastes, in his instincts, he will draw out all that is worst in his employees.

I tell you, my friend employer, it is give and take in this world. Action and reaction are equal. We get what we give. I have heard employers say: "What's the use in wasting your sympathy in trying to help employees; they don't appreciate it; they are a lot of cattle." Now if you hold that sort of attitude toward those who are making your success possible, you will always have a troublesome labor problem. Your employees are your brothers and sisters, and until you regard them as such, and treat them as such, you are going to be in hot water, and they are going to stint their services. It is only human nature that they will try to get all they can out of you as long as you are playing the same game with them.

The intelligent business world, generally, and many of our housewives, are beginning to find that a pooling of interests, mutual respect, sympathy, kindness and consideration between employer and employee, in short, the practice of love's way, is the one only and infallible solution of labor problems and difficulties.

Chapter 8: Spite Fences

After an ugly scar had been made by the stone quarry in the mountainside opposite Ruskin's home, destroying the beauty of his favorite landscape, he used to place a big chair in front of the window where he had been accustomed to command a beautiful view of lake and mountain so that it would conceal the scar from him while working, because it disturbed the harmony of his thought.

If you have received an ugly scar from someone perhaps whom you trusted and believed in; if you have a sore spot, a tender spot anywhere that mars your happiness, don't aggravate your pain by looking at it, keeping the sore open by reviewing a painful experience and cherishing a grudge against the one who injured you. Cover your wound with the mantle of love instead, forget and forgive the injury, and your wound will soon heal.

This is what a great singer did in the case of one who tried to do her a cruel wrong. The story is told by T. DeWitt Talmage in "The Pathway of Life":

"When Madame Sontag began her musical career, she was hissed off the stage at Vienna by the friends of her rival, Amelia Steininger, who had begun to decline through her dissipation. Years passed on and one day Madame Sontag, in her glory, was riding through Berlin, when she saw a child leading a blind woman, and she said: 'Come here, my child. Who is that you are leading by the hand?' The child replied: 'That's my mother; that's Amelia Steininger. She used to be a great singer, but she lost her voice, and she cried so much about it that she lost her eyesight.' 'Give my love to her,' said Madame Sontag, 'and tell her an old acquaintance will call on her this afternoon.' The next week, in Berlin, Madame Sontag sang before a vast audience gathered at a benefit for that blind woman. She took a skilled oculist to see her, but in vain he tried to give eyesight to the blind woman. Until the day of Amelia Steininger's death, Madame Sontag took care of her, and her daughter after her. That was what the queen of song did for her enemy."

That was love's way, the way of the Christ, who gave His followers that divine command, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven."

If you would be truly happy "bless where others curse; love where others hate; forget where others condemn; yield where others strive; give up where others grasp; lose where others gain."

Revenge, prejudice, hatred, spite, the desire for retaliation, all of the ill-will family act as irritants in the blood, and often destroy the health as well as the happiness of those who indulge in them.

I know a man who for years carried a fearful grudge against an employer who had broken a contract with him and discharged him. He not only refused to speak to his former employer when he met him on the street, but he stabbed him in the back whenever he got an opportunity, was always saying bitter things about him. Finally the employer failed in business, and in his desperate need, in order to keep his family from want, he applied for a position to the man he had once discharged, who in the meantime had become prosperous. The man gloated over their changed conditions and took great delight in "getting square," as he called it, with "the old man." Instead of giving him a helping hand, he gave him what he described as "a terrible raking over the coals," told him how he had hated him for years for the insult he had put upon him, and that he was really glad to have the opportunity of witnessing his painful distress and of turning him down when asking for a favor. He actually rejoiced in the misfortune of the man he regarded as his enemy and bragged about his triumph in at last "getting square" with him.

Now, this getting square business proved a very costly one to this man, as it does to everybody who tries it. Hatred had rankled so long in his system that there is no doubt but it had much to do with the failure of his health, for he suffered frightfully from chronic nervous dyspepsia, and liver and kidney trouble, as well as rheumatism. Indeed, his physician told him it was his mental irritation that caused his nervous breakdown. He said that the carrying grudges against neighbors, the failure to eradicate the roots of fancied insults, allowing hard thoughts and bitter feelings to fester and ulcerate in the nature, lowers one's vitality, lessens physical resisting power, and tends to physical and mental deterioration.

A determination to be revenged, to "get square," for real or fancied wrongs, all grudges, all ill-will, all hatred and malice, are boomerangs which always come back to the thrower, who, in the end, is injured much more by them than the one at whom they were aimed.

The story is told of a man who had once been very poor, but who after a time had accumulated a fortune. He built himself a magnificent mansion, and because he wanted to get square with a poorer neighbor with whom he had had a quarrel on his way up, he built a "spite fence" so high around his mansion that it cut much of the light and the sunshine out of the poorer man's house. It cut off the cool breezes in the summer, the sun in the winter, and made his neighbor's house very uncomfortable. To make the matter worse, there was an invalid sister in the neighbor's house who was tubercular and needed the sun very much. The rich man knew this, but so long as he "got square" with the man with whom he had quarreled he did not care who suffered.

He had not spoken to his neighbor for several years, when one day he saw a hearse in front of his door. Instantly the truth flashed upon his mind — that the invalid sister had gone, and then he was tortured with the thought that possibly the cutting off of the sun and air from that part of the house where she had lived had hastened her death. He tried in every way to get this idea out of his head, saying to himself, “How foolish this is; it is none of my affair. The man could have moved the invalid to some other part of the town. Her death is not my fault.” But the thought would not down, and he resolved to go to the man against whom he had so long cherished such a bitter grudge and tell him that he would remove the fence, if he so desired. But every time he made up his mind to do this, and had the opportunity, something inside of him resisted, a stubbornness which he could not account for, urged him to put off, and put off, the execution of his purpose, until finally the man disappeared. He was not seen going in and out of his home, and upon inquiry the rich man learned that his neighbor was very ill and not likely to live. This increased his torture, his regret, for he was fearful, as in the case of the woman, that the spite fence might have had something to do with her brother's illness.

Again he resolved to see the man, to ask pardon for his spite, and to remove the fence. This time he went as far as his neighbor's gate, but still he couldn't get up his courage to go into the house. He thought, perhaps, the door would be slammed in his face, so again he let his good resolution wane, until one day he saw crape on the door. Then he knew his neighbor was gone, and that never while life lasted could he make amends for the wrong he had done him.

After the funeral he began to take the spite fence down, but he never ceased to blame himself for the two deaths. All his remaining years were clouded with regrets and unavailing remorse. He moved away from his beautiful mansion, for he could not bear the sight of the desolate, empty house opposite, which was a perpetual reproach to him.

People who nurse a grudge or bitter resentment, who build spite fences to shut out the light, the air and the view from their neighbors, never get any real satisfaction out of such fiendish conduct; when too late they realize that they only added fuel to the flame of their anger and resentment, and further increased their unhappiness.

In good-will to men lies the cure for all the evils of society. With good-will to men in our hearts there is no possibility of cherishing a grudge against a neighbor, of wilfully injuring another. Hatred, ill-will, cannot live an instant in the presence of the Golden Rule, in the presence of love. Love melts all prejudices, dissolves all hatreds and jealousies, neutralizes all bitterness. All doors fly open to love. It has no enemies. It is a welcome guest everywhere. It needs no introduction. It introduces itself, and every created thing responds to it. It has transformed wild beasts into the dearest and most lovable of pets. It drives the brute out of every human being.

What a fearful price people pay for their revenge — a price which staggers their advancement, kills their efficiency, ruins their happiness, their characters.

I have known people to carry for years feelings of bitter hatred and a desire for revenge, a determination to "get square" with those who injured them, until their whole characters were so changed that they became almost inhuman. Hatred, revenge, and jealousy are poisons just as fatal to all that is noblest in us as arsenic is fatal to the physical life. And then think for a moment how unmanly, how unwomanly, how despicable it is to be waiting for an opportunity to injure another, or to "get square" with some one!

Robert Browning says: "It is good to forgive, best to forget." Many people, however, say of someone. who has done them an injury, "I can forgive, but I can never forget." Now, this is not forgiving, for as long as we hold the injury done us in mind, we do not forgive from our hearts. This is not love's way. It is not God's way, for He has said to the wrong-doer who repents, "Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be made whiter than snow."

If for any real or fancied wrong you hold a grudge against your neighbor, there is a better way of "getting square" than by building a spite fence. Love's way is infinitely better. It will win over your neighbor's respect and love, and it will have the approval of your own soul. You have tried the "getting square" policy, the hatred and grudge method; you have tried the revenge way, the jealousy way; you have tried the worry, the anxiety method, and these have pained and tortured you all the more. You have tried law and the courts to settle troubles and difficulties with neighbors and business associates, and perhaps you won lawsuits only to make bitter, lifelong enemies. But perhaps you have never yet tried love's way, excepting in spots. If you have not yet tried it as a principle, as a life philosophy, as a great life lubricant, begin now. It will smooth out all the rough places and wonderfully ease your journey over the jolts of life.

In proportion as you see the God in your friends and in your fellow beings generally will you call out their divine qualities and your own, because you appeal to the Godlike in them and in yourself. This is the secret of the brotherhood of man, of harmony and happiness.

Those who make love's way a life policy always see the best in people, and say pleasant, helpful things to them and about them. The trouble with most of us is that we do not make love's way a life policy; we do not open up our natures, throw wide the doors of our hearts and sympathies, and thus let in the sunshine of good-will, cheer and kindness.

If we were only as generous in judging others as we are in judging ourselves, as tolerant of others' weaknesses as we are of our own, we should be very slow to anger. The habit of holding the good-will, the kindly, sympathetic thought toward everybody would lift our minds above petty jealousy and meannesses; it would enrich and enlarge our whole nature. The daily habit of wishing everybody well, of feeling like wishing everybody a God-speed, no matter if they are strangers, ennobles character and beautifies and enriches life.

Yet everywhere we see people who are quarreling about half of the time, nagging, fault-finding, "getting mad" and putting up spite fences for trifles unworthy of attention. What a way for men and women with divine possibilities to spend their lives!

It is the spirit of hate, of selfishness and greed, that has obsessed those who are responsible for the present awful war. Love has not yet been born in the hearts of those who have brought this tragedy upon the world. They do not know what brotherhood means. The Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, are strangers to them. When love shall be born into their hearts there will be a new order of things.

Look out for the buried roots of former troubles, of old grudges, feelings of revenge, excuses for trying to get square! Root them up, cast them out of your heart and forget them, or you will be sorry. Obey the divine command, "Love your enemies," and you will have peace and happiness instead of discord and unhappiness.

No more scientific command was ever given than "Love your enemies," because love is the antidote for all sorts of grudges, all feelings of ill-will. You will have no enemies if you treat them all as friends, if you do by them as you would have them do by you. There is only one way to make and to hold enemies, and that is, to treat people like enemies in your thought and in your attitude and conduct toward them. You will attract the same kind of thoughts that you give out. Your own will come back to you, your attitude toward others will be practically their attitude toward you. Hatred cannot live an instant in the presence of love, any more than fire and water can live together. The practice of the Golden Rule, obedience to the command, "Love your enemies," kills revenge, jealousy, greed, all unkindness. It makes friends and brothers of enemies.

This is as natural as it is scientific. We all love kindly, magnanimous treatment. It softens hearts and wipes out ill feeling. Hatred and resentment cannot live in an atmosphere of friendliness, of helpfulness, of brotherly love. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred a conciliatory attitude would bring your own to you without contention, without quarreling. Practicing love's way with those we call our enemies would do away with a large part of the law business of the world. Very few lawyers would have business if love's way instead of law's way were always practiced by contestants.

Did you ever realize that by yielding instead of resisting, by giving in instead of being stubborn, of being a stickler for an apology, you disarm the resentment and awaken the better nature of the one who has injured you? Many people have thus gained the good-will of one whom they had regarded as an enemy.

Give in, my friend — this is love's way. Don't resist, don't stand out, don't be a stickler for the fine points, for the letter of your rights, but show yourself big, magnanimous, generous to your foe or fancied enemy. You will arouse what is big and generous in him. He will say to himself, "Why, I never realized that this man was such a good fellow, that he had such splendid qualities." He will be so impressed by your yielding, your "giving in," when according to custom you had a perfect right to resist, that he will become your friend. He cannot help admiring such magnanimity; he cannot stand off, hold out, after that, any more than a man you knock against accidentally on the street can hold his resentment when you apologize graciously and tell him how sorry you are.

The way of hatred, of resistance, the policy of harboring a grudge and trying to get square always leads to sorrow and disaster. Not long ago a fifteen-year-old boy shot and killed his uncle. When arrested for the crime, his defense was that his uncle had insulted his mother, and that for fifteen months he had been thinking about it, and had determined to "get square" with him.

Think of this wretched boy, who on the very threshold of his young life, because of a real or fancied injury commits a foul murder, thus blasting his whole career, if not forfeiting his life, and bringing disgrace on all connected with him!

Taking the law into our own hands, and in blind passion taking revenge for what often prove to be fancied injuries or insults, is a very serious matter. You cannot afford to go through the world recklessly venting your passion and spite upon those you think have injured or insulted you. You can't afford to go through life with a shield up in front of you, always ready to ward off thrusts from others who you think are going to hurt or insult you. You cannot afford the fatal rankling of hatred and revenge in your soul. They are efficiency killers, happiness destroyers. No one can afford to allow the enemies of his health, his happiness, and his efficiency, the enemies of his eternal welfare, to run riot in his nature, to blur his ideals, mar his ambition and strangle his chances in life.

One of the beauties of the New Thought and Christian Science philosophy is that it helps people to eradicate the roots of old troubles, to eliminate the causes of unhappiness and misery. It enables them to put out of their minds, to wipe out a bitter, unhappy past, because it believes thoroughly in the science of Christ's command to love our enemies.

Before Christ's day it was "an eye for an eye," an unkindness for an unkindness, a thrust for a thrust, a blow for a blow; but He taught that we must not strike back. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." This is as scientific as the laws of chemistry or mathematics.

The infant puts his hand in the flame and the pain he suffers teaches him a bitter lesson. He knows better than to do it again. After we have had our revenge, after we have tortured ourselves with thoughts which tear and lacerate us, after we have had experience enough of this kind, we shall learn that it is too expensive a business, that we cannot afford to pay such a price for the sake of "getting square" with another.

The next time you are so angry that your blood boils with indignation and you are ready to belch forth the hot lava of your temper like a volcano, just think a moment and don't do it. The next time you are inclined to hold a grudge in your heart against someone you think has injured you, don't do it. You are only putting up a spite fence between yourself and your God. There's an infinitely better way of "getting even" than of flying into a passion or holding a grudge, a glorious way that will give you peace of mind and infinite satisfaction — love's way. Try it.

Don't mail that sarcastic, bitter letter which you wrote in an angry mood, and which gave you a feeling of spiteful satisfaction because you thought you had done a smart thing and were going to get square with someone who had insulted or injured you — burn it. There is a better way, love's way. Try it.

Don't say the mean thing you have been planning to say to someone you think has been mean to you. Instead, give him the love thought, the magnanimous thought. Say to yourself: "He is my brother. No matter what he has done, I can't be mean to him. I must show my friendliness, my magnanimity to this brother.”

In France surgeons are using electric magnets to draw fragments of shrapnel, bullets, steel particles, etc., from soldiers' wounds. The love magnet applied to our enemies, to those who have injured us, will draw out the irritating substances, the things which poison. Love is the spiritual magnet that takes the sting out of all sorts of injuries and insults; it removes all discord because it forgets as well as forgives.

Chapter 9: Work and Happiness

"He who loves work gains all the favor of the gods," says Dr. Frank Crane.

Instead of being a curse, work is man's greatest blessing. There is no one thing that has ever done so much for humanity, that has given so much happiness, saved so many human beings from despair, and kept so many from suicide; no one thing that has called forth so many hidden resources, developed and strengthened so many powers of mind and body as has work.

A woman whose husband's health had failed, and who had also lost his property, said that she had never known what real happiness, real satisfaction, was until she had to push out for herself, to struggle to make a living for herself and her husband. She said that many of the things which previously had loomed so large, and annoyed her intensely when she had little or nothing to do, disappeared altogether as the larger responsibilities came to her. In the exercise of her talents in her daily work she found new life, new courage, new ambition. Her health also improved greatly after she had been thrown upon her own resources.

Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Harvard University, says: "A human being is a creature who cannot be healthy or happy or useful unless his balance is preserved by motion, by change, by action, by progress." In other words, no man or woman can be healthy, happy or useful if not engaged in useful, productive work, work that will be of some service to mankind.

Many people have a sort of vague impression that a happy, constructive life is a thing apart from the day's work, that it is a mystical something, determined largely by fate or destiny. The truth is, it depends entirely on how we manipulate our personal assets. The material of which success and happiness are built is in our own hands. The building is the work of everyday. It consists in living life up to its maximum possibility of good. There is no unnatural straining and striving in this. It is a simple matter of honest, earnest, persistent endeavor everyday; of always trying to better our best and to make our highest moment permanent.

"Get your happiness out of your work or you will never know what real happiness is," said Elbert Hubbard. The idle life is never a happy life. You must feel satisfied with yourself before you can be happy, and you are not satisfied with yourself unless you are doing the best thing possible to you. I never knew an idle person to approve of or think much of himself. Such people are always restless, discontented, unhappy, always hunting for new sensations, new excitements.

No one has ever found greater happiness than in the normal, vigorous exercise of his faculties along the line of his bent. If you have the right spirit; if you have the soul of an artist, no matter what your vocation, however laborious your work, you will find joy and satisfaction in it. The only genuine satisfaction that can come to a human being is to be a real man, or a real woman, and one cannot be that and live an idle, useless life.

One of the greatest delusions that ever crept into a human brain is the idea that the body of man, with its complex activities and functions, and the mind, with its divine possibilities, its immortal outreachings and longings can be satisfied with the froth of life, with its glittering but unsatisfying pleasures.

The human machine was made for action, was designed to perform useful work, and there can be no happiness for an able-bodied man or woman outside of an industrious life. We cannot cheat nature. If we would be happy, we must conform to nature's laws. Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man's being.

"Work cannot be evaded without serious spiritual loss," says Hamilton W. Mabie; "for work is the most general and the most searching method of education to which men are subject. A process which is educational, in a way at once so deep and rich must, in the nature of things, form part of the spiritual order of life; for education is always spiritual in its results. Christ's life among men was one of toil; He was bred to a trade, and practised it; His labors were manifold and continuous; and in word, deed and habit He identified Himself with those who work. Many of His most beautiful parables grew out of His familiarity with the tasks of the shepherd and husbandmen; many of the deepest truths He gave to His disciples were made real and comprehensible by the imagery of the working life in the fields and at home; and when he said, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' He not only gave a divine sanction to work, but He made it a part of the divine life.”

There is something inside a man that condemns him and utters its everlasting protest against his taking out of life's granary all the good things which the workers have put into it, while he has done nothing himself to produce or to earn these things. There is something inside of him that tells him he is mean and contemptible, that he is a thief, if he does not perform his part of the world's work.

How would you feel if you were wrecked at sea and should climb upon a great raft which your fellow passengers had made out of floating pieces of the wrecked ship, taking the most comfortable position, eating heartily of the scant food, drinking all the water you wanted, even though the workers went thirsty while you refused to do your share of the necessary work in the desperate effort to get ashore? How do you think your companions would feel? Would they not be justified in throwing you overboard?

Now, the human race is a great world raft, sailing at lightning speed through space, and the work of every human being on board is necessary to keep the raft headed in the right direction, and always moving toward the appointed goal. If anyone neglects to do his part the whole raft suffers.

But for the blessing of work the human mind would go to pieces. It is good, honest, regular work that preserves the physical and mental balance and keeps us in a normal condition.

God's medicine is work that we love. God's plan for man's development, his growth in mental and physical power and resourcefulness, is work.

It is the desire to attain, the struggle to realize our dreams, that unfolds our powers, calls, out our reserves, forms the character, makes the man; and there is no other possible way than through this exercise and through this evolutionary process that this great end can be accomplished.

Growth and happiness are found only in work; yet how most of us grumble at having to work so hard for everything we get! Who has not sometimes asked himself the question, "Why could not the Omnipotent cause bread readymade to grow on trees, and our clothing and our homes to come to us ready for use, so that we could spend our time in the development of our intellects, in self-culture, in travel, in pleasure?"

How little do the majority of us realize that everything that is desirable is so only because of its cost in effort! Supposing the Creator had provided everything full grown, readymade for our use, and that every human being had been college educated when born; supposing every wish could be gratified without any effort on our part, who would want to live in such a backboneless, jellyfish world, where there was no stamina, no initiative, no grit, no resolution, no incentive to activity, and consequently no stalwart manhood, no strong sweet womanhood, — because these things would be impossible without the constant struggle to attain? Who would care to live in a world of satisfied desires, with no motive for climbing?

This is not God's way. He planned a life of glorious achievement and self-development for man through work. "Work or starve" is written all over the universe, on the sod and on the starry heavens. Ceaseless activity characterizes all life. Every substitution that has ever been tried for work, for personal effort, has been a failure.

The man and the woman who tried to get the good things out of life without paying for them, without giving any equivalent in work, have been heard from. We all know them. They are characterless, selfish, indolent, greedy, overbearing, undeveloped; they never know what to do with themselves, they suffer more from ennui and satiety than they would ever suffer from the hardest work. They are always hunting for happiness but never finding it, because they don't earn it. We get the worthwhile things in life only through personal effort.

The chief ingredients of happiness are the right spirit and wholesome employment. We have the right spirit, when we are in harmony with our environment. When we add to this the doing of a superb piece of work, a fine day's work, we feel a sense of great satisfaction because we are using the human machine in a normal way, in the way it was intended to be used. We have been exercising it to the best of our ability, bringing into play our highest faculties, and contributing our share to the world's wealth.

If we have found our niche, if we are doing the thing we were made to do, we shall find no other happiness, no other satisfaction quite equal to that which we get out of our day's work.

I have rarely known of anyone to break down in doing work he loved. If we were all in our right places, doing the thing nature planned us to do, our work would be almost like play. Where the heart is there is no friction or discord, and friction and discord are what wear life out. These are what exhaust the vitality and waste the brain power. If you love your work, it will not deplete your strength, because it will not be a grind. On the contrary, it will be a pleasure, a perpetual stimulus.

The New Thought philosophy teaches that the mental attitude which we hold toward our work, or our aim in life, has everything to do with what we accomplish, with what life yields of true happiness and success. No one can make a real masterpiece of life until he sees something infinitely greater in his vocation than bread and butter and shelter. Until he sees his work as a task appointed him by the Father, to be done in the spirit of love, he will not have the right mental attitude toward it. Has not the Christ, whose life has taught all men how to live, said: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work"? And again, just before Gethsemane and Calvary: "Father, I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."

Even if you are doing something that is not congenial, make the best of it. Throw your whole soul into it. Do it with a manly, or a womanly spirit, in the spirit of an artist in love with his work, and you will rob it of its drudgery. Resolve that you will like it so long as you are obliged to do it, and that very mental attitude will be a step in leading you to that work which you were really created to do.

When you work in a grudging, unwilling spirit, you discourage and weaken the very qualities in yourself that will enable you to lift yourself out of an uncongenial position into the one you long to fill. If you have a level head, perseverance, and the right spirit you can make success enough even in the thing you do not like to enable you to open the door to your real work.

Good work never goes unrewarded. The willingness to do right, the spirit which never tires of trying to do its best, which puts willing effort into the humblest or most disagreeable task — this is the spirit which accomplishes the great things of life.

There is no other road to happiness than work.

Chapter 10: Practising Love’s Way

It was a bitter cold day, with a stinging wind blowing. A ragged old woman, worn with toil and bent under a heavy load of odd pieces of kindling wood strapped upon her back, was crossing a street when she saw the wind blow a poor blind organ grinder's hat off into the gutter. Many well-dressed people hurrying by also saw, but they only drew their furs more closely about them and passed on. The old woman stopped. With trembling fingers she untied the rope that bound the big load to her back, laid it down, went and picked up the hat and put it on the blind man's head, remarking, "It has been a pretty bad day. How have you made out?" "Not much doing today; the weather's too bad," was the answer. Looking into the little tin cup which held his pennies, the woman saw it was nearly empty. Putting her hand in her pocket and taking out one of her own few pennies, she dropped it in the cup with a "Good luck" and then, readjusting her load, the good Samaritan went on her way.

This is love's way.

Love is never too burdened to be kind, never too poor to give, never too busy to help. It always finds a way to serve.

There are one hundred and fifty or more blind children in the elementary grades in the New York public schools. These children are being taught to do the same work that their more fortunate brothers and sisters are doing. They are given the same examinations, and are judged by the same standards. They are in the same room with them, and are marked just as impartially. No allowance is made for their handicap.

The teacher who has charge of the blind children says that their whole aim is to make the children forget that they are blind.

This is love's way.

Love seeks to make people forget their troubles and trials, their unfortunate handicaps. Love increases their hope, bids them look forward and upward. It stimulates their ambition and helps them to overcome the obstacle which otherwise would hold them down and embitter their lives.

A poor crippled boy classifies his friends by their tact, or their lack of it, in referring to his misfortunes. He says he often meets people who don't mean to be unkind, but who are constantly reminding him of his defect. They will ask him if he has always been that way; or if there is really no help for it; if it doesn't make him very unhappy, and other equally foolish questions. On the other hand, those who have enough imagination, as well as love, to put themselves in his place, never treat him as though he is inferior physically, or make him feel that he is placed at a disadvantage in life. They never refer to his handicap any more than if it did not exist, and he loves them all the more for their tenderness. These he ranks as his best friends.

Real friends never remind us of personal blemishes or deficiencies. Nor do they upbraid us for our sins or shortcomings. When Elizabeth Fry was doing her marvelous work among the prisoners in London, she was asked by a visitor to the prison what crime a certain girl prisoner had committed. "I never asked her," was the reply. The great-hearted woman didn't want to know the girl's faults or offenses. Her one thought was to help all of the unfortunate women to leave their unhappy past and rise to the height of their possibilities.

This is love's way.

Love does not see the bad in others. It looks for the best, sees only the good. No matter how low a human being may fall, love still sees the God in him.

There is a story that an angel was once sent from heaven to visit London. A guide conducted the celestial visitor through the city. He took him to the best art galleries and museums, to the most beautiful parks and squares, to the historic monuments and public places, to all the show places of the great metropolis. The visitor politely noticed these things, but asked to be taken also to the poorer parts of the city, to the slums. The guide explained that these were such unlovely places, and the people who lived in them so degraded and downfallen, that it would only pain him to see them, and that they had better not go to those wretched quarters. The angel, however, urged that he would like to see all sides of the city; so the two started for the east end of London.

There the guide pointed out to the angel men who had committed the most horrible crimes; women who had fallen so low that there was hardly a semblance of womanhood left, and criminals of all sorts who had been inmates of prisons for many years. Instead of turning from them in disgust, as the guide had expected he would, his companion went among the wretched people with evident pleasure, greeting them cordially, shaking hands with each, and telling them how glad he was to see them. The scandalized guide remonstrated with him, insisting that no respectable person would associate with these miserable creatures. "They are outcasts, ostracized by society," he said, "and shut out from association with all good people."

"It makes no difference," answered the angel. "No matter what these people have done, they are all God's children. They are my brothers and sisters. I have lived with God so long that I can see the God in them. In spite of their condition, I feel my kinship with them. I sympathize with them, I pity, I love them."

This is love's way.

A rich man being asked what act of his life had given him the most real satisfaction, replied that it was the paying off of a little mortgage on a poor woman's home at the moment of a threatened foreclosure. He said that the happy smile, the joy and relief that came to the woman's face when he told her what he was doing had given him more happiness than any of the bigger things he had ever done.

It is not the big things of life, but the aggregate of the little kindnesses, the trifling acts of helpfulness, the few kindly words, the little daily deeds of love, that give us real happiness, that make life worth living. Big things come only now and then in a lifetime, and to comparatively few people; but no matter how poor we are, or how uneventful our lives, we can all be philanthropists of kindness. We can give our smiles, our encouragement, our sympathy to someone who needs them everyday in the year. These often mean more to a discouraged soul than does money.

The more we help others, the more closely we touch other lives, the more we expand and grow ourselves, the more love and power come; back to us. What Elizabeth Barrett Browning says is literally true:

"A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee, shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense of service which thou renderest."

Did you ever lose anything by helping the helpless, smoothing the path of the unfortunate? Did you ever regret lightening the burden of the distressed, encouraging those who have lost heart? Did you ever regret the little time, the little effort expended, to scatter sunshine and flowers as you go along life's pathway?

Chapter 11: Training the Child

Not long ago a woman applied to a New York district court to have her son Harold sent to a reformatory.

When questioned by the magistrate as to her reason for wishing her son sent to such an institution, the distressed mother replied that it was because the boy was so bad, she couldn't do anything with him. Then turning to the boy, the magistrate asked him why he didn't behave like a man and treat his mother better. "Because she hits my dog," was the startling reply.

Further questioning revealed that a neighbor gave the lad a puppy, a little mongrel thing, three months old, which he had taught to beg, to carry things in his mouth, and to perform some little dog tricks. He had built a little house for the dog to sleep in, and had also earned enough money to buy a collar for him.

The mother acknowledged that she considered the dog a nuisance, and had often whipped him, as had the boy's older sisters. But she admitted that since the puppy had come to their home, Harold had not roved around the streets so much as before. The magistrate suggested that she try an experiment with the boy before sending him away from her, to respect his love for his pet, and not to abuse either of them.

The woman followed the kind-hearted magistrate's advice. After a while she began to see that the boy was kinder to the little mongrel dog than she had been to her son, and she began to encourage the boy and to sympathize with him, and instead of scolding and whipping the dog, she treated it kindly. The result is the boy is quite changed and beginning to do wonderfully well.

This is the sort of miracle love always effects when it is given a fair chance. Love is the great educator, the great unfolder of youth. As the sun is the only thing that will bring out the sweet juices and develop the luscious flavor, the exquisite beauty of fruits and flowers, so love is the only thing that will develop the sweetness and the beauty of the child. It is the only power that will call out the true, the beautiful side of its nature. It is only the hard, coarse, and unlovely qualities that are developed by force and repression.

How often would a little kindness and forbearance on the part of a parent or guardian, a little better knowledge of child nature, do wonders for a so-called "bad boy" who is considered "incorrigible," a fit subject for a reformatory!

Judge Lindsey, who has, perhaps, a better knowledge of the nature of the growing boy and girl than any psychologist or expert in child study, says: "The child is a wonderful creature, a divine machine. We have much to expect from him, but he has much to expect from us, and what he returns depends largely upon what we give."

Children instinctively admire the good and the beautiful. They are natural hero-worshipers, and they respond enthusiastically to stories of heroism, high endeavor, loyalty, chivalry, all the highest and best instincts of the race. The noblest qualities are inherent in the child. But wrong training — suppression, nagging, scolding, terrorizing, depriving the growing mind of the stimulus of good books, fine examples of living, the starving of its body through insufficient or improper food — all this may, and often does, turn what with proper training might have been a splendid boy or girl into a pitiable human wreck.

The destiny of the child hangs upon its early environment, its parents, teachers and associates. Upon these depend the qualities or characteristics that will be called out of its nature. There are seeds of all sorts of possibilities lying dormant in the boy and the girl. A bad mother, a bad teacher, by appealing to the bad in them, will call out the bad. A good mother, a good teacher, by appealing to the best in them, will call out the best. Evil responds to evil. Nobility responds to nobility.

If you want to get the most out of your child, you cannot do it by repressing, by cramping, by watching, or by criticizing hint. I have known children to become so completely discouraged by being constantly denounced, scolded, perpetually reminded of their shortcomings, their weaknesses, by being told that they were stupid blockheads and would never amount to anything, that they completely lost confidence in themselves, and instead of progressing in a natural healthy way, they constantly fell behind in their studies, in their work, in every way.

How often we hear a parent talking to a boy after this fashion: "Now hurry up, you lazy good-for-nothing. What makes you so slow and stupid? I never saw such a blockhead! Why don't you get a move on you? You will never amount to anything, anyway!"

These denunciations so discourage a boy after a while that he doesn't care, and doesn't try, to do his best. Then, of course, his standards drop and he deteriorates.

The principle so effective in animal taming and training is just as effective in child training, in man and woman making. Children love to be praised and appreciated, just as horses and dogs and other animals do. Many children, especially those of a sensitive nature, live upon praise and appreciation, but the moment a high-spirited child is struck we naturally arouse his bitter resentment, his hatred, his antagonism.

I know a father who every time his boy commits any little fault flies into a rage and whips him unmercifully, and yet cannot understand why he does not make a confidant of him. He complains that his son goes to other people for advice rather than to him, and tells them all his ambitions and dreams for the future, and that he himself cannot draw any of these things out of him. Of course he cannot. And is it reasonable to expect that he could?

How would you feel toward a person, Mr. Parent, who treated you as you treat your boy? Would you be likely to unbosom yourself to him and make a confidant of him? He who is a friend must show himself friendly. You know how delicate a thing friendship is. You know you cannot be unkind or disagreeable to your friends and keep their friendship and admiration. Like attracts like. If you are brutal to your son, you can hardly expect to call out angelic qualities from him.

A father should be just as careful, if not more so, not to forfeit the good opinion, the love and admiration of his son as he would be not to forfeit the friendship of his best friend. If you cannot be a friend to your boy, you certainly cannot expect him to look up to you as an ideal, or even a fairly good, father.

Every time you punish your son in anger, he despises you for it. He knows that you do it because you are stronger and claim the right by virtue of your fatherhood.

You can get the confidence of your boy just as you can get the confidence of friends, and in no other way. Love and respect will come only in response to love and respect. If you love your boy in the right way, and if you enter into all his ambitions and life dreams with keen interest; if he feels that you are really his best friend, he will tell you everything, and not until then.

Many parents are distressed by the waywardness of their children; but the waywardness they deplore is often more imaginary than real. A large part of their children's pranks and mischief is merely the result of exuberant youthful spirits. They are so full of energy, and so buoyant with life that it is difficult for them to restrain themselves. Love is the only power that will control them.

A mother who has brought up a large family of children in the most admirable way says she has never applied physical punishment or spoken a cross word to one of them.

When this woman's first child was born, friends and neighbors said she was too good-natured to bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct or discipline, and would do nothing but love them. It is true, love was her only instrument of correction and discipline, but what splendid results it has achieved! Love has proved the great magnet which has held her large family together in a marvelous way. Not one member of it has gone astray. They have all grown up to be noble, straightforward, self-reliant men and women. Today they all look upon their mother as the greatest figure in the world. She has brought out the best in them.

The worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the best overpowered it. The children always worshiped their mother, and the expulsive power of a stronger emotion drove out of their nature, or discouraged the development of all vicious tendencies, which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant.

Love's way is the only way that always works. No human being in any part of the world has found that love's way has failed, that it has ever been wanting. It is as stable and as certain as the law of gravitation.

A young society woman, not long ago, by its help, succeeded in changing a group of the worst boys in an east side district in New York into earnest, self-respecting, ambitious youngsters. According to the social worker who put the boys in her charge, they "all smoke and shoot craps, the toughest boys on the east side."

The first thing the young woman did was to try to replace the old evil influences which had made the boys what they were by something better. So, she invited the whole "gang," eighteen in all, to her home. This first party was a complete failure. The boys made an uproar; turned the place into a bedlam, and behaved generally as if they were in their old haunts. But the young woman was not discouraged. She continued her parties, and gradually her visitors responded to her kindness and genuine interest in them. Love, which is always patient, at length won out, and in a comparatively short time their unruly natures were subdued, and they were as respectful to the young woman and her father as if they had been reared and trained in the best environment. This is love's way.

The three great essentials for a happy childhood are food, love, and play. After food and love, play is the great builder and developer of childhood. Yet there are far too large a number of parents who are still utterly ignorant of, or indifferent to, the rights of their children in this respect. And some of them are a little bit like our Puritan fathers who, in the early history of our country, thought that the fun-loving, playful faculties were of the devil, evidences of lack of piety, and a great detriment to the spiritual life. But we know now that this is the opposite of the truth. We have found many more useful things for their development in their play than in some of the things taught in the schools, although both school and play are necessary.

You are not loving your children, my parent friends, when you curtail their play, or worse still, shut it off altogether. This will tend to destroy their symmetrical development and to deprive them of the sound judgment and good sense which can only come from a symmetrically developed brain.

The Director of Education in the Philippine Islands says, "The games which we have taught the Filipinos have done for them more than all the other civilizing influence which America has brought. Before we came to the Islands the boys practically had no games and no plays. They had simple pastimes only. The girls had even less than their brothers. The games we have taught, a dozen or more in all, have brought these boys into their stronger and happier selves."

Froebel tells us that play is in reality the most spiritual activity of man in childhood. He finds that it is "typical of human life as a whole — of the inner, hidden, natural life of man and all things; it gives, therefore, joy, freedom, contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world; it holds the sources of all that is good. The child that plays thoroughly until physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion and welfare of himself and others."

The brain would be a prisoner but for the five senses. These five outlets connect it with the outside world. Without these connections a person would become an imbecile. Children, for a few years at least, find their chief outlet in play.

In the earlier, crueler centuries when small children were sometimes imprisoned for many years in dark dungeons, where no light or sound could reach them, and where they were not allowed to communicate with human beings, they never developed. They became imbeciles.

Christ was the first who voiced the rights of the child. There was a time when, if they were at all defective or deficient, children were exposed to wild animals; or if they were not likely to be strong and able to serve the state they were sacrificed. At this time the child was not supposed to have any rights that adults were bound to respect, but Christ said, "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Christ gave a new significance to the child, a new life and a new opportunity to it and to all mankind. The love leaven he implanted in the world has started such a tremendous impulse in favor of the little child, that it is taking hundreds of thousands of children out of factories, stores, and mines, and sending them to school, giving them a chance for life.

In Denmark, where children are not only theoretically the nation's greatest resource, but are treated as such, the state exercises a kindly supervision and care over every child, no matter whose it is, whether high or low, rich or poor. No child is allowed to go to waste, to become a menace to society, because of the parents' ignorance or indifference. Every boy and girl, insofar as the state can make it possible, is insured training for health and efficiency, so that they will grow up independent, self-respecting citizens, fully developed physically and mentally.

Every government should guarantee the inalienable right of its children to a fair chance in life, to all the advantages which a superb physique, robust health, a practical education and good moral training will give them. If all the civilized states would spend as much money on the proper rearing and education of their children as they now spend in conducting criminal trials, in supporting prisons, reform institutions, schools for defectives, insane asylums and poorhouses, the need for such institutions would soon cease to exist.

In New York City two hundred and fifty thousand dollars are spent for vacation classes, playgrounds and evening recreation centers, and seventeen million to correct delinquencies and crimes that have their origin in the evil bent given to the young largely by playless lives.

Ernest K. Coulter, author of "The Children of the Shadow" and founder of the Big Brother movement, made a study of the bad boy and girl problem for ten years in the children's courts of New York, and it is his opinion that if the community can be aroused to the dangers of evil environment the problem of the bad boy can be dealt with successfully.

Love by the state, love in the school and love in the home, but above all love in the home, is the great educator of the child, the great maker of men and women; not the over-indulgent, ignorant love which makes children little monsters of selfishness and cruelty, but the wise, enlightened, divine love which knows how to discipline, to withhold as well as to give.

Many parents who think they love their children are in reality their greatest enemies. They bring out the worst that is in them, because they appeal to the worst. They appeal to all that is frail, weak, timid, and unlovable in their nature, by catering to their selfishness, indulging every whim, no matter how unreasonable or vicious, by doing everything for them instead of allowing them to do things for themselves and thus strengthen their faculties and power of self-reliance.

They are allowed to stay at home from school when they "play" sick, as so many children do, and are petted, and coddled, and fussed over, when there is really nothing the matter with them. If they fall or hurt themselves, they are sympathized with and encouraged to cry, by expressions of pity, instead of being taught to bear a little pain or hurt bravely and manfully and not to whimper like a weakling.

In a hundred such ways, weak, foolish parents cultivate the selfishness of their children until they become unbearable; they destroy their courage and self-reliance; make cowards and weaklings of them, and pave the way for their destruction. Many men and women have lived to curse in bitterness of heart the criminal indulgence of overfond parents, who were the primal cause of their ruin.

Do not do for your children what they ought to do for themselves, but help them to help themselves. Do not allow them to trample on the rights of others in order to gratify their own selfish desires. Show them the beauty of the Golden Rule, and insist upon their practising it in their games, with their playmates, and with older people. Teach them to respect the rights of others; but don't forget under any circumstances that they also have rights which should be respected.

You can no more compel the love and admiration and respect of your child by constantly antagonizing, and finding fault with him, and showing him the unlovely side of your character on the one hand, or, on the other, pandering to every unreasonable whim, than a young man could compel a girl to love him by adopting similar means.

The training of a child is the most delicate and sacred business in the world. It is a work that calls for the greatest wisdom, the finest discernment, the most infinite patience. Love includes all of these.

In training your child try love's way.

Chapter 12: How to Lighten Your Burdens

"Help the other fellow" is one of the suggestive mottoes in a western factory. It would be a good motto for all of us. Nothing will do more to lighten your own burden than helping the other fellow to bear his.

It was love, the divine burden bearer, that enabled a poor apple-woman to do such service for others as should make those of us who grumble about the hard task of making a living blush for our self-absorption. Telling about her work in "The Investment of Influence," Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis says:

"Working among the poor of London an English author searched out the life-career of an apple-woman. Her story makes the story of kings and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys sleeping in an ash-box, whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered and reared some twenty orphans — gave them home and bed and food; taught them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead face. It must have been so. She 'had a beautiful soul,' as Emerson said of Longfellow .... Her life was a sweet episode in London's history. Social reform has felt her influence. Like a broken vase, the perfume of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone."

Oh, marvelous power of love that lightens all heavy burdens and smooths all rough roads! What would become of humanity were it not for love, which sweetens the hardest labor and makes self-sacrifice a joy? Without its transforming power we should still be primitive barbarians.

Love is the greatest tonic to the muscles and to all the faculties. Luther Burbank told me when I visited him at his great horticultural farm in California that he would not employ men who did not love flowers and enjoy caring for them, because he said if they did not, the flowers felt their antagonism and would not thrive with them as they did with people who loved them. Love of your work will enlarge your life and increase your ability. Joy in one's tasks is what sunshine is to the fruits and flowers. A person can do much more and better work where his heart is than where it is not.

What mothers endure for many years for their children would kill or drive them to an insane asylum but for love. This takes the drudgery out of service and lightens all burdens. It is love alone that enables the poor mother to go through terrible experiences in her struggles with poverty and sickness to rear her children. Love takes the sting out of poverty, the pain out of sacrifice. There is nothing too hard, too disagreeable or repulsive to human nature for a mother to do for her children. She will toil and perspire all day, and then rob herself of sleep and rest, walking the floor night after night with a sick child. These services she will perform for weeks and perhaps months at a time, even when she may be ill enough to be in bed herself. In fact, there is no service which it is possible for one human being to render another which the loving mother will not perform for her child.

The same thing is true of the loving father, though his burden in the nature of things is rarely as heavy as the mother's. But he is often virtually a slave for half a lifetime or more for those he loves. If he is a real man, however, he does not complain. Love lightens the burden and cheers the way for the real man, as it does for the real woman. Where the heart is, there the burden is light.

Obedience to the divine injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens," is the surest way of making one's own life rich and beautiful. It was this that made Lincoln the best loved man in America. He was loved in his lifetime, and is loved today as perhaps no other man on this continent was ever loved, because of his kindly disposition and rare spirit of helpfulness. His spontaneous desire to help everybody, and especially to return a kindness, endeared him to all who knew him. His desire to help the burden bearers, in youth as in later life, amounted to a passion. He chopped wood for the poor widows in his neighborhood, helped those who were out of work, ran errands, did chores for people, and in fact was known as "the man who helped everybody."

Herndon, his law partner said: "When the Rutledge Tavern, where Lincoln boarded, was crowded, Lincoln would often give up his bed, and sleep on the counter in his store with a roll of calico for his pillow. Somehow everybody in trouble turned to Lincoln for help."

One day, while practising law in Springfield, Lincoln was passing a neighbor's house, when he saw a little girl standing at the gate with her hat and gloves on, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"It was the first time I had ever seen Mr. Lincoln," she said in telling the story to a friend some years afterward, when the Springfield lawyer had become President of the United States. "I was going with a little friend for my first trip alone on the railroad cars. It was an epoch in my life. I had planned for it and dreamed of it for weeks. The day came, but, as the hour of departure approached, the hackman failed to call for my trunk. As the minutes passed, I realized with grief that I should miss the train. I was standing at the gate, crying, when Mr. Lincoln came along."

"'Why, what's the matter?' he asked.

"'The hackman has not come to get my trunk,' I replied.

"'How big is the trunk?' he asked. 'There's time enough if it isn't too big.' He pushed through the gate, and my mother took him up to my room, where my little old-fashioned trunk was waiting.

"'Oh, ho!' he cried, 'wipe your eyes and come on, quick.' Before I knew what he was going to do, he had shouldered the trunk, and was downstairs and striding out of the yard. Down the street he went, as fast as his long legs could carry him, I trotting behind, drying my eyes as I went. We reached the station in time. Mr. Lincoln put me on the train, kissed me goodbye, and told me to have a good time."

Whether it was a little child in distress, or a mother pleading for the life of her boy, this great loving soul was always ready to lighten their load, to help others carry their burden.

A candle loses nothing by giving its light to light another's candle which has gone out. We never lose anything by a kindly deed, by giving a helping hand to a brother wayfarer. On the contrary, whatever your vocation, you will find that if you go through life as a helper, a lifter, an encourager, if you give any little help or encouragement from day to day to the burden-bearers, to those who are less fortunate than yourself, you will be richer and not poorer for it. The habit of being kind, of helping others, will not only cause you infinite satisfaction, but it will actually increase your ability because it will make you happier, and whatever makes you really happy increases your ability and efficiency. Whenever we lose an opportunity to be helpful, we lose the blessing and the joy which attends service to others.

"Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love," says Drummond. "Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most, most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.”

Governor Andrews, the famous war governor of Massachusetts, was called the "Wide Liker," by the colored people who loved him because of his love and sympathy for them. Everybody who knew him loved him. They couldn't help it, because he had a great sympathetic, kindly heart; and, after all, it is the heart qualities that count. Governor Andrews had a great, wise head, but the poor, colored people did not understand much about that. They did understand and appreciate a great kind heart, and when their friend, the Governor, was buried, many poor, old, ragged colored men and women walked beside his coffin the whole five miles from Boston to Mount Auburn.

There is one thing that is infinitely more desirable than wealth or fame or any other earthly thing, and that is the good opinion of your fellowmen. The reputation of being kindly, of being helpful, of always being ready to give a lift to the unfortunate, is worth more than any amount of money, because it means a life of service, and the satisfaction which comes from such a life is greater than any fortune can give.

The son of a poor country clergyman who had such a reputation, when asked one day what his father was doing, said: "I don't know what he is doing, but I know he is helping somebody somewhere!" I know people like this clergyman who are poor in worldly possessions, but who have always been helpers, boosters of others. They are always ready to lend a hand, to help a neighbor or to give to anyone in distress.

There is none so poor that he cannot give in some way, and it is a heartless, soul-destroying thing to go through the world thinking only of self, trying to get every possible advantage for oneself, always looking out for the main chance. This kills the best thing in human nature, blights the finer sentiments, and shrivels all the qualities that win love and friendship.

I would rather be a helper, a lifter of human beings; would rather have the satisfaction of giving others a lift, of encouraging those who are down-and-out, of lending a hand in time of need to those who have been unfortunate, and yet be poor, than have the wealth of a Croesus and a starved, pinched, loveless life therewith.

Chapter 13: Survival Value

Of all those who went to their doom on the "Lusitania," there was one whose fate aroused more widespread sympathy and called out deeper and more numerous expressions of sorrow than any other. That one was Charles Frohman, the theatrical manager — "C. F.," as his friends and employees affectionately called him.

"Authors, actors and actresses have lost the greatest friend they ever had. He did more for them than any other manager." "No man, woman or child ever saw him angry or heard him raise his voice. I never knew him to have an enemy. I never heard him speak ill of anyone." "He filled a unique position in all countries and belonged to the whole world, which will grieve for him as I do now." "I have never met a kinder, straighter, more generous, more considerate man." "It is doubtful whether any man in the theatrical business ever lived who gave away so much money to charity as 'C. F.' " "If when I die," he once said to me, "I can do so with the love and respect of all my stars, all my authors, all my associates, all my employees, then I will not have lived in vain." "Wherever two or three people of the theatre are gathered together, whether they be billposters or magnates, they will tell you that 'C. F.' was one of the squarest men ever engaged in the show business.”

These are but a few of the many tributes from friends, associates, and employees to the memory of Charles Frohman, heard on every side after the tragedy of May, 1915. They explain the widespread mourning for his loss. They emphasize the meaning of that significant phrase "survival value."

This is the test of a man's work, his character, his life — its survival value. Only that which is useful to humanity has longevity. The good deed, the helpful service, the kindly act, the work which benefits the race — these are the things that endure.

History does not ask how much money a man has left, how many things he piled up about him, how many stocks and bonds he managed to get hold of, how much land he held the title deed to. It cares nothing about the selfish life, takes no interest in the accumulation of gold. The only question history will ask about you after you are gone is "How much of a man was he? What did he do for his kind? Did he add anything to the comfort, the convenience, the wellbeing, the happiness of his fellowmen? What service did he render to humanity?"

The world erects its monuments to those who relate to it through their high qualities of manhood. It erects none to those who are connected with it only through their selfish relationship. Your contact with the world must be a vital one, one of helpfulness and service, or you will quickly be forgotten. It cherishes the memory of those only who have been useful to it, those who have given civilization a lift, who have in some way bettered the conditions of the race. It gives its love only to those whose hearts have beaten in sympathy with the race.

Because of his immense service to mankind, time only makes Lincoln loom larger and larger as an international figure. As the stress and anxiety of the war increases, one of the most noticeable things in England is its increasing admiration and appreciation of the greatness of the man and his service to the world. Leading English publications recently printed long articles about him, and English statesmen have quoted his words and acts as precedents for their guidance in momentous crises developed during the war.

Mr. Wu-Ting-Fang, former Chinese Minister to. the United States, said of him, "To Lincoln may be applied the words which a Chinese historian uses in describing the character of Yao, the most revered and honored of the ancient rulers of China. 'His benevolence was boundless; his wisdom was profound; to anyone approaching him he had the genial warmth of the sun.' When viewed at a distance he seemed to have the mysterious warp of the clouds; though occupying the highest station, he was not haughty; though controlling the resources of the whole nation, he was not lavish; justice was the guiding principle of his actions; nobleness was written in his face."

Like Lincoln, the name and fame of Florence Nightingale are stamped for all time on the heart of mankind. The one was born in a log cabin, the other in a palatial home. But both lives were animated by the same passion for service which the world gratefully commemorates, not only in monuments of bronze, but in undying memory.

At a large dinner party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War, it was proposed that everyone should write on a slip of paper the name which appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When the papers were opened every one of them contained the name of Florence Nightingale.

What the vast resources of the British army had failed to do for its soldiers in the Crimea, the great brain, the loving heart and tender sympathy of this frail, delicately nurtured woman had accomplished.

When Florence Nightingale went to the Crimea, a far larger percentage of soldiers were dying of disease than were being killed in battle. This because of the appalling unsanitary conditions in the hospitals, and the lack of all facilities for caring for the sick and wounded. With a largeness of brain, only equaled by her largeness of heart, she soon brought order out of chaos, and converted what had been a plague spot into a place of health and healing. No wonder they called her the "Angel of the Crimea," for the work she accomplished with hand and heart and brain was nothing short of miraculous.

"Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler most distressingly nigh," wrote a Crimean correspondent of the London Times, "there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a 'ministering angel,' without any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and, as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds."

"If anyone's heart is full of love and his hand full of service he has no morbid 'problems,'" said Dr. Frank Crane. "He has solved the riddle of life."

With love in your heart, you have not only happiness, but a power of accomplishment which no amount of money can give. If the good done by love alone could be taken out of the world what would be left us! There is nothing great, enduring, worthwhile on which it is not built.

Some seventy or more years ago a poor young curate in Brittany had an idea that the poor should help the poor. His salary was only eighty dollars a year, his friends and parishioners were the poorest of the poor, and without money he proceeded to launch his idea. He got together some of his friends and outlined to them his plan for helping those who were poorer than themselves. As a result, in a poverty-stricken attic, in a poor street, with two old women as its first beneficiaries, the Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor was started. And from that humble beginning has grown that mighty organization which now covers two continents and gives food and shelter, encouragement and help to thousands and thousands of poor and aged people everyday.

The first helpers of the young curate were seamstresses and servants, who agreed to pool with him their little earnings for the starting of the enterprise. This little band has grown to thousands of devoted women, with more than two hundred and fifty houses of shelter for the aged and poor in Europe alone. The Little Sisters with their baskets or their carts collecting for their "children," as they call the occupants of the homes, are a very familiar sight in the large cities of Europe, and also in America.

The name of the Abbe Le Pailleur, the poor curate who, with the munificent salary of eighty dollars a year, established this great and merciful organization, will live when mighty kings and emperors are forgotten.

So will that of George Müller, who, early in the nineteenth century, opened the famous Orphan House at Ashley Downs, England. He had no money to start with, but his love for the poor, homeless orphans inspired a boundless faith that God would prosper the undertaking. He did, and the great institution at Ashley Downs, supported entirely by voluntary contributions, has educated and provided for many thousands of waifs.

Another of those great souls who in their love for humanity built better than they knew was Annie McDonald. She was only a poor dressmaker who died in New York some years ago, and left everything she had in the world, two hundred dollars, as a legacy to start a home for crippled children. She felt that other charities of almost every kind had been attended to but the poor crippled little ones. She had always done what she could to help them when living, and with a faith that looks beyond obstacles she had left her little fortune to them, hoping and believing that it would suggest to others with greater means the necessity of establishing a home for those poor children. This was the beginning of the Daisy Fields Home for Crippled Children. It stands back of the Palisades, on the Hudson, in the midst of a great field which in summer is covered with daisies. Here the children are cared for until they are either completely cured or able to support themselves without suffering. This is love's way.

A man may be perfectly honest, industrious and self-supporting, and yet be of practically no value whatever to his community. To be of worth to your fellowmen you must be more than honest; you must be helpful; you must be a lifter; you must have an unselfish interest in your kind. The man who thinks only of himself, no matter how much money he may pile up, can never win the love or esteem of his fellowmen.

"So much money and so few friends," was a remark recently made about a New York man who had piled up a great deal of money, but had not a real friend in the world, not one who regarded him with affection or esteem. In spite of his wealth, this man, and there are thousands like him, is of no benefit whatever to his community. He is a liability rather than an asset. His influence is destructive.

There must be an outlet as well as an inlet to a pool of water or the water will stagnate and breed all sorts of vermin. It will also exhale poisonous malaria and poison its whole neighborhood. We, too, must give out as well as receive or we will stagnate. People who are always getting, never giving themselves or their money, who are always grasping and hoarding, who have no outlet to. their lives, are a pest to society; they radiate poison.

Getting and never giving defeats its own purpose, for the selfish, miserly soul never gives or receives happiness, I know a wealthy man who says nobody cares what becomes of him. The only motive people have in cultivating him, he says, is the hope of getting some advantage of his wealth. He believes if he should lose his money no one would go to see him or even visit him in the hospital if he should be ill.

Now, a man who has gained a fortune and lost his friends in the process, has failed, no matter how many millions he may have amassed. A fortune acquired through selfishness and greed by a man who has sacrificed his friendships, his home, his family, who has ground all of his time and energy into the dollar game, does not enrich even himself. The man who grinds the life out of his employees for his own profit, who makes himself a sponge to pull things toward him and who never gives anything out is the worst sort of pauper. His life makes the world poorer instead of richer. His death causes no regret.

Though he may leave a fortune to endow charitable institutions, to build hospitals or

colleges after his death, the selfish, greedy man, whose life was all bound up in his own welfare is soon forgotten. The world remembers and builds monuments only to those who are helpful to it.

The supreme test of your work is its survival qualities: its value to humanity. If you are only related to your time and to civilization through self-seeking; if you have only established relationship with your kind through a selfish interest you will leave no blank in the world when death calls you. You will leave only a blank to the questions — How much of a man is he? What did his life mean to the race?

Chapter 14: The Miracle Worker

Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods, and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life and of happiness after death. — Plato.

An English soldier in India, who seemed to be a hopeless drunkard, had been brought time and again before his superior officer for drinking and severely punished.

"Here he is again," said this officer one day, when the man was brought before him by a sergeant. "Flogging, disgrace, solitary confinement, everything we can think of, has been tried to cure this man of drinking and it is no use. He is hopeless."

"Pardon me, sir," the sergeant said, "but there is one thing that we haven't tried yet." "Well, sir, what is it?" "He has never been forgiven, sir." "Forgiven!" shouted the officer, with a look of blank astonishment, but turning to the culprit he said, "What have you to say to this charge." "Nothing, sir," replied the man; "only I am awfully sorry for having got drunk again." "Well," said the officer, "we certainly have tried everything with you, and now we are going to do as the sergeant suggests, try one thing more; we are going to forgive you."

Tears streamed down the man's face as if he were a child, and thanking the officer he retired, apparently a hopeless victim of drink. But no, this first kindness of his Colonel touched his heart, and he resolved that he would never drink again. The chaplain of his regiment, who told the story, said that the man became a model soldier and never again had to be reprimanded for drinking.

The miracle worked in this drunken soldier by forgiving love is proof that the age of miracles has not passed. It will never pass while love endures, for love is continually working miracles in all sorts of people.

The possibilities of a single individual as illustrated in "The Passing of the Third Floor Back" to revolutionize a whole household by the power of love alone are not exaggerated.

Those who have seen or read the play will remember how, in response to an advertisement in a London paper, "Boom to let, third floor back," comes a remarkable man, who is given the title of "The Stranger." This man takes the third floor back, and finds himself in a boarding-house filled with questionable characters. Among them are petty thieves, gamblers, a rogue, a bully, a snob, a shrew, people who had led fast lives, and all sorts of uncharitable, envious, men and women. They stoop to every kind of meanness. One woman even steals candles. Everyone tries to cheat everyone else and is cheated in return. The landlady is of the same type as her boarders. She preys on them and they prey on her. She waters the milk, adulterates the food, steals and overcharges, and then to keep herself from being robbed she puts everything under lock and key.

In spite of the fact that they all make fun of the newcomer because he does not fall into their vicious ways, he takes no offense, but on the contrary gives them kindness and courtesy in return. Not only that, but he seems to see in each of them something good, some fine qualities or talents which they had not discovered themselves. Beneath all their wickedness, their dishonesty, their licentiousness, their gambling propensities, he recognizes in these unfortunate people the divinity of their being, the reality of themselves.

He would talk to the rogue about his splendid ability, his latent powers, the resources which he was not using, the great possibilities there were in him. He would tell the bully what fine things he was capable, of doing if he would only arouse and get hold of his real self. He assured one young man who took especial delight in making fun of him, that he really had great artistic ability which he should cultivate. To another he pointed out his unusual musical talent. And so, he tried to encourage each in turn, his whole aim being to arouse the divinity in his fellow-boarders, to show them that there was something better in them than what they were using.

The bully and the "painted lady," his wife, had managed to get their daughter engaged to a man of wealth, although she did not love him. But she was going to sell herself for money, as that was what her parents were after. The new boarder persuaded the girl to listen to her own heart, and marry only the man she loved. This she finally did, and the rich man, whose money her parents had coveted, under the influence of the occupant of the third floor back, became her very helpful friend.

Under the same benign influence the shrewish landlady was also transformed. She ceased watering the milk, adulterating the foods, stealing from her boarders, and locking things up to guard against their stealing from her. She began to trust people, to trust herself, to have more respect for herself and others. She turned over a new leaf in her treatment of her poor little "slavey" who, previous to the new boarder's advent, had received nothing from her but abuse and ill treatment.

She had constantly taunted the girl with the fact that she had been an inmate of the workhouse, that she was a nobody, that she didn't amount to anything and never would. And although she worked the girl nearly to death, she rarely gave her an evening off. Now the woman's manner began to soften toward her, and one day she surprised the girl by telling her she looked tired and that she had better run outdoors for a change. In fact, the hitherto harsh, slave-driving mistress became kind and considerate, more like a mother than a brutal employer.

The poor slavey herself was an object of especial interest to the Stranger. He persistently encouraged her and tried to show her that she was not the nobody her mistress had been telling her she was, and like all the others he inspired her with a new feeling of respect for herself and a new and enlarged estimate of her possibilities. Through the stimulus of the love spirit she ultimately became a fine, self-reliant, noble woman.

In a short time, the whole atmosphere of the house was changed. Every occupant of it responded to the divine influence of the gentle, unobtrusive lodger who was really a personification of the Christ spirit. He had shown every man and woman of that discordant jangling household his or her better self, and so, literally, made them anew. They had been born again.[1]

This is what love always does. It turns a person around so that he sees things in a different light, faces life in a different way. It puts a new spirit in him; it gradually neutralizes or drives out of the nature all selfishness, all greed, all unkindness, all uncharitableness.

Love is the most potent influence in life. It is infinitely more powerful than the gambling instinct, than the lust instinct, than the greedy, grasping instinct. It neutralizes all the baser passions and instincts. It touches the God in man. It is the divine leaven of love which uplifts and ennobles the whole nature. Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming brutal, dissolute men into refined and devoted husbands? I have known women who had such great, loving, helpful hearts, and such charm of manner, that the worst men, the most hardened characters would do anything in the world for them — would give up their lives even to protect them. These men could not be touched by unkindness or compulsion. Love was the only power that could reach them.

"To love, and to be loved," said Sydney Smith, "is the greatest happiness of existence." Everyone, rich and poor, high and low, is reaching out for love. What will not a man do to win the love of one who embodies his ideal of womanhood; one in whom he sees all the beautiful qualities that he himself lacks! This love is really a divine hunger, the longing for possession of what will make him a whole man instead of the half one he feels he is.

Why is it that when a coarse-grained, brutal, dissipated man falls in love with a sweet, pure girl he immediately changes his ways, looks up, thinks up, braces up, drops his profanity, is more refined, more choice in his language, more exclusive in his associations, and is, to all appearances, for the time at least, a changed man? Simply because love is a more powerful motive to the man than dissipation. He drops the latter, and if his love is steady and true, he will never again indulge in any degrading practice.

One of the most brutal human beings I ever saw, fallen as low as a human being possibly could, was an illiterate man who, though still young, had spent years in prison for different offenses, fell in love with a beautiful young woman, a schoolteacher, to whom he told his story. She became interested in him from the first and began to teach him to read. Closer association with the man showed her his possibilities and latent good qualities, and gradually she grew to love him.

Then the leaven of love began to work in the man's nature. His coarse, vulgar manners immediately softened. He showed more refinement in speech and manner. The fearful profanity in which he used to indulge dropped from him little by little. He was seen less and less in saloons and dives. He began to clean up and to dress up. He took more interest in his work and for the first time in his life began to save money. Finally the schoolteacher married him and his transformation was completed. He was a devoted husband and became an able and useful citizen.

I recall another instance of the redeeming power of love somewhat similar to this. A very pessimistic, ill-dispositioned man fell desperately in love with a sweet young girl, who in spite of his repellent qualities loved him and believed she could see the making of a man in him. With all of his other bad qualities, he was subject to frightful fits of the blues, which would last him for days. While in their grip he would suffer terribly, believing that there was nothing in life worth living for.

The girl married him and soon experienced the evil effects of his harsh, gloomy nature. But she was not discouraged and began the experiment of laughing him out of his blues, and in all sorts of ways trying to change the tenor of his thoughts. She was a student of the New Thought philosophy of life, and was always bright, cheerful, and hopeful. She was constantly telling her husband that happiness was his birthright, that being God's child he was not made to express any unfortunate qualities, and that the divine in him could and should dominate the human, the animal. She reminded him that his Maker was his partner, that consequently he was in touch with the Infinite Source of all things, and that all that was beautiful and true, all that was desirable in the universe, all the good things, were his if he would only claim them by developing his God consciousness.

The young wife never ceased in her efforts, always using love's way in whatever she tried to do for her husband. Where he had previously used the opposite, she persuaded him to substitute love's way. She showed him that love was the cure, the healing balm for all his weaknesses, all his unhappiness, all his difficulties, and all his unfortunate qualities.

It may have been a dangerous experiment for the girl, but the results were magical. After a few months of the love treatment this man became so changed in disposition, in personal appearance, in manner, in habits, in his conversation and life generally, that his old friends and acquaintances scarcely knew him. His nature had unfolded just as a plant unfolds when taken out of an inhospitable environment and placed in a warm, congenial atmosphere. The man's new environment, the sun of his wife's love, had nourished his nature and brought out the possible divine man. Before his marriage he had merely been expressing his lower self, his brute nature. But now his life has blossomed into beauty; he has become a strong, splendid man. He is expressing his higher, his real, self.

Love always finds the God in us, because it refuses to see anything else. Where there is apparently only a weakling or a coward, love sees a hero. It sees the good citizen, the good husband, the good father in the meanest hobo, in the most degenerate beggar that crawls in his rags. Love sees only the ideal man or woman, the being made in his Creator's image, which persists in every one of us no matter how low we may have fallen.

The loving mother does not see the criminal in her son. No matter what his faults or blemishes, she looks beyond them to the divine ideal. She sees an ideal man. She sees him as God sees him, not as society sees him, not as the judge on the bench sees him.

How often we hear the expression: "How that mother can see any good in that ugly brat of hers is more than I can understand." But the mother does see something beautiful in that "ugly brat"; she sees great possibilities in her boy, where others see none. She sees him in the years ahead a good husband, a good father, a good citizen. The fond mother does not see her homely or defective child as other people see it. She sees her boy growing into a splendid man with all his possibilities unfolded and given expression. She does not see her crippled girl as other people see her. She looks beyond the physical deformity, and sees the soul, the reality of the child, the truth of its being. She sees the superb woman in possibility, and makes all sorts of sacrifices so that her loved ones shall develop into the men and women God meant them to be.

The wife, who is faithful in spite of many disillusions and disappointments, does not see in the man she loves the dishonest, brutal, lustful husband. She sees only her ideal of manhood, the possibilities that still are his. The husband does not see in the woman he married the nagging, gossiping, mischief-making wife; he sees only his ideal of womanhood; he sees what love sees, only the good, only the pure, only the true, only the ideal girl he first loved.

Love sees no evil, thinks no evil, knows no evil. It sees, thinks, knows only the good, the pure, the clean, the true. Love goes through the world radiating sunshine and gladness, purifying the atmosphere everywhere, never seeing the bad in human beings because it is too much occupied in looking for the good.

It is difficult to imagine what would become of the race if love did not see the ideal, the perfect man, the man God intended instead of the burlesque man, the weak, deficient being that hatred and all forms of error have made him appear.

Browning said, "Love is energy of life." Love certainly is the greatest energy we know anything about. It is love that moves the world. No other human agency has been half so powerful for good. No other can lift man to the divine.

Chapter 15: Our Little Brothers and Sisters

I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, yet wanting sensibility), the man who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. — Cowper.

A famous dog trainer says, "My dogs will do anything to please me." Beating is no good. It only calls out resentment and resistance. No matter how often they fail, he says, his dogs will try over and over and over again to do what he wants them to do, because they know that when they succeed, they are going to get what they love so much, a lot of petting and praise.

Love has taken the wolf out of the dog and given us instead the most faithful and affectionate of animals. It has evolved our house cat from the ferocious wild cat. The same is true of other domestic animals. Kindness has trained the savage beasts of the jungle and forest and made them household pets, playmates and protectors of our children.

Rosa Bonheur, the great painter and lover of animals, bought from the owner of a menagerie a lion which he declared untameable. The artist, however, believed that love would accomplish the impossible. "In order to secure the affections of wild animals you must love them," she said, and in a comparatively short time her love had effected what the lion tamer had given up as hopeless. She used to play with and fondle the huge animal as if he were a kitten. When old and blind he died with his great paws clinging affectionately to the mistress whose love had tamed him.

It is interesting to see how quickly even the fiercest animals yield to the magic of love. Under the kindly treatment of one who really loves them, one who, like St. Francis, looks upon them as his "little brothers and sisters," the wild expression gives place to a milder, gentler one; the suspicious look is replaced by a trustful one; the brute nature is gradually softened, and distrust gives way to confidence; affection takes the place of dislike and fear; love goes out to meet love. The more love we give to any animal, the gentler and more tractable it becomes. Note the gentle, peaceful face of a cow or a horse which has been brought up as a family pet. Such animals would no more step on or injure a child than we would ourselves. We love and trust them, and they love and trust us in return.

Some time ago, there was on exhibition in New York a young horse which could do the most marvelous things, and yet his trainer said that only four years before he had had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, vicious, would kick and bite and do all sorts of bad things. But four years of kindness had completely transformed the vicious yearling colt into one of the kindest and most affectionate animals in the world. He was not only obedient and tractable, but had been trained to do all sorts of unusual things. He could readily count and reckon up figures, and could even spell many words, whose meaning he seemed to understand. In fact, he seemed to be capable of learning almost anything, and

the whole secret of his transformation and rare intelligence was due to kindness and love. His trainer said that in all the four years he had touched him with a whip but once.

Years ago Mr. Daniel Boyington proved to Texas cowboys, and others, that there was a better way of taming and subduing horses than the old brutal way of literally "breaking them."

"At first," says a writer, "he was hooted and jeered at, and the news that 'Uncle Dan was coming' was the signal for the larking cowboys to get together all the 'outlaws' and condemned horses for miles around, anticipating great sport in seeing them 'do up the old man' or 'run the professor plumb out of the corral.'

"When they had seen 'the professor' go into the corral without whip, rope, or hackamore, and had seen him subdue, pet, saddle, bit, and ride the most vicious horse in the bunch within three or four hours; when they had seen the trembling outlaw rub its nose against his shoulder and eat out of his hand, they said that it was hypnotism or magic. They accused him of 'doping' the horses, and privately offered him big bribes to tell them what charm or medicine he used.

"'Uncle Dan' only shook his head and laughed, and his answer was always the same. 'The only charm I use, boys, is the Golden Rule. Treat a horse as you would like to be treated if you were a horse yourself. There is never any need for anyone to beat or abuse a horse, for there is no creature living more faithful or loving, if you are only kind and patient with him. Teach him to love and have confidence in you, and give him time to find out what you want, then he will serve you not only willingly, but gladly and proudly. The best charm that any man can use in breaking a horse is kindness.’"

Someone has said that when a man really "gets religion" his horse soon finds it out. Yet it is a strange thing that many devoted church members, who firmly believe they are among the "righteous" are often cruel to their horses. And there is not a day that hundreds of these noble animals are not brutally maltreated in our city streets. How often do we see drivers unmercifully beating and abusing poor tired horses who are doing their best to carry their cruel burdens! But we utter no protest. We know it is wrong to allow the poor animals to be abused, but we are too cowardly to take the chances of exposing ourselves to ridicule or possible abuse from the driver, and pass on, leaving the helpless dumb creatures in their misery.

The lack of courage, the fear of being thought peculiar, keeps many people from doing kind things which their hearts prompt. Only the few have the manhood or the. womanhood to brave the ridicule of the coarse and unthinking for the sake of love.

One cold, blustering day last winter, one of these few, a woman, saw a horse standing in the street whose blanket had been blown off. The woman saw that the animal was shivering with cold, and she went and picked up the blanket and replaced it on his back. But the wind was strong and blew the blanket off again. The woman again replaced it, and this time firmly tucked it in, while she patted the horse's head. A crowd of men meanwhile had gathered on the sidewalk and stood watching her as much as to say: "I wonder what is the matter with that woman. She must be peculiar, out of her head." The idea of a fine looking, well-dressed woman getting out in the street, picking up a blanket and putting it on a horse, was something they could not understand. They thought her abnormal or eccentric.

Whether our unkindness or cruelty to the animals below us in the scale of evolution is active or passive, we will certainly have to answer for it in this life or some other. Elbert Hubbard goes so far as to say that: "When a man forgets his dumb brothers, and is dead to their fears, sufferings and agonies, he has lost his own soul. Am I my dumb brother's keeper? Certainly, yes, and thou shalt give an account of thy stewardship!"

I cannot see how anybody can gaze into the depths of the eyes of a dog without seeing there something akin to himself, something which responds to the deep within himself. For myself I can see there that which is on its way to something higher. I can see there a spirit of devotion, a spirit of love which bespeaks the divine.

How can you, how can anyone, abuse a dog who the more you whip him the more desperately he clings to you? Perhaps you have never thought what you represent to him. Did it never occur to you that you are his God; that he knows nothing higher than you, the source of his food, of all the affection he knows, of everything he has? So far as he is concerned you are the highest thing in the universe, and when you abuse him, his very sense of separateness from the greatest power he knows of makes him miserable. There is no happiness for him until his connection with you is re-established.

The next time you are tempted to abuse your dog, your horse, or any dumb animal, just look into his eyes and see if you can't recognize something there back of the brute, something which speaks through the animal that is not animal. These dumb animals have rights which the Creator has given them, and which man is bound to respect, even as he is bound to respect the rights of his fellowman.

When a boy, Theodore Parker once came across a tortoise and raised a stick to kill it, when something within whispered to him not to, that it was wrong to kill an innocent creature that had done him no harm. He dropped the stick, went home and told his mother of the incident. She made it the text of a talk which he said influenced his entire life.

It is comparatively easy to create a sentiment of sympathy and love for these dumb animals in growing children, and the creation of such a sentiment in youth will have a wonderful influence upon their afterlife. Teach your boy and your girl that a real man, a real woman, always champions the cause of the innocent and helpless birds and animals, that a really noble soul never injures or causes pain to creatures who have no way of appealing to him, who cannot plead their own cause, whose very helplessness should enlist his sympathy and protection. All children should be taught that the Creator has put the lower animals in our care and that He will hold us responsible for our treatment of them. I believe with Ella Wheeler Wilcox that: "If every child living today were made to realize this sense of responsibility, and to feel sympathy, protection and love for the helpless animals, the deformed, sick or penniless humans, more than two-thirds of the sorrow, suffering and sin on earth would vanish in one generation."

During the Spanish-American War an officer in the United States army one day noticed a corporal in a colored regiment who was carrying his own gun and that of a wounded comrade, two cartridge belts, two knapsacks, and a dog. The day was very hot, and many of the soldiers were nearly prostrated. The officer stopped the corporal and said to him, "Look here, didn't you march all last night?" "Yes, sir," said the corporal. "And didn't you fight all day?" "Sure, sir." "And haven't you been marching ever since ten o'clock tonight?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then," shouted the officer, "what in the mischief are you carrying that dog for?" "Why, boss, you see it's this way, this dog's tired!"

This young fellow was made of the right kind of stuff, and evidently had had the right kind of training in childhood. Though burdened with the equipment of two men, he thought there was reason enough to add to his burden because his dog was so tired. The true man is always as tender as he is brave.

Most boys pass through what we may call the "hunting" age, the destructive age. They want to own a gun; they want to shoot something. And as long as hunting and wantonly killing wild things is recognized as "manly sport," it is hard to make boys believe that there is really nothing manly in killing things merely for the fun of it; that it is, on the contrary, infinitely more manly to champion the cause of the hunted, to protect the birds and the animals from inhuman slaughter.

To take pleasure in killing innocent animals for sport is a relic of barbarism. How can any humane man get real fun out of the sufferings of animals, real fun from shooting the mother of bear cubs, for instance, and seeing the pathetic mourning of these baby bears as they climb upon their dead mother and try to attract her attention? How any man can find delight in breaking the wing of a mother bird when he knows that the young nestlings are waiting in the nest with wide open mouths for their mother's return is more than I can understand. Sportsmen do not seem to realize that the homes of these little creatures are just as sacred to them as the hunters' homes are to them, yet they do not hesitate to break them up by killing one or both the parents, leaving their young to suffer, perhaps die, from neglect!

What can we think of the degree of soul culture of people who will slaughter animals simply to make a holiday for themselves! I often wonder if these people ever read the beatitudes, especially that one which says, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." How can men who are not merciful to poor innocent dumb animals expect mercy themselves?

The time will come, and very soon, when the man who takes pleasure in killing anything, who goes slaughtering for mere sport, will be labelled "inhuman," and will be ostracized by all decent people. There are tens of thousands of men who ten years ago, some even five years ago, delighted in hunting, who could not be induced to go hunting today. Many of them have told me that they were ashamed to think they could ever have taken delight in such savage sport.

Mr. W. J. Stillman, once a "sportsman," some time ago, in "A Plea for Wild Animals" wrote: "The ghastly memories of all the game I ever in my wild life slaughtered do not give me the pleasure which I have found in teaching a wild creature to forget his inheritance of fear of mankind. Many trout have I lured from their deep hiding-places, but none with the keen satisfaction I have had in teaching a trout to rise at recognition of my approaching footfall, to submit to my caressing, as if he were a creature of the air rather than of the mud."

What shall be said of those more cold-blooded men and women who, not having the excitement of the chase as an excuse, desert their domestic pets, and leave them to die of starvation, or to suffer a cruel death in the streets? Not long ago the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals one summer, in the month of July, took into their custody fifteen thousand dogs and cats, eleven hundred and seventy-five in one day. Most of these, especially the cats, had been left by their owners, who had gone out of town for the summer, without any means of care or feeding. The majority of these people were probably church members who thought they had "got religion!"

What a rebuke to such brutality is the story of the kindness of a little untaught street Arab to a sick sheep. One who witnessed the incident tells how this young tatterdemalion, one of a gang of boys on the street, went to a water trough and several times filled his old battered leaky hat with water and took it to a poor half fainting sheep in a flock which was being driven along the street. Time and again the sheep had tried in vain to push with the others to the water in the trough and had finally dropped on the pavement utterly exhausted. The water given it by the boy quickly revived the animal and enabled it to go along with the others.

One of the "gang" began to twit the boy and asked him if the sheep said "Thank you, Papa." "I didn't hear it," said he, but there was a light in the boy's face which told the bystanders that he felt the pleasure that always comes from the performance of a kind act. The untaught ragged boy made several well-dressed people who were passing along feel very cheap and very mean because they had made no effort to help the poor sheep out of its suffering.

In a plea for justice, love and mercy for all living things, a New Thought writer says: "We, then, are tongues for our brothers dumb. We voice their hurt. We demand their justice — that it be done unto them in full measure heaped up and running over. We plead their love that it have its full and recognized part in the Love Universal. Out of the symphony of this Love Universal we would exclude not one life. We would have it there, voicing at 'full-throated ease.' Until the Universe excludes it, not one life would we exclude from our love, and, until the Universe can exclude something of itself and still be a perfect Universe, safe in its Love is every life which it has hallowed into living; and as beautifully safe should it be and is it in the thinkings of New Thought.”

If we expect to commune with God, to come into the consciousness of our union with Him, we must have the right mental attitude toward all of His creatures. If we are to realize our oneness with God, we must realize our oneness with His creation. We must love His creatures as He loves them. We cannot hold the God-consciousness, we cannot expect God's blessing, when we make sport of killing His dumb creatures, or when we are brutal to them in any way, any more than we can expect to get His blessing through our prayer, when at the same time we are taking advantage of our employees, cheating them, by paying them such stingy salaries that they are tempted to piece them out in illegitimate ways.

In the early history of the race might was the only recognized right. The weakest was always afraid of the strongest. There was no thought of the rights of dumb animals. But a new order came with the Sermon on the Mount. Love was born into the world and it is gradually teaching man that all life is one, and that what we call the "lower animals" are in reality our little brothers and sisters.

Chapter 16: The Thing That Makes A Home

Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. — Prov. 15:17.

The heart needs not for its heaven much space, nor many stars therein, if only the star of Love has arisen. — Richter.

"He is the happiest, be he king or peasant," said Goethe, "who finds peace in his home."

That peace is found only where the love spirit dwells, the spirit of mutual helpfulness and willing self-sacrifice. It may be within the four walls of a house, it may be in a tent, in a forest, on a prairie, or in a desert; it may be in a palace, or in a log cabin; it may be in a manger in a stable, as in the case of the child Jesus and his mother; it does not depend upon material things; it is born of the spirit and is sustained only by friendship, love, and sympathy.

Some time ago, while visiting friends I was greatly impressed by the influence of one member of the family in creating this beautiful home spirit. Though only a young girl — the youngest of the family — she seemed to take the place of the mother, who was dead. She was the center of the home. Nothing of importance was undertaken by anyone in it without first consulting her. Not one of them would leave the house without first kissing her goodbye, and she was the first one they sought when they came home. They all seemed anxious to confide in her, to tell her what had happened to them during the day, to have her opinion and advice in all difficulties. And the father relied on her as much as the rest of the family.

The secret of this young girl's influence lay in her unselfishness, her great interest in everything that concerned the others. In talking with her brothers I discovered that each thought his sister was especially interested in him and his affairs, and that he would not think of undertaking or deciding anything that required consideration without first talking it over with her. Each and all of them seemed to prefer her company to that of any other young lady, and were always proud to escort her when she went anywhere. Those boys are all clean-minded, open, frank and chivalrous, and I could not help thinking that a great deal of it was due to the sister's love for them and theirs for her.

One reason why a home like this is the sweetest, most beautiful spot on earth, is because of the love atmosphere; the harmonious vibrations it starts give a blessed sensation of rest, of peace, of security and power. The moment we enter such a place we feel its soothing, reassuring, uplifting influence. It produces a feeling of mental poise, of serenity which we do not experience elsewhere.

Where love and affection are habitually vibrating through the cells of the body, they affect both health and character. They impart a sweetness and strength, a peace and satisfaction that reinforce the whole being. Harmony soothes and strengthens. Discord lacerates and weakens. The character of people who keep themselves continually stirred up by discordant emotions is skeptical, unlovely, selfish. There is nothing outside of vice which will so quickly react on mind and body as living in an atmosphere of perpetual inharmony and ill feeling.

Discordant homes are responsible for more illness, as well as unhappiness, than almost any other one cause. In families where there is continual wrangling, fault-finding and nagging, someone is ill nearly all the time. It often happens that a member of such a family, delicate, sensitively organized, very impressionable, suffers for years, while no physician, at least no orthodox physician, can correctly diagnose the case or give permanent relief, because the. trouble comes from the inharmony in the home.

Some years ago, I was one of an audience which seemed much disgusted because the speaker suggested that most of those present had probably come from hell, that is, a hell of discord in the home or in their business, a hell of unhappiness, a nagging, distrustful, criticising hell, a hell of hatred and jealousy and utter misery. Yet he may not have been far wrong in his estimate, for there, are many people who have money enough to get anything they want except peace and happiness. These cannot be bought for money. And so multitudes of people are really living in hell; that is, they are living amidst strife, jealousies, and hatreds which drive love out of the home, for love will not stay where there is discord, it will not live with dissension.

Multitudes of rich people are bitterly disappointed because love does not seem to appreciate the value of money. They are surprised that it will live in a hovel with bare floors and pictureless walls, but will run away from palatial mansions.

I have in mind two homes which show love's way in this respect. One is that of people in very moderate circumstances, who can afford only the simplest sort of furniture, and whose style of living is as unassuming as their surroundings. But the instant you enter the house, you feel that atmosphere, that indefinable something, which alone makes the true home. The other is that of a multi-millionaire in a fashionable quarter of New York. There is everything in this mansion that money can buy, that the decorator or the artist can suggest. One sees on every side priceless works of art, mural paintings, costly decorations, rare, imported rugs, tapestries, all sorts of luxuries and curios. The owner told me that he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few pieces of tapestry; and his library, which contains rare manuscripts and books, represents a large fortune. As I was shown one day through this vast establishment, it seemed to me more like a cold, loveless museum than a home. There was a total lack of that sweet home spirit which makes many a little cabin a paradise in comparison with a palace without it.

I understood the reason for this lack when I learned that there was constant friction between the husband and wife, who lived in this particular palace. They had everything but love and harmony; and lacking these, in spite of all their money, they had nothing worthwhile. Money could not buy that spirit of sympathy, mutual helpfulness and love, without which it is impossible to make a home. Later a divorce ended the semblance of a union between these two.

Woman is pre-eminently the home maker. It is she who makes the house homelike and, above all, contributes the spirit that makes it a sacred place. Man may provide the material things necessary for its establishment and maintenance, but he is powerless to give it a soul. It is only a woman, as Charles Wagner has said, who knows how to put into a home that indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "The housetop rejoices and is glad."

Unfortunately, however, the wife, as well as the husband, is sometimes responsible for the unhappiness of the family life and the complete wreckage of the home. Many a woman is so over-particular as a housekeeper, so worried about little unimportant details that she drives peace and harmony out of the home. Serenity, tranquillity of mind, freedom from the things which distress and annoy, the sense of liberty, restfulness and poise that a home should give, are ruled out by her everlasting nagging, her constant reminders to one and another of the family that they have dropped an envelope or a piece of paper on the floor, that they have brought in mud or dust on their boots, that they have turned a rug askew, or that somebody's hat or coat has been forgotten on a chair. She not only makes a slave of herself, but in making everybody else toe the mark in accordance with her strained ideas of system and order, so discomforts her husband and children that they fail to get the things the. real home affords.

The woman who makes her husband and children uncomfortable and herself an irritable, nervous wreck, may think she is an efficient housekeeper, but as a homemaker she is an utter failure. More than that, she actually loses, or at least lessens, the. love and respect of the family she tries so hard in her mistaken way to serve. She never succeeds in making her family think home as the dearest and sweetest place in the world. On the contrary, just as soon as the evening meal is over, the father and children are anxious to get out of it. They constantly find some excuse to run away to other people's houses or to some place where the atmosphere is of a different nature.

There can be no real comfort or happiness where there is a constant sense of restraint. The home which does not give its members perfect freedom and ease is never a magnet to the weary heart, a vision of rest and joy to the homesick traveler.

One of the things that causes so much unhappiness in married life and drives love out of the home is the effort of a wife or a husband, arbitrarily, to change the other in some point, whether it be in regard to a trivial fault or habit, or something of great importance. I have known wives to make the mistake of trying to make their husbands over by always hammering away at their faults, their deficiencies, always reminding them of their weaknesses, instead of praising their strong points, lauding their good qualities, and appealing to the best in them. Nagging and fault-finding have never yet changed anyone, except for the worse. You cannot sandpaper a husband all the time, scold and criticize him constantly, without arousing a fatal protest.

When a wife is constantly picturing the awful results of her husband's drinking habits, or other greater or minor vices, and telling him what the result will be if he does not quit, she arouses in him a spirit of antagonism, and completely loses her influence over him. Every man resents this sort of treatment. It is human nature to defend ourselves when attacked, to resist being driven or being compelled to be good. We can only be led to give up that which is bad by the substitution of something better.

There is only one way to correct faults in men or women and that is by always appealing to the best in them. It is a question of the expulsive power of a stronger affection. If you wish to get a knife or other dangerous article away from a child, give him a toy or something that he likes better, and of his own accord he will drop the thing you don't want him to have. But the moment you try to pull it away from him, to force him to give it up, you arouse the natural antagonism in him and he is going to fight you. Men and women are only grown up children.

As a rule, however, men are the chief sinners in bringing discord into the home, in neglecting their part in contributing the things that make for the family's happiness.

Although marriage is supposed to be a partnership, the average man cannot seem to get the idea out of his head that he has the right of proprietorship, that he is really the owner and the boss not only of the house but of every, one in it, and that he is under no obligation to contribute anything to it beyond the material things.

I know a man of this sort, a very able man, who is regarded as a model in his place of business and by his associates generally. He is even-tempered, cool and self-controlled abroad, popular in his club, always generous with assistance for any public cause, his name being usually one of the first on subscription lists of all sorts. In short, he stands very high in his community as a public-spirited citizen, a model man in all respects. But at home there is a very different story. Here he throws off all restraint and plays the hog. He thinks he is under no obligation to practice self-control, to be a gentleman in his home. He evidently says to himself, "Isn't this my home? Didn't my money build it? Doesn't my money maintain it? Don't I pay the bills here? Isn't everybody here dependent upon me? Why should I feel any restraint in my own home? Certainly there ought to be one place in the world where a man can say what he thinks, express his feelings."

He is a hard worker, and usually comes home from business very much used up, often pretty nearly a nervous wreck, and he certainly takes it out on his family. He will often belch forth a volley of scolding just as soon as he enters the house. If he sees anything out of place, anything broken, anything injured, he makes it an excuse for his outburst. The children get frightened when they see a thundercloud on his face, and when he begins ranting like a madman, they all run away and get out of sight. This makes him still more furious, and he will often follow them all over the house, and call them to account for insulting him when he is trying to correct them, to set them straight.

This man's wife is a gentle, sensitive woman who dreads a scene and will do almost anything to avoid one. But if a servant happens to break a piece of china, or if the cook burns the food, if anything lacks the proper flavor, or if anything else goes wrong, no matter how trifling, he will break out right in the middle of a meal, and scold and rave like a maniac. In fact he makes a hades of his home, stirs everybody in it up, and creates an atmosphere that makes peace and happiness impossible.

There are a great many of these men who are gentlemen outside their homes, in their places of business, in their clubs, anywhere in public, but hogs in the home. Perhaps they don't realize that they are cowards and bullies. But of course every hog in the home knows that his wife and children do not dare to answer him back or call him to account. He knows they are helpless; that they must let him rave and abuse until his temper has spent itself, and bear it as best they can. Perhaps he doesn't know that he arouses their contempt, and that he cannot hold the affection of his family when he treats them in this way.

The mental attitude of an angry teacher will cause a whole schoolroom to vibrate in unison with her mood. The same is true of the home. One discordant member, by his surly or antagonistic attitude, will destroy its harmony for a whole evening. I have known the peace of an entire household to be broken up for the day because the father grew angry over something in the morning and got everybody so stirred up that harmony was not established even after he left the house.

The very foundation of our national life, of progress, of happiness, of true success is laid in the home. At the bottom of all a man's hopes is his dream of wife and child and home. No matter what hardships he endures, how poor or discouraged he may become, he never loses sight of this vision. He sees his ideal home in imagination, just as the architect sees in his mind's eye, in all its outlines of beauty and dignity, a mental picture of the great building for which he is making plans. The dream of a home of one's own has been the sublime incentive of the ages. Men and women in all times have made great sacrifices for fame and personal power, but what in the whole gamut of suffering have they not endured, and gladly, for the realization of their dream of a home!

What a pity it is that when the material foundation of a home is realized, the dream of happiness is so often shattered by the husband or wife!

One of the chief reasons for this is that so many couples fail to realize that, by its very nature, marriage is a compromise. If it is to endure and to be happy it must always be as a willing compromise by both parties to the contract. No harmony could ever exist in the home on any other basis, for no two people were ever made exactly alike, could ever think and feel as one on every subject.

Unhappily, it is not always questions of importance or grave faults on either side that ruin the happiness of husband and wife and break up the home or fill it with perpetual discord. It is trivial matters, the daily pinpricks, the little worries that continually rub one the wrong way. A nagging, worrying man or woman can destroy the peace of a household and make everyone in it miserable. Petty fault-findings, bickerings, misunderstandings about trifles, these are the little foxes which frequently destroy the home vines.

The happiness of the home, the conduct and welfare of the children depend on a happy marriage. And the happiest marriages are those in which husband and wife recognize and accept each other's differences, and try to fit into one another, as it were. This is really the divine plan, for man and woman are the complement of each other.

George Eliot says, "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life, — to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the last parting?"

When a man and woman are united in this spirit, when they maintain this attitude in all their trials and difficulties, they will have a happy home though it be within the four walls of one room or in a dugout on a Western prairie.

Chapter 17: "Stranger, Why Should I Not Speak to You?"

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" says Walt Whitman.

This would be love's way. But convention steps in and says, "No, you must not speak to strangers," and we obey.

Time and time, again, when I meet our soldiers and sailors on the street, my first impulse is to offer them my hand and express my gratitude for the great debt which I personally owe them. I know that these boys are giving up their vocation, their chosen career, their home, those dearer to them than life, to fight for me, and it seems coldblooded to pass them without any sign of recognition. But the iron habit of convention too often strangles my natural impulse, and I pass them by without a word or sign of recognition, or of my feeling toward them. I never do so, however, without a deep regret for not speaking, or at least giving them a smile, an acknowledgment of my appreciation of what they are doing for us all.

This apparent indifference is one reason why a great city like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, to a stranger, especially one from a foreign country, is about the lonesomest place a human being could be in. To pass thousands of faces day after day, without a friendly look from anyone, without a word of greeting, without even a smile or a glance of recognition, is most disheartening. It seems cruel, brutal, uncivilized, yet it does not proceed from unkindness, or because people don't want to be friendly — it is just the custom.

But why should we of the twentieth century perpetuate such a custom? Why should strangers stare so coldly at one another when a simple smile and pleasant recognition would be so pleasant? These people we call strangers are really our brothers and sisters, for the human family are all children of one Father. We have not had an opportunity to know the so-called strangers simply because our family is so vast.

There is something inhuman, unnatural, in the idea that we cannot speak to anyone until we have been formally introduced. Meeting strangers ought to be something like a brother or a sister going back to the old home after many years of absence and finding new brothers and sisters who were not there when they went away. Many of the people we don't know in the conventional way may be more akin to us in tastes and ideals than some of the members of our own family. I very often meet people whose faces tell me that they are not only brothers and sisters because we belong to the same great human family, but because we are sympathetically related — related by our mental affinity. My heart goes out to them spontaneously. I long to stop and tell them that I want to know them. Something in their faces attracts me. I can read there a history which interests me wonderfully. I know there is something there for me, and if so, there must be something in me which would interest and perhaps help them. They not only have a kindly expression, but they often look as though they knew what I was thinking and really felt sorry that custom forbade our speaking to each other.

Some will object that the custom of speaking to strangers, regardless of whether we know anything about them, would lead to all sorts of unfortunate results, especially for girls. And I answer that it does not do so where it is practised in the South; and it would not do so in large cities if it were made the general custom. A pleasant recognition, a smile or a friendly greeting, does not, of course, mean that we go off with strangers, or that girls would allow themselves to be led astray by strange men.

During my first visit to a Southern town, after living in New York many years, I was much pleased and surprised at the cordiality of people, even to strangers on the street. The first time I passed through the streets, many people whom I had never seen before bowed politely to me, and the colored men would raise their hats. The whole atmosphere of cordiality, of friendliness, was such a contrast to the cold atmosphere of New York that it made a lasting impression on me. Ever since I have really thought I would like to live in this little Southern city — Staunton, Va.

The American and English people particularly are cold and stony when coming in contact with strangers. I have sat down at a table in a hotel or restaurant opposite English speaking people who made me feel that I was intruding. They seemed to wish that I would get out of their way, that it was a piece of impudence on my part to sit down at the same table with them.

On the other hand, when traveling in some Continental countries, especially in France, if we enter a restaurant and sit down, those sitting opposite us at the table, or perhaps at tables nearby, smile politely and thus make us feel at home. Some of the brightest experiences of my life have come from traveling in strange lands and meeting strangers who could not even speak my language, but who would give me such a friendly greeting in their facial expression as to make me feel that we were real friends.

How different it is in our country! New York men tell me that they have passed men nearly everyday for years, without ever speaking to them or showing any sign whatever of recognition. This doesn't seem human. If we are brothers and sisters to the strangers we meet on the street, why should we pass them with a cold stare? It seems that we could at least give them a smile, at least show them that we recognize the relationship of our human brotherhood.

Elbert Hubbard says that "the world has always been run on a short allowance of love." Yet, if we will, we can give it in unlimited quantity; and just in the same measure that we give will it come back to us. Even if we don't speak to strangers, we can look at them in a way that will make them realize our kinship. And we never can tell how much good a friendly look, or a cheery smile will do. I know an old lady who has such a sweet benign expression, a half-smile on her face which seems to say, "I would like to speak to you if I only knew you," that the elevator boys, the conductors on the cars, the newsboys, the clerks — everybody who comes in contact with her feels that he has received a real benediction for the rest of the day.

We are all debtors on occasion to perfect strangers for some silent message of sympathy which helped us on our way — smiles, encouraging appreciative looks, kindly acts, a radiation of love that made us conscious of their sympathy and kinship. I meet one of these kindly strangers almost everyday in the streets of New York, a man who reflects so much love and good cheer in his face, that, although he doesn't speak, he makes me feel that he would like to, that only custom, not inclination, keeps him from doing so.

Dickens says, "no one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else." The man or woman who has a kindly feeling for everyone is a universal helper. Most of us very much overestimate the possibilities of money to help. What people want most of all is sympathy, the touch of brotherhood. This is what inspires, encourages, uplifts. It fills a need that money cannot touch. A church investigator tells how fully he realized this when calling on a poor old soul whom he found on a pallet of straw in an attic. When he asked her what she needed most he thought she would say "Bread, coal, covering," for she lacked all of these. But no, her answer was, "Folks. Someone to talk to me. I am lonely!”

How many lonely souls there are longing for sympathy, the solace of human companionship, which no material things can supply! Everywhere we see people starving for love, famishing for affection, for someone to appreciate them. We see men and women possessing material comfort, luxury, all that can contribute to their physical well-being — they are able to gratify almost any wish — and yet they are hungry for love. They seem to have plenty of everything but affection.

There are rich women who would give all their wealth for the love of a good, clean man, or of a little child. And there are millionaires whose lives are barren because there is no love in them. Everywhere we see the love-starved expression in the faces of all sorts and conditions of people. Many of them are rich in lands and houses, automobiles, yachts, horses, money — in everything but love!

Children should be reared to think that we are all related one to another, that human beings are the same family, because they have the same Father-Mother-God, and that because they do not happen to have been introduced to each other is no reason why they should not speak.

When we do this, men and women will not, as they do now, coldly pass people by who look as though they were really longing for friendship, famishing for sympathy, for love which many would gladly give them if there were no social ban upon recognizing or speaking to strangers.

There is a fruitful suggestion for helping others, no matter how poor we may be, in the thought that the spirit of kindness, of good-will, is a great radiating force that reaches out to other souls and gives them strength and uplift, though we may not even speak to them.

"Certainly in our own little sphere it is not the most active people to whom we owe the most," says Phillips Brooks. "Among the common people whom we know it is not necessarily those who are busiest, not those who, meteor-like, are ever on the rush after some visible charge and work. It is the lives, like the stars which simply pour down on us the calm light of their bright and faithful being, up to which we look and out of which we gather the deepest calm and courage. It seems to me that there is reassurance here for many of us who seem to have no chance for active usefulness. We can do nothing for our fellowmen. But still it is good to know that we can be something for them; to know (and this we may know surely) that no man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world's being better for it; without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."

The loving thought, the good-will attitude toward all reacts on ourselves. It is a great friend maker. If we cultivate a cheerful, cordial manner toward everybody, we make acquaintances and friends easily.

I know a woman who is a dwarf and a cripple, but .who has such a sweet, open, beautiful nature that everybody loves her. She is welcome everywhere, because she is interested in everyone. She is poor, .but she enters into other lives with a heartiness, an unselfish abandonment and enthusiasm that ought to shame those of us who are physically normal and in better circumstances.

There is no one so poor or so helpless that he cannot hold a helpful and encouraging mental attitude toward others, who cannot give of his sympathy to the lonely soul who is hungering for human companionship. We can all cherish the aspiration of George Eliot, and say with her:

"May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world."

Chapter 18: "I Serve the Strongest"

As love pours out in service, God pours in And, lo, to us comes spaciousness of soul. — Hugh Anthony Allen.

An old world legend tells of a powerful giant whose motto was "I serve the strongest." At first, he served the mayor of his town, until he discovered that the mayor was under a duke who was far more powerful than he. Thereupon he left the mayor to serve the duke, until he found that the latter had to obey one greater than any duke, the emperor. Then he transferred his allegiance to the emperor, whom he served until one day he heard him say that he was afraid of the devil.

"What! you afraid of the devil!" cried the giant. "Is the emperor afraid of anything? Is there anyone stronger than the emperor? If so, I will serve him.”

Leaving the emperor, he hunted for the devil, whom he found and served. But he soon learned that the devil was afraid of someone more powerful than himself, — the Christ.

For a long time he sought the Christ. One day, while still seeking, in a deep wood he met an old man who told him to serve his fellowmen, and that in this way he would serve the strongest power there was.

Following the old man's advice, the giant began to ferry people across a river that flowed close by the cabin in which he lived. This river was very treacherous, and in its dangerous waters many people had lost their lives.

One stormy night the giant heard a rap on his cabin door. Opening it he found a little girl, who wanted to get across the river. The giant told her it was the time of the Spring floods, and that if he attempted to cross his boat would be swamped and she would be killed by the sharp floating ice with which the river was almost covered. But the child insisted she must get across that night, and that if he would not row her to the other side she must go alone.

The giant lighted his lantern and together he and the child got into his boat and pushed out into the swirling waters. The wind soon blew out the lantern, and they were in utter darkness, in the midst of the swollen, ice-blocked current. Exerting his superhuman strength the giant succeeded in getting the boat across the river, but he was so exhausted when they landed that he sank on the sand unconscious. When he came to himself the child had disappeared, but a man stood bending over him, a man whose face bore the image of the child, and in which was a light never seen in any mortal face. And the man spoke, and said to the giant that, inasmuch as he had done great service to the humblest, he had also done it to his Master — the Christ.

Very similar to this old legend is Tolstoy's beautiful story of the peasant who longed to see the Christ.

A devout Russian peasant, according to the story, had prayed for years that the Master might sometime visit his humble home. One night he dreamed that the Master would come to him the next day. And so real seemed his dream that when the peasant awoke in the morning he arose and immediately went to work putting his cabin to rights and preparing for the expected heavenly guest.

A violent storm of sleet and snow raged during the day, but the man performed his usual household tasks, and while preparing his pot of cabbage soup, the Russian peasant's daily dish, he would look out into the storm with expectant eyes.

Presently he saw a poor pedler, with a pack on his back, struggling forward against the fierce icy blasts that almost overwhelmed him. The kind-hearted peasant rushed out and brought the wayfarer into his cabin. He dried his clothing, shared his cabbage soup with him, and started him on his way again warmed and comforted.

Looking out again he saw another traveler, an old woman, trying feebly to hold on her way against the blinding storm. Her also he took into his cabin, warmed and fed her, wrapped his own coat about her, and, strengthened and encouraged, sent her rejoicing on her way.

Darkness began to fall, but still no sign of the Master. Hoping against hope the man once more went to his cabin door, and looking out into the night he saw a little child, who was utterly unable to make its way against the blinding sleet and snow. Going out he took the half-frozen child in his arms, brought it into the cabin, warmed and fed it, and soon the little wayfarer fell asleep before the fire.

Bitterly disappointed at the master’s non-appearance, the peasant sat gazing into the fire, and as he gazed he fell asleep. Suddenly the room was radiant with a light that did not come from the fire, and there stood the Master, white-robed, and serene, looking upon him with a smile. "Ah, Master, I have waited and watched all this long day, but thou did'st not come." The Master replied, "Three times have I visited thy cabin today. The poor pedler whom thou rescued, warmed and fed, that was I; the poor woman to whom thou gavest thy coat, that was I; and this little child whom thou hast saved from the tempest, that is I. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

Someone says, "The greatest thing a man can do for his heavenly Father is to be kind to some of his other children." Whenever we do a kindness to another, we are literally obeying Christ's command to his disciples: "A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you love ye also one another." In love and service to one another lies the salvation of the world.

"I serve the strongest," would make a splendid life motto. For to serve the strongest is to serve God, which consists in helping the weakest, — all those who need our help.

Many of us do not realize the great value and importance of even the most trifling service unselfishly rendered a fellow being. We do not realize that the habit of kindness, of unselfishly serving another whenever we can, will not only benefit those we serve, but it will help ourselves even more. It will make our own lives richer, fuller, stronger, than the lives of the self-centered ever can be.

I recall a man whose life is a good illustration of this. He has hosts of friends and everybody loves him for his genial, helpful ways. He believes that every helpful suggestion and every uplifting thought implanted in the mind of youth are seeds sown in promising soil and that every time he meets a boy or girl, he must sow some of this seed. He has made it a life rule to try to inspire, to encourage every young person he meets.

If it be a youth with a deficient education, he encourages him along the lines of self-improvement, tells him how he can make the most of. his time. If one who lacks ambition, he tries to arouse it, to light his mind with a glimpse of his possibilities. If he finds a round peg anywhere in a square hole, he urges him to get out of it, to find his niche. In other words, he tries to give everybody a lift as he goes along life's way, and no one will ever know how many lives he has influenced for good.

Some people are always helping someone, somewhere. Wherever they go sunshine and encouragement follow in their wake. The downcast are cheered, the suffering are relieved and comforted.

During the battle of Fredericksburg, hundreds of Union soldiers who were wounded on the battlefield lay there all day and all night suffering frightfully from thirst as well as the pain from their wounds. Their agonizing cries for water were answered only by the roar of the cruel guns. A young Southern soldier, however, was so touched by those piteous cries that he begged his general to allow him to carry water to the suffering soldiers. The general warned him that it would mean death if he appeared on the battlefield at that time on such an errand. But the youth put no value on his life, and out he went amid shot and shell with his pail of water, going from soldier to soldier, straightening cramped and mangled limbs, putting knapsacks under the heads of sufferers, spreading cloaks and blankets over them, just as though they had been his own comrades. The soldiers of both armies watched the youth as he performed his work of mercy, and they were so touched by the divine courage that heeded not the guns, the roar of the cannon, or the bursting shells all about him, that they ceased firing at each other. For an hour and a half there was a virtual truce while the boy in gray went over the entire battlefield upon his errand of love, giving drink to the thirsty, and comfort to the mangled and the dying. Was there a more beautiful incident than this in the Civil War?

Love has no fear because it is unmindful of

self. It thinks only of the welfare of others, of relieving suffering wherever it sees it. Its physical courage in exposing itself to personal harm is only equaled by its moral courage in braving comment or criticism.

A Boston lady, while doing her Christmas shopping, noticed on the street, collecting contributions for the poor, a Salvation Army girl who looked very cold and tired. The lady asked her if she would not like to rest and have something to eat. The girl said she was very hungry and tired, but that she could not leave her post. Whereupon the lady offered to take the girl's pole standard and pot, and sent her away to a restaurant for a warm dinner and rest. The curious passing crowd stopped to look at the well-dressed woman with handsome furs ringing the bell by the Salvation Army contribution pot. And guessing the object of her presence there, they began to put in their nickels and dimes, and many a dollar bill also went into the pot. Friends and acquaintances of the temporary collector passed while she stood there, and, knowing her kindly heart, added their contributions, so that the pot held a goodly sum that night.

A spectator remarked that not one woman in a thousand would have done that. But why not? Why shouldn't we all do such things? The most beautiful thing in the world is spontaneous service, kindly acts of love and service to one another. "I wonder," says someone, "why it is that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How super-abundantly it pays itself back — for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as love. 'Love never faileth.' Love is success, love is happiness, love is life."

Happiness has been defined as "great love and much service." It is certain that no efforts we may ever make can bring such splendid returns as the endeavor to scatter the flowers of love and service as we go along, to plant roses instead of thorns; no investment will pay such rich dividends as kind words and kindly acts, the effort to radiate a loving spirit toward every living creature.

There are some great-hearted souls who are always giving out of their best without any thought of getting a return. They are always unconsciously serving the strongest.

I have read of one of these, a poor man who dreamed one night that he went to Paradise, and who was so surprised to find himself there that he began to apologize profusely for his intrusion. He said he knew he was out of place, that he had no business there, because he had never during his life earned anything so glorious, and that, in fact, it was a presumption on his part even to look within the gates of Paradise.

He pleaded his inability to do anything to win him such a great favor, protesting that he was a very poor man, just an ordinary, everyday workman, who had no standing in society on the earth. He had tried to live honestly, he said, to do his work faithfully, to bring up his children as they should be brought up, and to be kind to his neighbors, but as to any right to enter Paradise, he could not understand how he had presumed to do such a thing.

But the angel at the gate said to him: "My friend, do not depreciate yourself. Do you not remember how you saved a poor woman's home when it took nearly the last dollar you had in the savings bank? Nor how you helped a poor orphan child who had no home when you could scarcely take care of your own children? Nor, again, how you befriended many poor people even before you had a home of your own, and. continually made sacrifices of your own comfort, in order to give of your necessities to help others?"

"These and many other things like them," added the angel, "are what brought you here. You came because you had a right to; you belong here.”

"But," still protested the embarrassed, man, "I never founded colleges, or hospitals, or gave money to charitable institutions, as Mr. Blank, the man for whom I worked, did.”

"Ah," said the angel, "it is not these things which the rich and powerful give out of their abundance that gain entrance here; it is the little nameless acts of kindness and love, the self-sacrificing service performed in the common ordinary situations in life; it is the love that gives itself, the spirit of unselfishness, that opens the gates of Paradise to mortals."

Marcus Aurelius said that the more we love the nearer we are to God. Of course, he meant love in the highest, the truest, and the purest sense.

When we love thus, and are the most just, the most honest, the purest and cleanest we know how to be, we are the nearest to divinity. Such love puts us in touch with the best. It allies us with all that is beautiful, noble, highest, and most unselfish; with the loftiest sentiments, the highest principles, all that is finest in life. It is the golden key which gives us access to the holy of holies. This love is, indeed, the connecting link between man and his God.

Chapter 19: The Daily Orientation

"Eventually it will be possible to telephone completely around the globe. You may sit in one booth and speak into a receiver, while another man sits in the next booth and waits for your words.

“Your voice will go to San Francisco, say, by wire. It will leap the Pacific through the air and be returned to another wire. It will cross Europe by wire, then span the Atlantic through the ether and return to another wire here in New York, which will lead it to your friend a few feet away."

This prediction by the wireless expert, Bancroft Gherardi, engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's New York plant, amazing as it is, will, without doubt, be fulfilled when the world war is over.

How will this be accomplished? On precisely the same principle as the voice is carried by telephone to the next room to us or only a few miles away.

When we talk by telephone to people at a distance our voices are not transmitted over the wire as sound, without the aid of any other medium. The human voice merely sets in motion a series of vibrations which cause it to be exactly reproduced at the other end of the wire. No sound whatever passes over the wire, yet you hear the voice of the person to whom you are speaking almost as distinctly as though you were both in the same room.

The vibrations set in motion by the voice causes the particles in the wire to start vibrations into the ether which the wire directs and protects from being lost, but wireless telegraphy has shown us that these vibrations are not dependent upon wire. These are ethereal vibrations.

We are only beginning to realize that, in a similar way, our thoughts start vibrations which are transmitted to our friends, and also to our enemies or those antagonistic to us. We have all had experience in receiving from dear ones love vibrations which have been transmitted to us through space. We have also received, felt flowing in on us, discordant vibrations which originated in the hatred, the envy, or the jealousy of others.

Through wireless connection, scientists on land can explode a torpedo away out at sea. So we can send our thoughts, good thoughts or vicious thoughts, out into the universal ether to bless or curse both ourselves and others. Although they may be far away from us, we can make other people very miserable, or we can make them happy. We, in turn, unless very firmly centered in God — rendered immune by Divine Love — are seriously affected by other minds.

We live in the midst of all sorts of currents and cross-currents of other people's thoughts, and every time we fear, or worry, or doubt, or hate, we make connection with the currents of the fears, the worries, the doubts, the hatreds of others, which then flow in upon us and add to our misery.

On the other hand, when our thought connects us with the love current; when we send out vibrations of courage, of faith, of love, we are reinforced by similar vibrations flowing in on us from every side.

Vibration is inseparable from life. Almost everything in life can be accounted for by its rate of vibration. For example, all shades of color are due to different rates of vibration of the ether upon our optic nerve. Without this vibration there would be no such thing as color. The same thing is true of sound. Musical sounds, all sounds of every kind, are due to different rates of vibration which impinge upon the auditory nerve, each rate of vibration arousing a different sensation in the brain.

Every atom in the universe is in a vibratory state, is forever revolving around some center. The moon revolves around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun at an inconceivable speed, and the sun is whirling around an infinitely greater orbit at a speed which staggers the imagination, while every atom and every electron in all these bodies is revolving around its own little individual center.

The sun's heat, which sustains our earth life, is simply vibration. It would be absurd to suppose that the sun could transmit heat ninety-three million miles. What we call heat is a form of energy vibration. The sun gives the initial impulse, no one knows how, to some sort of energy which is transmitted to the earth by vibration.

Every life is vibratory movement, and the quality of our lives is determined by the quality and the rate of our vibrations. Harmonious vibrations mean health, happiness, efficiency, success. Discordant vibrations mean strangulation, discord, thwarted ambition, a wrecked career.

If we live in the midst of discordant vibrations which are antagonistic to one another, life will be whittled away at a terrific rate. If, on the other hand, we keep ourselves in tune with the infinite harmonies, we shall preserve the harmonious action of our brain, our nerves, our mental and physical being, and this harmony will heal, will increase our power, our success, and our happiness.

We are consciously or unconsciously continually being acted upon by vibrations from within and without. Every person we meet, everything we hear or read, our environment, every act, every hidden motive, every thought, every mood, every emotion, starts vibrations which play through the billions of cells in our body, and the influence exactly corresponds to the quality of the impetus which set up the vibration.

How little we realize that every bit of passion, every excited state of mind, every discouraged or despondent thought, all vibrations of anger, hatred, revenge, jealousy, avarice, or any sort of meanness, will be recorded with scientific accuracy not only in the warp and woof of our character, but also in the fiber of our physical being. Similarly, if you send a current of hope, of love, of joy, of generosity, of nobility, down through the nervous system, it will never stop until it has set every cell in your body into the same sort of vibration, stamping hope and joy and generosity and nobleness on every tissue of the body and every faculty of the mind. Every nerve, every atom in your body will take on the character and the quality of the thought, motive or mood which set it in motion.

How many incipient diseases and disease tendencies are started in the different organs of the body by vicious vibrations which have been set in motion by the wireless mental organization!

Vibrations started by your tubercular fears, by your cancer horror, by your fear of any disease, will reproduce themselves in the tissues of your system.

It is well known that pessimists are never in as good health as optimists. Pessimistic vibrations are destroyers. Your fear thought of disease sets in motion discordant vibrations which correspond with your thought. Hope and expectancy start constructive vibrations, while fear and doubt start destructive vibrations. Harmonious vibrations are always building for harmony and wholesomeness; the discordant vibrations for just the opposite.

Every human being makes his own world by his thoughts. The vibrations we start, determine what sort of a world it shall be. Two people who belong to the same family, live under the same roof, under the same influences, may be farther apart than the poles of the earth. No two people in the same environment live in the same world, because their thoughts, their motives, their emotions, their acts, connect them with their affinity currents. One of them may live in the current of reality, truth, love and helpfulness, while the other may live in the vilest current of thought, because his own thinking connects him with other minds on this same plane.

Similarly, a coarse, sensual mind is constantly making connections with like minds until thought currents make an irresistible force to drag him down to lower and lower depths.

A community is often shocked at the rapidity with which a wayward girl — a girl who has been well reared — goes to her utter ruin. It doesn't seem possible that any human being who had had any kind of moral training could deteriorate so rapidly as some girls do when they begin to go wrong. The reason is, they begin to make mental connection with those who are steeped in vileness. In other words, their own little diverted thought stream is reinforced by the great current of impurity with which they make wireless connection.

In a similar way, the youth who begins to fall away from right standards by dwelling upon the criminal thought, the criminal act, contemplating these things, makes connections with the criminal thought currents, and before he realizes it, he is swept off his feet and commits a crime. Then he becomes one of the criminal class.

We are in the habit of thinking of ourselves as alone, as individual units, but we are really connected with all other minds which have the same rate of vibration as ours. We form part of an unseen, vibrating current, and we are constantly increasing the strength of this wireless current by making connections with whoever or whatever has the same mental or moral vibration with ourselves.

When we are in tune with the Infinite, we feel tremendously reinforced by the mighty momentum of all that is good and pure and clean and true. We feel sustained, buttressed and supported, because we are in wireless connection with everything that is like God; that is, we are in tune with Him. But when we make a wireless connection with the devil or whatever typifies evil, we relate ourselves to all the forces of evil, we are in a downward current that every moment gathers momentum to drag us down.

What a wonderful help it would be in our educational training and character building if the invisible currents, radiating from other minds with which we make connection, could be made visible, like a panorama or picture, before our eyes! How mortified some of us would be if we could see in picture form the miserable, ugly, vile currents with which we make connections! Seen openly, how repulsive they would be to us! But because they are invisible and others cannot see the vile guests which we harbor in our minds, we do not try to keep them out. If everybody we meet could see what the mental currents which we invite, because we are in tune with them, bring into our minds; if we could see, and others could see, the kind of people with whom we make wireless connection because of our thought affinity, most of us would shudder at the shock.

One of the greatest problems in wireless telegraphy is the shutting out of conflicting currents, making the instrument immune to everything which doesn't vibrate with the message which the operator wishes to receive.

Our problem also is to shut out conflicting currents, and to keep our human instrument in tune with the message we wish to receive. If the wireless operator's instrument were left open to conflicting currents, he would not get the SOS message from the ship in distress. So we, if we would get, clear and distinct, the message the Creator intends for us, must make ourselves immune to all of the conflicting currents which are constantly bombarding our mentality. We must shut out the vicious currents, the worry currents, the jealous currents, the selfish, the fear currents, the hatred and revenge currents. If we want to receive the divine message, the love thought currents, vibrations that will build, that will inspire, that will encourage, vibrations which will help us to achieve the things worthwhile, which, will enable us to be what we long to be, we must shut out all thoughts, all vibrations that tear down, that blacken and defile the mind, that weaken and handicap both mind and body.

What sort of vibrations are you now sending out — harmonious or discordant? Are you sending out hate vibrations; lustful, sensual vibrations; selfish, greed vibrations; envious, jealous vibrations; or are you radiating an atmosphere of hope, joy, and gladness? Are you radiating sunshine or black shadows? Are you sending out harmonious and happy vibrations, vibrations of expectancy of better things, vibrations of encouragement, or are you sending out vibrations which will arouse discord, pain, doubt, fear and worry?

Remember that whatever you send out will come back to you in kind. If you are not attuned to the highest and the best in you; if your wireless instrument is attuned instead to discord, you will take off all of the discordant cross-currents that are floating in the boundless sea of thought. You will thus blacken and cripple other lives as well as your own, for since every thought vibration makes wireless connection with others like itself, your vibration goes on repeating itself, and never ceases until it has visited and affected numberless other minds.

No man lives to himself alone. We cannot even think without affecting others, either for good or ill. How important it is, then, to start only vibrations which will have a beneficent influence.

Everyone can direct and control his thought currents. He can send out and draw to himself whatever manner of thought he wills. No one is at the mercy of his thought. No one need be a victim of the distressing, discouraging thought currents and cross-currents which are flying in every direction from other minds.

If you will, you can get yourself in tune with your Infinite Source; in tune with truth, with beauty, with love, with helpfulness, with kindness, in tune with everything that is unselfish, uplifting, clean and true. You can, if you will, learn to cut out all harmful vibrations, all destructive, conflicting thoughts and imaginings, and make yourself immune to them.

In other words, it is possible for all who will take the trouble to get in tune with the highest thing in them to live in life's paradise instead of its hades most of the time, as so many of us do.

The churches use sacred music as a sort of tuning-up process for worshipers, to prepare the mind for sacred things, sensitizing it so that it may be more impressionable, more sensitive to the lessons from the pulpit. When the soul is wrought up with music there is a wireless connection between it and its Author — the; great Author of harmony and rhythmical laws — the Author of all law, of all creation.

If the worshipers who throng the churches on Sundays would keep their minds tuned throughout the week to the same harmonious key on which the sacred music starts them at the Sunday morning service, what a happy place this world would be! Whether we go to church or not, if each of us would resolve every morning that every thought, every emotion, every motive, every mental attitude for the day should be wholesome, helpful, uplifting, what a wonderful revolution it would make in our lives!

Living as a fine art is really living in harmony with ourselves and with others. It consists largely in keeping one's nature in tune with eternal Principle, in tune with Infinite Love. Here is where our strength lies — in .our conscious union with our Source. This is the secret of all power, poise and harmony.

When we bring our personal vibration, our mental atmosphere, into harmony with our higher self, when our vibrations are in tune with the Infinite, so that we feel one with the One, we shall take on infinite power; we shall feel the thrill of divine energy flowing through every atom of our being.

How shall we do this? By getting the right keynote for the day the first thing when we awake in the morning.

You know how a singer gets his keynote. He uses a tuning-fork or strikes a key on an organ or piano in order to key the voice and the instrument to the right keynote, so that their vibrations will harmonize, instead of conflicting with each other and making discord.

Now, in a similar way, when we wish to get our minds in tune with the Infinite Instrument, we must use certain mental tuning-forks which will tend to give like vibrations, vibrations that will harmonize.

The greatest of these tuning-forks is love. No other will so quickly bring the vibrations of the human heart into unison with the Infinite's pulsations. Love keys the mind to peace, poise, truth, beauty, purity, unselfishness, honesty, justice — all that harmonizes with divine principles.

The heart attuned to love, filled to overflowing with love of God and man, has no room for bitterness, malice, pettiness or meanness of any sort. Where the love thought is dominant, there are no discordant vibrations. It would be impossible, because love is the supreme harmonizer, the great peacemaker. The love vibrations are healing balm for all that blights happiness or produces discontent. They neutralize all selfishness, envy, jealousy, hatred, all of the brutal, baser passions and propensities.

When we open our minds to the inflow of divine love, we will have no difficulty in keeping our minds in harmony with the best thing in us. Then we are in tune with the Infinite and make connections with all the peaceful, happy currents from other peaceful, happy minds, and so multiply our strength and efficiency. For harmony is strength and efficiency.

Eastern philosophers have a beautiful custom which they call orienting themselves. When they rise in the morning they turn their faces toward the sun, raise their thoughts to the Supreme Being, and open every avenue of their minds to the beauty of love, of truth, and of all the divine influences.

At the very moment of waking they shut out from their minds every sordid thought, every selfish thought, everything that would conflict with their orientation. Nothing is suffered to clog the mental and spiritual avenues, and they get the full benefit of the flood of divine influences which flow in upon them.

In this way they prepare themselves for the day, put themselves in tune for the daily routine, the particular spiritual work, the spiritual contemplation or meditation which follows the "orientation," and for all the life of the day.

Here is an excellent suggestion for finding the keynote of your day. When you get up in the morning turn your face toward the sun. Imagine it as a symbol of divine love. Think of the sun as one of the great marvels of the Creator, given you to bring light, health, joy and beauty into your life. Breathe deeply and take in deep draughts of beauty, of love, and of truth. Make this a daily habit and you will be surprised to see how the beauty of it will grow on you, and how quickly this daily uplifting of your spirit will tend to purify and refreshen, renew and recreate your whole nature.

You may adopt any method you choose of directing and controlling your mental vibrations. But once you acquire the habit of getting your wireless instrument in tune daily to receive the vibrations of Divine Love, the vibrations that help, encourage, uplift, your body will grow stronger, your mind will expand, and your whole life will blossom out into beauty and power.

Chapter 20: Scatter Your Flowers As You Go

There is nothing else quite so pathetic as the post-mortem kindness so often manifested by people who thought they had no time to be kind to their loved ones while they were living.

Many a man has piled more flowers on the coffin of wife or mother than he ever gave her during her lifetime. I have known men who, because of a sense of remorse, spent more money on their mother's funeral than they spent on all the presents they ever gave her while she was living.

The Youth's Companion tells of a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirits and vigor who was married and had four children. Later, the husband died penniless and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate her children. She taught school, sewed, painted, did all sorts of things to earn money to send the girls to boarding school, and the boys to college.

When the girls came home, pretty, refined, intelligent, educated, and the strong young men, blessed with all the new ideas of their time, the mother was a worn-out, faded old woman. The children went their own way, had their own homes, their own interests, and the poor mother was neglected. Things went along in this way for several years until finally she was attacked with serious brain trouble, aggravated, no doubt, by disappointment, a sense of loneliness and a lack of appreciation from her children which she had always fancied she would get in her old age.

The shock woke them to a consciousness of their neglect. They all rushed to her assistance in her last hours, and, in an agony of grief, hung over her as she lay unconscious. One son, holding her in his arms, said to her, "You have been such a good mother to us." The mother's face showed a little color. Once more she opened her eyes and whispered, "You never said so before, John," then the light died out of her eyes and she was gone, leaving her children, sobbing, conscience stricken. They piled flowers high on her coffin and gave her a costly funeral.

That was not love's way. Love that is worth the name sends its flowers to the living. It does not wait to heap them on the dead. Love helps when help is needed. It does not wait until it is too late.

Love does not neglect the poor old mother until the last illness, and then shower her with luxuries she cannot enjoy. It helps her when a little thoughtful attention and kindness mean a great deal to her. Love writes frequent letters to the mother left behind in the old home. It does not send a little hurried note, after weeks and months of silence, telling how busy one has been, so driven with affairs that one has not had time to write. Love finds a way; it always finds time to do kind things.

The busy man of the world would claim that he is too busy to help another, but when he falls in love with a beautiful girl, he finds time to bestow favors on her, time to visit her, time to write her. Real love would find time to see the poor old mother, to make her happy, to send her flowers, to send her candy, to remind her constantly of the love that belongs to her.

There is a certain kind of giving which cannot be postponed. You must give the kind word, do the helpful deed as you go along or you lose your chance, and the blessing that goes with it.

There is also a certain amount of giving of ourselves which must be done each day. If we postpone it until tomorrow the opportunity of today will be lost, because tomorrow will bring its own cause for our gifts; and we cannot crowd today into tomorrow.

When the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, sweet, fresh manna fell everyday to supply their needs. They were commanded not to save any of it for next day, because they were assured it would not keep, and that a sufficient amount would fall for each day's need. But in spite of this assurance they doubted and tried to hoard some for next day, but their hoarding was useless, for the manna always spoiled.

Most of our daily personal gifts are like this manna of the Israelites. They will not keep. If they are not used as occasion demands they are lost. There are gifts of cheerfulness, of smiles, gifts of kindness, gifts of consideration, expressions of appreciation, gifts of praise, gifts of thanksgiving, which must go out everyday as we go along, for we shall never go this way again. We never make back tracks on the life path. Every step is onward, and if we do not scatter our love seeds as we go along, the path behind us will be so much the more barren for the lives which shall follow.

The excuse so common among busy people for every neglect or omission, "I haven't time," is no excuse at all for letting the manna of life spoil.

You can no more postpone your daily giving than you can postpone your breathing. If you postpone your gifts of kindly words to the servants, to the newsboy, to the conductor on the train, to employees, to your associates and especially to those who are in trouble, who have fallen by the way, those who need your help; if you do not fling out these gifts, these blessings, as you go along, they will be lost forever.

The following paragraph from "The Young Woman" has a personal application for most of us — men and women:

“'I sometimes think we women nowadays are in danger of being too busy to be really useful” said an old lady, thoughtfully. 'We hear so much about making every minute count, and always having some work or course of study for spare hours, and having our activities all synchronized, that there is no place left for small wayside kindnesses. We go to see the sick neighbor and relieve the poor neighbor; but for the common everyday neighbor who has not fallen by the way, so far as we can see, we haven't a minute to spare. But everybody who needs a cupful of cold water isn't calling the fact out to the world, and there are a great many little pauses by the way that are no waste of time. The old-fashioned exchange of garden flowers over the back fence and a friendly chat about domestic matters helped to brighten weary days and brought more cheer than many a sermon. We ought not to be too busy to inquire for the girl away at school or to be interested in the letter from the boy at sea or "over there." It is a comfort to the mother's lonely heart to feel that somebody else cares for that which means so much to her. Especially we ought not to be too busy to give and receive little kindnesses in our home.' May no one be able to say of us that we are too busy to be kind.”

If a Gladstone in the midst of pressing duties of international importance found time to visit a poor sick crossing sweeper, what excuse can less busy and less important people offer for the neglect of these small acts of kindness which make the best of life? Gladstone endeared himself to the heart of the English people by this more than by many of the great things he did. So did Phillips Brooks, by caring for a baby in the slums of Boston, that its mother might go out and get the fresh air, endear himself to the American people more than by many great acts of his noble life.

Yet how many of us hoard our sympathy, our words of good cheer and encouragement, the helpful kindnesses within our power to bestow, that might save many lives from misery, disaster and death! We not only withhold our sympathy, but we cling to our material wealth, and wonder why we are not popular and well beloved. We hoard our money in houses and lands and stocks and other investments, refusing to help those in need, fearing we may someday need it ourselves.

Here is a bright young girl working in some office or factory, trying to help a brother or sister to secure an education, or trying to support an invalid father or mother. Her salary is small and out of all proportion to her services. She tells her employer of her pressing needs, of her sick parents, and asks for an increase in salary. He knows that she deserves it, and he is well able to pay more, but he selfishly puts her off with vague promises, telling himself that he cannot afford the expense now, that later on he may be able to give the girl more money. But the years pass and the girl finds herself beyond the age of business service, penniless, broken down in health, and, but for the charity of friends, a public charge.

This is a double crime, for it is not only a wrong to another, but a greater wrong to the God in one's own soul. In no other way do we morally starve and stunt our lives more than by postponing things which we know we ought to do for another, with the excuse that we can better afford it later. We know very well that the longer we postpone the good deed, the less probability there is that we will ever do it. And in the end, we lose something far more precious than the thing we should have given.

He who denies the material aid that he could readily give, who withholds the fragrance of his love and helpfulness, finds that ultimately the very foundation of his heart dries up and his finer nature petrifies. He loses, too, the enjoyment that his wealth might procure, for the little shrunken soul cannot enjoy as the broad generous one can.

There is a tradition that King Solomon received a gift of a costly vase from the Queen of Sheba which contained an elixir, one drop of which would restore health and prolong life indefinitely. Solomon's friends heard about this wonderful life-restoring elixir, and when death was near, they begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomon always refused, because he feared that by opening the vase to get a drop the rest of the precious elixir might evaporate. At length he became very ill and bade his servants bring the vase, but behold, the precious contents had all evaporated!

Things are so constituted in this world that selfishness defeats its own end. The fragrance and the beauty do not exist in the unopened bud. It is only when the bud opens up its petals and begins to give itself out to others that its beauty and fragrance are developed.

Refuse to open your purse and soon you cannot open your sympathy. Refuse to love and you will soon lose the power to love; your affections are paralyzed, your sympathy atrophied, from selfish withholding and disuse, and you become a moral cripple. But the moment you fling open the door of your heart and allow the rose of your sympathy and helpfulness to send out, without stint, its fragrance and beauty, upon every passerby, whether pauper or millionaire, you begin to develop power.

What would you think of a man who after suffering for years with a very painful disease, had finally found a remedy which had entirely cured him, but who absolutely refused to tell others who were suffering with the same disease about the remedy? You would say that it was criminal. Perhaps you would hardly believe that any man would be so brutally selfish. But there are many beautiful helpful things which come to us constantly, things which would cheer the discouraged, inspire the down-hearted, and bring sunshine and joy into unfortunate lives about us, and these things we could pass along with little, if any, trouble to ourselves; but how many of us pass them on? How often when people say good things about us do we take it as a compliment, without even a thought of trying to help the one who helped us, who gave us the lift, the encouragement, or of passing the same helpful message on to another? How often do we hoard personal or household things with the thought that some time we may need them instead of passing them on to others who need them now!

This is not love's way. Love is a generous giver. Love passes things along it can do without. It does not lay up all sorts of things in the attic, because they may sometime be used. The old clothing, the discarded toys, the furniture it has no use for, it gives to the poor. It gives garments away before they are useless, while there is yet some wear in them. It passes on books and magazines it has read and no longer needs. Love goes through the house every little while and picks up and passes along to others less favored the things it can really do without. In other words, love has thought for others — feeling, sympathy, a longing to help, a passion to serve.

If we practice love's way, we will have nothing to do with post-mortem kindness. We will not postpone any service that love can render. We will not wait, thinking that we will do the kindly act, give the needed help, a little later on. We will not forget that there are many things which we must pass along as we receive them.

Everyday we can give out a lot of things that are invaluable, that will be a wonderful help to others not only without interfering with our daily duties, but with absolute benefit to them and to ourselves. After doing the things that Christ would have done under the circumstances, we feel a renewal of strength. After every kindly act we hear His words come back to us: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these little ones, you have done it unto me."

Chapter 21: Love Letters from God

Walt Whitman looked upon everything in nature as a message to man from the Infinite. He says:

"To me converging objects of the universe perpetually flow; All are written to me and I must get what the writing means."

Did you ever think that every flower, every tree, every ray of sunshine, every beautiful landscape, is really a loving message, a letter from God to us, His children? If we could only read His handwriting in the rocks, in the fields, in the flowers, in the stars, in the moon, in the clouds, in the sunset, in all His handiwork, what joy would be brought into our lives!

Whitman urged people to learn to read God's handwriting by going direct to the fountainhead and studying and interpreting His messages for themselves. This is the only way to get their full meaning. Books and teachers open the door to knowledge concerning the infinite wisdom and beauty of nature and her laws, but only by intimate and loving personal communion with her can we read and understand God's messages written on every leaf of her great book.

"Stop this night and day with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books.

"You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourselves."

The Creator has so fashioned us that we get our greatest happiness in finding Him in His creations. Nature is packed, saturated with things which are calculated to make every living creature happy. They were made for our use and enjoyment. They give pleasure to every sense through which pleasure can be communicated — the sense of sight, of sound, of smell, of taste, of touch. Every avenue to the brain opens up a new source of enjoyment.

Why is it that every normal person loves flowers? Simply because the same Power that created us made the flowers to fit our nature, to give us pleasure, to delight our senses. All things are made on a marvelous divine plan that fits each for a special purpose. There are no unrelated things in the universe. Everyone bears a relation to all other creations; and to the seeing eye, the understanding mind, God is manifest in all.

A friend once surprised Emerson out in the fields and overheard him exclaim, "God, God; all is God!" If every human being could thus see God in every natural object everyday and every moment of his life what a joy living would be! We would each be able to say with Emerson: "That which befits us, embosomed in wonder and beauty as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?"

It is a pity that we allow the sordid side of life, our grasping, greedy motives and efforts to obscure God's handwriting, to cover up the beautiful things, the finer things, the things that are worthwhile; that we spend the greater part of our time struggling for non-essentials, while we neglect the essentials, the things of real worth, the things that make true happiness.

We cannot have the right attitude toward life; we cannot understand its meaning until we have learned to see God in all His creations, — in the grass, the trees, the flowers, the mountains, the seas, the hills, the valleys, the clouds, the sunsets and sunrises. Yet many of us go through life without once enjoying the beauties spread out before us, without ever reading one of the glorious epistles that come to us from our Creator in every opening leaf and budding flower, in every shrub, in every tree, in every spear of grass. These beautiful epistles are telling us how God loves His children, but we. do not get their message because we have never learned to read them. We are in the position of a person traveling through the Yosemite Valley, through Yellowstone Park, and all through the most beautiful parks of California blindfolded. We have eyes but cannot see, and what we do not see we cannot know or understand.

It is a curious thing that our educators should lay such stress upon reading the works of the "great authors," but pay practically no attention whatever to the reading of the Greatest Author's works. Little pains is taken to teach our youth to read God's works, to study the miracles that are everywhere being performed in nature's laboratory, but the study of dead languages and the analysis of classic writers form an important part of our so-called higher education. No wonder it is so rare a thing to find a college graduate who can read God's letters in the flowers, the fruits, the vegetables, in the strata of the rocks, in the shining sand, in the crystal waters, in the sunbeam, in the formation of the earth, in everything.

One of the most excellent features of the Gary system of education is that it brings the children into closer relation with nature than any of the others. It takes them outdoors, where they are brought nearer to the Creator in His works. There is nothing else which will call so much of the beautiful out of children as the inculcation of a love and appreciation of the wonderful works of God.

In the unique school for boys established in India by the great poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore, where love is the only disciplinarian, learning to see and understand God in all things is a fundamental part of the boys' education. Teachers and pupils in this school all rise at half past four in the morning, and when dressed go outdoors chanting hymns in praise of "the Lord of the universe who is in the wood, in fire, in medicine, who pervades and permeates the universe with his loving spirit." Tagore wants to see the boys in his school grow with the plants; so each boy spreads his mat on the earth, and all study out under the trees. Sometimes the little students will be found studying an insect, sometimes the trees, the flowers, or other objects of nature, but always whatever the study may be, they are interested and happy.

Such a system could not be generally put in practice in America under present conditions, but the time will come when no one will be considered educated who is ignorant of God's handiwork. Children will be taught to read Him in the book of nature just as they are now taught grammar and mathematics, and they will enjoy that study as they enjoy nothing else.

We tell our children fairy stories to interest and amuse them, but the magic and marvels of fairyland are dull and lifeless compared with the wizardry of nature, the miracles she is constantly working before our eyes. We should teach our children the process of these miracles in simple language that they can understand, and when they look at flowers or fruit, vegetables or cereals, or any natural objects, we should teach them to see the good back of them all, to see the Creator's love in providing them for our satisfaction and enjoyment.

A little knowledge of nature would transform the world into a magic fairyland for our children. Agassiz could hold a hall full of grown students spellbound during an entire lecture on a grain of sand, or on a single scale of a fish. If we could show boys and girls the wonder and glory of a grain of sand, of a crystal, of every common object, how marvelously interesting it would make life for them.

Training children to analyze natural objects and to see the divine purpose back of them develops the imagination, the power of thinking clearly, and a feeling of awe and reverence for the Omnipotent Power that planned the universe. When we teach our children from the very start to see God in every plant, in every flower, in every tree, in every atom, in every molecule in the universe, life will have a wonderful meaning, a new joy for them. After this idea has once gotten hold of their being, never in all the years to come will life be other than a glory to them; it can never be a sordid grind.

Think what it would mean to the world today if every human being could read God's letters as Ruskin read them! Unless one knows and loves nature it would be impossible to imagine the rapture of his soul as he wandered through the country, drinking in with every sense its marvelous beauties. Clouds chasing one another through a blue sky across the sun, the grass, the trees, the flowers, the meadows, the brooks, the mountains, the birds, the insects, these made heaven for Ruskin. Yet to the average man, living his strenuous money-making life in the city, a day in the country filled with such glories would probably be an intolerable bore, because his finer sensibilities, his esthetic faculties, his love of the beautiful had not been developed in childhood as had Ruskin's.

All the money of a Rockefeller will never give its possessor a fraction of the real wealth owned by a Ruskin, a Wordsworth or a Burbank. It can never give him a tithe of the joy and happiness packed into one hour of the life of one who knows and loves God through His works. If you have never read a letter from God in nature, too transcendently lovely for description, you have not half lived. You are not an educated man or woman. When you can read God's letters to His children, you will see more in the weeds by the roadside, in the wildflowers, in the sun and the moon and the stars than ever was written about them in all the books that ever were printed.

Chapter 22: The Harmony Bath

"A man must be next to a devil who wakes angry," says Horace Bushnell.

How we feel on waking depends on how we felt when going to sleep. No man should wake angry, because no man should go to sleep in an angry mood.

The subconscious mind can build or destroy, can make us happy or miserable, can make us feel like a devil or an angel, according to the pattern we give it. Every thought dropped into the subconscious mind before we go to sleep is a seed that will germinate in the night while we are unconscious and, ultimately, bring forth a harvest of its kind.

Dr. Elwood Worcester, of Boston, and many others working along the same lines and getting similar results, says: "There is a very easy and rational way by which many childish faults can be removed; that is, by making good suggestions to our children while they are in a state of natural sleep.

"My method is to address the sleeping child in a low and gentle tone, telling it that I am about to speak to it, and that it will hear me, but that my words will not disturb it nor will it awake. Then I give the necessary words, repeating them in different language several times. By this means I have removed childish fears and corrected bad habits. I have checked nervous twitchings, anger, violence, a disposition to lie, and I have improved speech in stammering children."

Before going to sleep we can, through autosuggestion, treat ourselves in a similar way. We can impress whatever message we desire on the subconscious mind, and it will affect us according to its nature. Swedenborg claimed that his "spiritual vision" was opened in the unconscious hours of the night. "When corporal and voluntary things are quiescent," he said, "the Lord operates."

When we stop to think that the majority of us spend about one-third of our lives in sleep we get some idea of the importance of putting ourselves in the right mental attitude before going to sleep. Eight hours out of the twenty-four cuts a swath out of life that no one can afford to ignore or minimize. Here and there, of course, we find a rare exception like Thomas A. Edison, who does not need, and who insists that others do not need, to give anything like this amount of time to sleep. But the fact remains that pretty nearly all of us do spend from eight to nine hours out of the twenty-four in bed. This being so, if we make the most of life as a whole, we must prepare the mind for sleep with as much care as we prepare the body.

No one can afford to awake to a new day feeling like a devil. To do our best during the day we must awake in tune with the Infinite, in harmony with the spirit of divine love. To do this you must go to sleep in the right mood.

Never allow yourself to drop to sleep with anything on your mind against any living creature. If you have a grudge against another, forget it, wipe it out, erase it completely, and substitute a charitable love-thought, a kindly, generous thought, before you fall asleep. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath.

No matter how tired you are, or how late you retire, make it a rule never to go to sleep without erasing every unfortunate impression, every disagreeable experience, every unkind thought, every particle of envy, jealousy and ill-will from your mind. Just imagine that the words "Harmony," "Love," "Good-will to every living creature," are written all over your bedroom in letters of light. Repeat the words to yourself, or, if alone, out loud until your mental atmosphere responds to their suggestion.

Unless we attune our minds to harmony for sleep, there will be a constant strain on the nervous system all through the night. For even if we do manage to go to sleep with a troubled mind, the brain keeps on working along the same line of thought. If, for instance, we go to sleep worrying, depressed, jealous, envious, angry, melancholy, we will awake tired, exhausted physically and mentally. There will be no elasticity or spring in our brain, no buoyancy in our spirits. The blood poisoned by wrong thinking is incapable of refreshing the brain.

Those who have learned the art of putting themselves in harmony with all the world before they retire, never harboring a thought of jealousy, hatred, envy, revenge or ill-will against anyone, or irritating or distressing thoughts of any sort, not only get a great deal more out of sleep but they retain their youth and vigor much longer than those who are in the habit of going to bed all out of tune, or of reviewing all their disagreeable experiences and thinking over all their troubles and trials after they lie down. I know men whose lives have been revolutionized by adopting the practice of putting themselves in a harmonious condition, getting in tune with the Infinite before going to sleep.

Many people age more during sleep than while awake, because they do not prepare their minds for sleep. They do not take their mental harmony bath, but go to bed nursing their grouches, their hatreds, their petty jealousies, their worries, their anxieties and envies. These enemies of their peace and happiness, working all night, cut deep furrows in the brain, which soon appear on the face.

I know a man who is aging very rapidly from his business and family worries. I frequently travel morning and evening to and from the city with him, and instead of looking fresh and rejuvenated in the morning he actually looks older and more careworn than he did the night before. This is because he takes his troubles to bed with him and falls asleep worrying and depressed. Instead of practising mental chemistry, and neutralizing or driving them out by the peace thought, the harmony and love thoughts, he lets these vicious mental devils, which are playing such havoc in his life, work all night in his brain. And, of course, they poison his blood, deplete his vitality and cut his wrinkles deeper and deeper every night.

At no time can we use auto-suggestion, this great "therapeutic agency" and "uplifting ethical force," with more effect than on retiring for the night. That is the time of all others when the rush and hurry of the day is past, when we can most effectively put ourselves in tune with the Infinite. Taking love as our key thought, there is no mental state, no matter how troubled or worried, how discordant and out of tune, that cannot be brought into harmony through auto-suggestion.

There are marvelous possibilities for health building, success and happiness building in ourselves, in impressing on the mind as vividly as possible before going to sleep what we would like to become and what we long to accomplish. That wonderful force in your subjective self will immediately begin to shape the pattern, to occupy the model which you thus give it. If you put your objective mind in tune with your highest hopes, your loftiest expectations and ideals, your subconscious mind will do a lot of creating during the night. It will build rather than tear down, as it does when one goes to sleep in a discordant mood.

If you make it a rule to go to sleep in a harmonious mental attitude you will be delighted to find not only how much fresher and younger and more virile you will be, but how much more you will accomplish from day to day. If we should prepare the mind for sleep with the same care that we prepare the body; if we were to give it a cleansing mental bath, erasing from it all black, discordant pictures, all the worries and fears which harassed us during the day, instead of taking them to bed with us and allowing them to rob us of needed rest, what a difference it would make in our achievement, in our lives!

If children were trained to form the habit of falling asleep every night with pleasant thoughts uppermost, with bright, beautiful pictures in their minds, they would wake in the morning fresh, vigorous, cheerful, instead of peevish, fretful and unhappy, as is the case with so many. And what a difference it would make to them when started on an active career to find this priceless habit as natural as eating and drinking!

But it is never too late to form the habit. No matter what your age you may begin now. You can, if you only persist in continually flooding your mind with the love thought, fall asleep every night like a tired, happy child, and awake in the morning just as refreshed and happy. Your subconscious self will, after a while, carry out your behests without any conscious effort on your part. The habit of falling asleep in a mental atmosphere of love and peace will become second nature.

From the standpoint of physical well-being alone it is imperative to form the habit. It is fundamental to sound health to make it a rule never to discuss business troubles, or anything whatever that vexes and irritates at night, especially just before retiring. When you compose yourself to rest, let there be nothing in your mind which will cause you regret, no ghosts of unforgiven offenses; no grudges or jealousies. Be sure that your mental bath has washed out everything that could offend, everything that could cause you pain. Forgive all of your enemies if you have any. Do not let yourself go to sleep with any bitter thought in your mind.

Mental chemistry shows us that opposite thoughts — thoughts of love and hate, of harmony and discord, of good-will and ill-will — cannot exist in. the mind at the same time. If you flood your mind with love thoughts, good-will thoughts, with optimistic, hopeful, helpful, pictures of yourself and others you will erase all unkind thoughts, all thoughts of revenge, jealousy, envy, hatred, ill-will.

If you form the habit of going to sleep with the Christ mental attitude toward every human being, with the mind that was His, with the philosophy that was His, that was reflected in the Golden Rule, holding in your heart good-will for every living creature, you will awake every morning refreshed and renewed. You will arise a new creature, full of hope, energy and courage, with a new lease of life, a new joy in living.

Chapter 23: Heroism at Home

Someone has said: "Someday we shall learn that the little deeds of love wrought unconsciously as we pass on our way are greater in their helpfulness and still shine more brightly in the life than the deeds of renown which we think of as alone making a life great."

Never was there a greater mistake than to think that heroism, courage, daring, are confined to the field of battle. It doesn't matter what post we are assigned to in the battle of life we have an opportunity to do heroic things everyday. If we have the spirit of brotherly love; if we are filled with the love of truth and justice; if we are determined always to stand for the right no matter what the cost, we are unceasingly battling for the higher things of life.

It is as heroic to take a firm stand for honesty, when it may cost you your position, because your employer is not honest himself, or to rescue a person from a burning building, or from drowning, as it is to go into battle. It is heroic to stand for the right when others sneer and condemn you for doing so. It often takes more courage to stand alone for the right, for justice, for principle, when those about you ridicule and caricature you for your stand, than it would be to walk up to a cannon's mouth in battle, under the excitement, the stimulus of action and the support of the comradeship of a multitude of others.

If you can keep up your courage when others lose heart; if you can keep pushing on when others turn back; if you can smile and wait when others play the coward and quit; if you can be serene in the face of misfortune, and of failure; if you can keep your nerve, and a level head when others get panicky; if you can carry yourself like a conqueror, keep your fixity of purpose when others waver; if you can stand unmoved and see your prosperity swept away from you, even your home sold over your head; if when you have been deceived where you trusted, your hopes and plans wrecked, your future apparently blighted, and you still refuse to lose your courage and your grip on yourself, or your faith in the Power that controls your life, then you may know that there is a hero, or a heroine, in you as noble as any that ever gave up his life on the field of battle for a great cause.

A woman who has been inveigled into an unfortunate marriage, taken away from her girlhood home and those who love her into a little cabin on a vast prairie twenty miles from any sign of civilization, writes: "Exiled from home and parents, deprived forever from pursuing my chosen vocation, the dream of my life faded out, lost, what have I to make happiness out of?"

Now, this is a situation that calls for that sort of moral heroism which as far transcends physical heroism as a high spiritual love transcends that which is merely physical, of the senses alone.

Whether this woman rises above, or sinks beneath the condition in which she finds herself rests wholly with her. The soul centered and poised in Divine Love is endowed with strength to conquer every limitation of the body, every condition or circumstance that would hold it down. You can keep your eyes turned inward, nurse your grief and disappointment until it conquers you, or you can look out and up at God's fair universe, and cry with Henley:

"Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole

I thank whatever gods there be

For my unconquerable soul.”

This woman says she is not only exiled from her home, but exiled from happiness. No person is exiled from happiness unless he exiles himself. The chances are that if she would examine herself, she would find a great many things which would alleviate her distress and help her bear her disappointment bravely. There are many things even in her situation for which millions of people would envy her. She is sound and whole in body and mind, with all her senses unimpaired, free to absorb the sweet pure air, the bright sunshine, the sights and sounds of nature all around her.

Few of us ever stop to think that the nearer we are to nature, to the source of things, the greater our opportunities for gathering strength and power to do, — for power springs from the soil, from the sunshine. The country is the source of power, of beauty. How many who are weak and ailing, crippled or handicapped in some way, mental or physical; how many shut up in cities, with no possibility of visits to the country, would envy this woman her freedom, her great opportunity to keep close to nature and to study her at close range.

She acknowledges that there are those, even though at a great distance, who love her. Her ability to communicate with them still leaves her a great source of happiness. She probably does not realize how many people there are hungering for love, who have not a soul of their own kith and kin on earth, perhaps not a single human being who is sufficiently interested to care what becomes of them. In spite of her overwhelming disappointment, her loneliness, the hard circumstances in which she finds herself, she still has possibilities to make of her life a sublime success.

The way we meet our problems, great or small, is the test of our courage and of our faith in the greater Love that ordereth all things well. Remember, my friend, no matter where you are, or what your environment, you were sent here as an ambassador of the Almighty. You are here on His business — to make a worthy contribution to the world, to deliver the message with which He entrusted you. Now an ambassador must go where he is sent, and do his duty, attend to his business like a man, not whine, grumble, groan or whimper. You did not choose your present place, but the mission on which you were sent has made it necessary for you to go there, and, no matter whether you feel like it or not, it is your business to do your level best to be a good ambassador, to meet your difficulties in the spirit of a brave, strong, self-reliant soul. It is the business of every one of us to meet every situation in life with courage, with a stoic but cheerful determination to make the best and the most of whatever comes. This is our task, this is our mission, wherever we find it.

Thoreau, that great student and lover of nature, said, "God could not be unkind to me if He tried." If we have the right spirit, if we are animated by the love motive, there is no situation which we cannot turn to advantage. To have one's dream of happiness shattered at the outset is no little thing, but the only hope of reconstructing it is to meet the situation bravely and make the best of it. Not many are called upon to meet great trials like this. The majority are of the minor kind. Unfortunately, one disappointment, one little setback, makes most of us forget all the good things we still enjoy, just as one stormy day makes many people forget months of pleasant weather. The little cloud in front of our eyes at the moment seems to cover the whole sky, to shut out all sunlight and beauty. If instead of keeping our eyes turned inward, we would keep them turned outward like Thoreau, we would see as he did, that "God could not be unkind to us if He tried."

When we stop to think of the things which constitute the average life, we shall be surprised to find how seldom the big problem, the great dead, the unusual opportunity, the extraordinary experience enters into it. Some of the finest characters that ever lived never had met great trouble or unhappiness, never did a single thing that was very distinctive, very original, or heroic in the accepted sense. It was their whole life habit of accepting cheerfully whatever came, of doing good wherever an opportunity presented itself, of being kind, courteous, always helping someone somewhere, that made them strong, poised, unselfish, really noble men and women.

There is a wonderful meaning in the common everyday happenings, the little things that come up in the daily routine, which most of us lose sight of, and that is, the opportunity they give for character building, for mental training, for the object of all of life's endeavor — man-building and woman-building.

Your name and face may never appear in the newspapers or magazines, but everyday you have an opportunity to live a beautiful life, a helpful life. The heroic virtues, courage, fortitude, unselfishness, can be practised behind the lines in the home, in the shop, in the factory, in the marketplace, as well as in the forefront on the field of battle.

Only once or twice in a lifetime, and perhaps not at all, will you have a chance to do a thing that is heroic in a spectacular way, something that will attract widespread attention; but the little, common, everyday courtesies, the loving acts of kindness and helpfulness that count so much in the long run, we can practise everyday. These are the things that make character, that beautify and ennoble life. These are really the things that in the aggregate make greatness. They may not win medals as will some physically daring, heroic deed, but they will win something even more valuable, — the strength that comes from daily service, without hope of notice or reward.

Chapter 24: What the Bee Teaches Us

Maeterlinck says that a single bee lacks the necessary intelligence to make honey; but that a hive of bees develops a high order of intelligence.

It is only when they work together that bees are productive. If all the bees in the hive were separated and forced to live alone, they would make no honey, not even to sustain life. Through lack of individual intelligence they would die of starvation.

A hive of bees has a well-defined purpose, toward which each must work or suffer the consequences. If, for example, a bee bringing honey back to the hive eats it instead of storing it for the general good, the other bees sting it to death.

One bee alone has no purpose, no plans, no intelligence. In short, a bee separated from its fellow bees is absolutely helpless, absolutely useless.

What is true of the bee is in a large degree true of a human being. A man separated from his fellowmen, without any of the social advantages, conveniences or facilities which community life affords, would be practically helpless. The strength of each one of us is dependent on our unity with all the others, because we are all parts of one whole.

The intelligence of the community brain of a town or village is much superior to the individual brains composing it. Men, who are stingy, narrow, unprogressive, will vote en masse to do things for the general welfare which individually they would never consent to.

History and experience show that mankind rises or falls together. Every real and permanent advance since the world began has been due to the action of the great principle of human brotherhood — the majority acting together for the good of all.

It is a remarkable thing that practically all of the experiments for the attainment of ideal citizenship by little groups of altruistic people, who separated themselves from the rest of the world to start colonies modeled on the Brook Farm plan, have been total failures. Theoretically, it would seem that the colonization of intellectual, highly moral and industrious people should produce an ideal condition of society. But the results of actual experience in exclusive class-grouping of this sort have always been disappointing.

The fact is, we are made to help one another in the mass. It is a law of nature that men and women begin to deteriorate when they are separated from their fellows. No man can permanently separate himself from his fellows without shrinking. No one, no matter how clever or resourceful, is independent. He is not a whole man alone; but he is large and powerful in proportion as he is related to his fellows. He must touch other lives or lose power. He is so constituted that a thousand relations with his brother man are necessary to his largest development, his completest life. When he cuts himself off from the common life, he cuts off a great many currents of power, closes many avenues of interrelation which bring strength and rich experience.

Take a writer, for example. If he secludes himself from society he begins after a while to lose his mental vigor; his brain has less stamina; there is a weakening all along the line until, if he secludes himself too long, his writings become flat, insipid, flavorless. To keep up his standard his brain must have new food, greater variety, fresh experiences. He must meet new people, visit new scenes, mix with the world, fulfil his social functions. This is nature's law; and the penalty for its violation is mental paralysis.

What is true of the writer is true of men and women in every calling. Separate yourself from the. world, and you are like a single wire in an untwisted cable. A large part of your strength comes from your close association with other men and women. It did not reside in you, but only became yours when you were closely twisted with the others.

"Men succeed only as they work together," said Elbert Hubbard. "Without companionship ambition droops; courage flags, reason totters, ambition vanishes, and the man dies. Nature puts a quick limit on the horrors of solitary confinement — she unhinges the reason of the prisoner, and he addresses comrades who have no existence save in his fevered imagination. The man who does useful work is in direct communication with other people — he works for others, and the thought that he is doing something for somebody sustains him.”

This tying together of human beings so that they cannot get their fullest power alone is one of the wisest provisions of nature for the defeat of selfishness, the greatest foe of human development.

We have seen that when the bee does not work for the common good it is put out of the way. In human society, we don't put the selfish units to death, but their selfishness brings its own punishment, just as the broad generous spirit brings its own reward. For the more a man helps others, the more closely he touches other lives, the more he expands and grows, the more love and power comes back to him, while the selfish man, who secludes himself from others, who has no sympathy for his neighbors, who tries to get everything for himself, and gives as little as possible, is constantly shrinking and narrowing his boundaries. He is robbing himself of power when he thinks he is acquiring it. In the long run, selfishness defeats its object.

Every created thing is a part of the divine universal plan, in which each of us is intended to play an individual part. But though individual, we are still one in essence, "For," as St. Paul says, "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit." Our neighbor is ourself because there is only one mind in the universe. And since all is an expression of that Infinite Mind, there can be no real separateness of individuals, except in their failure to recognize that "one life runs through all creation's veins."

Some of us seem to think that we are independent centers of intelligence instead of being parts of a scheme so vast, a plan so magnificent, not only for the races that live upon our little earth planet, but for the numberless beings who live upon other planets, that it is beyond the scope of our imagination.

When we consider that hundreds of thousands of earths like our own could be taken into the sun through one of the holes on its surface which we call "sunspots," and that this sun is but as a single grain of sand compared with the number of the heavenly bodies, we get a faint idea of the earth's littleness, and of the immensity of the universe. The idea that, literally,

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is and God the soul," that there is but one principle running through the universe, one life, one truth, one reality, and that this principle is divinely beneficent, is the most inspiring, encouraging idea that ever entered the human mind.

When we realize that we are actually one with our neighbor we cannot help loving him as ourselves, because he is one with us in his oneness with the great universal principle which underlies all being, which is the truth of all truths. It is our ignorance of this oneness of life, our failure to realize this marvelous unity of being that gives us a false sense of life. This is what makes us selfish. This is why we grab things from our neighbor because we do not know that he is really ourself.

To contemplate the oneness of all creation, to hold fast to the truth that all things are but a manifestation of the creative thought of God, not only draws all people closer to God and to one another, but it enlarges the mind and enriches the nature as nothing else can. The habit of looking upon all human beings as one, kills ill-will and hatred. It removes all prejudice against unfortunate human beings who have gone astray, sinned greatly, or become criminals. The thought of our oneness with the Creator gives us a new view of life, a new thought of man and a new thought of God.

This idea of man's unity with God captured the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, who said: "Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness; that man, for example, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that of Jehovah! . . . This is not an atheistic banishment of God and His holy angels, but is, on the contrary, the enthronement of a new Jehovah — a God that has become conscious and potent in the human mind."

The full realization of our oneness with God; that we actually live, move, and have our being in Him will elevate our standards, will give us wider, nobler views of life.

Selfishness will then disappear because it will not mean anything, or rather because we shall see that it only hurts us, since all are working for the same end. We have no desire to cheat ourselves, to get something desirable away from ourselves; and when we realize that we are all parts of one life, branches of the same parent vine, we shall have no desire to get things away from others, to take advantage of them, to cheat them, because that would only mean cheating and robbing ourselves. It would be like a man taking money out of one pocket and putting it into the other and trying to convince himself that he had made a good bargain, that he had gained something. If my brother is myself, and I know it, I can have no desire to take advantage of him.

The truth is that love is the great mind opener, the great heart opener, the great developer. It is what holds society together. It is the source of all peace and harmony. If children in all countries were trained to love humanity, to love all countries and their inhabitants as they are taught to love their own Country and countrymen, there would be no wars. But even the great war now devastating the earth, is teaching us the unity of human interests, in that what injures one injures all. We are all, in greater or less degree, suffering from its effects. And so unless we all work together now and after this war is over to bring good out of evil, the suffering and the sacrifices it has involved will be in vain.

We have been drawn into this tragic war in defense of justice and democracy, and we are going to see to it that it shall be the end of war. The world has tried the hatred way, the way of war, the butchering way all up through the centuries, and they have never worked. Force has always been a failure. Civilization has tried all sorts of ways which have failed; only one way has worked under all sorts of conditions, and that is love's way. It is the only way which will banish wars and human strife, hatred and revenge, selfishness and greed from the world. A principle which always works, which fits every case and every emergency, must be a universal principle.

The time will come when man will think of his neighbor as himself, because all men will then see the oneness of all life, of all truth, of all principle. The coming man will know that whatever hurts his neighbor will hurt himself, because we are all one with the One. The coming man will see that he is not a separate unit, but that he bears the same relation to mankind as a whole as a drop of water bears to the ocean. He will know that "the thought and will of God are in every particle of the substance of the universe, in every manifestation of energy, power or force, and in every manifestation of life."

Already we are beginning to find that all human beings are so closely related that one suffers or rejoices, is happy or miserable, according as others are affected. Our welfare, our prosperity, our happiness, are not separate from the general welfare, prosperity and happiness; they are interdependent. And the time will come when we shall not consider any city or town either moral or beautiful so long as it tolerates cancer spots, black spots of poverty and squalor, crime and misery in its midst.

"No man has come to true greatness," says Phillips Brooks, "who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind." We cannot lay claim to real humanity, let alone greatness, until we have conquered all inclination to enrich ourselves at the expense of our neighbor, to take advantage of him in any way. Only in so far as we treat our neighbor as ourselves will we find true happiness and success.

Chapter 25: Love's Way and Christmas Giving

One day, during the last Christmas rush, I overheard a little ragged boy say to his baby sister as they stood gazing hungrily at the big show window of a toy shop, "How I wish I could get that dollie for you, sister. You know you never had a dollie. I do wish I had money to get that one."

One of the most pathetic things in life, one which has often made my heart bleed during Christmastide is to see poor ragged children like these little ones, looking so longingly into the gaily dressed shop windows at the dolls and toys and other beautiful things, the like of which they never had in their lives. What a wonderful time they would have; how happy they think they would be if they only had the money to buy some of these wonderful things! But with the wisdom which comes prematurely to the children of the poor, they resign themselves to the consciousness that they never can have them.

Not less pathetic than the children are the mothers who vainly long to brighten Christmas for their little ones with the gifts their child-hearts crave. When I see poor women who are obliged to leave their children at home and go out washing or scrubbing floors, standing with their scrubbing pails on their arms looking so longingly at the Christmas show windows, I can read their thoughts. How they long to take some of those things home to their loved ones, things which they know that though they should scrub their fingers to the bone their children will never have. Yet how eagerly they look at the pretty clothing, the dolls, the toys, the things which they see other children have, but which are forever denied to their children, who are just as precious to them as the better-to-do children are to their mothers.

We are all looking into the show windows of life, longing to get the beautiful things we see displayed there, the things which will delight, which will add to our joy and happiness. And those of us who enjoy an abundance of the good things find it hard to deny ourselves, especially at Christmas time when all purse-strings are loosened, any of the superfluous things we desire. All sorts of temptations are constantly besieging us during the holiday season to buy things for ourselves and for others which we do not need. Here is where the right sort of Christmas giving will do a double service. The very learning to say "No" to selfish desires, the denying ourselves the things we long for, but can do without, helps build a strong, beautiful character.

To refrain from burdening well-to-do people with a lot of gimcrack things which are of no earthly use to anyone, and to give the money which is usually expended on these things where it is really needed, would be to give in the spirit of Him whose nativity we Commemorate.

Dorothy Dix, one Christmas, told of a young man who showed her a couple of hundred of silly presents he had received from girls, "and who," she said, "after sadly inquiring of me what I supposed most of the things were intended for, remarked: 'Gee! I'd trade the whole lot off for one good pair of socks.'”

How many men and women find themselves in a similar position after Christmas. And how gladly they would throw the stuff in the ash-barrel were it not for the fear of offending their friends. In how many homes do we see these Christmas presents, which are neither useful nor ornamental, lying about cluttering table and mantelpiece, always in the way. The recipients do not dare to throw them away or put them out of sight for fear those who gave them might notice, and think they were not appreciated.

What is the sense of spending money and time in embarrassing well-to-do-people with useless stuff of this sort, when both might be expended in doing real good? This year when once happy and prosperous people in war-devastated Europe are starving and looking to America for help in their awful need, waste of any sort is a crime. It is our privilege to be able to give, to give generously in response to any appeal for help, but in our giving let us not forget the little ragged children and the poor mothers, even in prosperous America, who are looking longingly at the Christmas show windows for the things they ought to have, but cannot themselves buy.

In almost every home there are discarded dolls and toys, outgrown articles of clothing, pictures, books, all sorts of things which are no longer needed, or used by the family, but which would make many a poor mother and many a little child happy this Christmastide.

The time is coming when we shall have uprooted from our economic system the evils that make poverty and misery in this beautiful world; when no one need be poor but through his own fault. But until that happy time arrives, no one is excused from doing his part in hastening its coming, or from his daily responsibility in helping to bear his brother's burdens.

To have and not to give, or to give stingily, grudgingly, or only to those from whom we expect something in return, is to be outside the pale of Christian brotherhood. It is to know nothing of the Christ spirit; it is to be contemptible. Emerson says, "He is base — and that is the only base thing in the universe — to receive favors and render none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms. Put it away quickly in some sort."

The world war is loosening our heart and our purse-strings as never before, and we are finding ourselves all the richer for it. In the broadening of our sympathies, and the opening of the door of narrow self-centered lives into wider interests and world fellowship with all who are suffering, we are learning the truth of Christ's "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Perhaps you feel rather poor this year on account of the high cost of living, and the many war funds to which duty compelled you to contribute, and have been thinking of cutting down on your Christmas presents. By all means, let us all cut out the presents that we were wont to give in the quid pro quo spirit. But let us not cut out the small gifts from which we expect no return, but which will make somebody happy.

Love, which is the essence of the Christmas spirit, always finds some way to serve.

A little girl who had only three pennies with which to buy a Christmas present for her grandmother was puzzling over what she could buy with so small a sum when a happy thought came to her. With one penny she bought a sheet of paper and an envelope, and with the other two a stamp, to carry a letter in which she said, "I have no gift to send you, dear grandma, but I love you, love you, love you, and here are a hundred kisses for you." Among the many remembrances which that grandmother received, it is said that this childish letter was the only one which she cried over, and locked up with her dead baby's curl of hair and one or two other priceless things.

I know a very poor woman who has nothing to give in the way of material presents, but who does more good according to her means than anyone else I know of. She makes a point of going about among poor people before Christmas, trying to cheer up and comfort the cripples, the unfortunate, the sick and discouraged, all those who are in trouble. She gives such a wealth of love, of sympathy, of encouragement, of sunshine, of good cheer, that they feel richer after she has visited them than many dollars' worth of material gifts would have made them. Mere things are cold and unsympathetic in comparison with what x his poor woman gives them.

No one is so poor that he cannot give something. Where love is there is always something to give, for "love never faileth." But where love is not, where the Christ spirit is absent, there is poverty, indeed.

"Though Christ a thousand times

In Bethlehem be born,

If He's not born in thee,

Thy soul is all forlorn"

I hope you enjoyed reading Love’s Way by Orison Swett Marden.

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Endnotes

Notes

[←1]

This and other illustrations in this volume, which in a very beautiful way emphasize the rewards of love and service, have been adapted from other books of the author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Invitation

Chapter 2: Try Love’s Way

Chapter 3: The Greatest Thing in the World

Chapter 4: Making Life A Song

Chapter 5: The Dream of Brotherhood

Chapter 6: Driving Away What We Long for Most

Chapter 7: Employers and Employees

Chapter 8: Spite Fences

Chapter 9: Work and Happiness

Chapter 10: Practising Love’s Way

Chapter 11: Training the Child

Chapter 12: How to Lighten Your Burdens

Chapter 13: Survival Value

Chapter 14: The Miracle Worker

Chapter 15: Our Little Brothers and Sisters

Chapter 16: The Thing That Makes A Home

Chapter 17: "Stranger, Why Should I Not Speak to You?"

Chapter 18: "I Serve the Strongest"

Chapter 19: The Daily Orientation

Chapter 20: Scatter Your Flowers As You Go

Chapter 21: Love Letters from God

Chapter 22: The Harmony Bath

Chapter 23: Heroism at Home

Chapter 24: What the Bee Teaches Us

Chapter 25: Love's Way and Christmas Giving

Endnotes