THE FREEDOM OF LIFE

BY

ANNIE PAYSON CALL

_Author of "Power Through Repose, "

"As a Matter of Course, " etc. _

 _FREEDOM_

 _LORD GOD of Israel, -- Where Thou art we are free! Call out Thy people, Lord, we pray, From Egypt unto Thee. Open our eyes that we may see Our bondage in the past, -- Oh, help us, Lord, to keep Thy law, And make us free at last!_

 _Lord God of Israel, -- Where Thou art we are free! Freed from the rule of alien minds, We turn our hearts to Thee. The alien hand weighs heavily, And heavy is our sin, -- Thy children cry to Thee, O Lord, -- Their God, --to take them in. _

 _Lord God of Israel, -- Where Thou 'art we are free Cast down our idols from on high, That we may worship Thee. In freedom we will live Thy Love Out from our inmost parts; Upon our foreheads bind Thy Law, -- Engrave it on our hearts!_

 _Amen. _

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

 I. THE FREEDOM OF LIFE II. HOW TO SLEEP RESTFULLY III. RESISTANCE IV. HURRY, WORRY, AND IRRITABILITY V. NERVOUS FEARS VI. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS VII. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF LIFE VIII. OTHER PEOPLE IX. HUMAN SYMPATHY X. PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE XI. SELF-CONTROL XII. THE RELIGION OF IT XIII. ABOUT CHRISTMAS XIV. TO MOTHERS

_INTRODUCTION_

INTERIOR freedom rests upon the principle of non-resistance to all thethings which seem evil or painful to our natural love of self. Butnon-resistance alone can accomplish nothing good unless, behind it, there is a strong love for righteousness and truth. By refusing toresist the ill will of others, or the stress of circumstances, for thesake of greater usefulness and a clearer point of view, we deepen ourconviction of righteousness as the fundamental law of fife, and broadenour horizon so as to appreciate varying and opposite points of view. The only non-resistance that brings this power is the kind which yieldsmere personal and selfish considerations for the sake of principles. Selfish and weak yielding must always do harm. Unselfish yielding, onthe other hand, strengthens the will and increases strength of purposeas the petty obstacles of mere self-love are removed. Concentrationalone cannot long remain wholesome, for it needs the light of growingself-knowledge to prevent its becoming self-centred. Yielding alone isof no avail, for in itself it has no constructive power. But if we tryto look at ourselves as we really are, we shall find great strength inyielding where only our small and private interests are concerned, andconcentrating upon living the broad principles of righteousness whichmust directly or indirectly affect all those with whom we come intocontact. 

I

_The Freedom of Life_

I AM so tired I must give up work, " said a young woman with a verystrained and tearful face; and it seemed to her a desperate state, forshe was dependent upon work for her bread and butter. If she gave upwork she gave up bread and butter, and that meant starvation. When shewas asked why she did not keep at work and learn to do it withoutgetting so tired, that seemed to her absurd, and she would have laughedif laughing had been possible. 

"I tell you the work has tired me so that I cannot stand it, and youask me to go back and get rest out of it when I am ready to die offatigue. Why don't you ask me to burn myself, on a piece of ice, orfreeze myself with a red-hot poker?"

"But, " the answer was, "it is not the work that tires you at all, it isthe way you do it;" and, after a little soothing talk which quieted theoverexcited nerves, she began to feel a dawning intelligence, whichshowed her that, after all, there might be life in the work which shehad come to look upon as nothing but slow and painful death. She cameto understand that she might do her work as if she were working verylazily, going from one thing to another with a feeling as near toentire indifference as she could cultivate, and, at the same time, doit well. She was shown by illustrations how she might walk across theroom and take a book off the table as if her life depended upon it, racing and pushing over the floor, grabbing the book and clutching ituntil she got back to her seat, or, how she might move with exaggeratedlaziness take the book up loosely, and drag herself back again. Thisillustration represents two extremes, and one, in itself, is as bad asthe other; but, when the habit has been one of unnecessary strain andeffort, the lazy way, practised for a time, will not only be veryrestful, but will eventually lead to movement which is quick as well. 

To take another example, you may write holding the pen with much moreforce than is needful, tightening your throat and tongue at the sametime, or you may drag your pen along the paper and relieve the tendencyto tension in your throat and tongue by opening your mouth slightly andletting your jaw hang loosely. These again are two extremes, but, ifthe habit has been one of tension, a persistent practice of the extremeof looseness will lead to a quiet mode of writing in which ten pagescan be finished with the effort it formerly took to write one. 

Sometimes the habit of needless strain has taken such a strong holdthat the very effort to work quietly seems so unnatural as to causemuch nervous suffering. To turn the corner from a bad habit into a trueand wholesome one is often very painful, but, the first pain workedthrough, the right habit grows more and more easy, until finally thebetter way carries us along and we take it involuntarily. 

For the young woman who felt she had come to the end of her powers, itwas work or die; therefore, when she had become rested enough to seeand understand at all, she welcomed the idea that it was not her workthat tired her, but the way in which she did it, and she listenedeagerly to the directions that should teach her to do it with lessfatigue, and, as an experiment, offered to go back and try the "lazyway" for a week. At the end of a week she reported that the "lazy way"had rested her remarkably, but she did not do her work so well. Thenshe had to learn that she could keep more quietly and steadilyconcentrated upon her work, doing it accurately and well, without inthe least interfering with the "lazy way. " Indeed, the betterconcentrated we are, the more easily and restfully we can work, forconcentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward ourwork, --it means _dropping everything that interferes, _ and strainednerves and muscles constitute a very bondage of interference. 

The young woman went back to her work for another week's experiment, and this time returned with a smiling face, better color, and a new andmore quiet life in her eyes. She had made the "lazy way" work, andfound a better power of concentration at the same time. She knew thatit was only a beginning, but she felt secure now in the certainknowledge that it was not her work that had been killing her, but theway in which she had done it; and she felt confident of her power to doit restfully and, at the same time, better than before. Moreover, inaddition to practising the new way of working, she planned to getregular exercise in the open air, even if it had to come in theevening, and to eat only nourishing food. She has been at work now forseveral years, and, at last accounts, was still busy, with notemptation to stop because of overfatigue. 

If any reader is conscious of suffering now from the strain of his workand would like to get relief, the first thing to do is to notice thatit is less the work that tires him than his way of doing it, and theattitude of his mind toward it. Beginning with that conviction, therecomes at first an interest in the process of dropping strain and then anew interest in the work itself, and a healthy concentration in doingthe merest drudgery as well as it can be done, makes the drudgeryattractive and relieves one from the oppressive fatigue ofuninteresting monotony. 

If you have to move your whole body in your daily work, the first careshould be to move the feet and legs heavily. Feel as if each footweighed a ton, and each hand also; and while you work take long, quietbreaths, --breaths such as you see a man taking when he is very quietlyand soundly sleeping. 

If the work is sedentary, it is a help before starting in the morningto drop your head forward very loosely, slowly and heavily, and raiseit very slowly, then take a long, quiet breath. Repeat this severaltimes until you begin to feel a sense of weight in your head. If thereis not time in the morning, do it at night and recall the feeling whileyou are dressing or while you are going to work, and then, during yourwork, stop occasionally just to feel your head heavy and then go on. Very soon you become sensitive to the tension in the back of your neckand drop it without stopping work at all. 

Long, quiet breaths while you work are always helpful. If you areworking in bad air, and cannot change the air, it is better to try tohave the breaths only quiet and gentle, and take long, full breathswhenever you are out-of-doors and before going to sleep at night. 

Of course, a strained way of working is only one cause of nervousfatigue; there are others, and even more important ones, that need tobe understood in order that we may be freed from the bondage of nervousstrain which keeps so many of us from our best use and happiness. 

Many people are in bondage because of doing wrong, but many morebecause of doing right in the wrong way. Real freedom is only foundthrough obedience to law, and when, because of daily strain, a manfinds himself getting overtired and irritable, the temptation is tothink it easier to go on working in the wrong way than to make theeffort to learn how to work in the right way. At first the effort seemsonly to result in extra strain, but, if persisted in quietly, it soonbecomes apparent that it is leading to less and less strain, andfinally to restful work. 

There are laws for rest, laws for work, and laws for play, which, if wefind and follow them, lead us to quiet, useful lines of life, whichwould be impossible without them. They are the laws of our own being, and should carry us as naturally as the instincts of the animals carrythem, and so enable us to do right in the right way, and make us sosure of the manner in which we do our work that we can give all ourattention to the work itself; and when we have the right habit ofworking, the work itself must necessarily gain, because we can put thebest of ourselves into it. 

It is helpful to think of the instincts of the beasts, how true andorderly they are, on their own plane, and how they are only pervertedwhen the animals have come under the influence of man. Imagine Baloo, the bear in Mr. Kipling's "Jungle Book, " being asked how he managed tokeep so well and rested. He would look a little surprised and say:"Why, I follow the laws of my being. How could I do differently?" Nowthat is just the difference between man and beast. Man can dodifferently. And man has done differently now for so many generationsthat not one in ten thousand really recognizes what the laws of hisbeing are, except in ways so gross that it seems as if we had sunken tothe necessity of being guided by a crowbar, instead of steadilyfollowing the delicate instinct which is ours by right, and sovoluntarily accepting the guidance of the Power who made us, which isthe only possible way to freedom. 

Of course the laws of a man's being are infinitely above the laws of abeast's. The laws of a man's being are spiritual, and the animal in manis meant to be the servant of his soul. Man's true guiding instinctsare in his soul, --he can obey them or not, as he chooses; but thebeast's instincts are in his body, and he has no choice but to obey. Man can, so to speak, get up and look down on himself. He can be hisown father and his own mother. From his true instinct he can say tohimself, "you must do this" or "You must not do that. " He can see andunderstand his tendency to disobedience, and _he can force himself toobey. _ Man can see the good and wholesome animal instincts in himselfthat lead to lasting health and strength, and he can make them all thegood servants of his soul. He can see the tendency to overindulgence, and how it leads to disease and to evil, and he can refuse to permitthat wrong tendency to rule him. 

Every man has his own power of distinguishing between right and wrong, and his own power of choosing which way he shall follow. He is leftfree to choose God's way or to choose his own. Through past and presentperversions, of natural habit he has lost the delicate power ofdistinguishing the normal from the abnormal, and needs to be educatedback to it. The benefit of this education is an intelligentconsciousness of the laws of life, which not only adds to his ownstrength of mind and body, but increases immeasurably his power of useto others. Many customs of to-day fix and perpetuate abnormal habits tosuch an extent that, combined with our own selfish inheritances andpersonal perversions, they dim the light of our minds so that many ofus are working all the time in a fog, more or less dense, of ignoranceand bondage. When a man chooses the right and refuses the wrong, in sofar as he sees it, he becomes wise from within and from without, hispower for distinguishing gradually improves, the fog lifts, and hefinds within himself a sure and delicate instinct which was formerlyatrophied for want of use. 

The first thing to understand without the shadow of a doubt, is that, man is not in freedom when he is following his own selfish instincts. He is only in the appearance of freedom, and the appearance of freedom, without the reality, leads invariably to the worst bondage. A man wholoves drink feels that he is free if he can drink as much as he wants, but that leads to degradation and delirium tremens. A man who has aninherited tendency toward the disobedience of any law feels that he isfree if he has the opportunity to disobey it whenever he wants to. Butwhatever the law may be, the results have only to be carried to theirlogical conclusion to make clear the bondage to which the disobedienceleads. All this disobedience to law leads to an inevitable, inflexible, unsurmountable limit in the end, whereas steady effort toward obedienceto law is unlimited in its development of strength and power for use toothers. Man must understand his selfish tendencies in order to subdueand control them, until they become subject to his own unselfishtendencies, which are the spiritual laws within him. Thus he graduallybecomes free, --soul and body, --with no desire to disobey, and withsteadily increasing joy in his work and life. So much for the bondageof doing wrong, and the freedom of doing right, which it seemsnecessary to touch upon, in order to show clearly the bondage of doingright in the wrong way, and the freedom of doing right in the right way. 

It is right to work for our daily bread, and for the sake of use toothers, in whatever form it may present itself. The wrong way of doingit makes unnecessary strain, overfatigue and illness. The right way ofworking gives, as we have said before, new power and joy in the work;it often turns even drudgery into pleasure, for there is a specialdelight in learning to apply one's self in a true spirit to "drudgery. "The process of learning such true application of one's powers oftenreveals new possibilities in work. 

It is right for most people to sleep eight hours every night. The wrongway of doing it is to go to sleep all doubled up, and to continue towork all night in our sleep, instead of giving up and resting entirely. The right way gives us the fullest possible amount of rest andrefreshment. 

It is right to take our three meals a day, and all the nourishing foodwe need. The wrong way of doing it, is to eat very fast, withoutchewing our food carefully, and to give our stomachs no restfulopportunity of preparation to receive its food, or to take good care ofit after it is received. The right way gives us the opportunity toassimilate the food entirely, so that every bit of fuel we put into ourbodies is burnt to some good purpose, and makes us more truly ready toreceive more. 

It is right to play and amuse ourselves for rest and recreation. Weplay in the wrong way when we use ourselves up in the strain ofplaying, in the anxiety lest we should not win in a game, or when weplay in bad air. When we play in the right way, there is no strain, noanxiety, only good fun and refreshment and rest. 

We might go through the narrative of an average life in showing brieflythe wonderful difference between doing right in the right way, anddoing right in the wrong way. It is not too much to say that thedifference in tendency is as great as that between life and death. 

It is one thing to read about orderly living and to acknowledge thatthe ways described are good and true, and quite another to have one'seyes opened and to act from the new knowledge, day by day, until anormal mode of life is firmly established. It requires quiet, steadyforce of will to get one's self out of bad, and well established ingood habits. After the first interest and relief there often has to besteady plodding before the new way becomes easy; but if we do not allowourselves to get discouraged, we are sure to gain our end, for we areopening ourselves to the influence of the true laws within us, and infinding and obeying these we are approaching the only possible Freedomof Life. 

II

_How to Sleep Restfully_

IT would seem that at least one might be perfectly free in sleep. Butthe habits of cleaving to mistaken ways of living cannot be thrown offat night and taken up again in the morning. They go to sleep with usand they wake with us. 

If, however, we learn better habits of sleeping, that helps us in ourlife through the day. And learning better habits through the day helpsus to get more rest from our sleep. At the end of a good day we cansettle down more quickly to get ready for sleep, and, when we wake inthe morning, find ourselves more ready to begin the day to come. 

There are three things that prevent sleep, --overfatigue, materialdisturbances from the outside, and mental disturbances from, within. 

It is not uncommon to hear people say, "I was too tired to sleep"--butit is not generally known how great a help it is at such times not totry to sleep, but to go to work deliberately to get I rested inpreparation for it. In nine cases out of ten it is the unwillingness tolie awake that keeps us awake. We wonder why we do not sleep. We tossand turn and wish we could sleep. We fret, and fume, and worry, becausewe do not sleep. We think of all we have to do on the following day, and are oppressed with the thought that we cannot do it if we do notsleep. First, we try one experiment to see if it will not make ussleep, and when it fails, we try another, and perhaps another. In eachexperiment we, are watching to see if it will work. There are manythings to do, any one of which might help us to sleep, but the_watching to see if they will work keeps us awake. _

When we are kept awake from our fatigue, the first thing to do is tosay over and over to ourselves that we do not care whether we sleep ornot, in order to imbue ourselves with a healthy indifference about it. It will help toward gaining this wholesome indifference to say "I amtoo tired to sleep, and therefore, the first thing for me to do is toget rested in order to prepare for sleep. When my brain is well rested, it will go to sleep; it cannot help it. When it is well rested, it willsleep just as naturally as my lungs breathe, or as my heart beats. "

In order to rest our brains we want to lie quietly, relaxing all ourmuscles, and taking even, quiet breaths. It is good when we can takelong, full breaths, but sometimes that is too fatiguing; and then wemust not only take moderately long, breaths, but be careful to havethem gentle, quiet, and rhythmic. To make a plan of breathing andfollow it keeps the mind steadily concentrated on the breathing, andgives the rest of the brain, which has been working on other things, achance to relax and find its own freedom and rest. It is helpful toinhale while we count seven, exhale while we count seven, then rest andbreathe naturally while we count seven, and to repeat the series ofthree for seven times; but to be strict with ourselves and see that weonly do it seven times, not once more nor once less. Then we shouldwait a little and try it again, --and so keep on for a number of times, repeating the same series; and we should always be sure to have the airin our bedrooms as fresh as possible. If the breathing is steady andrhythmical it helps very much, and to inhale and exhale over and overfor half an hour has a very pleasant, quieting effect--sometimes suchexercises make us nervous at first, and, if we are very tired, thatoften happens; but, if we keep steadily at work, the nervousnessdisappears and restful quiet follows which very often brings restoringand refreshing sleep. 

Another thing to remember--and it is very important--is that anovertired brain needs more than the usual nourishment. If you have beenawake for an hour, and it is three hours after your last meal, takehalf a cup, or a cup of hot milk. If you are awake for another twohours take half a cup more, and so, at intervals of about two hours, so long as you are awake throughout the night. Hot milk is nourishingand a sedative. It is not inconvenient to have milk by the side ofone's bed, and a little saucepan and spirit lamp, so that the milk canbe heated without getting up, and the quiet simple occupation ofheating it is sometimes restful in itself. 

There are five things to remember to help rest an overtired brain: 1. Ahealthy indifference to wakefulness. 2. Concentration of the mind onsimple things. 3. Relaxation of the body. 4. Gentle rhythmic breathingof fresh air. 5. Regular nourishment. If we do not lose courage, butkeep on steadily night after night, with a healthy persistence inremembering and practising these five things, we shall often find thatwhat might have been a very long period of sleeplessness may bematerially shortened and that the sleep which follows the practice ofthe exercises is better, sounder, and more refreshing, than the sleepthat came before. In many cases a long or short period of insomnia canbe absolutely prevented by just these simple means. 

Here is perhaps the place to say that all narcotics are in such cases, absolutely pernicious. 

They may bring sleep at the time, but eventually they lose theireffect, and leave the nervous system in a state of strain which cannotbe helped by anything but time, through much suffering that might havebeen avoided. 

When we are not necessarily overtired but perhaps only a little tiredfrom the day's work, it is not uncommon to be kept awake by a flappingcurtain or a swinging door, by unusual noises in the streets, or bypeople talking. How often we hear it said, "It did seem hard when Iwent to bed tired last night that I should have been kept awake by anoise like that--and now this morning, I am more tired than when I wentto bed. "

The head nurse in a large hospital said once in distress: "I wish thenurses could be taught to step lightly over my head, so that they wouldnot keep me awake at night. " It would have been a surprise to her ifshe had been told that her head could be taught to yield to the stepsof the nurses, so that their walking would not keep her awake. 

It is resistance that keeps us awake in all such cases. The curtainflaps, and we resist it; the door swings to over and over again, and weresist it, and keep ourselves awake by wondering why it does not stop;we hear noises in the street that we am unused to, especially if we areaccustomed to sleeping in the stillness of the country, and we toss andturn and wish we were in a quiet place. All the trouble comes from ourown resistance to the noise, and resistance is nothing butunwillingness to submit to our conditions. 

If we are willing that the curtain should go on flapping, the door goon slamming, or the noise in the street continue steadily on, ourbrains yield to the conditions and so sleep naturally, because thenoise goes through us, so to speak, and does not run hard against ourunwillingness to hear it. 

There are three facts which may help to remove the resistance whichnaturally arises at any unusual sound when we are tired and want to getrest. 

One is that in almost every sound there is a certain rhythm. If weyield to the sound enough to become sensitive to its rhythm, that, initself, is soothing, and what before was keeping us awake now _helps usto go to sleep. _ This pleasant effect of finding the rhythm in sound isespecially helpful if one is inclined to lie awake while travelling insleeping cars. The rhythm of sound and motion in sleeping cars andsteamers is, in itself, soothing. If you have the habit of feeling asif you could never get refreshing sleep in a sleeping car, first besure that you have as much fresh air as possible, and then make up yourmind that you will spend the whole night, if necessary, in noticing therhythm of the motion and sound of the cars. If you keep your mindsteadily on it, you will probably be asleep in less than an hour, and, when the car stops, you will wake only enough to settle comfortablyinto the sense of motion when it starts again. It is pleasant to noticethe gentleness with which a good engineer starts his train at night. Ofcourse there is a difference in engineers, and some are much moregentle in starting their engines than others, but the delicacy withwhich the engine is started by the most expert is delightful to feel, and gives us many a lesson on the use of gentle beginnings, with otherthings besides locomotive engines, and especially in our dealings witheach other. 

The second fact with regard to yielding, instead of resisting, in orderto get to sleep is that listening alone, apart from rhythm, tends tomake one sleepy, and this leads us at once to the third fact, thatgetting to sleep is nothing but a healthy form of concentration. 

If true concentration is dropping everything that interferes withfixing our attention upon some wholesome object, it means merelybringing the brain into a normal state which induces sleep when sleepis needed. First we drop everything that interferes with the one simplesubject, and then we drop that, and are unconscious. 

Of course it may take some time to make ourselves willing to submit toan unusual noise if we have the habit of feeling that we mustnecessarily be disturbed by it, and, if we can stop the noise, it isbetter to stop it than to give ourselves unnecessary tasks innon-resistance. 

Then again, if we are overtired, our brains are sometimes so sensitivethat the effect of any noise is like that of being struck in a sorespot, and then it is much more difficult to bear it, and we can onlymake the suffering a little less by yielding and being willing that itshould go on. I cannot go to sleep while some one is knocking my lamearm, nor can I go to sleep while a noise is hitting my tired brain; butin such cases we can give up expecting to go to sleep, and get a greatdeal of rest by using our wills steadily not to resist; and sometimes, even then, sleep will come upon us unexpectedly. 

With regard to the use of the will, perhaps the most dangerous pitfallto be avoided is the use of drugs. It is not too much to say that theynever should be used at all for cases of pure sleeplessness, for withtime their power to bring sleep gradually becomes exhausted, and thenthe patient finds himself worse off than before, for the reactionaryeffect of the drugs leaves him with exhausted nerves and a weakenedwill. All the strengthening, moral effect which can be gained fromovercoming sleeplessness in wholesome ways is lost by a recourse todrugs, and character is weakened instead of strengthened. 

When one has been in the habit of sleeping in the city, where the noiseof the street is incessant, a change to the perfect silence of thecountry will often keep sleep off quite as persistently as noise. Sowith a man who has been in the habit of sleeping under other abnormalconditions, the change to normal conditions will sometimes keep himawake until he has adjusted himself to them, and it is not uncommon forpeople to be so abnormal that they resist rhythm itself, such as isheard in the rolling of the sea, or the rushing of a river. 

The re-adjustment from abnormal to normal conditions of sleeping may bemade surely if we set about it with a will, for we have all nature onour side. Silence is orderly for the night's rest, and rhythm onlyemphasizes and enhances the silence, when it is the rhythm of nature. 

The habit of resistance cannot be changed in a single day--it must taketime; but if the meaning, the help, and the normal power ofnon-resistance is clearly understood, and the effort to gain it ispersistent, not only the power to sleep, but a new sense of freedom maybe acquired which is quite beyond the conception of those who are inthe daily habit of resistance. 

When we lie down at night and become conscious that our arms and ourlegs and our whole bodies are resting heavily upon the bed, we areletting go all the resistance which has been left stored in our musclesfrom the activities of the day. 

A cat, when she lies down, lets go all resistance at once, because shemoves with the least possible effort; but there are very few men who dothat, and so men go to their rest with more or less resistance storedin their bodies, and they must go through a conscious process ofdropping it before they can settle to sleep as a normal child does, without having to think about how it is done. The conscious process, however, brings a quiet, conscious joy in the rest, which opens themind to soothing influences, and brings a more profound refreshmentthan is given even to the child--and with the refreshment new power forwork. 

One word more about outside disturbances before we turn to thoseinterior ones which are by far the most common preventatives ofrefreshing sleep. The reader will say: "How can I be willing that thenoise should go on when I am not willing?" The answer is, "If you cansee clearly that if you were willing, the noises would not interferewith your sleep, then you can find the ability within you to makeyourself willing. "

It is wonderful to realize the power we gain by compelling andcontrolling our desires or aversions through the intelligent use of thewill, and it is easier to compel ourselves to do right againsttemptation than to force ourselves to do wrong against a trueconviction. Indeed it is most difficult, if not impossible, to forceourselves to do wrong against a strong sense of right. Behind an ourdesires, aversions, and inclinations each one of us possesses acapacity for a higher will, the exercise of which, on the side of orderand righteousness, brings into being the greatest power in human life. The power of character is always in harmony with the laws of truth andorder, and although we must sometimes make a great effort of the willto do right against our inclinations the ease of such effort increasesas the power of character increases, and strength of will growssteadily by use, because it receives its life from the eternal will andis finding its way to harmony with that. 

It is the lower, selfish will that often keeps us awake by causinginterior disturbances. 

An actor may have a difficult part to play, and feel that a great dealdepends upon his success. He stays awake with anxiety, and this anxietyis nothing but resistance to the possibility of failure. The firstthing for him to do is to teach himself to be willing to fail. If hebecomes willing to fail, then all his anxiety will go, and he will beable to sleep and get the rest and new life which he needs in order toplay the part well. If he is willing to fail, then all the nervousforce which before was being wasted in anxiety is set free for use inthe exercise of his art. 

Looking forward to what is going to happen on the next day, or within afew days, may cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we havea good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expectedsuccess or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compelourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet andreceptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake with new power forwhatever task or pleasure may lie before us. 

Of course we are often kept awake by the sense of having done wrong. Insuch cases the first thing to do is to make a free acknowledgment toourselves of the wrong we have done, and then to make up our minds todo the right thing at once. That, if the wrong done is not too serious, will put us to sleep; and if the next day we go about our workremembering the lesson we have learned, we probably will have littletrouble in sleeping. 

If Macbeth had had the truth and courage to tell Lady Macbeth that bothhe and she were wicked plotters and murderers, and that he intended, for his part, to stop being a scoundrel, and, if he had persisted incarrying out his good intentions, he would never have "murdered sleep. "

III

_Resistance_

A MAN once grasped a very hot poker with his hand, and although hecried out with pain, held on to the poker. His friend called out to himto drop it, whereupon the man indignantly cried out the more. 

"Drop it? How can you expect me to think of dropping it with pain likethis? I tell you when a man is suffering, as I am, he can think ofnothing but the pain. "

And the more indignant he was, the tighter he held on to the poker, andthe more he cried out with pain. 

This story in itself is ridiculous, but it is startlingly true as anillustration of what people are doing every day. 

There is an instinct in us to drop every hot poker at once; andprobably we should be able to drop any other form of unnecessarydisagreeable sensation as soon as possible, if we had not lost thatwholesome instinct through want of use. As it is, we must learn tore-acquire the lost faculty by the deliberate use of our intelligenceand will. 

It is as if we had lost our freedom and needed to be shown the way backto it, step by step. The process is slow but very interesting, if weare in earnest; and when, after wandering in the bypaths, we finallystrike the true road, we find our lost faculty waiting for us, and allthat we have learned in reaching it is so much added power. 

But at present we are dealing in the main with a world which has nosuspicion of such instincts or faculties as these, and is sufferingalong in blind helplessness. A man will drop a hot poker as soon as hefeels it burn, but he will tighten his muscles and hold on to a cold inhis head so persistently that he only gets rid of it at all becausenature is stronger than he is, and carries it off in spite of him. 

How common it is to see a woman entirely wrapped up, with ahandkerchief held to her nose, --the whole body as tense as it canbe, --wondering "Why does it take so long to get rid of this cold?" Toget free from a severe cold there should be open and clear circulationthroughout the whole body. The more the circulation is impeded, thelonger the cold will last. To begin with, the cold itself impedes thecirculation; and if, in addition, we offer resistance to the very ideaof having a cold, we tighten our nerves and our bodies and therebyimpede our circulation still further. It is curious that the more weresist a cold the more we hold on to it, but it is a very evident fact;and so is its logical corollary, that the less we resist it the soonerit leaves us. 

It would seem absurd to people who do not understand, to say:--

"I have caught cold, I must relax and let it go through me. "

But the literal truth is that when we relax, we open the channels ofcirculation in our bodies, and so allow the cold to be carried off. Inaddition to the relaxing, long, quiet breaths help the circulationstill more, and so help the cold to go off sooner. 

In the same way people resist pain and hold on to it; when they areattacked with severe pain, they at once devote their entire attentionto the sensation of pain, instead of devoting it to the best means ofgetting relief. They double themselves up tight, and hold on to theplace that hurts. Then all the nervous force tends toward the soreplace and the tension retards the circulation and makes it difficultfor nature to cure the pain, as she would spontaneously if she wereonly allowed to have her own way. 

I once knew a little girl who, whenever she hit one elbow, would atonce deliberately rub the other. She said that she had discovered thatit took her mind away from the elbow that hurt, and so stopped itshurting sooner. The use of a counterirritant is not uncommon with goodphysicians, but the counter-irritant only does what is much moreeffectually accomplished when the patient uses his will andintelligence to remove the original irritant by ceasing to resist it. 

A man who was troubled with spasmodic contraction of the throat oncewent to a doctor in alarm and distress. The doctor told him that, inany case, nothing worse than fainting could happen to him, and that, ifhe fainted away, his throat would be relieved, because the faintingwould relax the muscles of the throat, and the only trouble with it wascontraction. Singularly, it did not seem to occur to the doctor thatthe man might be taught to relax his throat by the use of his own will, instead of having to faint away in order that nature might do it forhim. Nature would be just as ready to help us if we were intelligent, as when she has to knock us down, in order that she may do for us whatwe do not know enough to do for ourselves. 

There is no illness that could not be much helped by quiet relaxing onthe part of the patient, so as to allow nature and remedial agencies todo their work more easily. 

That which keeps relief away in the case of the cold, of pain, and ofmany illnesses, is the contraction of the nerves and muscles of thebody, which impedes the curative power of its healing forces. Thecontraction of the nerves and muscles of the body is caused byresistance in the mind, and resistance in the mind is unwillingness:unwillingness to endure the distress of the cold, the pain, or theillness, whatever it may be; and the more unwilling we are to sufferfrom illness, the more we are hindering nature from bringing about acure. 

One of the greatest difficulties in life is illness when the hands arefull of work, and of business requiring attention. In many eases thestrain and anxiety, which causes resistance to the illness, is evenmore severe, and makes more trouble than the illness itself. 

Suppose, for instance, that a man is taken down with the measles, whenhe feels that he ought to be at his office, and that his absence mayresult in serious loss to himself and others. If he begins by lettinggo, in his body and in his mind, and realizing that the illness isbeyond his own power, it will soon occur to him that he might as wellturn his illness to account by getting a good rest out of it. In thisframe of mind his chances of early recovery will be increased, and hemay even get up from his illness with so much new life and with hismind so much refreshed as to make up, in part, for his temporaryabsence from business. But, on the other hand, if he resists, worries, complains and gets irritable, he irritates his nervous system and, byso doing is likely to bring on any one of the disagreeable troublesthat are known to follow measles; and thus he may keep himself housedfor weeks, perhaps months, instead of days. 

Another advantage in dropping all resistance to illness, is that therelaxation encourages a restful attitude of mind, which enables us totake the right amount of time for recovery, and so prevents either apossible relapse, or our feeling only half well for a long time, whenwe might have felt wholly well from the time we first began to take upour life again. Indeed the advantages of nonresistance in such casesare innumerable, and there are no advantages whatever in resistance andunwillingness. 

Clear as these things must be to any intelligent person whose attentionis turned in the right direction, it seems most singular that not inone case in a thousand are they deliberately practised. People seem tohave lost their common sense with regard to them, because forgenerations the desire for having our own way has held us in bondage, and confused our standard of freedom; more than that, it has befoggedour sense of natural law, and the result is that we painfully fight tomake water run up hill when, if we were to give one quiet look, weshould see that better things could be accomplished, and our own senseof freedom become keener, by being content to let the water quietly rundown and find its own level. 

It is not normal to be ill and to be kept from our everyday use, but itis still less normal for a healthy, intelligent mind to keep its bodyill longer than is necessary by resisting the fact of illness. Everydisease, though it is abnormal in itself, may frequently be kept withinbounds by a certain normal course of conduct, and, if our sufferingfrom the disease itself is unavoidable, by far our wisest course is tostand aside, so to speak, and let it take its own course, using allnecessary remedies and precautions in order that the attack may be asmild as possible. 

Many readers, although they see the common sense of suchnon-resistance, will find it difficult to practise it, because of theirinheritances and personal habits. 

The man who held the hot poker only needed to drop it with his fingers;the man who is taken ill only needs to be willing with his mind and torelax with his nerves in order to hasten his recovery. 

A very useful practice is to talk to ourselves so quietly and earnestlyas to convince our brains of the true helpfulness of being willing andof the impediment of our unwillingness. Tell the truth to yourself overand over, quietly and without emotion, and steadily and firmlycontradict every temptation to think that it is impossible not toresist. If men could once be convinced of the very real and wonderfulpower they have of teaching their own brains, and exacting obediencefrom them, the resulting new life and ability for use would make theworld much happier and stronger. 

This power of separating the clear, quiet common sense in ourselvesfrom the turbulent, willful rebellion and resistance, and so quietingour selfish natures and compelling them to normal behavior, is trulylatent in us all. It may be difficult at first to use it, especially incases of strong, perverted natures and fixed habits, because in suchcases our resistances are harder and more interior, but if we keepsteadily on, aiming in the right direction, --if we persist in thepractice of keeping ourselves separate from our unproductiveturbulences, and of teaching our brains what we _know_ to be the truth, we shall finally find ourselves walking on level ground, instead ofclimbing painfully up hill. Then we shall be only grateful for all thehard work which was the means of bringing us into the clear air offreedom. 

There could not be a better opportunity to begin our training innon-resistance than that which illness affords. 

IV

_Hurry, Worry, and Irritability_

PROBABLY most people have had the experience of hurrying to a trainwith the feeling that something held them back, but not many haveobserved that their muscles, under such conditions, actually _do_ pullthem back. 

If any one wants to prove the correctness of this observation let himwatch himself, especially if it is necessary for him to go downstairsto get to the station, while he is walking down the steps. The drawingback or contracting of the muscles, as if they were intelligentlytrying to prevent us from reaching the train on time, is mostremarkable. Of course all that impeding contraction comes fromresistance, and it seems at first sight very strange that we shouldresist the accomplishment of the very thing we want to do. Why should Iresist the idea of catching a train, when at the same time I am mostanxious to do so? Why should my muscles reflect that resistance bycontracting, so that they directly impede my progress? It seems a mostsingular case of a house divided against itself for me to want to takea train, and for my own muscles, which are given me for my command, torefuse to take me there, so that I move toward the train with aninvoluntary effort away from it. But when the truth is recognized, allthis muscular contraction is easily explained. What we are resisting isnot the fact of taking the train, but the possibility of losing it. That resistance reflects itself upon our muscles and causes them tocontract. Although this is a practical truth, it takes us some time torealize that the fear of losing the train is often the only thing thatprevents our catching it. If we could once learn this fact thoroughly, and live from our clearer knowledge, it would be one of the greatesthelps toward taking all things in life quietly and without necessarystrain. For the fact holds good in all hurry. It is the fear of notaccomplishing what is before us in time that holds us back from itsaccomplishment. 

This is so helpful and so useful a truth that I feel it necessary torepeat it in many ways. Fear brings resistance, resistance impedes ourprogress. Our faculties are paralyzed by lack of confidence, andconfidence is the result of a true consciousness of our powers when inharmony with law. Often the fear of not accomplishing what is before usis the _only_ thing that stands in our way. 

If we put all hurry, whether it be an immediate hurry to catch a train, or the hurry of years toward the accomplishment of the main objects ofour lives, --if we put it all under the clear light of this truth, itwill eventually relieve us of a strain which is robbing our vitality tono end. 

First, the times that we _must_ hurry should be minimized. In ninecases out of ten the necessity for hurry comes only from our ownattitude of mind, and from no real need whatever. In the tenth case wemust learn to hurry with our muscles, and not with our nerves, or, Imight better say, we must hurry without excitement. To hurry quietly isto most people an unknown thing, but when hurry is a necessity, theprocess of successive effort in it should be pleasant and refreshing. 

If in the act of needful hurry we are constantly teaching ourselves tostop resistance by saying over and over, through whatever we may bedoing, "I am perfectly willing to lose that train, I am willing to loseit, I am willing to lose it, " that will help to remove the resistance, and so help us to learn how to make haste quietly. 

But the reader will say, "How can I make myself willing when I am notwilling?"

The answer is that if you know that your unwillingness to lose thetrain is preventing you from catching it, you certainly will see theefficacy of being willing, and you will do all in your power towardyielding to common sense. Unwillingness is resistance, --resistance inthe mind contracts the muscles, and such contraction prevents our usingthe muscles freely and easily. Therefore let us be willing. 

Of course there is a lazy, selfish indifference to catching a train, oraccomplishing anything else, which leaves the tendency to hurry out ofsome temperaments altogether, but with that kind of a person we are notdealing now. And such indifference is the absolute opposite of thewholesome indifference in which there is no touch of laziness orselfishness. 

If we want to avoid hurry we must get the habit of hurry out of ourbrains, and cut ourselves off, patiently and kindly, from theatmosphere of hurry about us. The habit gets so strong a hold of thenerves, and is impressed upon them so forcibly as a steady tendency, that it can be detected by a close observer even in a person who islying on a lounge in the full belief that he is resting. It showsitself especially in the breathing. A wise athlete has said that ournormal breathing should consist of six breaths to one minute. If thereader will try this rate of breathing, the slowness of it willsurprise him. Six breaths to one minute seem to make the breathingunnecessarily slow, and just double that seems about the right numberfor ordinary people; and the habit of breathing at this slower rate isa great help, from a physical standpoint, toward erasing the tendencyto hurry. 

One of the most restful exercises any one can take is to lie at fulllength on a bed or lounge and to inhale and exhale, at a perfectlyeven, slow rate, for half an hour. It makes the exercise more restfulif another person counts for the breathing, say, ten slowly and quicklyto inhale, and ten to exhale, with a little pause to give time for aquiet change from one breath to another. 

Resistance, which is the mental source of hurry, is equally at the rootof that most harmful emotion--the habit of worrying. And the sametruths which must be learned and practised to free ourselves of the onehabit are applicable to the other. 

Take the simple example of a child who worries over his lessons. Children illustrate the principle especially well, because they are soresponsive that, if you meet them quietly with the truth indifficulties of this kind they recognize its value and apply it veryquickly, and it takes them, comparatively, a very little time to getfree. 

If you think of telling a child that the moment he finds himselfworrying about his lesson he should close his book and say:

"I do not care whether I get this lesson or not. "

And then, when he has actually persuaded himself that he does not care, that he should open his book and study, --it would seem, at first sight, that he would find it difficult to understand you; but, on thecontrary, a child understands more quickly than older people, for thechild has not had time to establish himself so firmly in the evil habit. 

I have in mind a little girl in whom the habit had begun of worryinglest she should fail in her lessons, especially in her Latin. Hermother sent her to be taught how not to worry. The teacher, aftergiving her some idea of the common sense of not worrying, taught herquieting exercises which she practised every day; and when one day, inthe midst of one of her lessons, Margaret seemed very quiet andrestful, the teacher asked:--

"Margaret, could you worry about your Latin now if you tried?"

"Yes, " said Margaret, "I am afraid I could. "

Nothing more was said, but she went on with her lessons, and severaldays after, during the same restful quiet time, the teacher venturedagain. 

"Now, Margaret, could you worry about your Latin if you tried?"

Then came the emphatic answer, _"No, I could not. "_

After that the little girl would say:

"With the part of me that worries, I do not care whether I get my Latinor not; with the part of me that does not worry, I want to get my Latinvery much; therefore I will stay in the part of me that does not worry, and get my Latin. "

A childish argument, and one that may be entirely incomprehensible tomany minds, but to those who do comprehend, it represents a very realand practical help. 

It is, in most cases, a grave mistake to, reason with a worry. We mustfirst drop the worry, and then do our reasoning. If to drop the worryseems impossible, we can separate ourselves from it enough to preventit from interfering with our reasoning, very much as if it wereneuralgia. There is never any real reason for a worry, because, as weall know, worry never helps us to gain, and often is the cause of ourlosing, the things which we so much desire. 

Sometimes we worry because we are tired, and in that case, if we canrecognize the real cause, we should use our wills to withdraw ourattention from the object of worry, and to get all possible rest atonce, in the confident belief that rest will make things clear, or atleast more clear than they were when we were tired. It would be hard tocompute the harm that has been done by kindly disposed people inreasoning with the worry of a friend, when the anxiety is increased byfatigue or illness. To reason with one who is tired or ill and worried, only increases the mental strain, and every effort that is made toreason him out of it aggravates the strain; until, finally, the poorbrain, through kindly meant effort, has been worked into an extremestate of irritation or even inflammation. For the same reason, aworried mind should not be laughed at. Worries that are aroused byfatigue or illness are often most absurd, but they are not absurd tothe mind that is suffering from them, and to make fun of them onlybrings more pain, and more worry. Gentle, loving attention, withkindly, truthful answers, will always help. By such attention we arereally giving no importance to the worry, but only to our friend, withthe hope of soothing and quieting him out of his worries, and when heis rested he may see the truth for himself. 

We should deal with ourselves, in such cases, as gently as we wouldwith a friend, excepting that we can tell the truth to ourselves moreplainly than we can to most friends. 

Worrying is resistance, resistance is unwillingness. Unwillingnessinterferes with whatever we may want to accomplish. To be willing thatthis, that, or the other should happen seems most difficult, when toour minds, this, that, or the other would bring disaster. And yet if wecan once see clearly that worrying resistance tends toward disasterrather than away from it, or, at the very least, takes away ourstrength and endurance, it is only a matter of time before we becomeable to drop our resistance altogether. But it is a matter of time;and, when once we are faced toward freedom, we must be patient andsteady, and not expect to gain very rapidly. Theirs is indeed a hardlot who have acquired this habit of worry, and persist in doing nothingto gain their freedom. 

"Now I have got something to worry about for the rest of my life, "remarked a poor woman once. Her face was set toward worrying; nothingbut her own will could have turned it the other way, and yet shedeliberately chose not to use it, and so she was fixed and settled inprison for the rest of her life. 

To worry is wicked; it is wickedness of a kind that people often do notrecognize as such, and they are not fully responsible until they do;but to prove it to be wicked is an easy matter, when once we are facedtoward freedom; and, to get over it, as I have said, is a matter ofsteady, persistent patience. 

As for irritability, that is also resistance; but there are two kindsof irritability, --physical and moral. 

There is an irritability that comes when we are hungry, if we haveeaten something that disagrees with us, if we are cold or tired oruncomfortable from some other physical cause. When we feel that kind ofirritability we should ignore it, as we would ignore a little snappingdog across the street, while at the same time removing its cause asquickly as we can. There is nothing that delights the devil more thanto scratch a man with the irritability of hunger, and have him respondto it at once by being ugly and rude to a friend; for then theirritation immediately becomes moral, and every bit of selfishnessrushes up to join it, and to arouse whatever there may be of evil inthe man. It is simple to recognize this merely physical form ofirritability, and we should no more allow ourselves to speak, or act, or even _think_ from it, than we should allow ourselves to walkdirectly into foul air, when the good fresh air is close to us on theother side. 

But moral irritability is more serious; that comes from the soul, andis the result of our wanting our own way. The immediate cause may besome physical disturbance, such as noise, or it may be aroused by otherpetty annoyances, like that of being obliged to wait for some one whois unpunctual, or by disagreement in an argument. There are very manycauses for irritability, and we each have our own individualsensitiveness or antipathy, but, whatever the secondary cause, theprimary cause is always the same, --resistance or unwillingness toaccept our circumstances. 

If we are fully willing to be disturbed, we cease to be troubled by thedisturbance; if we are willing to wait, we are not annoyed by beingkept waiting, and we are in a better, more quiet humor to help ourfriend to the habit of promptness. If we are willing that anothershould differ from us in opinion, we can see more clearly either toconvince our friend, if he is wrong, --or to admit that he is right, andthat we are wrong. The essential condition of good argument is freedomfrom personal feeling, with the desire only for the truth, --whether itcomes from one party or the other. 

Hurry, worry, and irritability all come from selfish resistance to thefacts of life, and the only permanent cure for the waste of force andthe exhausting distress which they entail, is a willingness to acceptthose facts, whatever they may be, in a spirit of cheerful and reverentobedience to law. 

V

_Nervous Fears_

TO argue with nervous anxiety, either in ourselves or in others, isnever helpful. Indeed it is never helpful to argue with "nerves" atall. Arguing with nervous excitement of any kind is like rubbing asore. It only irritates it. It does not take long to argue excited ortired nerves into inflammation, but it is a long and difficult processto allay the inflammation when it has once been aroused. It is a sadfact that many people have been argued into long nervous illnesses bywould-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue them out ofillness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends are apt tolose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired brain which theyare trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than they realize. Theradical cure for nervous fears is to drop resistance to painfulcircumstances or conditions. Resistance is unwillingness to endure, andto drop the resistance is to be strongly willing. This vigorous"willingness" is so absolutely certain in its happy effect, and is soimpossible that it should fail, that the resistant impulses seem tooppose themselves to it with extreme energy. It is as if theresistances were conscious imps, and as if their certainty ofdefeat--in the case of their victim's entire "willingness "--rousedthem to do their worst, and to hold on to their only possible means ofpower with all the more determination. Indeed, when a man is workingthrough a hard state, in gaining his freedom from nervous fears, theseimps seem to hold councils of war, and to devise new plans of attack inorder to take him by surprise and overwhelm him in an emergency. Butevery sharp attack, if met with quiet "willingness, " brings a defeatfor the assailants, until finally the resistant imps are conquered anddisappear. Occasionally a stray imp will return, and try to arouseresistance on what he feels is old familiar ground, but he is quicklydriven off, and the experience only makes a man more quietly vigilantand more persistently "willing. "

Perhaps one of the most prevalent and one of the hardest fears to meet, is that of insanity, --especially when it is known to be a probable orpossible inheritance. When such fear is oppressing a man, --to tell himthat he not only can get free from the fear, but free from anypossibility of insanity, through a perfect willingness to be insane, must seem to him at first a monstrous mockery; and, if you cannotpersuade him of the truth, but find that you are only frightening himmore, there is nothing to do then but to be willing that he should notbe persuaded, and to wait for a better opportunity. You can show himthat no such inheritance can become an actuality, unless we permit it, and that the very knowledge of an hereditary tendency, when wholesomelyused, makes it possible for us to take every precaution and to useevery true safeguard against it. The presence of danger is a source ofstrength to the brave; and the source of abiding courage is not in thenerves, but in the spirit and the will behind them. It is the clearstatement of this fact that will persuade him The fact may have to bestated many times, but it should never be argued. And the more quietlyand gently and earnestly it is stated, the sooner it will convince, forit is the truth that makes us free. 

Fear keeps the brain in a state of excitement. Even when it is notconsciously felt, it is felt sub-consciously, and we ought to be gladto have it aroused, in order that we may see it and free ourselves, notonly from the particular fear for the time being, but from thesubconscious impression of fear in general. 

Is seems curious to speak of grappling with the fear of insanity, andconquering it by being perfectly willing to be insane, but it is nomore curious than the relation of the centrifugal and the centripetalforces to each other. We need our utmost power of concentration toenable us to yield truly, and to be fully willing to submit to whateverthe law of our being may require. Fear contracts the brain and thenerves, and interrupts the circulation, and want of free circulation isa breeder of disease. Dropping resistance relaxes the tension of thebrain and nerves, and opens the channels for free circulation, and freecirculation helps to carry off the tendency to disease. If a man iswholesomely willing to be insane, should such an affliction overtakehim, he has dropped all resistance to the idea of insanity, and thusalso to all the mental and physical contractions that would fosterinsanity. He has dropped a strain which was draining his brain of itsproper strength, and the result is new vigor to mind and body. To dropan inherited strain produces a great and wonderful change, and all weneed to bring it about is to thoroughly understand how possible and howbeneficial it is. If we once realize the benefit of dropping thestrain, our will is there to accomplish the rest, as surely as it isthere to take our hand out of the fire when it burns. 

Then there is the fear of contagion. Some people are haunted with thefear of catching disease, and the contraction which such resistancebrings induces a physical state most favorable to contagion. There wasonce a little child whose parents were so full of anxious fears thatthey attempted to protect him from disease in ways that were extremeand ridiculous. All his toys were boiled, everything he ate or drankwas sterilized, and many other precautions were taken, --but along withall the precautions, the parents were in constant fear; and it is notunreasonable to feel that the reflection upon the child of the chronicresistance to possible danger with which he was surrounded, hadsomething to do with the fact that the dreaded disease was finallycaught, and that, moreover, the child did not recover. If reasonablyhealthy conditions had been insisted upon, and the parents had felt awholesome trust in the general order of things, it would have beenlikely to make the child more vigorous, and would have tended toincrease his capacity for throwing off contagion. 

Children are very sensitive, and it is not unusual to see a childcrying because its mother is out of humor, even though she may not havespoken a cross word. It is not unusual to see a child contract itslittle brain and body in response to the fears and contractions of itsparents, and such contraction keeps the child in a state in which itmay be more difficult to throw off disease. 

If you hold your fist as tight as you can hold it for fifteen minutes, the fatigue you will feel when it relaxes is a clear proof of theenergy you have been wasting. The waste of nervous energy would be muchincreased if the fist were held tightly for hours; and if the waste isso great in the useless tightening of a fist, it is still greater inthe extended and continuous contraction of brain and nerves in uselessfears; and the energy saved through dropping the fears and theiraccompanying tension can bring in the same proportion a vigor unknownbefore, and at the same time afford protection against the very thingswe feared. 

The fear of taking cold is so strong in many people that a draught offresh air becomes a bugaboo to their contracted, sensitive nerves. Draughts are imagined as existing everywhere, and the contraction whichimmediately follows the sensation of a draught is the best means ofpreparing to catch a cold. 

Fear of accident keeps one in a constant state of unnecessary terror. To be willing that an accident should happen does not make it morelikely to happen, but it prevents our wasting energy by resistance, andkeeps us quiet and free, so that if an emergency of any kind arises, weare prepared to act promptly and calmly for the best. If the amount ofhuman energy wasted in the strain of nervous fear could be measured inpounds of pressure, the figures would be astonishing. Many people whohave the habit of nervous fear in one form or another do not throw itoff merely because they do not know how. There are big and littlenervous fears, and each and all can be met and conquered, --thusbringing a freedom of life which cannot even be imagined by thosecarrying the burden of fear, more or less, throughout their lives. 

The fear of what people will think of us is a very common cause ofslavery, and the nervous anxiety as to whether we do or do not pleaseis a strain which wastes the energy of the greater part of mankind. Itseems curious to measure the force wasted in sensitiveness to publicopinion as you would measure the waste of power in an engine, and yetit is a wholesome and impersonal way to think of it, --until we find abetter way. It relieves us of the morbid element in the sensitivenessto say, "I cannot mind what so-and-so thinks of me, for I have not thenervous energy to spare. " It relieves us still more of the tendency tomorbid feeling, if we are wholesomely interested in what others thinkof us, in order to profit by it, and do better. There is nothing morbidor nervous about our sensitiveness to opinion, when it is derived froma love of criticism for the sake of its usefulness. Such a rightful andwise regard for the opinion of others results in a saving of energy, for on the one hand, it saves us from the mistakes of false and shallowindependence, and, on the other, from the wasteful strain of servilefear. 

The little nervous fears are countless. The fear of not being exact. The fear of not having turned off the gas entirely. The fear of nothaving done a little daily duty which we find again and again we havedone. These fears are often increased, and sometimes are aroused, byour being tired, and it is well to realize that, and to attend at oncecarefully to whatever our particular duty may be, and then, when thefear of not having done it attacks us, we should think of it as if itwere a physical pain, and turn our attention quietly to something else. In this way such little nagging fears are relieved; whereas, if weallowed ourselves to be driven by them, we might bring on nervousstates that would take weeks or months to overcome. These nervous fearsattack us again and again in subtle ways, if we allow ourselves to beinfluenced by them. They are all forms of unwillingness or resistance, and may all be removed by dropping the resistance and yielding, --not tothe fear, but to a willingness that the fear should be there. 

One of the small fears that often makes life seem unbearable is thefear of a dentist. A woman who had suffered from this fear for alifetime, and who had been learning to drop resistances in other ways, was once brought face to face with the necessity for going to thedentist, and the old fear was at once aroused, --something like thefeeling one might have in preparing for the guillotine, --and shesuffered from it a day or two before she remembered her new principles. Then, when the new ideas came back to her mind, she at once appliedthem and said, "Yes, I _am afraid, _ I _am awfully afraid. _ I am_perfectly willing to be afraid, "_ and the ease with which the feardisappeared was a surprise, --even to herself. 

Another woman who was suffering intensely from fear as to theafter-effects of an operation, had begun to tremble with great nervousintensity. The trembling itself frightened her, and when a friend toldher quietly to be willing to tremble, her quick, intelligence respondedat once. "Yes, " she said, "I will, I will make myself tremble, " and, bynot only being willing to tremble, but by making herself tremble, shegot quiet mental relief in a very short time, and the tremblingdisappeared. 

The fear of death is, with its derivatives, of course, the greatest ofall; and to remove our resistance to the idea of death, by beingperfectly willingly to die is to remove the foundation of all thephysical cowardice in life, and to open the way for the growth of acourage which is strength and freedom itself. He who yields gladly tothe ordinary facts of life, will also yield gladly to the supreme factof physical death, for a brave and happy willingness is thecharacteristic habit of his heart:--

 Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. "

There is a legend of the Arabs in which a man puts his head out of histent and says, "I will loose my camel and commit him to God, " and aneighbor who hears him says, in his turn, "I will tie my camel andcommit him to God. " The true helpfulness from non-resistance does notcome from neglecting to take proper precautions against the objects offear, but from yielding with entire willingness to the necessary factsof life, and a sane confidence that, whatever comes, we shall beprovided with the means of meeting it. This confidence is, in itself, one of the greatest sources of intelligent endurance. 

VI

_Self-Consciousness_

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS may be truly defined as a person's inability to getout of his own way. There are, however, some people who are so entirelyand absolutely self-conscious that everything they do, even though itmay appear spontaneous and ingenuous, is observed and admired andapproved of by themselves, --indeed they are supported and sustained bytheir self-consciousness. They are so completely in bondage tothemselves that they have no glimpse of the possibility of freedom, andtherefore this bondage is pleasant to them. 

With these people we have, at present, nothing to do; it is only thosewho have begun to realize their bondage as such, or who suffer from it, that can take any steps toward freedom. The self-satisfied slaves muststay in prison until they see where they are--and it is curious and sadto see them rejoicing in bondage and miscalling it freedom. It makesone long to see them struck by an emergency, bringing a flash of innerlight which is often the beginning of an entire change of state. Sometimes the enlightenment comes through one kind of circumstance, sometimes through another; but, if the glimpse of clearer sight itbrings is taken advantage of, it will be followed by a time of gropingin the dark, and always by more or less suffering. When, however, weknow that we are in the dark, there is hope of our coming to the light;and suffering is nothing whatever after it is over and has brought itsgood results. 

If we were to take away the prop of self-approval entirely andimmediately from any one of the habitually self-satisfied people, theprobable result would be an entire nervous collapse, or even a painfulform of insanity; and, in all changes of state from bondage to freedom, the process is and must be exceedingly slow. No one ever strengthenedhis character with a wrench of impatience, although we are often giventhe opportunity for a firm and immediate use of the will which leaveslasting strength behind it. For the main growth of our lives, however, we must be steadily patient, content to aim in the true direction dayby day, hour by hour, minute by minute. If we fall, we must pickourselves up and go right on, --not stop to be discouraged for oneinstant after we have recognized our state as a temptation. Whateverthe stone may be that we have tripped over, we have learned that it isthere, and, while we may trip over the same stone many times, if welearn our lesson each time, it decreases the possible number ofstumbles, and smooths our paths more than we know. 

There is no exception to the necessity for this patient, steadyplodding in the work required to gain our freedom fromself-consciousness. It is when we are aware of our bondage that ouropportunity to gain our freedom from it really begins. This bondagebrings very real suffering, and we may often, without exaggeration, call it torture. It is sometimes even extreme torture, but may have tobe endured for a lifetime unless the sufferer has the clear light bywhich to find his freedom; and, unfortunately, many who might have thelight will not use it because they are unwilling to recognize theselfishness that is at the root of their trouble. Some women like tocall it "shyness, " because the name sounds well, and seems to exoneratethem from any responsibility with regard to their defect. Men willrarely speak of their self-consciousness, but, when they do, they areapt to speak of it with more or less indignation and self-pity, as ifthey were in the clutches of something extraneous to themselves, andover which they can never gain control. If, when a man is complainingof self-consciousness and of its interference with his work in life, you tell him in all kindness that all his suffering has its root indownright selfishness, he will, in most cases, appear not to hear, orhe will beg the question, and, having avoided acknowledging the truth, will continue to complain and ask for help, and perhaps wonder whetherhypnotism may not help him, or some other form of "cure. " Anythingrather than look the truth in the face and do the work in himselfwhich, is the only possible road to lasting, freedom. Self-pity, andwhat may be called spiritual laziness, is at the root of most of theself-torment in the world. 

How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to produce an electricburner according to laws of his own devising, and then sat down andpitied himself because the light would not burn, instead of searchingabout until he had found the true laws of electricity whose applicationwould make the light shine successfully. How ridiculous it would seemif a man tried to make water run up hill without providing that itshould do so by reaching its own level, and then got indignant becausehe did not succeed, and wondered if there were not some "cure" by meansof which his object might be accomplished. And yet it is no morestrange for a man to disobey habitually the laws of character, and thento suffer for his disobedience, and wonder why he suffers. 

There is an external necessity for obeying social laws which must berespected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great aninternal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our properself-control and power for use; but we do not recognize that necessitybecause, while disregarding the laws of character, we can still livewithout the appearance of doing harm to the community. Social laws canbe respected in the letter but not in the spirit, whereas spirituallaws must be accepted by the individual heart and practiced by theindividual will in order to produce any useful result. Each one of usmust do the required work in himself. There is no "cure, " no help fromoutside which can bring one to a lasting freedom. 

If self-consciousness makes us blush, the more we are troubled the moreit increases, until the blushing may become so unbearable that we aretempted to keep away from people altogether; and thus life, so far ashuman fellowship goes, would become more and more limited. But, whensuch a limitation is allowed to remain within us, and we make no effortof our own to find its root and to exterminate it, it warps us throughand through. If self-consciousness excites us to talk, and we talk onand on to no end, simply allowing the selfish suffering to goad us, thehabit weakens our brains so that in time they lose the power of strongconsecutive thought and helpful brevity. 

If self-consciousness causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learnto yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strainbecomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we keepaway from people, just as the blushing man is tempted to do. In thatcase, the strain is still in us, in the back of our brains, so tospeak--because we have not faced and overcome it. 

Stage fright is an intense form of self-consciousness, but the man whois incapable of stage fright lacks the sensitive temperament requiredto achieve great power as an artist. The man who overcomes stage frightby getting out of his own way, and by letting the character he isplaying, or the music he is interpreting, work through him as a clear, unselfish channel receives new power for his work in the proportionthat he shuns his own interfering selfishness. 

But it is with the self-consciousness of everyday life that we haveespecially to do now, and with the practical wisdom necessary to gainfreedom from all its various discomforts; and, even more than that, togain the new power for useful service which comes from the possessionof that freedom. 

The remedy is to be found in obedience to the law of unselfishness, carried out into the field of nervous suffering. 

Whatever one may think, however one may try to dodge the truth by thisexcuse or that, the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain freedomfrom self-consciousness are _absolutely within the individual whosuffers. _ When we once understand this, and are faced toward the truth, we are sure to find our way out, with more or less rapidity, accordingto the strength with which we use our wills in true obedience. 

First, we must be willing to accept the effects of self-consciousness. The more we resist these effects the more they force themselves uponus, and the more we suffer from them. We must be willing to blush, bewilling to realize that we have talked too much, and perhaps madeourselves ridiculous. We must be willing to feel the discomforts ofself-consciousness in whatever form they may appear. Then--the centralpoint of all--we must know and understand, and not dodge in the veryleast the truth that the _root of self-consciousness is selfishlycaring what other people think of us, --and wanting to appear wellbefore them. _

Many readers of this article who suffer from self-consciousness willwant to deny this; others will acknowledge it, but will declare theirinability to live according to the truth; some, --perhaps more than afew, --will recognize the truth and set to work with a will to obey it, and how happily we may look forward to the freedom which willeventually be theirs!

A wise man has said that when people do not think well of us, the firstthing to do is to look and see whether they are right. In most cases, even though they way have unkind feelings mingled with their criticism, there is an element of truth in it from which we may profit. In suchcases we are much indebted to our critics, for, by taking theirsuggestions, we are helped toward strength of character and power foruse. If there is no truth in the criticism, we need not think of it atall, but live steadily on, knowing that the truth will take care ofitself. 

We should be willing that any one should think _anything_ of us, solong as we have the strength of a good conscience. We should be willingto appear in any light if that appearance will enhance our use, or is anecessity of growth. If an awkward appearance is necessary in theprocess of our journey toward freedom, we must not resist the fact ofits existence, and should only dwell on it long enough to shun itscause in so far as we can, and gain the good result of the greaterfreedom which will follow. 

It is because the suffering from self-consciousness is often so intensethat freedom from it brings, by contrast, so happy and so strong asense of power. 

There is a school for the treatment of stammerers in this country inwhich the pupils are initiated into the process of cure by beingrequired to keep silence for a week. This would be a most helpfulbeginning in a training to overcome self-consciousness. We shouldrecognize first that we must be willing to endure the effects ofself-consciousness without resistance. Secondly, we should admit thatthe root of self-consciousness lies entirely in a selfish desire toappear well before others. If, while recognizing these two essentialtruths and confirming them until they are thoroughly implanted in ourbrains, we should quietly persist in going among people, the practiceof silent attention to others would be of the greatest value in gainingreal freedom. The practice of attentive and sympathetic silence mightwell be followed by people in general far more than it is. Theprotection of a loving, unselfish silence is very great: a silencewhich is the result of shunning all selfish, self-assertive, vain, oraffected speech; a silence which is never broken for the sake of"making conversation, " "showing off, " or covering selfishembarrassment; a silence which is full of sympathy and interest, --thepower of such a silence cannot be overestimated. 

If we have the evil habit of talking for the sake of winning approval, we should practise this silence; or if we talk for the sake of callingattention to ourselves, for the sake of winning sympathy for ourselfish pains and sorrows, or for the sake of indulging in selfishemotions, nothing can help us more than the habit of loving andattentive silence. 

Only when we know how to practise this--in an impersonal, free andquiet spirit, one which is not due to outward repression of anykind--are we able to talk with quiet, loving, helpful speech. Then maywe tell the clean truth without giving unnecessary offence, and thenmay we soothe and rest, as well as stimulate in, wholesome ways; then, also, will our minds open to receive the good that may come to usthrough the words and actions of others. 

VII

_The Circumstances of Life_

IT is not the circumstances of life that trouble or weigh upon us, itis the way we take them. If a man is playing a difficult game of chess, the more intricate the moves the more thoughtfully he looks over hisown and his opponent's men, and the more fully he is aroused to makethe right move toward a checkmate. If, when the game became difficult, the player stopped to be depressed and disheartened, his opponent wouldprobably always checkmate him; whereas, in most cases, the moredifficult the game the more thoroughly the players are aroused to dotheir best, and a difficult game is invariably a good one, --the winnerand the loser both feel it to be so, --even though the loser may regrethis loss. But--the reader will say--a game of chess is a gameonly, --neither one's bread and butter nor one's life depend uponwinning or losing it. If, however, we need to be cool and quiet andtrustful for a game, which is merely an amusement, and if we play thegame better for being cool and quiet and trustful, why is not a quietsteadiness in wrestling with the circumstances of life itself just asnecessary, not only that we may meet the particular problem of themoment truly, but that we may gain all the experience which may behelpful in meeting other difficult circumstances as they presentthemselves. 

We must first convince ourselves thoroughly of the truth thatCIRCUMSTANCES, HOWEVER DIFFICULT, ARE ALWAYS--WITHOUT EXCEPTION, OPPORTUNITIES, AND NOT LIMITATIONS. 

They are not by any means opportunities for taking us in the directionthat our own selfishness would have us go; they are opportunities whichare meant to guide us in the direction we most need to follow, --in theways that will lead us to the greatest strength in the end. 

The most unbelieving of us will admit that "there is a destiny whichshapes our ends, rough hew them as we may, " and it is in the stupidresistance to having our ends shaped for us that we stop and groan atwhat we call the limitations of circumstances. 

If we were quickly alert to see where circumstances had placed the gateof opportunity, and then steadily persisted in going through it, itwould save the loss of energy and happiness which results fromobstinately beating our heads against a stone wall where there is nogate, and where there never can be a gate. 

Probably there is hardly a reader who will not recall a number of casesin which circumstances appear to have been only limitations to him orto his friends; but if he will try with a willing mind to find the gateof opportunity which was not used, he will be surprised to learn thatit was wide open all the time, and might have led him into a new andbetter country. 

The other day a little urchin playing in the street got in the way of ahorse, and just saved himself from being run over by a quick jump; hethrew up his arms and in a most cheerful voice called out, "It's allright, only different!" If the horse had run over him, he might havesaid the same thing and found his opportunity to more that was good anduseful in life through steady patience on his bed. The trouble is thatwe are not willing to call it _"all right"_ unless it is _thesame, _--the same in this case meaning whatever may be identical withour own personal ideas of what is "all right. " That expressive littlebit of slang is full of humor and full of common sense. 

If, for instance, when we expect something and are disappointed, wecould at once yield out of our resistance and heartily exclaim, "it isall right, only different, " how much sooner we should discover the gooduse in its being different, and how soon we should settle into thesense of its being "all right!" When a circumstance that has seemed tous _all wrong_ can be made, through our quiet way of meeting it, toappear all right, only different, it very soon leads to a wholesomecontent in the new state of affairs or to a change of circumstances towhich we can more readily and happily adjust ourselves. 

A strong sense of something's being "all right" means a strong sense ofwillingness that it should be just as it is. With that clearwillingness in our hearts in general, we can adjust ourselves toanything in particular, --even to very sudden and unexpected changes. Itis carrying along with us a background of powerful non-resistance whichwe can bring to the front and use actively at a moment's notice. 

It seems odd to think of actively using non-resistance, and yet theexpression is not as contradictory as it would appear, for the strengthof will it takes to attain an habitual attitude of wholesomenon-resistance is far beyond the strength of will required to resistunwholesomely. The stronger, the more fixed and immovable the centre, the more free and adaptable are the circumferences of action; and, eventhough our central principle is fixed and immovable, it must be elasticenough to enable us to change our point of view whenever we find thatby so doing we can gain a broader outlook and greater power for use. 

To acquire the strength of will for this habitual non-resistance issometimes a matter of years of practice. We have to compel ourselves tobe "willing, " over and over again, at each new opportunity; sometimesthe opportunities seem to throng us; and this, truly considered, isonly a cause for gratitude. 

In life the truest winning often comes first under the guise offailure, and it is willingness to accept failure, and intelligence inunderstanding its causes, and using the acquired knowledge as a meansto a higher end, that ultimately brings true success. If we choose, afailure can always be used as a means to an end rather than as a resultin itself. 

How often do we hear the complaint, "I could do so well if it were notfor my circumstances. " How many people are held down for a lifetime bythe habitual belief in circumstances as limitations, and by ignoringthe opportunities which they afford. 

"So long as I must live with these people I can never amount toanything. " If this complaint could be changed to the resolve: "I willlive with these people until I have so adjusted myself to them as to becontented, " a source of weakness would be changed into a source ofstrength. The quiet activity of mind required to adjust ourselves todifficult surroundings gives a zest and interest to life which we canfind in no other way, and adds a certain strength to the characterwhich cannot be found elsewhere. It is interesting to observe, too, howoften it happens that, when we have adjusted ourselves to difficultcircumstances, we are removed to other circumstances which are more insympathy with our own, thoughts and ways: and sometimes tocircumstances which are more difficult still, and require all thestrength and wisdom which our previous discipline has taught us. 

If we are alive to our own true freedom, we should have an activeinterest in the necessary warfare of life. For life is a warfare--notof persons, but of principles--and every man who loves his freedomloves to be in the midst of the battle. Our tendencies to selfishdiscontent are constantly warring against our love of usefulness andservice, and he who wishes to enjoy the full activity of freedom mustlearn to fight and to destroy the tendencies within himself which standin the way of his own obedience to law. But he needs, for this, thetruthful and open spirit which leads to wise self-knowledge; a quietand a willing spirit, to make the necessary sacrifice of selfish pride. His quiet earnestness will give him the strength to carry out what hisclear vision will reveal to him in the light of truth He will keep hishead lifted up above his enemies round about him, so that he maysteadily watch and clearly see how best to act. After periods of hardfighting the intervals of rest will be full of refreshment, and willalways bring new strength for further activity. If, in the battle withdifficult circumstances, we are thrown down, we must pick ourselves upwith quick decision, and not waste a moment in complaint ordiscouragement. We should emphasize to ourselves the necessity forpicking ourselves up immediately, and going directly on, over and overagain, --both for our own benefit, and the benefit of those whom we havethe privilege of helping. 

In the Japanese training of "Jiu Jitsu, " the idea seems to be to dropall subjective resistance, and to continue to drop it, until, throughthe calmness and clearness of sight that comes from quiet nerves and afree mind, the wrestler can see where to make the fatal stroke. Whenthe right time has arrived, the only effort which is necessary isquick, sharp and conclusive. This wonderful principle is often misusedfor selfish ends, and in such cases it leads eventually to bondagebecause, by the successful satisfaction of selfish motives, itstrengthens the hold of our selfishness upon us; but, when used in anunselfish spirit, it is an ever-increasing source of strength. In thecase of difficult circumstances, --if we cease to resist, --if we acceptthe facts of life, --if we are willing to be poor, or ill, ordisappointed, or to live with people we do not like, --we gain aquietness of nerve and a freedom of mind which clears off the mistsaround us, so that our eyes may see and recognize the gate ofopportunity, --open before us. 

It is the law of concentration and relaxation. If we concentrate onbeing willing, on relaxing until we have dropped every bit ofresistance to the circumstances about us, that brings us to a quiet andwell-balanced point of view, whence we can see clearly how to take firmand decided action. From such action the re-action is only renewedstrength, --never painful and contracting weakness. If we could give upall our selfish desires and resistances, circumstances, howeverdifficult, would have no power whatever to trouble us. To reach suchabsolute willingness is a long journey, but there is a straight pathleading nearer and nearer to the happy freedom which is our goal. 

Self-pity is one of the states that interferes most effectually withmaking the right use of circumstances. To pity one's self isdestruction to all possible freedom. If the reader finds himself in thethroes of this weakness and is helped through these words to recognizethe fact, let him hasten to shun it as he would shun poison, for it isprogressively weakening to soul and body. It will take only slightdifficulties of any kind to overthrow us, if we are overcome by thistemptation. 

Imagine a man in the planet Mars wanting to try his fortunes on anotherplanet, and an angel appearing to him with permission to transfer himto the earth. 

"But, " the angel says, "of course you can have no idea of what the lifeis upon the new planet unless you are placed in the midst of variouscircumstances which are more or less common to its inhabitants. "

"Certainly, " the Martian answers, "I recognize that, and I want to havemy experience on this new planet as complete as possible; therefore themore characteristic and difficult my circumstances are the better. "Then imagine the interest that man would have, from the moment he wasplaced on the earth, in working, his way through, and observing hisexperience as he worked. 

His interest would be alive vivid, and strong, from the beginning untilhe found himself, with earthly experience completed, ready to return tohis friends in Mars. He would never lose courage or be in any waydisheartened. The more difficult his earthly problem was, the more itwould arouse his interest and vigor to solve it. So many people prefera difficult problem in geometry to an easy one, then why not in life?The difference is that in mathematics the head alone is exercised, andin life the head and the heart are both brought into play, and thefirst difficulty is to persuade the head and heart to work together. Inthe visitor from Mars, of course, the heart would be working with thehead, and so the whole man would be centred on getting creditablythrough his experience and home again. If our hearts and heads weretogether equally concentrated on getting through our experience for thesake of the greater power of use it would bring, --and, if we couldtrustfully believe in getting home again, that is, in gettingestablished in the current of ordinary spiritual and natural action, then life would be really alive for us, then we should actually get thescent of our true freedom, and, having once had a taste of it, weshould have a fresh incentive in achieving it entirely. 

There is one important thing to remember in an effort to be free fromthe bondage of circumstances which will save us from much unnecessarysuffering. This has to do with the painful associations which arisefrom circumstances which are past and over. 

A woman, for example, suffered for a year from nervous exhaustion inher head, which was brought on, among other things, by over-excitementin private theatricals. She apparently recovered her health, and, because she was fond of acting, her first activities were turned inthat direction. She accepted a part in a play; but as soon as she beganto study all her old head symptoms returned, and she was thoroughlyfrightened, thinking that she might never be able to use her headagain. Upon being convinced, however, that all her discomfort came fromher own imagination, through the painful associations connected withthe study of her part, she returned to her work resolved to ignorethem, and the consequence was that the symptoms rapidly disappeared. 

Not uncommonly we hear that a person of our acquaintance cannot go tosome particular place because of the painful events which occurredthere. If the sufferer could only be persuaded that, when suchassociations are once bravely faced, it takes a very short time for thepainful effects to disappear entirely, much unnecessary and prolongeddiscomfort would be saved. 

People have been kept ill for weeks, months and years, through holdingon to the brain impression of some painful event. 

Whether the painful circumstances are little or great, the law ofassociation is the same and, in any case, the brain impression can bedropped entirely, although it may take time and patience to do it. Wemust often talk to our brains as if we were talking to another personto eliminate the impressions from old associations. Tell your brain inso many words, without emotion, that the place or the circumstance isnothing, nothing whatever, --it is only your idea about it, and thefalse association can be changed to a true one. 

So must we yield our selfish resistances and be ready to accept everyopportunity for growth that circumstances offer; and, at the same time, when the good result is gained, throw off the impression of the pain ofthe process entirely and forever. Thus may we both live and observe forour own good and that of others; and he who is practising thisprinciple in his daily life can say from his heart:--"Now shall my headbe lifted up above mine enemies round about me. "

VIII

_Other People_

HOWEVER disagreeable other people may be, --however unjust they may be, however true it may be that the wrong is all on their side and not atall on ours, --whatever we may suffer at their hands, --we can onlyremedy the difficulty by looking first solely to ourselves and our ownconduct; and, not until we are entirely free from resentment orresistance of any kind, and not until we are quiet in our own mindswith regard to those who may be oppressing or annoying us, should wemake any effort to set them right. 

This philosophy is sound and absolutely practical, --it never fails; anyapparent failure will be due to our own delinquency in applying it;and, if the reader will think of this truth carefully until he feelsable to accept it, he will see what true freedom there is init, --although it may be a long time before he is fully able to carry itout. 

How can I remain in any slightest bondage to another when I feel surethat, however wrong he may be, the true cause of my discomfort andoppression is in myself? I am in bondage to myself, and it is to myselfthat I must look to gain my freedom. If a friend is rude and unkind tome, and I resent the rudeness and resist the unkindness, it is theresentment and resistance that cause me to suffer. I am not sufferingfor my friend, I am suffering for myself; and I can only gain myfreedom by shunning the resentment and resistance as sin against allthat is good and true in friendship. When I am free from these thingsin myself, --when, as far as I am concerned, I am perfectly and entirelywilling that my friend should be rude or unjust, then only am I freefrom him. It is impossible that he should oppress me, if I am willingthat he should be unjust or unkind; and the freedom that comes fromsuch strong and willing non-resistance is like the fresh air upon amountain. Such freedom brings with it also a new understanding of one'sfriend, and a new ability to serve him. 

Unless we live a life of seclusion, most of us have more than onefriend, or acquaintance, or enemy, with whom we are brought intoconstant or occasional contact, and by whom we are made to suffer; notto mention the frequent irritations that may come from people we seeonly once in our lives. Imagine the joy of being free from all thisirritability and oppression; imagine the saving of nervous energy whichwould accompany such freedom; imagine the possibility of use to otherswhich would be its most helpful result!

If we once catch even the least glimpse of this quiet freedom, we shallnot mind if it takes some time to accomplish so desirable a result, andthe process of achieving it is deeply interesting. 

The difficulty at first is to believe that so far as we are concerned, the cause Of the trouble is entirely within, ourselves. The temptationis to think:--

"How can I help resenting behavior like that! Such selfishness and lackof consideration would be resented by any one. "

So any one might resent it, but that is no reason why we should. We arenot to make other people's standards our own unless we see that theirstandards are higher than ours; only then should we change, --not to winthe favor of the other people, but because we have recognized thesuperior value of their standards and are glad to put away what isinferior for what is better. Therefore we can never excuse ourselvesfor resentment or resistance because other people resent or resist. There can be no possible excuse for resistance to the behavior ofothers, and it is safe to say that we must _never pit our wills againstthe wills of other people. _ If we want to do right and the other manwants us to do wrong, we must pass by his will, pass under it or overit, but never on any account resist it. There has been more loss ofenergy, more real harm done, through this futile engagement of twopersonal wills than can ever be computed, and the freedom consequentupon refusing such contact is great in proportion. Obedience to thislaw of not pitting our wills against the wills of other people leads tonew freedom in all sorts of ways, --in connection with little, everydayquestions, as to whether a thing is one color or another, as well as inthe great and serious problems of life. If, in an argument, we feelconfident that all we want is the truth, --that we do not care whetherwe or our opponents are in the right, as long as we find the rightitself, --then we are free, so far as personal feeling is concerned;especially if, in addition, we are perfectly willing that our opponentsshould not be convinced, even though the right should ultimately proveto be on our side. 

With regard to learning how always to look first to ourselves, --firstwe must become conscious of our own resentment and resistance, then wemust acknowledge it heartily and fully, and then we must go to workfirmly and steadily to refuse to harbor it. We must relax out of thetension of our resistance with both soul and body; for of course, theresistance contracts the nerves of our bodies, and, if we relax fromthe contractions in our bodies, it helps us to gain freedom fromresistance in our hearts and minds. The same resistance to the sameperson or the same ideas may return, in different forms, many timesover; but all we have to do is to persist in dropping it as often as itreturns, even if it be thousands of times. 

No one need be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a "mush ofconcession" through the process of dropping useless resistance, for thestrength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of pittingone's own will against that of another is much greater than thestrength we use when we indulge the habit. The two kinds of strengthcan no more be compared than the power of natural law can be comparedto the lawless efforts of human waywardness. For the will that ispitted against the will of another degenerates into obstinacy, andweakens the character; whereas the will that is used truly to refuseuseless resistance increases steadily in strength, and develops powerand beauty of character. Again, the man who insists upon pitting hiswill against that of another is constantly blinded as to the truequalities of his opponent. He sees neither his virtues nor his vicesclearly; whereas he who declines the merely personal contest becomesconstantly clarified in his views, and so helped toward a lovingcharity for his opponent, --whatever his faults or difficulties maybe, --and to an understanding and love of the good in him, which doesnot identify him with his faults. 

When we resent and resist, and are personally wilful, there is a greatbig beam in our eye, which we cannot see through, or under, orover, --but, as we gain our freedom from all such resistance, the beamis removed, and we are permitted to see things as they really are, andwith a truer sense of proportion, our power of use increases. 

When a person is arguing with all the force of personal wilfulness, itis both pleasant and surprising to observe the effect upon him if hebegins to feel your perfect willingness that he should believe in hisown way, and your willingness to go with him, too, if his way shouldprove to be right. His violence melts to quietness because you give himnothing to resist. The same happy effect comes from facing any one inanger, without resistance, but with a quiet mind and a loving heart. Ifthe anger does not melt--as it often does--it is modified and weakened, and--as far as we are concerned--it cannot touch or hurt us. 

We must remember always that it is not the repression or concealment ofresentment and resistance, and forbearing to express them, that canfree us from bondage to others; it is overcoming any trace ofresentment or resistance within our own hearts and minds. If theresistance is in us, we are just as much in bondage as if we expressedit in our words and actions. If it is in us at all, it must expressitself in one way or another, --either in ill-health, or in unhappystates of mind, or in the tension of our bodies. We must also rememberthat, when we are on the way to freedom from such habits of resistance, we may suffer from them for a long time after we have ceased to actfrom them. When we are turning steadily away from them, theuncomfortable effects of past resistance may linger for a long whilebefore every vestige of them disappears. It is like the peeling afterscarlet fever, --the dead skin stays on until the new, tender skin isstrong underneath, and after we think we have peeled entirely, wediscover new places with which we must be patient. So, with the oldhabits of resistance, we must, although turning away from them firmly, be steadily patient while waiting for the pain from them to disappear. It must take time if the work is to be done thoroughly, --but thefreedom to be gained is well worth waiting for. 

One of the most prevalent forms of bondage is caring too much in thewrong way what people think of us. If a man criticises me I must firstlook to see whether he is right. He may be partly right, and notentirely, --but, whatever truth there is in his criticism, I want toknow it in order that I may see the fault clearly myself and remedy it. If his criticism is ill-natured it is not necessarily any the lesstrue, and I must not let the truth be obscured by his ill-nature. All, that I have to do with the ill-nature is to be sorry, on my friend'saccount, and help him out of it if he is willing; and there is nothingthat is so likely to make him willing as my recognizing the justice ofwhat he says and acting upon it, while, at the same time, I neitherresent nor resist his ill-nature. If the man is both ill-natured andunjust, --if there is no touch of what is true in his criticism, --thenall I have to do is to cease resenting it. I should be perfectlywilling that he should think anything he pleases, while I, so far as Ican see, go on and do what is right. 

_The trouble is that we care more to appear right than to be right. _This undue regard for appearances is very deep-seated, for it comesfrom long habit and inheritance; but we must recognize it andacknowledge it in ourselves, in order to take the true path towardfreedom. So long as we are working for appearances we are not workingfor realities. When we love to _be_ right first, then we will regardappearances only enough to protect what is good and true from needlessmisunderstanding and disrespect. Sometimes we cannot even do thatwithout sacrificing the truth to appearances, and in such cases we mustbe true to realities first, and know that appearances must harmonizewith them in the end. If causes are right, effects must be orderly, even though at times they may not seem so to the superficial observer. Fear of not being approved of is the cause of great nervous strain andwaste of energy; for fear is resistance, and we can counteract thatterrified resistance only by being perfectly willing that any oneshould think anything he likes. When moving in obedience tolaw--natural and spiritual--a man's power cannot be overestimated; butin order to learn genuine obedience to law, we must be willing toaccept our limitations and wait for them to be gradually removed as wegain in true freedom. Let us not forget that if we areoverpleased--selfishly pleased--at the approval of others, we are justas much in bondage to them as if we were angry at their disapproval. Both approval and disapproval are helpful if we accept them for the usethey can be to us, but are equally injurious if we take them to feedour vanity or annoyance. 

It is hard to believe, until our new standard is firmly established, that only from this true freedom do we get the most vital sense ofloving human intercourse and companionship, for then we find ourselvesworking hand in hand with those who are united to us in the love ofprinciples, and we are ready to recognize and to draw out the best inevery one of those about us. 

If this law of freedom from others--which so greatly increases ourpower of use to them and their power of use to us--had not been provedabsolutely practical, it would not be a law at all. It is only as wefind it practical in every detail, and as obedience to it is proved tobe the only sure road to established freedom that we are bound toaccept it. To learn to live in such obedience we must be steady, persistent and patient, --teaching ourselves the same truths many times, until a new habit of freedom is established within us by the experienceof our daily lives. We must learn and grow in power from every failure;and we must not dwell with pride and complacency on good results, butalways move steadily and quietly forward. 

IX

_Human Sympathy_

A NURSE who had been only a few weeks in the hospital training-school, once saw--from her seat at the dinner-table--a man brought into thehouse who was suffering intensely from a very severe accident. Theyoung woman started up to be of what service she could, and when shereturned to the table, had lost her appetite entirely, because of hersympathy for the suffering man. She had hardly begun her dinner, andwould have gone without it if it had not been for a sharp reprimandfrom the superintendent. 

"If you really sympathize with that man, " she said, "you will eat yourdinner to get strength to take care of him. Here is a man who will needconstant, steady, _healthy_ attention for some days to come, --andspecial care all this afternoon and night, and it will be your duty tolook out for him. Your 'sympathy' is already pulling you down andtaking away your strength, and you are doing what you can to lose morestrength by refusing to eat your dinner. Such sympathy as that is poorstuff; I call it weak sentimentality. "

The reprimand was purposely sharp, and, by arousing the anger andindignation of the nurse, it served as a counter-irritant whichrestored her appetite. After her anger had subsided, she thanked thesuperintendent with all her heart, and from that day she began to learnthe difference between true and false sympathy. It took her some time, however, to get thoroughly established in the habit of healthysympathy. The tendency to unwholesome sympathy was part of her naturalinheritance, along with many other evil tendencies which frequentlyhave to be overcome before a person with a very sensitive nervoussystem can find his own true strength. But as she watched the uselesssuffering which resulted in all cases in which people allowedthemselves to be weakened by the pain of others, she learned tounderstand more and more intelligently the practice of wholesomesympathy, and worked until it had become her second nature. Especiallydid she do this after having proved many times, by practicalexperience, the strength which comes through the power of wholesomesympathy to those in pain. 

Unwholesome sympathy incapacitates one for serving others, whether theneed be physical, mental, or moral. Wholesome sympathy not only givesus power to serve, but clears our understanding; and, because of ourgrowing ability to appreciate rightly the point of view of otherpeople, our service can be more and more intelligent. 

In contrast to this unwholesome sympathy, which is the cause of moretrouble in the world than people generally suppose, is the unwholesomelack of sympathy, or hardening process, which is deliberatelycultivated by many people, and which another story will serve toillustrate. 

A poor negro was once brought to the hospital very ill; he had sufferedso keenly in the process of getting there that the resulting weakness, together with the intense fright at the idea of being in a hospital, which is so common to many of his class, added to the effects of hisdisease itself, were too much for him, and he died before he had beenin bed fifteen minutes. The nurse in charge looked at him and said, ina cold, steady tone:--

"It was hardly worth while to make up the bed. "

She had hardened herself because she could not endure the suffering ofunwholesome sympathy, and yet "must do her work. " No one had taught herthe freedom and power of true sympathy. Her finer senses were dulledand atrophied, --she did not know the difference between one human souland another. She only knew that this was a case of typhoid fever, thata case of pneumonia, and another a case of delirium tremens. They wereall one to her, so far as the human beings went. She knew the diagnosisand the care of the physical disease, --and that was all. She did thematerial work very well, but she must have brought torture to thesensitive mind in many a poor, sick body. 

Another form of false sympathy is what may be called professionalsympathy. Some people never find that out, but admire and get comfortfrom the professional sympathy of a doctor or a nurse, or any otherperson whose profession it is to care for those who are suffering. Ittakes a keen perception or a quick emergency to bring out the falsering of professional sympathy. But the hardening process that goes onin the professional sympathizer is even greater than in the case ofthose who do not put on a sympathetic veneer. It seems as if there mustbe great tension in the more delicate parts of the nervous system inpeople who have hardened themselves, with or without the veneer, --akinto what there would be in the muscles if a man went about his work withboth fists tightly clenched all day, and slept with them clenched allnight. If that tension of hard indifference could be reached andrelaxed, the result would probably be a nervous collapse, before true, wholesome habits could be established, but unfortunately it oftenbecomes so rigid that a healthy relaxation is out of the question. Professional sympathy is of the same quality as the selfish sympathywhich we see constantly about us in men or women who sympathize becausethe emotion attracts admiration and wins the favor of others. 

When people sympathize in their selfishness instead of sympathizing intheir efforts to get free, the force of selfishness is increased, andthe world is kept down to a lower standard by just so much. 

A thief, for instance, fails in a well-planned attempt to get a largesum of money, and confides his attempt and failure to a brother thief, who expresses admiration for the sneaking keenness of the plan, andhearty sympathy in the regret for his failure. The first thiefimmediately pronounces the second thief "a good fellow. " But, at thesame time, if either of these apparently friendly thieves could getmore money by cheating the other the next day he would not hesitate todo so. 

To be truly sympathetic, we should be able so to identify ourselveswith the interests of others that we can have a thorough appreciationof their point of view, and can understand their lives clearly, as theyappear to themselves; but this we can never do if we are immersed inthe fog, --either of their personal selfishness or our own. Byunderstanding others clearly, we can talk in ways that are, and seem tothem, rational, and gradually lead them to a higher standard. 

If a woman is in the depths of despair because a dress does not fit, Ishould not help her by telling her the truth about her character, andlecturing her upon her folly in wasting grief upon trifles, when thereare so many serious troubles in the world. From her point of view, thefact that her dress does not fit _is_ a grief. But if I keep quiet, andlet her see that I understand her disappointment, and at the same timehold my own standard, she will be led much more easily and more trulyto see for herself the smallness of her attitude. First, perhaps, shewill be proud that she has learned not to worry about such a littlething as a new dress; and, if so, I must remember her point of view, and be willing that she should be proud. Then, perhaps, she will cometo wonder how she ever could have wasted anxiety on a dress or a hat, and later she may perhaps forget that she ever did. 

It is like leading a child. We give loving sympathy to a child when itbreaks its doll, although we know there is nothing real to grieve aboutThere is something for the child to grieve about, something very real_to her;_ but we can only sympathize helpfully with her point of viewby keeping ourselves clearly in the light of our own more mature pointof view. 

From the top of a mountain you can see into the valley roundabout, --your horizon is very broad, and you can distinguish the detailsthat it encompasses; but, from the valley, you cannot see the top ofthe mountain, and your horizon is limited. 

This illustrates truly the breadth and power of wholesome humansympathy. With a real love for human nature, if a man has a clear, highstandard of his own, --a standard which he does not attribute to his ownintelligence--his understanding of the lower standards of other menwill also be very clear, and he will take all sorts and conditions ofmen into the region within the horizon of his mind. Not only that, buthe will recognize the fact When the standard of another man is higherthan his own, and will be ready to ascend at once when he becomes awareof a higher point of view. On the other hand, when selfishness issympathizing with selfishness, there is no ascent possible, but onlythe one little low place limited by the personal, selfish interests ofthose concerned. 

Nobody else's trouble seems worth considering to those who are immersedin their own, or in their selfish sympathy with a friend whom they havechosen to champion. This is especially felt among conventional people, when something happens which disturbs their external habits andstandards of life. Sympathy is at once thrown out on the side ofconventionality, without any rational inquiry as to the real rights ofthe case. Selfish respectability is most unwholesome in its unhealthysympathy with selfish respectability. 

The wholesome sympathy of living human hearts sympathizes first withwhat is wholesome, --especially in those who suffer, --whether it bewholesomeness of soul or body; and true sympathy often knows andrecognizes that wholesomeness better than the sufferer himself. Only ina secondary way, and as a means to a higher end, does it sympathizewith the painful circumstances or conditions. By keeping our sympathiessteadily fixed on the health of a brother or friend, when he isimmersed in and overcome by his own pain, we may show him the way outof his pain more truly and more quickly. By keeping our sympathiesfixed on the health of a friend's soul, we may lead him out ofselfishness which otherwise might gradually destroy him. In both casesour loving care should be truly felt, --and felt as real understandingof the pain or grief suffered in the steps by the way, with anintelligent sense of their true relation to the best interests of thesufferer himself Such wholesome sympathy is alert in all itsperceptions to appreciate different points of view, and takes care tospeak only in language which is intelligible, and therefore useful. Itis full of loving patience, and never forces or persuades, but waitsand watches to give help at the right time and in the right place. Itis more often helpful with silence than with words. It stimulates oneto imagine what friendship might be if it were alive and wholesome tothe very core. For, in such friendship as this, a true friend to oneman has the capacity of being a true friend to all men, and one who hasa thoroughly wholesome sympathy for one human being will have it forall. His general attitude must always be the same--modified only by therelative distance which comes from variety in temperaments. 

In order to sympathize with the best possibilities in others, our ownstandards must be high and clear, and we must be steadily true to them. Such sympathy is freedom itself, --it is warm and glowing, --while thesympathy which adds its weight to the pain or selfishness of others canreally be only bondage, however good it may appear. 

X

_Personal Independence_

IN proportion as every organ of the human body is free to perform itsown functions, unimpeded by any other, the body is perfectly healthyand vigorous; and, in proportion as every organ of the body isreceiving its proper support from every other, the body as a whole isvigorous, and in the full use of its powers. 

These are two self-evident axioms, and, if we think of them quietly fora little while, they will lead us to a clear realization of truepersonal independence. 

The lungs cannot do the work of the heart, but must do their own work, independently and freely; and yet, if the lungs should suddenly say tothemselves:

"This is all nonsense, --our depending upon the heart in this way; wemust be independent! It is weak to depend upon the other organs of thebody!" And if they should repel the blood which the heart pumped intothem, with the idea that they could manage the body by themselves, andwere not going to be weakly dependent upon the heart, the stomach, orany other organ, --if the lungs should insist upon taking thisindependent stand, they would very soon stop breathing, the heart wouldstop beating, the stomach would stop digesting, and the body would die. Or, suppose that the heart should refuse to supply the lungs with theblood necessary to provide oxygen; the same fatal result would ofcourse follow. Or, even let us imagine all the organs of the bodyagreeing that it is weak to be dependent, and asserting theirindependence of each other. At the very instant that such an agreementwas carried into effect, the body would perish. 

Then, on the other hand, --to reverse the illustration, --if the lungsshould feel that they could help the heart's work by attending to thecirculation of the blood, if the heart should insist that it couldinhale and exhale better than the lungs, and should neglect its ownwork in order to advise and assist the lungs in the breathing, themachinery of the body would be in sad confusion for a time, and wouldvery soon cease altogether. 

This imaginary want of real independence in the working of thedifferent organs of the body can be illustrated by the actual action ofthe muscles. How often we see a man working with his mouth whilewriting, when he should be only using his hands; or, working uselesslywith his left hand, when what he has to do only needs the right! Howoften we see people trying to listen with their arms and shoulders!Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, and, in all cases, the false sympathy of contraction in the parts of the body which arenot needed for the work in hand comes from a wrong dependence, --fromthe fact that the pats of the body that are not needed, are officiouslydependent upon those that are properly active, instead of minding theirown affairs and saving energy for their own work. 

The wholesome working of the human organism, is so perfect in itsanalogy to the healthy relations of members of a community, that noreader should pass it by without very careful thought. 

John says:--

"I am not going to be dependent upon any man. I am going to live my ownlife, in my own way, as I expect other men to live theirs. If they willleave me alone, I will leave them alone, " and John flatters himselfthat he is asserting his own strength of personality, that he isemphasizing his individuality. The truth is that John is warpinghimself every day by his weak dependence upon his own prejudices. He isunwilling to look fairly at another main's opinion for fear of beingdependent upon it. He is not only warping himself by his"independence, " which is puffed up with the false appearance ofstrength, but he is robbing his fellow-men; for he cannot refuse toreceive from others without putting it out of his own power to give toothers. Real giving and receiving must be reciprocal in spirit, andabsolutely dependent upon each other. 

It is a curious and a sad study to watch the growing slavery of such"independent" people. 

James, on the other hand, thinks he cannot do anything without askinganother man's advice or getting another man's help; sometimes it isalways the same man, sometimes it is one of twenty different men. Andso, James is steadily losing the power of looking life in the face, andof judging for himself whether or not to take the advice of others froma rational principle, and of his own free will, and he is graduallybecoming a parasite, --an animal which finally loses all its organs fromlack of use, so that only its stomach remains, --and has, of course, nointelligence at all. The examples of such men as James are much morenumerous than might be supposed. We seldom see them in such flabbydependence upon the will of an individual as would make themconspicuous; but they are about us every day, and in large numbers, intheir weak dependence upon public opinion, --their bondage to the desirethat other men should think well of them. The human parasites that aredaily feeding on social recognition are unconsciously in the process oflosing their individuality and their intelligence; and it would be asad surprise to them if they could see themselves clearly as theyreally are. 

Public opinion is a necessary and true protection to the world as itis, because if it were not for public opinion, many men and women woulddare to be more wicked than they are. But that is no reason whyintelligent men should order their lives on certain lines just becausetheir neighbors do, --just because it is the custom. If the custom is agood custom, it can be followed intelligently, and because we recognizeit as good, but it should not be followed only because our neighborsfollow it. Then, if our neighbors follow the custom for the sameintelligent reason, it will bring us and them into free and happysympathy. 

Neither should a man hesitate to do right, positively and fearlessly, in the face of the public assertion that he is doing wrong. He should, of course, look himself over many times to be sure that he is doingright, according to his own best light, and he should be willing tochange his course of action just as fearlessly if he finds he has madea mistake; but, having once decided, he will respect public opinionmuch more truly by acting quietly against it with an open mind, than hewould if he refused to do right, because he was afraid of what otherswould think of him. To defy carelessly the opinion of others is falseindependence, and has in it the elements of fear, however fearless itmay seem; but to respectfully ignore it for the sake of what is true, and good, and useful, is sure to enlarge the public heart and to help, it eventually to a clearer charity. Individual dependence andindividual independence are absolutely necessary to a well-adjustedbalance. It is just as necessary to the individual men of a communityas to the individual organs of the body. 

It is not uncommon for a person to say:--

"I must give up So-and-so; I must not see so much of him, --I am gettingso dependent upon him. "

If the apparent dependence on a friend is due to the fact that he hasvaluable principles to teach which may take time to learn, but whichlead in the end to greater freedom, then to give up such companionship, out of regard for the criticism of others would, of course, be weaknessand folly itself. It is often our lot to incur the severest blame forthe very weaknesses which we have most entirely overcome. 

Many people will say:--

"I should rather be independently wrong than dependently right, " andothers will admire them for the assertion. But the truth is, thatwhenever one is wrong, one is necessarily dependent, either upon man ordevil; but it is impossible to be dependently right, excepting for thecomparatively short time that we may need for a definite, usefulpurpose. If a man is right in his mental and moral attitude merelybecause his friend is right, and not because he wants the righthimself, it will only be a matter of time before his prop is takenaway, and he will fall back into his own moral weakness. Of course, aman can begin to be right because his friend is right;--but it isbecause there is something in him which responds to the good in hisfriend. Strong men are true to their friendships and convictions, inspite of appearances and the clamor of their critics. 

True independence is never afraid of appearing dependent, and truedependence leads always to the most perfect independence. 

We cannot, really enjoy our own freedom without the growing desire andpower to help other people to theirs. Our own love of independence willbring with it an equal love for the independence of our neighbor; andour own love of true dependence--that is, of receiving wise help fromany one through whom it may be sent--will give us an equal love forgiving help wherever it will be welcome. Our respect for our ownindependence will make it impossible that we should insist upon tryingto give help to others where it is not wanted; and our own respect fortrue dependence will give us a loving charity, a true respect for thosewho are necessarily and temporarily dependent, and teach us to helpthem to their true balance. 

We should learn to keep a margin of reserve for ourselves, and to givethe same margin to others. Not to come too near, but to be far enoughaway from every one to give us a true perspective. There is a sort offamiliarity that arises sometimes between friends, or even mereacquaintances, which closes the door to true friendship or to realacquaintance. It does not bring people near to one another, but keepsthem apart. It is as if men thought that they could be better friendsby bumping their heads together. 

Our freedom comes in realizing that all the energy of life should comeprimarily from a love of principles and not of persons, excepting aspersons relate to principles. If one man finds another living onprinciples that are higher than his own, it means strength and freedomfor him to cling to his friend until he has learned to understand andlive on those principles himself. Then if he finds his own power forusefulness and his own enjoyment of life increased by his friendship, it would indeed be weak of him to refuse such companionship from fearof being dependent. The surest and strongest basis of freedom infriendship is a common devotion to the same fundamental principles oflife; and this insures reciprocal usefulness as well as personalindependence. We must remember that the very worst and weakestdependence is not a dependence upon persons, but upon a sin, --whetherthe sin be fear of public opinion or some other more or less seriousform of bondage. 

The only true independence is in obedience to law, and if, to gain thehabit of such obedience, we need a helping hand, it is trulyindependent for us to take it. 

_We all came into the world alone, and we must go out of the worldalone, and yet we are exquisitely and beautifully dependent upon oneanother. _

A great German philosopher has said that there should be as much spacebetween the atoms of the body, in relation to its size, as there isbetween the stars in relation to the size of the universe, --and yetevery star is dependent upon every other star, --as every atom in thebody is dependent upon every other atom for its true life and action. This principle of balance in the macrocosm and the microcosm is equallyapplicable to any community of people, whether large or small. Thequiet study and appreciation of it will enable us to realize thestrength of free dependence and dependent freedom in the relation ofpersons to one another. The more truly we can help one another infreedom toward the dependence upon law, which is the axis of theuniverse, the more wholesome and perfect will be all our humanrelations. 

XI

_Self-control_

TO most people self-control means the control of appearances and notthe control of realities. This is a radical mistake, and must becorrected, if we are to get a clear idea of self-control, and if we areto make a fair start in acquiring it as a permanent habit. 

I am what I am by virtue of my own motives of thought and action, byvirtue of what my mind is, what my will is, and what I am in theresultant combination of my mind and will; I am not necessarily what Iappear from the outside. 

If a man is ugly to me, and I want to knock him down, and refrain fromdoing so simply because it would not appear well, and is not the habitof the people about me, my desire to knock him down is still a part ofmyself, and I have not controlled myself until I am absolutely freefrom that interior desire. So long as I am in hatred to another, I amin bondage to my hatred; and if, for the sake of appearances, I do notact or speak from it, I am none the less at its mercy, and it will findan outlet wherever it can do so without debasing me in the eyes ofother men more than I am willing to be debased. The control ofappearances is merely outward repression, and a very common instance ofthis may be observed in the effort to control a laugh. If we repressit, it is apt to assert itself in spite of our best efforts; whereas, if we relax our muscles, and let the sensation go through us, we cancontrol our desire to laugh and so get free from it. When we repress alaugh, we are really holding on to it, in our minds, but, when wecontrol it by relaxing the tension that comes from the desire to laugh, it is as if the sensation passed over and away from us. 

It is a well-known fact among surgeons that, if a man who is badlyfrightened, takes ether, no matter how well he controls his outwardbehavior, no matter how quiet he appears while the ether is beingadministered, as soon as he loses control of his voluntary muscles, thefear that has been repressed rushes out in the form of excitement. Thisis a practical illustration of the fact that control of appearances ismerely control of the muscles, and that, even so far as our nervoussystem goes, it is only repression, and self-repression is notself-control. 

If I repress the expression of irritability, anger, hatred, or anyother form of evil, it is there, in my brain, just the same; and, inone form or another, I am in bondage to it. Sometimes it expressesitself in little meannesses; sometimes it affects my body and makes meill; often it keeps me from being entirely well. Of one thing we may besure, --it makes me the instrument of evil, in one way or another. Repressed evil is not going to lie dormant in us forever; it will risein active ferment, sooner or later. Its ultimate action is just ascertain as that a serious impurity of the blood is certain to lead tophysical disease, if it is not counteracted. 

Knowing this to be true, we can no longer say of certain people"So-and-so has remarkable self-control. " We can only say, "So-and-sorepresses his feelings remarkably well: what a good actor he is!" Themen who have real self-control do exist, and they are the leaven thatsaves the race. It is good to know that this habitual repression comes, in many cases, from want of knowledge of the fact that self-repressionis not self-control. 

But the reader may say, "what am I to do, if I feel angry, and want tohit a man in the face; I am not supposed to hit him am I, rather thanto repress my feelings?"

No, not at all, but you are supposed to use your will to get in behindthe desire to hit him, and, by relaxing in mind and body, and stoppingall resistance to his action, to remove that desire in yourselfentirely. If once you persistently refuse to resist by dropping theanger of your mind and the tension of your body, you have gained anopportunity of helping your brother, if he is willing to be helped; youhave cleared the atmosphere of your own mind entirely, so that you canunderstand his point of view, and give him the benefit of reasonableconsideration; or, at the very least, you have yourself ceased to beruled by his evils, for you can no longer be roused to personalretaliation. It is interesting and enlightening to recognize the factthat we are in bondage to any man to the extent that we permitourselves to be roused to anger or resentment by his words or actions. 

When a man's brain is befogged by the fumes of anger and irritabilityit can work neither clearly nor quietly, and, when that is the case, itis impossible for him to serve himself or his neighbor to his fullability. If another person has the power to rouse my anger or myirritability, and I allow the anger or the irritability to control me, I am, of course, subservient to my own bad state, and at the mercy ofthe person who has the power to excite those evil states just in so faras such excitement confuses my brain. 

Every one has in him certain inherited and personal tendencies whichare obstacles to his freedom of mind and body, and his freedom islimited just in so far as he allows those tendencies to control him. Ifhe controls them by external repression, they are then working havocwithin him, no matter how thoroughly he may appear to be master ofhimself. If he acknowledges his mistaken tendencies fully and willinglyand then refuses to act, speak, or think from them, he is taking astraight path toward freedom of life and action. 

One great difficulty in the way of self-control is that we do not wantto get free from our anger. In such cases we can only want to want to, and if we use the strength of will that is given us to drop ourresistance in spite of our desire to be angry we shall be workingtoward our freedom and our real self-control. 

There is always a capacity for unselfish will, the will of the betterself, behind the personal selfish will, ready and waiting for us to useit, and it grows with use until finally it overrules the personalselfish will with a higher quality of power. It is only false strengththat supports the personal will, --a false appearance of strength whichmight be called wilfulness and which leads ultimately to thedestruction of its owner. Any true observer of human nature willrecognize the weakness of mere selfish wilfulness in another, and willkeep entirely free from its trammels by refusing to meet it in a spiritof resentment or retaliation. 

Real self-control, as compared to repression, is delightful in itsphysical results, when we have any difficult experience to anticipateor to go through. Take, for instance, a surgical operation. If Icontrol myself by yielding, by relaxing the nervous tension which isthe result of MY fear, true self-control then becomes possible, andbrings a helpful freedom from, reaction after the trouble is over. Orthe same principle can be applied if I have to go through a hard trialwith a friend and must control myself for his sake, --droppingresistance in my mind and in my body, dropping resistance to hissuffering, yielding my will to the necessities of the situation, --thisattitude will leave me much more clear to help him, will show him howto help himself, and will relieve him from the reaction that inevitablyfollows severe nervous strain. The power of use to others is increasedimmeasurably when we control ourselves interiorly, and do not merelyoutwardly repress. 

It often happens that a drunkard who is supposed to be "cured, " returnsto his habit, simply because he has wanted his drink all the time, andhas only been taught to repress his appetite; if he had been steadilyand carefully taught real self-control, he would have learnt to controland drop his interior _desire, _ and thus keep permanently free. Howoften we see intemperance which had shown itself in drink simply turnedinto another channel, another form of selfish indulgence, and yet thevictim will complacently boast of his self-control. An extremeillustration of this truth is shown in the case of a well-knownlecturer on temperance. He had given up drink, but he ate like aglutton, and his thirst for applause was so extreme as to make himappear almost ridiculous when he did not receive it. 

The opportunities for self-control are, of course, innumerable; indeedthey constitute pretty much the whole of life. We are living in freedomand use, real living use, in proportion as we are in actual control ofour selfish selves, and led by our love of useful service. Inproportion as we have through true self-control brought ourselves intodaily and hourly obedience to law, are we in the freedom that properlybelongs to our lives and their true uses. 

When once we have won our freedom from resistance, we must use thatfreedom in action, and put it directly to use. Sometimes it will resultin a small action, sometimes in a great one; but, whatever it is, itmust be _done. _ If we drop the resistance, and do not use the freedomgained thereby for active service, we shall simply react into furtherbondage, from which it will be still more difficult to escape. Havingdropped my antagonism to my most bitter enemy, I must do something toserve him, if I can. If I find that it is impossible to serve him, Ican at least be of service to someone else; and this action, if carriedout in the true spirit of unselfish service, will go far toward thepermanent establishment of my freedom. 

If a circumstance which is atrociously wrong in itself makes usindignant, the first thing to do is to drop the resistance of ourindignation, and then to do whatever may be within our power to preventthe continuance of such wrong. Many people weaken their powers ofservice by their own indignation, when, if they would cease theirexcited resistance, they would see clearly how to remedy the wrong thatarouses their antagonism. Action, when accompanied by personalresistance, however effective it may seem, does not begin to have thepower that can come from action, without such resistance. As, forinstance, when we have to train a child with a perverse will, if wequietly assert what is right to the child, and insist upon obediencewithout the slightest antagonistic feeling to the child's naughtiness, we accomplish much more toward strengthening the character of the childthan if we try to enforce our idea by the use of our personal will, which is filled with resistance toward the child's obstinacy. In thelatter case, it is just pitting our will against the will of the child, which is always destructive, however it may appear that we havesucceeded in enforcing the child's obedience. The same thing holds truein relation to an older person, with the exception that, with him orher, we cannot even attempt to require obedience. In that case wemust, --when it is necessary that we should speak at all, --assert theright without antagonism to what we believe to be their wrong, andwithout the slightest personal resistance to it. If we follow thiscourse, in most cases our friend will come to the right point ofview, --sometimes the result seems almost miraculous, --or, as is oftenthe case, we, because we are wholesomely open-minded, will recognizeany mistake in our own point of view, and will gladly modify it toagree with that of our friend. 

The trouble is that very few of us feel like working to remedy a wrongmerely for the sake of the right, and therefore we must have an impetusof personal feeling to carry us on toward the work of reformation. Ifwe could once be strongly started in obedience to the law from love ofthe law itself, we should find in that impersonal love a clear lightand power for effective action both in the larger and in the smallerquestions of life. 

There is a popular cry against introspection and an insistence that itis necessarily morbid, which works in direct opposition to trueself-control. Introspection for its own sake is self-centred andmorbid, but we might as well assert that it is right to have dirtyhands so long as we wear gloves, and that it is morbid to want to besure that our hands are clean under our gloves, as to assert thatintrospection for the sake of our true spiritual freedom is morbid. IfI cannot look at my selfish motives, how am I going to get free fromthem? It is my selfish motives that prevent true self-control. It is myselfish motives that prompt me to the false control of repression, which is counterfeit and for the sake of appearances alone. We must seethese motives, recognize and turn away from them, in order to controlourselves interiorly into line with law. We cannot possibly see themunless we look for them. If we look into ourselves for the sake offreedom, for the sake of our greater power for use, for the sake of ourtrue self-control, what can be more wholesome or what can lead us to amore healthy habit of looking out from ourselves into the lives andinterests of others? The farther we get established in motives that aretruly unselfish, the sooner we shall get out of our own light, and thewider our horizon will be; and the wider our horizon, the greater ourpower for use. 

There must, of course, be a certain period of self-consciousness in theprocess of finding our true self-control, but it is for the sake of anend which brings us more and more fully into a state of happy, quietspontaneity. If we are working carefully for true self-control we shallwelcome an unexpected searchlight from another mind. If the searchlightbrings into prominence a bit of irritation that we did not know wasthere, so much the better. How could we free ourselves from it withoutknowing that it was there? But as soon as we discover it we can controland cast it off. A healthy introspection is merely the use of asearchlight which every one who loves the truth has the privilege ofusing for the sake of his own growth and wilfulness, and circumstancesoften turn it full upon us, greatly to our advantage, if we do notwince but act upon the knowledge that it brings. It is possible toacquire an introspective habit which is wholesome and true, and bringsus every day a better sense of proportion and a clearer outlook. 

With regard to the true control of the Pleasurable emotions, the sameprinciple applies. 

People often grow intensely excited in listening to music, --lettingtheir emotions run rampant and suffering in consequence a painfulreaction of fatigue. If they would learn to yield so that the musiccould pass over their nerves as it passes over the strings of a musicalinstrument, and then, with the new life and vigor derived from theenjoyment, would turn to some useful work, they would find a greatexpansion in the enjoyment of the music as well as a new pleasure intheir work. 

Real self-control is the subjugation of selfishness in whatever form itmay exist, and its entire subordination to spiritual and natural law. Real self-control is not self-centred. In so far as we becomeestablished in this true self-control, we are upheld by law and guidedby the power behind it to the perfect freedom and joy of a useful life. 

XII

_The Religion of It_

THE religion of it is the whole of it. "All religion has relation tolife and the life of religion is to do good. " If religion does notteach us to do good in the very best way, in the way that is most trulyuseful to ourselves and to other people, religion is absolutely uselessand had better be ignored altogether. We must beware, however, ofidentifying the idea of religion with the men and the women who pervertit. If an electrician came to us to light our house, and the lightswould not burn, we would not immediately condemn all electric lightingas bosh and nonsense, or as sentimental theory; we should know, ofcourse, that this especial electrician did not understand his business, and would at once look about to find a man who did, and get him to putour lights in order. If no electrician really seemed to know hisbusiness, and we wanted our lights very much, the next thing to dowould be to look into the laws of electricity ourselves, and find outexactly where the trouble was, and so keep at work until we had madeour own lights burn, and always felt able, if at any time they failedto burn, to discover and remedy the difficulty ourselves. There is nota man or woman who does not feel, at some time, the need of an innerlight to make the path clear in the circumstances of life, andespecially in dealing with others. Many men and women feel that needall the time, and happy are those who are not satisfied until the needis supplied and they are working steadily in daily practical life, guided by a light that they know is higher than theory. When the lightis once found, and we know the direction in which we wish to travel, the path is not by any means always clear and smooth, it is often, fullof hard, rough Places, and there are sometimes miles to go over whereour light seems dim; but if we have proved our direction to be right, and keep steadily and strongly moving forward, we are always sure tocome into open resting places where we can be quiet, gather strength, and see the light more clearly for the next stage of the journey. 

"It is wonderful, " some one remarked, "how this theory ofnon-resistance has helped me; life is quite another thing since I havepractised it steadily. " The reply was "it is not wonderful when werealize that the Lord meant what He said when He told us not to resistevil. " At this suggestion the speaker looked up with surprise and said:"Why, is that in the New Testament? Where, in what part of it?" Shenever had thought of the sermon on the Mount as a working plan, or, indeed, of the New Testament as a handbook of life, --practical andpowerful in every detail. If we once begin to use it daily and hourlyas a working plan of life, it is marvellous how the power and theefficiency of it will grow on us, and we shall no more be able to getalong without it than an electrician can get along without a knowledgeof the laws of electricity. 

Some people have taken the New Testament so literally that they havebefogged themselves entirely with regard to its real meaning, and haveput it aside as impracticable; others have surrounded it with anemotional idea, as something to theorize and rhapsodize about, and havebefogged themselves in that way with regard to its real power. Mostpeople are not clear about it because of the tradition that has come tous through generations who have read it and heard it read in church, and never have thought of living it outside. We can have a great dealof church without any religion, but we cannot have religion withouttrue worship, whether the worship is only in our individual souls, orwhether it is also the function of a church to which we belong, with abuilding dedicated to the worship of the Lord to which we go for prayerand for instruction. If we could clear ourselves from the deadeningeffects of tradition, from sentimentality, from nice theory, and fromevery touch of emotional and spurious peace, and take up the NewTestament as if we were reading it for the first time, and then if wecould use it faithfully as a working plan for a time, simply as anexperiment, --it would soon cease to be an experiment, and we should notneed to be told by any one that it is a divine revelation; we would beconfident of that in our own souls. Indeed that is the only way any onecan ever be sure of revelation; it must come to each of us alone, as ifit had never come to any one before; and yet the beauty and power of itis such that it has come to myriads before us and will come to myriadsafter us in just the same way. 

But there is no real revelation for any one _until he has lived what hesees to be true. _ I may talk like an angel and assert with a shiningface my confident faith in God and in all His laws, but my words willmean nothing whatever, unless I have so lived my faith that it has beenabsorbed, into my character and so that the truths of my working planhave become my second nature. 

Many people have discovered that the Lord meant what He said when Hesaid: "Resist not evil, " and have proved how truly practical is thecommand, in their efforts to be willing to be ill, to be willing thatcircumstances should seem to go against them, to be willing that otherpeople should be unjust, angry, or disagreeable. They have seen that inyielding to circumstances or people entirely, --that is, in droppingtheir own resistances, --they have gained clear, quiet minds, whichenables them to see, to understand, and to practise a higher commonsense in the affairs of their lives, which leads to their ultimatehappiness and freedom. It is now clear to many people that much of thenervous illness of to-day is caused by a prolonged state of resistanceto circumstances or to people which has kept the brain in a strainedand irritated state so that it can no longer do its work; and that thepatient has to lay by for a longer or a shorter period, according tohis ability to drop the resistances, and so allay the irritation andlet his brain and nervous system rest and heal. 

Then with regard to dealing with others, some of us have found out thepractical common sense of taking even injustice quietly and withoutresistance, of looking to our own faults first, and getting quite freefrom all resentment and resistance to the behavior of others, before wecan expect to understand their point of view, or to help them to morereasonable, kindly action if they are in error. Very few of us haverecognized and acknowledged that that was what the Lord meant when Hesaid: "Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment yejudge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall bemeasured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thybrother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out ofthine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou seeclearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. "

It comes with a flash of recognition that is refreshingly helpful whenwe think we have discovered a practical truth that works, and then seethat it is only another way of putting what has been taught for thelast two thousand years. 

Many of us understand and appreciate the truth that a man's truecharacter depends upon his real, interior motives. He is only what hismotives are, and not, necessarily, what his motives appear to be. Weknow that, if a man only controls the appearance of anger and hatred, he has no real self-control whatever. He must get free from the angeritself to be free in reality, and to be his own master. We must stopand think, however, to understand that this is just what the Lord meantwhen He told us to clean the inside of the cup and the platter, and weneed to think more to realize the strength of the warning, that weshould not be "whitened sepulchres. "

We know that we are really related to those who can and do help us tobe more useful men and women, and to those whom we can serve in themost genuine way; we know that we are wholesomely dependent upon allfrom whom we can learn, and we should be glad to have those freelydependent upon us whom we can truly serve. It is most strengtheningwhen we realize that this is the true meaning of the Lord's saying, "For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and mysister, and mother. " That the Lord Himself, with all His strength, waswilling to be dependent, is shown by the fact that, from the cross, Hesaid to those who had crucified Him, "I thirst. " They had condemnedHim, and crucified Him, and yet He was willing to ask them for drink, to show His willingness to be served by them, even though He knew theywould respond only with a sponge filled with vinegar. 

We know that when we are in a hard place, if we do the duty that isbefore us, and keep steadily at work as well as we can, that the hardproblem will get worked through in some way. We know that this is true, for we have proved it over and over; but how many people realize thatit is because the Lord meant what He said when He told us: to "take nothought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the thingsof itself. "

I am reasoning from the proof of the law to the law itself. 

There is no end to the illustrations that we might find proving thespiritual common sense of the New Testament and, if by working first inthat way, we can get through this fog of tradition, of sentimentality, and of religious emotion, and find the living power of the book itself, then we can get a more and more clear comprehension of the laws itteaches, and will, every day, be proving their practical power in allour dealings with life and with people. Whether we are wrestling withnature in scientific work, whether we are working in the fine arts, inthe commercial world, in the professional world, or are dealing withnations, it is always the same, --we find our freedom to work fullyrealized only when we are obedient to law, and it is a wonderful dayfor any human being when he intelligently recognizes and finds himselfgetting into the current of the law of the New Testament. The action ofthat law he sees is real, and everything outside he recognizes asunreal. In the light of the new truth, we see that many things which wehave hitherto regarded as essential, are of minor importance in theirrelation to life itself. 

The old lady who said to her friend, "My dear, it is impossible toexaggerate the unimportance of things, " had learned what it meant todrop everything that interferes, and must have been truly on her way tothe concentration which should be the very central power of alllife, --obedience to the two great commandments. 

Concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle towardobedience, it means _dropping every thing that interferes. _ If we dropeverything that interferes with our obedience to the two greatcommandments, and the other laws which are given us all through the NewTestament to help us obey, we are steadily dropping all selfishresistance, and all tendency to selfish responsibility; and in thatsteady effort, we are on the only path which can by any possibilitylead us directly to freedom. 

XIII

_About Christmas_

THERE was once a family who had a guest staying with them; and whenthey found out that he was to have a birthday during his visit theywere all delighted at the idea of celebrating it. Days before--almostweeks before--they began to prepare for the celebration. They cookedand stored a large quantity of good things to eat, and laid in a stockof good things to be cooked and prepared on the happy day. They plannedand arranged the most beautiful decorations. They even thought over andmade, or selected, little gifts for one another; and the whole housewas in hurry and confusion for weeks before the birthday came. Everything else that was to be done was postponed until after thebirthday; and, indeed, many important things were neglected. 

Finally the birthday came, the rooms were all decorated, the table set, all the little gifts arranged, and the guests from outside of the househad all arrived. Just after the festivities had begun a little childsaid to its mother: "Mamma, where is the man whose birthday it is--"

"Hush, hush, " the mother said, "don't ask questions. "

But the child persisted, until finally the mother said: "Well, I amsure I do not know, my dear, but I will ask. "

She asked her neighbor, and the neighbor looked surprised and a littlepuzzled. 

"Why, " she said, "it is a celebration, we are celebrating his birthday, and he is a guest in the house. "

Then the mother got interested and curious herself. 

"But where is the guest? Where is the man whose birthday it is?" And, this time she asked one of the family. He looked startled at first, andthen inquired of the rest of the family. 

"Where is the guest whose birthday it is?" Alas I nobody knew. Therethey were, all excited and trying to enjoy themselves by celebratinghis birthday, and he, --some of them did not even know who he was! Hewas left out and forgotten!

When they had wondered for a little while they immediately forgotagain, and went on with their celebrations, --all except the littlechild. He slipped out of the room and made up his mind to find the manwhose birthday it was, and, finally, after a hard search, he found himupstairs in the attic, --lonely and sick. 

He had been asked to leave the guestroom, which he had occupied, and tomove upstairs, so as to be out of the way of the preparations for hisbirthday. Here he had fallen ill, and no one had had time to think ofhim, excepting one of the humbler servants and this little child. Theyhad all been so busy preparing for his birthday festival that they hadforgotten him entirely. 

This is the way it is with most of us at Christmas time. 

Whenever we think of a friend, or even an acquaintance, we think of hisvarious qualities, --not always in detail, but as forming a generalimpression which we associate with his name. If it is a friend whom welove and admire, we love, especially on his birthday, to dwell on allthat is good and true in his character; and at such times, though hemay be miles away in body, we find ourselves living with him every hourof the day, and feel his presence, and, from that feeling, do our dailytasks with the greater satisfaction and joy. 

Every one in this part of the world, of course, knows whose birthday wecelebrate on the twenty-fifth of December. If we imagine that such aman never really existed, that he was simply an ideal character, andnothing more, --if we were to take Christmas Day as the festival of anoble myth, --the ideal which it represents is so clear, so true, soabsolutely practical in the way it is recorded in the book of his life, that it would be a most helpful joy to reflect upon it, and to try andapply its beautiful lessons on the day which would especially recall itto our minds. 

Or, let us suppose that such a man really did exist, --a man whosecharacter was transcendently clear and true, quiet, steady, andstrong, --a man who was full of warm and tender love for all, --who wasconstantly doing good to others without the slightest display orself-assertion, --a man who was simple and humble, --who looked the wholeworld in the face and did what was right, --even though the wholerespectable world of his day disapproved of him, and even though thissame world attested in the most emphatic manner that he was doing whatwas dangerous and wicked, --a man with spiritual sight so keen that itwas far above and beyond any mere intellectual power, --a sight comparedto which, what is commonly known as intellectual keenness is, indeed, as darkness unto light; a man with a loving consideration for others sotrue and tender that its life was felt by those who merely touched thehem of his garment. Suppose we knew that such a man really did live inthis world, and that the record of his life and teachings constitutethe most valuable heritage of our race, --what new life it would give usto think of him, especially on his birthday, --to live over, so far aswe were able, his qualities as we knew them; and to gain, as a result, new clearness for our own everyday lives. The better we knew the man, the more clearly we could think of him, and the more full our thoughtswould be of living, practical suggestions for daily work. 

But now just think what it would mean to us if we really knew that thishumble, loving man were the Creator of the universe--the very God--whotook upon Himself our human nature with all its hereditaryimperfections; and, in that human nature met and conquered everytemptation that ever was, or ever could be possible to man; thus--byself-conquest--receiving all the divine qualities into his humannature, and bringing them into this world within reach of the heartsand minds of all men, to give light and warmth to their lives, and toenable them to serve each other;--if we could take this view of theman's life and work, with what quiet reverence and joy should wecelebrate the twenty-fifth of December as a day set apart to celebrateHis birth into the world!

If we ourselves loved a truthful, quiet way of living better than anyother way, how would we feel to see our friends preparing to celebrateour birthday with strain, anxiety, and confusion? If we valued a lovingconsideration for others more than anything else in the world, howwould it affect us to see our friends preparing for the festival with aforced sense of the conventional necessity for giving?

 Who gives himself with his gift feeds three, -- Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me. "

That spirit should be in every Christmas gift throughout Christendom. The most thoughtless man or woman would recognize the truth if theycould look at it quietly with due regard for the real meaning of theday. But after having heard and assented to the truth, the thoughtlesspeople would, from force of habit, go on with the same rush and strain. 

It is comparatively easy to recognize the truth, but it is quiteanother thing to habitually recognize your own disobedience to it, andcompel yourself to shun that disobedience, and so habitually toobey, --and to obey it is our only means of treating the truth with realrespect. When you ask a man, about holiday time, how his wife is, notuncommonly he will say:--

"Oh, she is all tired out getting ready for Christmas. "

And how often we hear the boast:--

"I had one hundred Christmas presents to buy, and I am completely wornout with the work of it. "

And these very women who are tired and strained with the Christmaswork, "put on an expression" and talk with emotion of the beauty ofChristmas, and the joy there is in the "Christmas feeling. "

Just so every one at the birthday party of the absent guest exclaimedwith delight at all the pleasures provided, although the essentialspirit of the occasion contradicted directly the qualities of the manwhose birthday it was supposed to honor. 

How often we may hear women in the railway cars talking over theirChristmas shopping:--

"I got so and so for James, --that will do for him, don't you think so?"

And, when her companion answers in the affirmative, she gives a sigh ofrelief, as if to say, now he is off my mind!

Poor woman, she does not know what it means to give herself with hergift. She is missing one of the essentials of the true joy of ChristmasDay. Indeed, if all her gifts are given in that spirit, she is directlycontradicting the true spirit of the day. How many of us areunconsciously doing the same thing because of our--habit of regardingChristmas gifts as a matter of conventional obligation. 

If we get the spirit of giving because of Him whose birthday it is, weshall love to give, and our hearts will go out with our gifts, --andevery gift, whether great or small, will be a thoughtful message oflove from one to another. There are now many people, of course, whohave this true spirit of Christmas giving, and they are the people whomost earnestly wish that they had more. Then there are many more who donot know the spirit of a truly thoughtful gift, but would be glad toknow it, if it could once be brought to their attention. 

We cannot give in a truly loving spirit if we give in order that we mayreceive. 

We cannot give truly in the spirit of Christmas if we rush and hurry, and feel strained and anxious about our gifts. 

We cannot give truly if we give more than we can afford. 

People have been known to give nothing, because they could not givesomething expensive; they have been known to give nothing in order toavoid the trouble of careful and appropriate selection: but to refrainfrom giving for such reasons is as much against the true spirit ofChristmas as is the hurried, excited gift-making of conventionality. 

Even now there is joy in the Christmas time, in spite of the rush andhurry and selfishness, and the spirit of those who keep the joy aliveby remembering whose birthday it is, serves as leaven all over theworld. 

First let us remember what Christmas stands for, and then let us try torealize the qualities of the great personality which gave the day itsmeaning and significance, --let us honor them truly in all ourcelebrations. If we do this, we shall at the same time be trulyhonoring the qualities, and respecting the needs of every friend towhom we give, and our gifts, whether great or small, will be full ofthe spirit of discriminating affection. Let us realize that in order togive truly, we must give soberly and quietly, and let us take an houror more by ourselves to think over our gifts before we begin to buy orto make them. If we do that the helpful thoughts are sure to come, andnew life will come with them. 

A wise man has described the difference between heaven and hell bysaying that in heaven, every one wants to give all that he has to everyone else, and that in hell, every one wants to take away from othersall they have. It is the spirit of heaven that belongs to Christmas. 

XIV

_To Mothers_

MOST mothers know that it is better for the baby to put him into hiscrib and let him go quietly to sleep by himself, than to rock him tosleep or put him to sleep in his mother's arms. 

Most mothers know also the difficulty of getting the baby into theright habit of going to sleep; and the prolonged crying that has to beendured by both mother and baby before the habit is thoroughlyestablished. 

Many a mother gets worn out in listening to her crying child, and goesto bed tired and jaded, although she has done nothing but sit still andlisten. Many more, after listening and fretting for a while, go andtake up the baby, and thus they weaken him as well as their owncharacters. 

A baby who finds out, when he is two months old, that his mother willtake him up if he cries, is also apt to discover, if he cries or teasesenough, that his mother will let him have his own way for the rest ofhis life. 

The result is that the child rules the mother, rather than the motherthe child; and this means sad trouble and disorder for both. 

Strong, quiet beginnings are a most valuable help to all good things inlife, and if a young mother could begin by learning how to sit quietlyand restfully and let her baby cry until he quieted down and went tosleep, she would be laying the foundation for a very happy life withher children. 

The first necessity, after having seen that nothing is hurting him andthat he really needs nothing, is to be willing that he should cry. Amother can make herself willing by saying over and over to herself, "Itis right that he should cry; I want him to cry until he has learned togo to sleep quietly by himself He will be a stronger and a more healthyman for getting into all good habits as a child. "

Often the mother's spirit is willing, or wants to be willing, but hernerves rebel if, while she is teaching herself to listen quietly, shewill take long, quiet breaths very steadily for some time, and willoccupy herself with interesting work, she will find it a great helptoward dropping nervous resistance. 

Children are much more sensitive than most people know, and readilyrespond to the mother's state of mind; and even though the mother is inthe next room, if she is truly dropping her nervous resistance andtension, the baby will often stop his crying all the sooner, andbesides, his mother will feel the good effects of her quiet yielding inher care of the baby all day long. She will be rested instead of tiredwhen the baby has gone to sleep. She will have a more refreshing sleepherself, and she will be able to care for the baby more restfully whenthey are both awake. 

It is a universal rule that the more excited or naughty the childrenare, the more quiet and clear the mother should be. A mother whorealizes this for the first time, and works with herself until she isfree from all excited and strained resistance, discovers that it isthrough her care for her children that she herself has learned how tolive. Blessed are the children who have such a mother, and blessed isthe mother of those children!

It is resistance--resistance to the naughtiness or disobedience in thechild that not only hurts and tires the mother, but interferes with thebest growth of the child. 

"What!" a mother may say, "should I want my child to be naughty? What adreadful thing!"

No, we should not want our children to be naughty, but we should bewilling that they should be. We should drop resistance to theirnaughtiness, for that will give us clear, quiet minds to help them outof their troubles. 

All vehemence is weak; quiet, clear decision is strong; and the childnot only feels the strength of the quiet, decisive action, but he feelsthe help from his mother's quiet atmosphere which comes with it. If allparents realized fully that the work they do for their children shouldbe done in themselves first, there would soon be a new and wonderfulinfluence perceptible all about us. 

The greatest difficulty often comes from the fact that children haveinherited the evil tendencies of their parents, which the parentsthemselves have not acknowledged and overcome. In these cases, most ofall, the work to be done for the child must first be done in theparents. 

A very poor woman, who was living in one room with her husband andthree children, once expressed her delight at having discovered how tomanage her children better: "I see!" she said, "the more I hollers, themore the children hollers; now I am not going to holler any more. "

There is "hollering" of the voice, and there is "hollering" of thespirit, and children echo and suffer from both. 

The same thing is true from the time they are born until they are grownup, when it should be right for them to be their own fathers andmothers, so far as their characters are concerned, that they canreceive the greatest possible help from their parents through quietnon-resistance to their naughtiness, combined with firm decision indemanding obedience to law, --a decision which will derive its weightand influence from the fact that the parents themselves obey the lawsto which they require obedience. 

Thus will the soul of the mother be mother to the soul of her child, and the development of mother and child be happily interdependent. 

It is, of course, not resisting to be grieved at the child'snaughtiness, --for that grief must come as surely as penitence for ourown wrongdoing. 

The true dropping of resistance brings with it a sense that the childis only given to us in trust, and an open, loving willingness leaves usfree to learn the highest way in which the trust may be fulfilled.