The Heart of the New Thought Part 4

Once you say these things over to yourself in a calm, earnest way, you will begin to feel more cheerful. The worries and troubles of the coming day will seem less colossal.

Then say: "I shall be given help to meet anything that comes to-day.

Everything will be for the best. I shall succeed in whatever I undertake. I cannot fail."

Do not let it discourage you if the moment you leave your room you encounter a trouble or a disaster. This usually happens. When we make any boasts, spiritually or physically, we are put to the test. The occult forces about us are not unlike human beings. When a school-boy boasts of his strength, and says he can "lick any boy in school," he generally gets a chance to prove it.

When we declare we are brave enough to overcome any fate, we find our strength put to the test at once.

But that is all right. Prove your words to be true. Regard the troubles and cares you encounter as the "punching bags" of fate, given you to develop your spiritual muscle.

Go at them with courage and keep to your morning resolve.

By and by the troubles will lessen, and you will find yourself master of Circ.u.mstances.

The Philosophy of Happiness

There are natures born to happiness just as there are born musicians, mechanics and mathematicians.

They are usually children who came into life under right pre-natal conditions. That is, children conceived and born in love.

The mother who thanks G.o.d for the little life she is about to bring to earth, gives her child a more blessed endowment than if it were heir to a kingdom or a fortune.

As the majority of people, however, born under "civilized" conditions, are unwelcome to their mothers, it is rarely we encounter one who has a birthright of happiness.

Youth possesses a certain buoyancy and exhilaration which pa.s.ses for happiness, until the real disposition of the individual a.s.serts itself with the pa.s.sing of time.

Good health and strong vitality are great aids to happiness; yet that they, wealth and honors added, do not produce that much desired state of mind we have but to look about us to observe.

One who is not born a musician needs to toil more a.s.siduously to acquire skill in the art, however strong his desire or great his taste, than the natural genius.

So the man not endowed with joyous impulses needs to set himself the task of acquiring the habit of happiness. I believe it can be done.

To the sad or restless or discontented being I would say: Begin each morning by resolving to find something in the day to enjoy. Look in each experience which comes to you for some grain of happiness. You will be surprised to find how much that has seemed hopelessly disagreeable possesses either an instructive or an amusing side.

There is a certain happiness to be found in the most disagreeable duty when you stop to realize that you are getting it out of the way.

If it is one of those duties which has the uncomfortable habit of repeating itself continually, you can at least say you are learning patience and perseverance, which are two great virtues and essential to any permanent happiness in life.

Do not antic.i.p.ate the happiness of to-morrow, but discover it in to-day. Unless you are in the profound depths of some great sorrow, you will find it if you look for it.

Think of yourself each morning as an explorer in a new realm. I know a man whose time is gold, and he carefully arranged his plans to take three hours for a certain pleasure. He lost his way and missed his pleasure, but was full of exuberant delight over his "new experience."

"I saw places and met with adventures I might have missed my whole life." He was a true philosopher and optimist and such a man gets the very kernel out of the nut of life.

I know a woman who had since her birth every material blessing, health, wealth, position, travel and a luxurious home. She was forever complaining of the cares and responsibilities of the latter. Finally she prevailed upon the family to rent the home for a series of years and to live in hotels. Now she goes about posing as a martyr, "a homeless woman." It is impossible for such a selfishly perverted nature to know happiness.

A child should be taught from its earliest life to find entertainment in every kind of condition or weather. If it hears its elders cursing and bemoaning a rainy day the child's plastic mind is quick to receive the impression that a rainy day is a disaster.

How much better to expatiate in its presence on the blessing of rain, and to teach it the enjoyment of all nature's varying moods, which other young animals feel.

Happiness must come from within in order to respond to that which comes from without, just as there must be a musical ear and temperament to enjoy music.

Cultivate happiness as an art or science.

A Worn Out Creed

I have a letter from an "orthodox Christian," who says the only hope for humanity lies in the "old-fashioned religion."

Then he proceeds to tell me how carefully he has studied human nature, "in business, in social life, and in himself," and that he finds it all vile--selfish--sinful.

Of course he does, because he studies it from a false and harmful standpoint, and looks for "the worm of earth" and "the poor, miserable sinner," instead of the _divine_ man.

We find what we look for in this world.

I have always been looking for the n.o.ble qualities in human beings, and I have found them.

There are great souls all along the highway of life, and there are great qualities even in the people who seem common and weak to us ordinarily.

One of the grandest souls I know is a man who served his term in prison for sins committed while in drink.

He was not "born bad", he simply drifted into bad company and formed bad habits.

He paid the awful penalty of five years behind prison bars, but the divine man within him a.s.serted itself, and today I have no friend I feel prouder to call that name.

Mr. John L. Tait, secretary of the Central Howard a.s.sociation, of Chicago, writes me regarding his knowledge of ex-convicts:

According to my experience with a number of men of this cla.s.s during the last two years, more than 90 per cent of them are worthy of the most cordial support and a.s.sistance.

If this can be said of men who have been criminals, surely humanity is not so vile as my "orthodox" correspondent would have me believe.

A "Christian" of that order ought to be put under restraint, and not allowed to a.s.sociate with mankind.

He carries a moral malaria with him, which poisons the air.

He suggests evil to minds which have not thought it.

He is a dangerous hypnotist, while pretending to be a disciple of Christ.

The man who believes that all men are vicious, selfish and immoral is _projecting pernicious mind stuff_ into s.p.a.ce, which is as dangerous to the peace of the community as dynamite bombs.

The world has been kept back too long by this false, unholy and blasphemous "religion."

It is not the religion of Christ--it is the religion of ignorant translators, ignorant readers.