The Victorious Attitude Part 10

A few days ago I was attracted by an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a morning paper which said, "When every other physician has given you up; when you have failed to find relief from all other sources, then come to me. You are the sort of person I cure." The advertiser may have been a quack, but the advertis.e.m.e.nt would make its appeal, perhaps, to the desperate, the discouraged, who had been given up as incurable by the regular profession, and it set me to thinking. "Why, this," I said to myself, "is the language of Divine Love's advertis.e.m.e.nt. 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.' When you have failed to find comfort, satisfaction or joy in anything else, when your friends have deserted you, when your business is ruined, when you have made fatal mistakes and society has closed its doors on you, when everybody else rejects and denounces you, when everything else has failed, then come to me and you shall find peace and rest."

Love is the sovereign remedy. It is the last resort of those driven to desperation. When nothing else is left, when life is full of bitterness and anguish, the thief, the murderer, the failure, the outcast turns to Love and finds a refuge, for "Love never faileth."

Love is to every human being what mother love is to the erring child. No son or daughter has ever fallen so low as to get beyond a mother's love.

When society has turned its back on the outcast, when the prison door closes behind him, when companions have fled, when sympathy and mercy have departed, when the world has forgotten, the mother remembers and loves her child. She visits her boy in the "death house," her daughter in the dens of vice in the slums. The child can never stray too far for the mother's love to follow. It is the most perfect prototype of our Father-Mother-G.o.d's love.

The Vedanta scriptures, which are thousands of years older than the Old Testament of our Bible, commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves because we are all neighbors, because of the oneness of all life, because the same spirit is in all human beings. Until we see and live in conscious cooperation with this oneness of spirit, until the world sees it in all human beings, there will be public strife, private quarrels, greed, selfish ambition, inhumanity of man to man, poverty, crime, all sorts of wretchedness and misery. Love alone can wipe all these out. Human laws, repression, punishment will never do it. Christ's way, Love's way, holds the solution of all life's problems.

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

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

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

A young man who had been successful in Golden Rule management hearing of the situation saw in it a possible opening, and asked this man to give him a trial as manager before giving up his business altogether.

The result was, he was so pleased with him that in less than half an hour he had engaged him as manager, although he still insisted that it was a very doubtful experiment.

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

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

Yet in many respects the new manager was not nearly as able as his employer, but he had a different spirit. He was animated by a belief in the brotherhood of man. He had sympathy, tact, diplomacy, and a real personal interest in those who worked under him. He never scolded them when they did not do right; he simply talked with them like an elder brother and made them ashamed of themselves. He showed them there was a better way, and they followed it. In short, he won their love and respect and they would do anything for him.

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

You who have been tortured and torn to pieces for years with hot tempers, with worry, with fear, with hatred and ill will; you who have already committed suicide on many years of your life, why not turn your back on all this and try love's way? So far your life has been a disappointment. There must be a better way for all who bear the scars and stains of strife, who have been battered and buffeted by the old evil way, in which there has been no rest, no harmony, no sweetness. Why not try love's way? Try it for every trouble, for every hurt and sorrow.

Try it you whose home life has been a bitter disappointment; you husbands and wives who have quarreled, who have never known what peace and comfort are, try love's way. It will smooth out all your wrinkles, it will put a new spirit into your home that was never there before, it will bring a new light into your eyes, new hope into your heart, and new joy into your life.

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

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

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

Give sympathy and kindness instead of scolding and nagging and you will work a revolution in your household. You will be delighted to find how quickly love's way will change the atmosphere in your family, how soon helpful relations will take the place of antagonistic ones. Praise, generous, whole-hearted, unstinted praise, now and then, will not hurt any one, but, on the contrary, will act like lubricating oil on dry squeaky machinery, and its reflex action on yourself will be magical.

You husbands who have been subst.i.tuting money and luxury for love, who have thought that if a woman had a fine house, beautiful clothes and all her bills paid, she ought to be satisfied and happy; you who have so miserably failed of your object in this subst.i.tution will be surprised to find how much happier you can make your wife by bestowing on her a generous, unselfish love. A very little money, a very humble home with love will make every true woman happier than millions, a palatial home, with indifference.

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

Try it you who are worn out with the discord and the hagglings, the trials and tribulations you encounter every day in your business. You men and women who have never been able to get good help, who are driven to desperation with the wicked breakage and wastage of your employees; you who have been through purgatory in your struggle with dishonesty and inefficiency, whose faces are furrowed with cruel wrinkles and prematurely aged in trying to fight evil with evil, try love's way. It will create a new spirit in your store, your factory, your office.

Whatever your business, whatever your trials and difficulties, love will ease the jolts of life and smooth your way miraculously. Try love's way all you who have hitherto lived in purgatory because you did not know this better way.

You have tried the "getting square" policy, the hatred and grudge method; you have tried the revenge way, the jealousy way; you have tried the worry, the anxiety method, and these have pained and tortured you all the more. You have tried law and the courts to settle troubles and difficulties with neighbors and business a.s.sociates, and perhaps you won lawsuits only to make bitter, life-long enemies. But perhaps you have never yet tried love's way, excepting in spots. If you have not yet tried it as a principle, as a life philosophy, as a great life lubricant, begin now. It will smooth out all the rough places and wonderfully ease your journey over the jolts of life.

You may be wondering why you have so few friends, why you do not attract people, why others are not more interested in you. Look into your heart and you will find the reason. If you are sending out a current of selfishness, of uncharitableness, unkindness, indifference, ingrat.i.tude, you can not get a return current of friendship, of encouragement and helpfulness. The stream that leads back to you will be just like that which goes out in your thought, in your habitual mental att.i.tude. To have friends, to win love you must make yourself a magnet for love. You must send out the friendly thought current, the helpful current, the kindly, loving current of human fellowship. If you give out stinginess, narrowness, meanness, selfishness, you will not receive love's gifts in return. As you give, so will you receive, and the more generously you give of love and kindness and service the more generously will the current that returns bear them back to you.

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

All through the Bible are pa.s.sages which extol the height and depth, the breadth and power, the inexhaustibleness of love. The more of love we give out, the more we have. Love maintains perpetual summer in the soul and shuts out winter's chill. Love of man is love of G.o.d, and love of G.o.d prolongs life.

"With long life will I satisfy him," declares Jehovah in the words of the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me." Love is harmony, and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and discord shorten it. Those who are filled with the spirit of love, whose sympathies are not confined to their own family, but reach out to every member of the human family, are more exempt from the ills of mankind than the selfish and pessimistic, who lose the better part of life, the joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.

Some natures are so permeated with the spirit of love, of helpfulness, of unselfishness, that their very presence acts like a balm upon the wounded soul. They radiate harmony, soul sunshine. There is a personal charm about them which strengthens, rea.s.sures, and uplifts.

No more scientific advice was ever uttered on this earth than "Love your enemies." Nothing will take the sting out of unkindness like kindness; nothing will disarm prejudice, hatred, and jealousy like love. It is impossible for any one to continue to hate us, when we send out to him only love thoughts, love vibrations, or to be jealous of us when we send out to him only kindly, generous, helpful thoughts. Hatred or the spirit of revenge cannot live in the presence of love any more than an acid can retain its eating, biting qualities in the presence of an alkali.

One whose heart is filled with love for all cannot possibly have an enemy very long, because love dissolves all enmity, all jealousy, neutralizes, antidotes all hatred. One-sided hatred cannot exist because there is nothing to keep it alive. It must be fed in some way or the fire will die out for lack of fuel.

It is simply impossible to keep on feeling unkindly towards another, to continue hating him very long when we discover that he feels kindly toward us and is willing to help us. I have never felt so humiliated in my life as when years ago, in my hot youth, I was rendered a very great service by a man whom I disliked intensely, and against whom I had for some time cherished a grudge. His great-hearted, generous act, which was a real help to me, made me feel utterly ashamed of myself. It showed me as nothing else could have done what a mean, unworthy, contemptible thing it is to nurse a feeling of hate or revenge toward a fellow-being.

We cannot hold the love thought without feeling the uplift, the glow, the divine energy which it sends through the whole system. Nor, on the other hand, can we hold the hate thought, the revenge, the jealous, the envious, or any other mean, selfish thought, without a feeling of depression, a feeling of smallness, of contemptibleness, which robs us of self-respect and of power.

When you denounce and condemn others, when you nurse bitterness and ill will in your heart, you start boomerang vibrations which impair your cell life and seriously mar your happiness and efficiency. One of the great benefits of devotional exercise, of prayer, of contemplation, of divine thinking, is that this mental att.i.tude sets in motion vibrations which have a helpful, uplifting influence on both mind and body. Where love and affection are habitually vibrating through the cell life they develop a poise and serenity of character, a sweetness and strength, a peace and satisfaction that reenforce the whole being. Love soothes and strengthens. Hate lacerates, wrinkles, weakens. The character of people who keep themselves continually stirred up by discordant emotions, who live in discordant homes where there is perpetual wrangling, criticism, denunciation, scolding, twitting are cold, skeptical, unlovely, selfish.

Their affections become marbleized. There is nothing outside of vice which will deform the character so quickly as living in an atmosphere of perpetual hatred, jealousy, envy and revenge. The wear and tear of their vicious vibrations is ever getting in its deadly work.

Love is the great disciplinarian, the supreme harmonizer, the true peacemaker. It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all brutish pa.s.sions and propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil pa.s.sions find their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy.

One reason why a happy home is the sweetest, most beautiful spot on earth is because the love atmosphere, the harmony vibrations give a blessed sensation of harmony, of rest, of safety, security and power.

The moment we enter such a place we feel its soothing, rea.s.suring, uplifting atmosphere. It produces a feeling of mental poise, of serenity which we do not experience anywhere else.

During a recent visit to a large family I was much impressed by the power of one person to create this beautiful home spirit. In this family was one sister who, though the youngest member, seemed to take the place of the mother, who was dead. This young girl was the apparent center of the home. Nothing of importance was undertaken by any of her brothers without consulting her. Not one of them would leave the house without first kissing her good-by, and she was the first one they sought when they came home. They all seemed anxious to confide to her their little secrets, to tell her of what had happened to them during the day, to have her opinion and advice in all difficulties.

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

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

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

Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming rough, uncouth men into refined and devoted husbands? I have known women who had such great, loving, helpful hearts, and such charm of manner, that the worst men, the most hardened characters would do anything in the world for them--would give up their lives even to protect them. But these men could not be reformed by prison methods, could not be touched by unkindness or compulsion. Love is the only power that could reach them.

I do not believe there is any human being, in prison or out, so depraved, so low, so bad but that there is somebody in the world who could control him perfectly by love, by kindness, by patience. Many a man has been kept from performing a disgraceful, a criminal act by the thought that somebody loved him, believed in him, trusted him.

"Though thy sins be as scarlet they shall be made whiter than snow."

Love purifies, lifts up, regenerates. We are all familiar with its wonderful transforming power; how it erases the scars of sin, smooths out the wrinkles which vice has left in the face, softens the hard features and puts its own divine stamp there. We know how it changes the coa.r.s.e, brutal, sinful man into its own divine likeness, how it brings the color back to the pale cheek, the l.u.s.ter to the dull eye, how it restores courage to the disheartened, hope to the distressed and the despairing. We know how it calls into the face a light which was never there before, and which is not of earth.

In the remarkable play, "The Pa.s.sing of the Third Floor Back," we have a striking ill.u.s.tration of the subtle, silent force of the love motive.

Those who have seen or read the play will remember how in response to an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a London paper, "Room to let, Third floor back," comes a remarkable man, who is given the t.i.tle of "The Stranger." This man takes the "third floor back," and finds himself in a boarding house filled with questionable characters, petty thieves, gamblers, people who have led fast lives, all sorts of uncharitable, envious men and women.

They stoop to every kind of meanness. One woman even steals candles.

Every one tries to cheat every one else and is cheated in return. The landlady is of the same type as her boarders. She preys on them and they prey on her. She waters the milk and adulterates the food. Then to keep herself from being robbed she puts everything under lock and key.

The mere presence of the Stranger seems antagonistic to the practices and low-flying ideals of the boarders and the landlady. They begin to make all sorts of fun of him. But he takes no notice. Instead he gives them kindness for unkindness, love for hate, and a pleasant smile as the only answer to their sarcastic, cutting remarks and innuendoes.

Gradually, as they become better acquainted, he begins to talk to them of themselves, to point out their good qualities, and to show them what great ability they have in certain lines, what wonderful things are possible to them.

He told one of the young men who had made merry at his expense that he had a fine artistic temperament, and that he had in him the making of a great artist. He showed another his possibilities as a musician, and so on with every member of the discordant, jangling group, until each one finally came under the spell of his love and kindness.

The little London "slavey," or maid-of-all-work who was abused and constantly reminded that she had been in State Prison and hence was a n.o.body, under the Stranger's uplifting influence became a self-respecting, n.o.ble woman. The landlady, who had hitherto treated the girl like a slave, began to favor her and made her go outdoors and get a little change while she did the work. A man and wife who had lived a cat and dog life were brought together in harmony. All of the boarders, without exception, even those who had been the most brutal and selfish, gradually changed and became thoughtful, helpful and kindly toward one another. They became friends. The whole atmosphere of the house was changed. The Stranger had shown every man and woman of them his or her better self, and in so doing had literally made them anew.