Chapter 8

The sect that insists on following the Scriptures in the matter of baptism by immersion fails to follow the Scriptures in the matter of washing the feet or anointing the head.

Many years ago the church considered it a sacrilege to use an organ. Today they have orchestras and hire operatic singers.

So it seems that the church is broadening out. Thinking men believe that religion should not be an auto-intoxication of self-condemnation or worry, sobs and misery. Because so much of this sort of teaching is prevalent the church is not making the gains it should. The church is largely supported by nice little women, many of them maiden ladies who have little to do, and know little of the great problems of the busy world.

I am thoroughly convinced that the church must recognize that evolution is taking place, that we are to be more charitable, more broad in our views, less technical in our tenets and more practical in our work.

We will have to cut down the fences between the sects and all get together in the great field for a common cause rather than trying to maintain little independent vineyards.

Religion must teach smiles and joy, courage and brotherly love, instead of frowns, dejection, fear and envy.

It must teach how to be and how to get good out of our today on earth. If we are good and do good here, we certainly will help our future prospects.

Certainly we are progressing from narrowness, bigotry, selfishness and envy, to broadness, reason, brotherly love and contentment, and we shall progress from the narrow confines of obstinate orthodoxy or bulldogmatics, by breaking down the sect, cult, ism, and doxy barriers until we all join in a universal church in which all can put their hearts and beliefs, in which all can find full range for their spiritual belief and expression.

That big, broad, right church will be in harmony with God's purpose.

The Creator made all men and He doesn't confine His love or His interest to any one little man-made narrow sect, or creed.

"God is love." "Love thy neighbor." "Help the weak, cheer the grief stricken." Those are the commands and purposes we find everywhere in the Scriptures.

"He that believeth in me shall be saved." That's a definite promise and it is not qualified with a lot of creed paragraphs and beliefs. That promise doesn't have any buts or ifs. It doesn't say we shall be saved whether we are Methodists or Catholics, or Baptists or Presbyterians. Those names are man-made, and creeds of those churches are man-made, too.

At the congress of religions in the World's Fair at Chicago over three hundred religions and sects were represented by delegates from all over the world, and every one there with hearty accord sang, "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" and "Rock of Ages." Those hymns were universal; they fitted all creeds and sects.

Big men in the church are intensely interested in the get-together, universal church, and each year will mark a definite progress toward amalgamation of sects and divisions.

There should be no Methodist Church North and Methodist Church South.

There should not be churches like the Congregational and Presbyterian, whose creeds are identical, the difference being only in the officers.

The country village of 1,000 population has five churches; it should have only one. The country is full of half starved preachers and weak, struggling congregations.

The get-together movement will help religion, and it's going to happen surely.

INVENTORY

A Necessary Practice to Bring Efficiency

Every year the business man goes over his stock, tools, fixtures, and accounts, and prepares a statement of assets and liabilities so as to get a fairly accurate understanding of his profit and loss.

If he didn't take this inventory his net worth would be guess work.

This inventory deals with money and things which are mixed more or less with the human element and affected more or less by conditions or trade, crops, competition, supply and demand.

The business man takes all these conditions into consideration in preparing for the coming year. He red flags the mistakes and green flags the good plans.

The business man should carry the inventory further. Every month or so he should take a careful inventory of himself, putting down his assets of health, initiative, patience, ability to work, smiles, honesty, sincerity, and the like. So also he must put down in the debit side the pull backs, hindrances and other business killers in the list of liabilities. These items are smoothness, untruth, unfairness, grouchiness, impatience, worry, ill health, gloom, meanness, broken word, unfulfilled promises and the like.

In making up the inventory pay particular attention to your habits: smoking, drinking, over-eating, useless display, useless social functions and other useless things that pull on your nerves and your pocket book.

Then check up department A, which is your family. How have you dealt with your family and children?

Department B is friends; how do you stand in your treatment of them?

Department C, all other persons. Did you lie to, cheat, steal from or defraud any one? How much cash profit did you make? How much less a man did the act make you?

Go over your self-respect account. Does it show profit or loss.

Check up your employees' account. What has your stewardship shown? Have you drawn the employees closer, or driven them further from you?

Analyze your spiritual account. Is your religious belief a sham or conviction? Do you sing on Sunday, "we shall know each other there," or do you make it a point to know and love your brother here, seven days a week.

Be fair in your inventory. Write down the facts in the two columns "good" and "bad," then go over the list and put a red danger flag on the bad. Keep the list until next inventory and see whether you have made a gain or loss in your net moral standing.

Don't read this and say, "a good idea." Do the thing literally.

Take a clean sheet of paper and write your personal assets and liabilities down in the two columns marked "good" and "bad."

If this inventory doesn't help then you may call me a false prophet.

I know the plan is a good one. I know it will help you. If it helps you, you will thank me. There can be no harm in trying, because it's a worth-while thing to test.

The business man who never takes inventory is likely to go bump some day.

EGOTISM

Those Who Decry It Most Have It Most

The ego is in us. It is good to have, but egotism needs the soft pedal when we speak or do things.

Many people are unconscious of their egotism yet they suggest between lines in their conversation, "even I who am superior to the herd would do this or that."

For instance, two persons were arguing about the merits of an inexpensive automobile. Parenthetically I may say one belonged to the Ford class and the other to the can't afford class. A can't afford snob came to the rescue of the Ford champion by saying, "that's a good car; why, I wouldn't mind owning one of them myself," and he beamed at the party with the consciousness of having settled the matter and removed the stigma from the Ford car.

The egotism crops out often when one shows a group picture in which he appears. He doesn't wait for you to find him; he pokes his arm over your shoulder and says, "that's me."

To each of us in the manner of things the I is the center of our world. We see things always through our I's.

If we wish to get along without friction we must remember that the other fellow has his I's also, and when we try to make him see things through our I's it makes trouble.

The hall mark of education, refinement and character in the broad sense is the ability to exclude the personal so far as possible from our conversation. And be big enough to grant to others their undoubted right to see and think from their own standpoint.

Argument develops egotism more than most any other thing will.

How often have you convinced another in an argument?

How often have you been convinced in an argument?

The world is big, there are millions of others in it and our job is a big one if we 'tend pretty well to our own knittin'.

PERSEVERANCE

It Is the Last Step in the Race That Counts

Four hundred and twenty-three years ago Christopher Columbus landed on an island which he thought was India.

Chris was mighty happy as he put his foot on good old mother earth; not so much because he had discovered a new way to India, as he thought, but because his foot touched land.

Two days before he landed on San Salvador his crew pitched into him and threatened to throw him in the sea and turn about the ship to Spain.

If Chris had shown the white feather, 1492 would not be the date of the first line in the geography, announcing the "Discovery of America."

Chris had perseverance, the stuff that makes men successful.

He started to find India by sailing westward. He didn't succeed in his purpose, but his determination was rewarded just the same, for he found a new country, and that was worth while.

Before he started he was promised ten per cent of the revenue from any lands he might discover. Just imagine what that would mean today.

Columbus had perseverance and pep, and his unwavering fidelity to his cause brought him success in his efforts.

The world has improved since 1492, but the percentage of men who would keep on like Columbus did has not increased, perhaps.

Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He steered to the direction of the setting sun. His crew was 120 men. None of them were enthusiastic at the start; all of them disgusted, discouraged and ready to mutiny at the last.

But Christopher kept the ships pointed West, through rain, shine, through drifting breezeless days and through storms. He kept on, and on and on, and he brought home the bacon, which being interpreted means success crowned his efforts.

Perseverance and pep produce prosperity, peace and plenty.

It was the mileage made on October 12th, 1492, that counted.

It is the last step in a race that counts.

It is the last stroke on the nail that counts.

The moral is that many a prize has been lost just when it was ready to be plucked.

Perseverance--patience--pluck--pep--are particularly profitable if pursued until you ring the bell.

GEOLOGY

The Earth's Incontestable Pages of Truth

On the wall in the room where I write these lines is a fossil herring which the boys dug up in the Rockies near Frozen Dog, at an altitude of six thousand feet.

The herring is a salt water fish proving that the country around Frozen Dog was at one time under the sea.

A few weeks ago, in the Missouri River bottom near Omaha, some Harvard scientists discovered the remains of three ancient towns, one buried on top of the other.

In the Nile valley in Egypt nine towns, in one location, have been unearthed, each town in a different strata of alluvial deposit.

The ninth or top city is the ancient City of Memphis, once the largest city in the world.

Those cities and the mute eloquence of my fossil herring plainly point out the fact that the world is millions of years old.

Last summer I found some coral on Washington Island, which is off the point of land where Lake Michigan and Green Bay meet. Coral is only formed in salt water.

Geologists tell me that Washington Island and surrounding country plainly shows marks of three distinct glacial periods.

Several times the poles were in the tropical climate, and consequently the tropics or the temperate zones at least were under permanent snow and ice.

The earth changes its axis every few thousand centuries, that we know.

The rains and snows wash the earth to the sea, depositing layers of sand and sediment, which as the ages go by, turn to stone and form permanent pages that man may read in succeeding eras.

During the world's changes, vast surfaces of earth and rock are lifted to mountain heights and other places lowered and the sea covers them.

Thus the habitations of man have been buried, new earth covered them, new towns were built and again the covering process.

Scientists are deciphering the story of the earth and its people. Babylonia and Egypt left records which our learned men can read, but ages and eons before these ancients there were races who could not write even crude picture or hieroglyphic languages, and probably we shall never know much about these very old times.

Around our Mississippi Valley we know of Mound Builders before our Indians. In the Southwest the relics of the cliff dwellers are abundant.

This summer at Salt Lake City I saw seven mummies of fair-haired people that were discovered in Southern Utah.

Near Naples, in digging a well, the workmen found statuary, jewelry and cooking utensils. The Italian government began excavating and they opened up to modern gaze an old city. The town was Pompeii.

People may now walk the streets of old Pompeii as freely as the streets of Kansas City, and the old pavements are likewise worn and torn like the present streets of Kansas City.

The residents of Pompeii had fine plumbing, baths and luxuries.

They had a place called a vomitorium. The old Roman sports were gluttons; they stuffed themselves, then went to the vomitorium and threw up so they could eat more.

Near Pompeii is the ancient buried city of Herculaneum, but it is covered with lava, hard as granite, while Pompeii is covered with ashes.

Our western hemisphere is called the new world, but all parts of the world are equally old.

The Missouri River swelled up and washed out a big cul de sac and bared those three towns near Omaha. We haven't dug much in America but likely in a few years we will discover some old towns equally as ancient as Pompeii.

Verily, this earth of ours has had humans on it for more than the 6,000 years our written records give as its age.

PATRIOTISM

An Intoxicant That Often Turns Men Into Murderers

A false patriotism, an inherited acceptance of servility and obedience, makes the foreigners meek, sheep-like men.

This great war, and most every great war of the past, is possible because of a distorted understanding of patriotism.

Patriotism began away back yonder when sons and daughters were taught love and loyalty to the pater, the father. The patriarchs of old extended the patriot idea to the tribe and later as tribes banded together and formed nations. The patriotism principle was the basis for the bond that tied men together for a common cause.

Now patriotism is bounded by geographical lines and national boundary lines. The patriotism is most sincere, and most solemn, for men willingly sacrifice their lives for it.

But, really, this patriotism is one of the narrowest and most cruel forces in the world. It causes wars, waste and desolation. It makes jealousies, braggadocio and keeps up the fight spirit.

The false patriotism is an obstacle to broader human progress, brotherly love and the finer things in life.

Kings and rulers, fired by selfish egotism, know full well what a powerful force patriotism is and they nurse the babes with fatherland stuff and give them tin soldiers to play with and tin helmets to wear.

Patriotism, when it reflects love of the place of one's nativity, when it spells home and love and association, is a natural and a beautiful sentiment.

But patriotism, as fomented and fostered by governments for war spurs and goads, is a monster that lives on blood.

To keep this false patriotism alive, wars must be made, so that human blood can be secured to save the monster from perishing. Human blood fires and intoxicates this false patriotism behemoth.

And so, on slight pretexts Kings are insulted. War lords have put out chips on their shoulders on purpose to be knocked off, and when the chip is brushed off then comes the declaration of war.

The banner, patriotism, is flaunted in the air. It is the shibboleth of the red blooded, hot headed, bravest and best of the nation, the youth, who die in countless thousands--for what?

Such patriotism is failure and worse than failure. It is hindrance to civilization.

These bewildered men have let reason escape, and intoxicated false patriotism poison come in their brains to take the place of reason.

In their delirium they try to appear consistent, logical and abused. In their extremity they try to co-ordinate their acts with God's mind.

Each nation has its own interpretation of the Divine will. Each asks Divine help for his nation.

God looks at the maddened millions of insane murderers and his heart is torn as He sees the avalanche of tears shed by bereaved wives and children.

The patriotism that is responsible for starting this war is a mockery, a snare, a delusion, and deserves the profoundest contempt of every man who loves his fellow man.

Europe has certainly put riot in patriotism.

RIDICULE

A Poor Vehicle for Humor

The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide and he will finish the slide as an out-and-out grouch.

You and I know men who never have a pleasant word to say of anyone, or a serious commendation of anything.

Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and try to pass for puns. By and by, however, this ridicule and sarcasm gets to be a habit, and the coat of humor becomes threadbare.

Just at this time friends depart, for the grouch phase of the disease has started.

Sarcasm and ridicule are powerful weapons when used adroitly and for good purposes. But when sarcasm and ridicule are used constantly as a means to generate fun or as vehicles for humor, then the evil commences.

People will listen to you for awhile, if you good-naturedly ridicule a thing, but when you are known to have the habit, then is when friends give you the go-by.

Sarcasm and ridicule wound deeply; they are hot pokers jabbed in quivering flesh.

Don't juggle with ridicule or sarcasm, for people look beneath the veneer nowadays. They remember and repeat the axiom, "there's many a true word spoken in jest."

There are so many beautiful things to say, so many kind expressions to utter, so many helpful hints to give, that we should be ashamed to say or do things even jokingly that may hurt another.

Safest way is to run no chances. When you ridicule a thing or a person, you may ridicule the tender heart of one you should cheer and help.

Ridicule is the negative element anyway; the only good it can be is by reflex or rebound force.

Ridicule is conceived by the humor idea. It is used because it so easily lends itself to a seeming clever way to create a laugh.

Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low comedy by use of ridicule, and often the audience does not differentiate between low comedy and rare humor.

The masses will laugh when the comedian on the stage hits his friend with a club; that sort of fun-making satisfies adults who have children's brains and such brain-constructed people will also laugh at jokes which ride on ridicule. But you who read these lines are worthy of better things; that's why you are reading this book. If, in my audience there are those who have the ridicule habit, I want to arouse you to a better sense of humor than you can get by the employment of ridicule and sarcasm.

I don't want you to descend to the level of the grouch. The slide-down is so easy, the climbing back and up from the depth is so very hard.

Ridicule and sarcasm are cheap, slapstick methods to produce fun. They leave a sting many times when you are not aware of it.

When fighting whiskey, sin, corruption or evil hosts, then use burning ridicule and caustic sarcasm to sizzle and destroy the things that need to be destroyed.

Now I've told you, and next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop and stop now.

THE WIFE

She Is Your Partner, Don't Cheat Her

A wife is either a partner or an employee. If a partner, she has a right to the fifty-fifty split on profits; if an employee she is entitled to her wages.

A thrifty husband is commendable, but a show-me-what-you-did-with-that-money husband should be punished by being sentenced to attend pink teas, afternoon receptions, and to match samples at the dry goods store.

Married folks must be on the partnership basis, or there's sand in the gear box.

Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills; tote fair with her; show her and give her just what your income affords, and what economic and wise administration warrants; she'll cut the cloth to fit the garment.

When the husband questions every turn, every move, every cent, the wife feels like a prisoner or a slave. Wives will do good team work when they are broken to double harness with their husbands.

Women are generally raised without any requirements of economy; they are pretty birds, and used to preening and smoothing their plumage and looking pretty.

It's the female instinct in the human. In the animal world the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating act; but in the human animal the female is the bird with the bright plumage.

You can't expect her to know about pennies and purses and prudent purchases the moment you slip the ring on her finger.

But she's an intelligent filly and she'll go in double harness much better if trained and coaxed and petted than she will if she is haltered, broke and a Spanish bit put in her mouth by the husband's stinginess.

She'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her shopping and encourages her in her economical administration of the household budget.

She wants a word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, detective, lawyer-like husband.

She's a sweet bird and sweet birds and hawks don't nest well together.

Where the hawk and the dove are in the same cage the feathers will fly.

As I came through the park this morning I saw a pair of robins who have the right idea. They share home responsibilities and do fine team work. I think they are mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.

Mamma robin looked down with loving eyes at her hubby, and the little baby robins sang a chorus of joy at the very privilege of living in such a home.

Worry will fly out of the window the moment the husband and wife lay their cards on the table and play the open hand. The moment one or the other keeps a few cards in the sleeve, then worry and trouble comes back.

The moral of this is: husbands and wives, live together, get together, stay together, play together, save together, grow together, share together. Travel the same road; don't take different paths.

MENTAL PLEASURES

The Rarest, Sweetest Pleasures in the World

There are two principal pleasures man seeks; one is material pleasures and that takes in about ninety-nine per cent of the human family.

The other, the one per cent, seeks mental pleasures, and this little group is the one that gets the real, lasting, satisfying and improving pleasures.

Material pleasures are eating, displaying, possessing, and society. Material pleasures generate in the human the desire for fluff, feathers, and four-flushing.

Material pleasures accentuate the desire to possess things, and in the strife for possession hearts are broken, fortunes wasted, nerves shattered and finer sentiments calloused.

The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry, neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound.

Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there always comes the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression.

The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at the homes where material pleasures are the rule.

Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in solitude.