Chapter 3

By wisdom I mean the philosophy which enables us to control our tempers, curb our tendency to severe criticism, and cultivate our sympathies.

The majority of people after thirty-five consider themselves privileged to be cross, irritable, critical and severe, because they have lived longer than the young, because they have had more trials and disappointments, and because they believe they understand the world better.

Those are excellent reasons why they should be patient, kind, broad and sympathetic.

The longer we live the more we should realize the folly and vulgarity of ill-temper, the cruelty of severe criticism and the necessity for a broad-minded view of life, manners, morals and customs.

Unless we adapt ourselves to the changing habits of the world, unless we adopt some of the new ideas that are constantly coming to the front, we will find ourselves carping, disagreeable and lonely old people as the years go by.

The world will not stand still for us. Society will not wear the same clothes or follow the same pleasures, or think the same thoughts when we are eighty that were prevalent when we were thirty. We must keep moving with the world or stand still and solitary.

After thirty we must seize every hour and educate ourselves to grow into agreeable old age.

It requires at least twenty years to become well educated in book and college lore. If we begin to study at seven we are rarely through with all our common schools, seminaries, high schools and colleges have to offer under a score of years.

The education for old age needs fully as many years. We need to begin at thirty to be tolerant, patient, serene, trustful, sympathetic and liberal. Then, at fifty, we may hope to have "graduated with honors" from life's school of wisdom, and to be prepared for another score or two of years of usefulness and enjoyment in the practice of these qualities.

Instead of wasting our time in bemoaning the loss of early opportunities for obtaining an education, let us devote ourselves to the cultivation of wisdom, since that is free to all who possess self-control, will power, faith and perseverance.

Begin to-day, at home. Be more tolerant of the faults of the other members of your household. Restrain your criticisms on the conduct of your neighbors.

Try and realize the causes which led some people who have gone wrong to err. Look for the admirable qualities in every one you meet. Sympathize with the world. Be interested in progress, be interested in the young. Keep in touch with each new generation, and do not allow yourself to grow old in thought or feeling.

Educate yourself for a charming old age. There is no time to lose.

Dividends

Our thoughts are shaping unmade spheres, And, like a blessing or a curse, They thunder down the formless years And ring throughout the universe.

The more we realize the tremendous responsibility of our mental emanations the better for the world and ourselves. The sooner we teach little children what a mighty truth lies in the Bible phrase "As a man thinketh, so is he," the better for future generations.

If a man thinks sickness, poverty and misfortune, he will meet them and claim them all eventually as his own. But he will not acknowledge the close relationship, he will deny his own children and declare they were sent to him by an evil fate.

Walter Atkinson tells us that "he who hates is an assassin."

Every kindergarten and public school teacher ought to embody this idea in the daily lessons for children.

It may not be possible to teach a child to "love every neighbor as himself," for that is the most difficult of Commandments to follow to the letter; but it is possible to eliminate hatred from a nature if we awaken sympathy for the object of dislike.

That which we pity we cannot hate. The wonderful Intelligence which set this superb system of worlds in action must have been inspired by love for all it created.

So much grandeur and magnificence, so much perfection of detail, could only spring from Love.

Whatever is out of harmony in our little world has been caused by man's substituting hate and fear for love and faith.

Every time we allow either hate or fear to dominate our minds we disarrange the order of the universe and make trouble for humanity, and ourselves.

It may be a little late in reaching us, but it is sure to come back to the Mind which sent forth the cause.

Every time we entertain thoughts of love, sympathy, forgiveness and faith we add to the well-being of the world, and create fortunate and successful conditions for ourselves.

Those, too, may be late in coming to us--BUT THEY WILL COME.

Right thinking is not attained in a day or a week.

We must train the mind to reject the brood of despondent, resentful, fearful and prejudiced thoughts which approach it, and to invite and entertain cheerful, broad and wholesome thoughts instead, just as we overcome false tones and cultivate musical ones in educating the voice for singing.

When we once realize that by driving away pessimistic, angry and bitter thoughts we drive away sickness and misfortune to a great extent, and that by seeking the kinder and happier frame of mind we seek at the same time success and health and good luck, we will find a new impetus in the control of our mental forces.

For we all love to be paid for our worthy deeds, even while we believe in being good for good's sake only. And nothing in life is surer than this:

RIGHT THINKING PAYS LARGE DIVIDENDS.

_Think_ success, prosperity, usefulness. It is much more profitable than thinking self-destruction or the effort at self-destruction for that is an act which aims at an impossibility. You can destroy the body, but the _you_ who suffers in mind and spirit will suffer still, and live still. You will only change your location from one state to another. You did not make yourself, you cannot unmake yourself. You can merely put yourself among the spiritual tramps who hang about the earth's borders, because they have not prepared a better place for themselves.

Suicide is cheap, vulgar and cowardly. Because you have made a wreck of a portion of this life, do not make a wreck of the next.

Mend up your broken life here, go along bravely and with sympathy and love in your heart, determined to help everybody you can, and to better your condition as soon as possible. Men have done this after fifty, and lived thirty good years to enjoy the results.

Do not feel hurt by the people who slight you, or who refer to your erring past. Be sorry for them. I would rather be a tender-hearted reformed sinner than a hard-hearted model of good behavior.

I would rather learn sympathy through sin than never learn it at all.

There is nothing we cannot live down, and rise above, and overcome. There is nothing we cannot be in the way of nobility and worth.

Royalty

We get what we give. I have never known this rule to fail in the long run. If we give sympathy, appreciation, goodwill, charitable thoughts, admiration and love--we receive all these back from humanity in time.

We may bestow them unworthily, as the sower of good seed may cast it on a rocky surface, but the winds of heaven will scatter it broadcast, and, while the rock remains barren, the fields shall yield a golden harvest.

_The seed must be good_, however.

If I say to myself without any real regard for another in my heart, "I want that person to like me, I will do all in my power to please him," I need not be surprised if my efforts fail or prove of only temporary efficacy.

Neither need I feel surprised or pained if I find by-and-by that other people are bestowing policy friendship upon me, actions with no feeling for a foundation.

No matter how kind and useful I make my conduct toward an individual, if in my secret heart I am criticising him severely and condemning him, I must expect criticism and condemnation from others as my portion.

We reap what we sow. Some harvests are longer in growing than others, but they all grow in time.

Servility in love, or friendship, or duty, is never commendable. I do not believe God Himself feels complimented when the beings He created as the highest type of His workmanship declare themselves worthless worms, unworthy of His regard!

We are heirs of God's kingdom, and rightful inheritors of happiness, and health, and success. What monarch would feel pleasure in having his children crawl in the dust, saying, "We are less than nothing, miserable, unworthy creatures?"

Would he not prefer to hear them say, proudly: "We are of royal blood"?

We ought always to believe in our best selves, in our right to love and be loved, to give and receive happiness, and to toil and be rewarded. And then we should bestow our love, our gifts and our toil with no anxious thought about the returns. If we chance to love a loveless individual, to give to one bankrupt in gratitude, to toil for the unappreciative, it is but a temporary deprivation for us. The love, the gratitude and the recompense will all come to us in time from some source, or many sources. It cannot fail.

Heredity

American parents, as a rule, can be put in two extreme classes, those who render the children insufferably conceited and unbearable by overestimating their abilities and overpraising their achievements, and those who render them morbid and self-depreciating by a lack of wholesome praise.

It is rare indeed, when we find parents wise and sensible enough to strengthen the best that is in their children by discreet praise, and at the same time to control the undesirable qualities by judicious and kind criticism.

I heard a grandmother not long ago telling callers in the presence of a small boy what a naughty, bad child he was, and how impossible it seemed to make him mind. Wretched seed to sow in the little mind, and the harvest is sure to be sorrow.

I have heard parents and older children, expatiate on the one stupid trait and the one plain feature of a bright and handsome child, intending to keep it from forming too good an opinion of itself.

To all young people I would say, cultivate a belief in yourself. Base it on self-respect and confidence in God's love for his own handiwork. Say to yourself, "I will be what I will to be." Not because your human will is all-powerful, but because the Divine will is back of you. Analyze your own abilities and find what you are best fitted to do.

Then get about the task of doing your chosen work to the very best of your ability, and do not for an instant doubt your own capabilities. Perhaps they may be dwarfed and enfeebled by years of morbid thought; but if you persist in a self-respecting and self-reliant and God-trusting course of thinking your powers will increase and your capabilities strengthen.

It is no easy matter to overcome a habit of self-depreciation.

It is like straightening out a limb which has been twisted by a false attitude or correcting a habit of sitting round-shouldered.

It requires a steady and persistent effort. When the depressing and doubtful thoughts come drive them away like malaria-breeding insects. Say, "This is not complimentary to my Maker. I am His work. I must be worthy of my own respect and of that of others. I must and will succeed."

Invincibility

If we persistently desire good things to come to us for unselfish purposes, and at the same time faithfully perform the duties which lie nearest, we will eventually find our desires being realized in the most unexpected manner.

Our thought force has proved to be a wedge, opening the seemingly inaccessible Wall of Circumstance.

To read good books, to think and ponder on what you read, to cultivate every agreeable quality you observe in others, and to weed from your nature every unworthy and disagreeable trait, to study humanity with an idea of being helpful and sympathetic, all these efforts will help you to the ultimate attainment of your wishes.

It is a proven fact that if we devote a few moments each day to reaching exercises, standing with loose garments and stretching the body muscles to reach some point above us, we increase our stature.

Just so if we mentally and spiritually are continually reaching to a higher plane we are growing.

Every least thought of the brain is a chisel, chipping away at our characters, and our characters are building our destinies.

The incessant and persistent demand of our hearts and minds MUST be granted.

That Mental Chisel

During a trolley ride through a thrifty New England locality, where church spires were almost as plentiful as trees, I studied the faces of the people who came into the car during my two hours' journey.

The day was beautiful, and all along the route our numbers were recruited by bevies of women, young, middle aged and old, who were bent on shopping expeditions or setting forth to make social calls.

They went and came at each village through which our coach of democracy passed, and they represented all classes.

The young girls were lovely, as young girls are the world over: their complexion possessed that soft tender luster, peculiar to seashore localities, for the salty breath of Father Neptune is the greatest of cosmetics. Many of the young faces were formed in classic mould, their features clearly cut and refined, and severe, like the thoughts and principles of their ancestors.

Often I observed a mother and some female relative, presumably an aunt, in company with a young relative; and always the sharpening and withering process of the years of set and unelastic thought was discernible upon their faces, which had once been young, and classic and attractive.

In the entire two hours I saw but three lovely faces which were matured by time.

I saw scores of well-dressed and evidently well-cared-for women of middle age, whose countenances were furrowed, drawn, pinched, sallow, and worn, beyond excuse; for time, sorrow, and sickness are not plausible excuses for such ravages upon a face God drew in lines of beauty.

Time should mature a woman's beauty as it does that of a tree. Sorrow should glorify it as does the frost the tree, and sickness should not be allowed to lay a lingering touch upon it, until death calls the spirit away.

Without question the great majority of the women I saw were earnest orthodox Christians.

I heard snatches of conversation regarding Church and Charities and I have no doubt that each woman among them believed herself to be a disciple of Christ.

Yet where was the result of the loving, tender, sweet spirit of Christ's teaching?

It surely was not visible upon those pinched and worried faces? and those faces were certain and truthful chronicles of the work done by the minds within.

One face said to me in every line, "I talk about God's goodness and loving-kindness, but I worry over the dust in the spare room, I fret about our expenses, I am troubled about my lungs, and I fear my husband has an unregenerate heart. I never know an hour's peace, for even in my sleep, I worry, worry, worry, but of course I know I will be saved by the blood of Christ!"

Another said, "I am in God's fold, well and safe, but I hate and despise my nearest neighbor, for she wears clothes that I am sure she cannot pay for, and her children are always dressed better than mine. I quarrel with my domestics, and am always in trouble of some kind, just because human beings are so full of sin and no one but myself is ever right. I shall be so glad to leave this world of woe and go to heaven, but I hope I will not meet many of my present acquaintances there!"

Another said, "If I only had good health--but I was born to sickness and suffering, and it is God's will that I should suffer!"

Oh the pity of it, and to imagine this is religion!

Thank God the wave of "New Thought" is sweeping over the land, and washing away those old blasphemous errors of mistaken creeds.

The "New Thought" is to give us a new race of beautiful middle-aged and old people.

To-day in any part of the land among rich, poor, ignorant or intellectual, orthodox or materialists the beautiful mature face is rarer than a white blackbird in the woods.

It is impossible to be plain, ugly, or uninteresting in late life, if the mind keeps itself occupied with right thinking.

The withered and drawn face of fifty indicates withered emotions and drawn and perverted ambitions.

The dried and sallow face tells its story of dried up sympathies and hopes.

The furrowed face tells of acid cares eating into the heart.

All this is irreligious! yet all this prevails extensively in our most conservative and churchy communities.

He who in truth trusts God cannot worry.

He who loves God and mankind, cannot become dried and withered at fifty, for love will re-create his blood, and renew the fires of his eye.

He who understands his own divine nature will grow more beautiful with the passing of time, for the God within will become each year more visible.

The really reverent soul accepts its sorrows as blessings in disguise, and he who so accepts them is beautified and glorified by them, within and without.

Are you growing more attractive as you advance in life? Is your eye softer and deeper, is your mouth kinder, your expression more sympathetic, or are you screwing up your face in tense knots of worry? Are your eyes growing hopeless and dull, is your mouth drooping at the corners, and becoming a set thin line in the centre, and is your skin dry, and sallow, and parched?

Study yourself and answer these questions to your own soul, for in the answer depends the decision whether you really love and trust God, and believe in your own immortal spirit, or whether you are a mere impostor in the court of faith.

The Object of Life

What do you believe to be the object of your life?

To be happy and successful, perhaps you are thinking, even if you do not answer in those words.

That is the idea of the many. Meanwhile others, who have been educated in the melancholy faith of their ancestors, believe the object of this life is to be miserable, poor, and full of sorrow, that they may wear a crown of glory hereafter.

But the clear thinker and careful observer must realize that there is one and only one main object in life--_the building of character_.

He who sets out in early youth with that ambition and purpose, and keeps to it, will not only attain his object, but he will, too, attain happiness and true success--for there is no such thing as failure for the man or woman of character.

We often apply the two words character and success, unworthily.

We speak of a man of "much character" when he is merely self-assertive and stubborn, and we call a man successful, who has accumulated a fortune, or achieved fame and a position, by doubtful methods.

Then what is character, and what is success?

Character is the result of the cultivation of the highest and noblest qualities in human nature, and putting those qualities to practical use.

Success is the conquest of the lower and baser self, and the ability to be useful to one's fellow men.

There are men of brain, wealth and position who are failures, and there are men of limited abilities and in humble places who are yet successful, inasmuch as they make the utmost of themselves, and their opportunities.

It makes no difference how lowly your sphere in life may be, and no matter how limited your environment, you can build your character if you will. You need no outlay of money, no assistance from those in power, no influence.

Character Building must be done alone, and by yourself. The ground must be cleansed of debris, and the structure must be erected stone by stone.

It is dull, slow, hard work, especially the preparation.

All preparation is drudgery.

When this little whirling globe of ours began to cool in space think what a task lay before it! Think of the mass of chaos, which had to slowly shape itself into mighty, green, glad and snow-capped mountains, fertile vales, and noble forests.

Each one of us is a little world, whirling alone on an individual orbit, but the divine power is within us, to grow into symmetry, beauty, and perfection if we only realize it.

And the happiness of the work, once we begin it, is beyond the power of description.

There is no other satisfaction can compare with that of looking back across the years and finding that you have grown in self-control, in charity of judgment, in a sense of justice, in generosity, and in unselfishness.

If you are conscious of this growth, let no lack of material success for one moment disturb you. That will come, enough for your need, in time.

The man of symmetrically developed character is never a pauper.

He is never dependent for more than a temporary period.

To possess character is to be useful, and to be useful is to be independent, and to be useful and independent, is to be happy, even in the midst of sorrow; for sorrow is not necessarily unhappiness.

The man who has made the development of a noble and harmonious character the business of his life, accepts his sorrows as means of greater growth, and finds in them an exaltation of spirit which is closely allied to happiness.

To such a nature, absolute wretchedness would only be possible through the loss of self-respect; the lowering of an ideal or the failure of a principle.

Would you be happy and successful? Then set yourself to _build character_.

Seek to be worthy of your own highest commendation.

Wisdom

A great many people are attracted to the New Thought of the day, by its declaration of our right to material wealth, and by its claim that the mind of man can create, command, and control conditions which produce wealth.

There is no question concerning the truth of this claim.

But woe unto him who cultivates his mental and spiritual powers only for this purpose.

His gold shall turn to dross, his pleasure to Dead Sea fruit.

He shall be as one who drags a beautiful garment through the mud of the streets, and while clothed in purple and fine linen is yet a repulsive object.

Into the Great Scheme of Existence, as first conceived by the Creator, money did not enter.

He made this beautiful Universe, and all that it contains was meant for the enjoyment of His creatures.

There was no millionaire and no pauper soul created by God.

Each soul contains the spark of the divine spirit, and by the realization of that spark, and all it means, whatever is desired by mortal man may come to him.

But wise is he who remembers the injunction, "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all other things shall be added unto you."

Wise is he who understands the meaning of the words, "Unto him that hath, more shall be given."

Not until you obtain the faculty of being happy through your spiritual and mental faculties, independent of material conditions, not until you learn to value wealth only as a means of helpfulness, can you safely turn your powers of concentration upon the idea of opulence.

To demand, assert, and command wealth for its mere sensual benefits, to focus your mind upon it because you desire to shine, lead, and triumph, is to play spiritual football with spiritual dynamite.

You may obtain what you seek, you may accumulate riches, but at the cost of all that is worth living for.

The merely ignorant, or stupid, or wholly material man who stumbles into a fortune, through inheritance, dogged persistent industry, or chance, may enjoy it in his own fashion, and do no harm in the world.

But the man who knows and who has developed his spiritual powers only for the purpose of commanding material gain, might better have a millstone tied about his neck. For he makes himself a spiritual outcast, and his money shall never bring him happiness.

Make, therefore, your assertion of opulence the last in your list, as you make Love first.

Call unto yourself spiritual insight, absolute unselfishness, desire for universal good, wisdom, justice, and usefulness, and last of all opulence.