Part 8

If we agree on these things, and do useful work, and think helpful thoughts, we are doing our duty. Theories, arguments and studying too deeply on bootless systems, codes, beliefs, cults, isms and doctrines, is a waste of time. When we can, here and now, derive definite benefits from doing the simple and helpful things, and acting and thinking the simple, practical cheer thoughts, it is neither necessary nor helpful for us to waste time on spiritualism or theoretical beliefs that cannot be proven to our own satisfaction.

We are asked to believe these strange, impractical, unnatural beliefs because of the sincerity of others. It's better to believe and to credit the things we can ourselves measure, understand and sincerely adopt.

There are hundreds of strange beliefs and spiritual systems, each claiming to be all-powerful, all-right. If any one is all truth, then all the others are all wrong.

The bigot who assumes he is the sole possessor of truth--the cult, sect, ism, or science that claims to possess all truth and presumes to lay down the exact rules for the world to obey--should be classed with those misguided religions and institutions of the dark past which burned human beings who dared to doubt their claim to the possession of all truth and knowledge.

God never gave his approval to any one man-made religious sect.

God is the universal good power. Man often tries to dwarf God's idea to the narrow dimensions of his own small soul.

43.

[Sidenote: Whiskey and Fake Medicines.]

Whiskey must go. It is written on the pages of the record book of man's progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and the fake medicine go. They have had their day. The quack doctor has already breathed his last in many parts of the country. The fake medicine schemes are still with us, but they are becoming increasingly difficult to put over. That they are doomed to extinction, there can be no doubt.

The side-whiskered advertising doctor who magnifies symptoms and proclaims them to be grave forerunners of awful, debilitating disease, is nothing short of a criminal. He is one of the worst of criminals, because he imposes upon the credulity of the ignorant, excites their fear by means of sensational scarehead advertising, and then when he has finally lured them into his spider-web, fleeces them unmercifully. These charlatans are really more contemptible than any thief, for the thief does not pretend to be anything else but what he is, while the quack doctor swindles and exploits you under the guise of being your benefactor.

As I have repeatedly explained, illness, feeling "out of sorts," local pains and sickness, unless of the contagious or infectious kind, are largely conditions of the mind.

Most of the temporary ailments are caused by constipation, wrong diet or lack of exercise. The doctor gives a laxative, nature re-asserts herself, and the patient is cured.

Chronic ailments require long treatments--making long bills and many visits for the quack doctor.

[Sidenote: Your Family Physician.]

Your health and happiness are things largely in your own control. However, when you feel you must have a doctor, go to your family physician and not to a strange doctor who advertises. His advertisement is merely a spiderweb to catch and hold you while he robs you.

It is a hopeful sign of the brighter future toward which man is progressing, that the respectable papers will not lend their aid to swindling doctors. The best papers will not carry these quack doctor or fake medicine ads.

Before long the government will pass laws abolishing this baneful, shameful, quack advertising. Quack doctoring, gambling, liquor selling--these are all swindling methods to get money, and in the getting, the ghouls and parasites who practise these "professions" are killing men, ruining homes, destroying happiness, holding back progress.

The one object of the quack doctor is to size you up and see what you "are good for." "Good for" means how much money can he get from you, and how long can he keep you as a patient to contribute to his coffers.

Let every reader of this book enroll as an opponent to quack doctors and quack medicines, and by word and influence help to hasten the day when such pernicious swindlers and swindling schemes are things of the past.

44.

No two minds can see the same picture in the same way, nor can two persons, armed and equipped with logic, come to the same definite conclusions on religion.

The old Scripture said: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The new Scripture teaches us to "turn the other cheek" and "love our enemies."

[Sidenote: Religion, Old and New.]

Two hundred years ago witchcraft was practised and miserable human beings were burned at the stake. Thirty years ago the preacher who took exception to the universal belief of a hell of fire and brimstone was thrown out of the church. To-day no preacher believes in such a hell.

Present day religion is really a Sunday religion. One and a half hours a week the members of the church join in singing, "We shall know each other there." The remainder of the week they make it a point to keep from knowing each other here.

[Sidenote: Sectarianism.]

The Protestant church divides itself into numerous sects, each one built on some particular ordinance or practice. Each one, in matters of doctrine, will swallow a camel but will strain at a gnat. One sect insists that baptism shall be by immersion because the disciples baptized that way. They believe in following custom literally, yet in the cities they immerse the members in a big tub under the pulpit, which practice is entirely different from the method employed by John the Baptist.

Another sect insists upon having a communion every Sunday because the Bible says, "As often as you do this," etc. To be literal in the matter of communion, the Lord's Supper should be served at night, as the original was, and it should be supper and not a few pieces of broken crackers.

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, churches considered it a sacrilege to use an organ. To-day they have orchestras and hire operatic singers.

So it seems that the church is broadening out. Thinking men refuse to believe that religion should any longer be a matter of self-chastisement and 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.

[Sidenote: A Live Religion.]

I am thoroughly convinced that the church must recognize that a great evolution is taking place--that we must 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 get together in the great field for a common cause, rather than try to maintain little independent vineyards.

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

It must teach us how to be and how to get good out of our to-day on earth. If we are good and do good here, we certainly need have no fear for our future prospects.

[Sidenote: The Universal Church.]

Day by day 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 sect and cult barriers until we are joined together 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 by a lot of creed paragraphs and beliefs. That promise doesn't have any "buts" or "ifs." It doesn't say we shall be saved if we be Methodists or Catholics, Baptists or Presbyterians. Those names are man-made, and the 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 of these delegates, 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.

45.

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 a matter of guess work.

This inventory, which deals with money, materials, etc., and things which are mixed more or less with the human element, is affected by conditions of 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.

[Sidenote: Self Inventory. Listing the Liabilities.]

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 should put down on the debit side in the list of liabilities the pull-backs, hindrances and other business-killers. These items are untruth, unfairness, sharp practice, grouchiness, impatience, worry, ill-health, gloom, meanness, broken word, unfilled 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 includes all other persons. Did you lie to, steal from, cheat 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 have you driven them further from you?

Analyze your spiritual account. Is your religious belief a sham or a 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?

[Sidenote: Balancing the Statement.]

Be fair in your inventory. Write down the facts in the two columns designated "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 bump some day.

46.

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

Many people are unconscious of their egotism, yet their conversation carries the suggestion, "Even I, who am superior to the herd, would do this or that."

[Sidenote: The Personal Pronoun.]

For instance, two persons were arguing about the merits of an inexpensive automobile. Parenthetically, I may say that 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.

This egotism often crops out 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 very nature 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 out I's, it makes trouble.

[Sidenote: Good Breeding.]

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 almost anything else 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'.

47.

Four hundred and twenty-six 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 back with the ship to Spain.

[Sidenote: The Last Step Counts.]

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 to-day.

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 everlastingly at it like Columbus did, has not increased, perhaps.

Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He steered in 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 toward the last.

[Sidenote: Keeping Everlastingly at It.]

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

Perseverance and pep--when all is said and done, these are the factors without which no great achievement is possible.

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--these are magic words. They are the "Open Sesame" of modern life. They open the door to opportunity, and will bring you prosperity, peace and plenty.

48.

The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide, and he will end up by becoming 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.

[Sidenote: Ridicule and Humor.]

Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and are sometimes decked out as puns. By and by, however, this bias toward 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. The fun disappears; the sting remains.

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

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

[Sidenote: A Dangerous Weapon.]

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.

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 approach to a subject anyway; the only good it can accomplish is by reflex action or rebound force.

Ridicule is mistakenly conceived, by many, as humor. It is used because it can so easily be employed, in a seemingly clever way, to create a laugh.

Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low comedy through the 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 people of similar brain-construction 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 is possible through 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 is so very hard.

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

[Sidenote: When You Can Go the Limit.]

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

49.

[Sidenote: Your Wife and Partner.]

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 a partnership basis, or there's sand in the gear box.

Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills. Play fair with her; show her what your income is; give her all you can afford and what economic and wise administration warrants. She'll cut the cloth to fit the garment.

When the husband questions every turn, every move, and doles out 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 being required to economize. They have probably been petted and humored, and are used to preening and smoothing their plumage and looking pretty.

[Sidenote: Fine Feathers.]

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

You can't expect her to know much about the economic side of the home the moment you slip the ring on her finger.

But she'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her shopping and encourages her in the 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, meddlesome 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 had the right idea. They shared home responsibilities and did fine team work. I think they were mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.

Mama 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 up their sleeve, then worry and trouble come 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.

50.

To-night I am in the Ozarks, and old Mother Earth is passing through the belt of meteoric dust--that great mysterious sea in the universe through which we pass every year about the middle of November.

[Sidenote: The Stars.]

I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected with humanity. That they are connected, I have no doubt, for truly, "the sun, the moon, the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me, that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a part, an atom though I be."

How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.

Franklin Adams some years ago photographed the whole canopy with 206 exposures. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and published his finding that there were 1,600,000,000 stars. That number is just about the number of humans on this earth. So, then, there is one star for each of us.

[Sidenote: Finite and Infinite.]