Part 17 (1/2)

”But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other functions. Relatively few medical and scientific men, I fancy, can pray.

Few can carry on any living commerce with G.o.d. Yet many of us are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in everyone potential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor can thus be easily explained.”

Have a few simple sentences full of thanksgiving, of peace and rest. The best are found in the Bible. The words to Moses, ”My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest,” may be given and repeated many times with a realization of their deep meaning and a personal application to the individual.

Not only repeat phrases, lines, and verses, full of beautiful thought, but change these into your own words. Learn to articulate your own convictions and apply them to your own needs,--even paraphrase, for example, such a phrase as ”He restoreth my soul” in the twenty-third Psalm. For the word ”soul” we can subst.i.tute anything according to the specific needs of the hour. We should, however, use nothing that is not in accordance with universal love and the highest spiritual ideals of man and of our conceptions of the universe. We must always remember that truth is universal.

We can change ”soul” also to ”health,” ”strength” or ”life,” to ”joy,”

to ”success,” to ”confidence,” to the body or any part of the body which may seem to be afflicted.

There are in this Psalm other good affirmations on going to sleep. Take individual clauses and repeat them many times, such as ”I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

One of the best affirmations is found in the first of the twenty-seventh Psalm. ”The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom [or of what] shall I be afraid?

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord [in a consciousness of His presence] all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple [to commune with Him in the sacred temple of my own soul].

”Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”

Everyone should find his own, should find it in his experience, find it by personal investigation and study of the Bible and through spiritual realization.

We should live in peace with all men, be able to rejoice evermore, ”to pray without ceasing”; that is, we should always be in an att.i.tude to receive that which is good and never admit that which is negative;--hate, antagonism or fear,--but we should welcome love and that which we know expresses the ”Infinite Presence.” Antagonism, hate, discords prevent us from living our hundred years. ”Certain cla.s.ses of men shall not live out half their days.”

The last moment before going to sleep should be one of peaceful rest.

Say ”Not my will but Thine” and give up everything to the Infinite and Eternal.

My own best help is thanksgiving and praise. When I cannot give up the thoughts and conflicts of the day, I can bring my whole being into reposeful rhythm best by expressing thanks that I can be awake and that I have shared in the life of a day. I praise the Infinite Presence that I can know beauty when I see it, that I can understand truth and know that two times three are not seven and that I can partic.i.p.ate in the goodness of the universe. Then, before I know it, I have laid aside the conflicts of the day and have pa.s.sed into peaceful and harmonious rest.

This method of thanksgiving especially applies to those times when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Returning to Pippa, we find her retirement to her own room and her method of going to sleep no less suggestive as an example than her awakening.

She met the first wakening moment with joy and praise as she resolutely put aside the dark thought of her life and went singing all through the day with the same spirit of thanksgiving and love for all mankind.

Now she comes back to her room weary and discouraged, as we nearly all do. She knows nothing of what her songs have accomplished, nothing of the wonderful influence that has been exercised. In her disheartened moment she sees the sunset in the dark cloud and thinking over the day she would like to know what she really has done.

Yet she checks herself and returns to her morning hymn and keeps her faith and trust. ”Results belong to the Master, Thou hast no need to measure them.” She becomes very humble, willing, and submissive to the hard task of the morrow. Little she dreams of the revelation that will come of the secrets of her own life and family.

”We know not what we shall be.” Each of us at the close of life lies down without realizing our relation to the Infinite, without realizing that we are children and heirs. Blessed is he who feels that his hymn is also ”True in some sense or other,” that life is true and that each one performs some work and it is not for us to say whether it is great or small. They who wrought but one hour received the same wages as they who wrought the whole day.

Deeply symbolical, allegorical, and typical in the poetic sense of human life is Pippa's closing thought as she lies down to sleep.

”Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day!

How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?

Ah, Pippa, morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed!

Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's.

Oh, lark, be day's apostle To mavis, merle and throstle, Bid them their betters jostle From day and its delights!

But at night, brother howlet, over the woods, Toll the world to thy chantry; Sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods Full complines with gallantry; Then, owls and bats, Cowls and t.w.a.ts, Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods, Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!

Now, one thing I should like to really know: How near I ever might approach all these I only fancied being, this long day: --Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so As to ... in some way ... move them--if you please, Do good or evil to them some slight way.