Part 1 (2/2)
In your Will sleep the oracles of prophecy. You were made master over this world. In your Will is enthroned Sovereignty, Dominion, Kings.h.i.+p.
With force of Will, Pygmalion carved his soul dream into the marble until its loveliness of form and grace became so real as to take on life and motion. With force of Will Dante created his h.e.l.l, and with force of Will Milton created his Paradise Regained. Put your Will into command. Start new. Realize that you are Supreme. Get a mind picture of what you want, what you want to be, what you want to do, THEN ACTUALIZE IT. Get above doubts. Do not wait to be well, to be happy, to be rich, all of these will be added unto you. Climb out of your prison of doubts, worries, fears. Begin where you are. Let your Will create, even as G.o.d creates. ”He that believeth shall not perish, shall not abide in darkness, shall have the light of life, shall have everlasting life; all things are possible to him that believeth.” Come down out of the gallery of supine hero wors.h.i.+ppers, get into the arena and be the hero. Quit the drivel of matinee idol longing, and get onto the stage of life and get the bouquets for yourself. The world is waiting to ring up the curtain for your star part in life.
=YOU CAN WORK MIRACLES=: A miracle is a wonder, a marvel, a supernatural occurrence, a result obtained by suspension of natural processes. You can do that any day. The miracle is that so few do it.
You know Ibsen's play, ”The Doll House.” How the wife forged a note, raised the money to send her husband to regain his health. How he did regain it, returned to great prominence and wealth as a banker. Then the blackmailer threatened to reveal the crime. How the husband rushed to his wife in anger that she should have done such a thing, that it meant ruin to him in his high position. How the wife replied: ”Why, I expected the miracle. That you would save me as I saved you. That you would say that you did it.” If he only had, what a marvelous, what a wonderful, what a supernatural thing it would have been. Christ made whole and useful a withered hand. People say, ”O, that I could do so wonderful a thing.” Well, why don't you. See the withered hands around you. A young woman with a beautiful voice, but no means to cultivate it. You have a thousand or so in the bank? You can save that voice to a world that needs song. A young man with a fine mind, helpless to go thru college, you have means to give that mind to a world in power and usefulness. The natural thing is for you not to do it, the supernatural, the miracle, is that you are divine enough to do it. A man, a woman, is forsaken, friendless, cruelly judged by the world, their goodness blasted, their spirit crushed, their hearts bleeding, their lives made useless, withered. The natural thing is to avoid such, stand aloof, be quite scornfully indifferent. The miracle would happen if you went to them, lifted them up, restored them to society.
I have said avoid useless people, I mean selfish, lazy, purposeless, aimless people. Sir Humphrey Davy worked a miracle when he took the boy Farrady out of a stable loft and gave him a chance to cultivate his genius. The Sistine Chapel is Angelo's miracle. When the band on the deck of the t.i.tanic, under the pale light of the morning stars played ”Nearer My G.o.d To Thee,” to give hope and strength to men and women struggling to be saved, each player, as the voice of his melody was forever hushed behind the s.h.i.+ning emerald gates, in the crystal tomb of the sea, went down crowned with the glory of a selfless miracle. The natural thing would have been for them to have frantically fought to save themselves. What superb opportunities to work miracles have pa.s.sed you! What magnificent possibilities are still right before you! The cripple is always at your Gate Beautiful. Are you divine enough, wonderful enough, marvelous enough, supernatural enough to say: ”Such as I HAVE, GIVE I unto thee”? Do it quickly. Do it, and you shall know daily the joy of hearing the Father say: ”This is My Son in whom I am well pleased.”
If there is any one person on this earth to whom I take off my hat and wait until they safely pa.s.s, it is a school teacher. The most obscure teacher, back in the country hills, unknown, unthought of, unpraised, but with loving patience unfolding the secrets of knowledge to little frowzy headed boys and girls, can look into her mirror at evening and behold the face of an angel.
Flowers cast their wealth upon the vacant air, and rich fathers oft cast their wealth upon the vacant heir.
Some people are so sensitive that if you call them ”Honey,” they will break out with the ”hives” the next morning.
Do not divorce your husband because he has cold feet, perhaps he got them since you were married.
Christ stopped every funeral that came his way and sent the mourners home singing. Funeral sermons were too sad for Him to preach. Every sick room He entered became a health resort. He made grave-yards unpopular.
Many a lonely bachelor looking back over the stretch of years, recalls the charming moonlight nights, when the cool summer air was perfumed with old fas.h.i.+oned flowers, and he looked into the loving eyes of his sweetheart; recalls how the crimson glow of youth flushed her velvet cheeks as he took her warm hand in his; recalls sadly that if he had only given that hand ”a square deal,” played it in the game of life, he would have had ”a full house” now.
Would you like to become young? Then tap new reservoirs of youthful thoughts, irrigate your alkali desert from the fountains of youth, become youthfully active in some new field of work. Vanderbilt added $100,000,000 to his fortune after he was eighty. Wordsworth earned the Laureates.h.i.+p at seventy-three. Theirs established the French Republic and became its first president at seventy-two. Verdi wrote ”Falstaff”
at eighty. Sir Walter Scott was $600,000 in debt when he was fifty-five, but thru his own efforts he paid all and made himself a lasting name.
Book knowledge is not all. A wealthy, fond father, fearing his son would be contaminated by college life, had him educated at home. When he was twenty-one, he took him to ride thru the streets of the city.
They pa.s.sed a female seminary just as the doors opened and a crowd of young women came out. The dear boy grabbed his father's arm and cried, ”What are those?” His father replied, ”They are only goslins.” Later in the day, the fond father said: ”My son, you have obeyed me, have faithfully completed your education, now I am ready to spend $50,000 to give you the highest ambition of your life.” The boy looked up in glad wonder and said: ”O, dad, give me a goslin.”
=Lesson Second
SUPREME CONTROL OF AGE=
=YOUTH IS ETERNAL:= Nature never grows old. The flowers that bloomed in Eden are blooming to-day. Just as lovely, just as sweet, just as fresh and unchanged. The roses your life-mate brings home to you, have the same fragrance as the roses Adam brought to Eve, if he thought of it. The lovely stars that glitter in the azure fields above you tonight, have the same loveliness that gleamed in tremulous glory down upon the shepherds beyond Bethlehem. The radiant, life giving rays of the sun that ten thousand, thousand years ago warmed mother earth into vernal spring life, are the same life giving rays that shall bring again the spring-tide. Life never grows old, it only changes form. Your life is perpetual, then your youth may be perpetual. The human race is ever young, its units fall off. You should be younger at sixty, than at sixteen, because you have more of life. Growing old is a habit. People travel along the years up the hill of life, till they reach a certain point where they begin to THINK they must be growing old. Think its time to sag. Think its time to droop. Think its time to begin the process of decay. Then begin to talk about it. To write letters about it. To feel around for it. To look for it in others. Finally the habit they inherited from the race is on, and they are old. Life is endless, but you can think it short, ”The power of an endless life,” is within you, but by thinking you can turn it to the white ashes of old age. THINK YOUTH AND YOU STAY YOUNG.
=YOUTH IS GROWTH:= Keep growing and you keep young. A new idea will make you feel younger. Develop it and it will develop you.
Quicken your mental throb with new ideas. Begin now. Stop talking about being too old to grow. You pa.s.s by trees daily, a hundred, two hundred years old, still they are growing. The rose bush on a wall in China is supposed to be over a thousand years old, it bears more roses now, than when it was a mere slip of a vine of only one hundred.
Gladstone at eighty-two was a growing statesman, and elected prime minister of England for the fourth time. Cato at eighty began to study Greek, and renewed the youth of his mind. Donald Davis is a growing hunter at one hundred and three. G.o.ddard Diamond was a growing teacher of health, when he was one hundred and eleven. I know a bright, cheery lady who is just beginning a new study for decorating china, along with her household cares, and she is eighty-eight. Also another woman who has taken up a new process of enlarging drawings into water-colors and she is eighty-one years young. The fig tree withered when the Master of Life found it not growing, producing, creating. When you stop growing you will wither by the same law. Grow something, create something, produce something and the law of youth will pervade your Being.
=YOUTH IS OBSERVING THE LAW:= Observing the law of health, the law of mind, the law of growth, the law of harmony, the law of production, the law of expression, the law of beauty, the law of selflessness. Keep your bodily forces up. Rebuild destroyed tissue.
Keep the system free of waste. Stop poisoning your body with anger, hate, jealousy, fear. Keep your mind sweet. Think cheerfully. Avoid mental turmoil and excitement. Two great enemies of youth are worry and fear. The next is selfishness. Think every morning when you rise--”This new day is new life. It is fresh from the hand of G.o.d. It is mine to use. I will increase it unto the Perfect Day.” Grow in each day, and make each day grow. Check discord. Quit useless discussion for it weakens and withers. Stop quarreling. Check complainings. Root criticism out of your life. You are bigger than these things. Get into harmony. You are of the world, upon worlds, universe unto universe.
Study your words to make them have beauty, your walk to have grace, your personality to make it magnetic, your smile to give courage and comfort, your presence to have it healing, helping, inspiring. ”If there be any virtue in whatsoever things are lovely, think on those things.”
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