■.] 
 
h:, 
 
 
 c ^-^ 
 
 (iJatttgU MnitiErBitg Sitbrara 
 
 Jttjata, SJeio Sork 
 
 FROM •• 
 
 ulaso^ViiccLJl 
 __'^e"V;v.e.v>r 
 
The date shows when this voluc 
 
 To renew this book copy the call No. and give to 
 , ' the librarian. 
 
 HOME H6E RULES 
 
 ■MT5'J947' 
 
 ..>lflN2..2...I948-Jir-. 
 
 .JAM.1...8...ia43..J[.. 
 
 vy-l:. 
 
 , IIIW^rtAISirttE: 
 
 All Books subject to RecaU 
 
 All borrowers must regis- 
 ter in the library to borrow 
 books for home use. 
 
 All books must be re- 
 turned at end of college 
 year 'or inspectipn and 
 repairs. 
 
 Limited books must be re- 
 turned within the four week 
 limit and not renewed. 
 
 Students must return all 
 books before leaving town. 
 OfQj^ers should arrange for 
 the return of books wanted 
 during their absence from 
 town. 
 
 Volumes of periodicals 
 and of pamphlets are held 
 in the library as much as 
 lossible. , For special pur- 
 poses they are given out for 
 a limited time. 
 
 Borrowers should not use 
 their library privileges for 
 the benefit of other persons. 
 
 Books of special value 
 and gift books, when the 
 giver wishes it, are not 
 
 lowed to circulate. 
 
 Readers are asked to re- 
 port all cases of books 
 marked or mutilated. ^ 
 
 Do not deface books by marks and writing. 
 
 ,.^ 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 BJ1409 .031 
 
 Soul in suffering: a practical applicati 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 205 379 
 
A ^5-n< 
 
 COPTBIGHT, 1919 
 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1919 
 
 IT 
 
 ^^ 
 
 -V 
 
 ■r^ 
 
 / 
 
 "^ 
 
aoNaiis dO ONiaadjns anx 
 
 aaznvnxiHws ohav 
 
 aanioaa anx ox 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The greatest privilege of the physician's work 
 is his welcome into the intimacies of his patients' 
 inner lives. Day and night the busy practitioner 
 is in close touch with the souls of the sick. To 
 him it is specially given to most clearly recognize 
 the healthy soul with its sick body, the ill soul 
 with its distressed body and the whole body with 
 its ailing soul. 
 
 The following chapters have been written with 
 a constructively sympathetic understanding of the 
 soul-need which comes to the suffering. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029205379 
 
INTEODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 The reality of suffering is for us all. Until we 
 have felt the heaviness of its hand, its lighter 
 touches seem intolerable. If its mission is to build 
 character from sickness into timelessness, every 
 word and thought and inspiration which can rob 
 it of its repulsiveness, which can illuminate its 
 darksome mystery, which can reveal its touch of 
 love, is welcome. Religion and Medicine have 
 stood too long on opposite sides of the couch of 
 suffering, forgetting, one the body, the other, the 
 spirit, and both, the mind. 
 
 The Soul in Suffering has grown out of many 
 years spent in a realizing contact with illness of 
 body, mind and soul. It essays to bring a step 
 closer the practical benefits of the accuracies of 
 medical science and the highest aspirations of 
 our religion. It stands for medical ideals reach- 
 ing out to Christian ideals, that one of the greatest 
 problems of human existence — the problem of suf- 
 fering, which through the ages has been so pitiably 
 solved by the many — ^may be a bit more worthily 
 met by all helpers of mankind. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE UNSEEN 
 
 PAQE 
 
 I ThS Unseen .......... 1 
 
 I'l The Temporal 11 
 
 III Evolution 20 
 
 IV Reality 29 
 
 MAN'S POSSIBILITIES 
 
 V Ability 40 
 
 VI Stability 48 
 
 VII Attitude 59 
 
 VIII Health e !•; • 70 
 
 MAN SUrFERING 
 
 IX Hindrances 80 
 
 X COIIPLAININS 91 
 
 XI SUEFEEING 101 
 
 XII Death Ill 
 
 XIII Deserts 116 
 
 MAN STRIVING 
 
 XIV Contention 126 
 
 XV Moods 138 
 
 XVI Endurancte 146 
 
 XVII Margins 158 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MAN ATTAINING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XVIII Healing 169 
 
 XIX Work 179 
 
 XX Cooperation 187 
 
 XXI Freedom 197 
 
 MAN VICTORIOUS 
 
 XXII Faith 205 
 
 XXIII Righteousness 214 
 
 XXIV Serenity 224 
 
 XXV Whole Living 233 
 
THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE imSEEN 
 Thingg which are seen were not made of things which do appear. 
 
 ' There are few tendencies in human nature more 
 general than that toward superstition. Interest- 
 ing and important anthropological studies of lower 
 races and tribes are concerned with investigations 
 of their belief in evil influences, fetishes, charms 
 and wandering spirits. Even in civilized races 
 the individual is rare who does not openly or cov- 
 ertly avow his faith in the influence of new moons, 
 hooting owls, rabbit's feet or the curse of a dying 
 ancestor. For the things that are unseen are of 
 infinitely more portent and power than the things 
 which are visible. 
 
 Experience testifies that the ability to observe 
 accurately much which is tangible, is poorly de- 
 veloped in most of us, while the capacity to clearly 
 interpret that which passes before our observation 
 is even more rare. We attend a ball game and 
 watch with thrilling senses the sure, forceful 
 movements of the players. The pitcher's hands 
 hang listlessly for a moment at his side, and all 
 the fielders move to the right, or he stands with 
 
2 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 arm akimbo and the same fielders slip to the left ; 
 the ball is pitched, the runner on third starts for 
 home with apparently not one chance in fifty of 
 being safe; there is a dull crack of the bat and 
 the ball rolls but a few yards, the runner dashes 
 home and a game is won! "Why the movements 
 of the fielders? Why the bold dash for the 
 plate? Why the purposely impotent stroke of 
 the bat? All because the game is being played 
 by signals unseen by the thousands of onlookers 
 who are blind to most of the niceties of inside base- 
 ball. No player to-day stays long in the Major 
 Leagues who has not the keenness of sense which 
 enables him to detect instantly any one of the 
 many constantly changing signals by which each 
 step of the game is ordered from the bench. 
 
 We visit our physician. We are not up to 
 standard and feel the need of a going-over. Why 
 does he flash the little light in our eyes? Why 
 does he tap us here and there with his rubber 
 hammer? What does he hear when he so profes- 
 sionally thumps our chests or listens through his 
 little rubber instrument to the workings of the 
 inside wheels? Yes, what does he hear? So 
 much that would pass the attention of the rest of 
 us unperceived; so much that tells him the dif- 
 ference between robust health and impending ill- 
 ness ; so much that enables him to direct us wisely 
 what to use, what to take or what to do ; much, per- 
 chance, that tells him our working days are over, 
 that the old ship is drifting toward the shoals. 
 
 We enter our neighbor's home and carelessly 
 cross thfe hall rug. It is faded and a bit dingy. 
 
THE UNSEEN 3 
 
 How many of us can tell whether it is a piece of 
 cheap tapestry or a precious, antique oriental into 
 which, once upon a time, deft and patient fingers 
 wove thread by thread through dreary months the 
 sad tale or the glad tale of the family drama. Are 
 we walking on some mechanically twisted and 
 dyed threads representing only paltry dollars, or 
 are our feet pressing the very heart throbs of a 
 human soul? 
 
 Most of us have stood awed at the brink of 
 Niagara. We have caught ourselves watching the 
 play of the lacy froth draping as it does the thun- 
 dering, murderous onrush into the seething cal- 
 dron below. We peer into the abyss, feeling dan- 
 gerously drawn to become part of that reckless 
 tumult, for our identity is fairly annihilated by 
 our relative insignificance. Even the abyss itself, 
 shrouded as it ever is in the fleecy, cumulous cloud 
 of golden-white water-dust, is. made treacherously 
 inviting. This, and more, most of us have seen as 
 we stood beside this Giant of Nature. And yet, 
 there was one — ^newlywed perchance, or certainly 
 badly beau-stricken, who after a momentary si- 
 lence in the presence of this majestic spectacle re- 
 marked to her companion: "Oh, ain't it cute?" 
 Having eyes they see not; having ears they hear 
 not. Even so with all of us, in some realm of the 
 physical life, much passes unseen. 
 
 In the mental sphere of our being we find our- 
 selves equally, if not more obtuse. Thousands of 
 men have lived pinched lives, sacrificing even ordi- 
 nary comforts, that they might teach the world 
 the beauty, the inspiration, and the joys of art. 
 
4 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Hundreds of untouched volumes crowd library 
 shelves, volumes which contain priceless descrip- 
 tions of beauty and records of things artistic, and 
 yet, how many of us to-day, looking at a picture, 
 could locate the distant point or indicate the lines 
 of perspective, or intelligently discuss the compo- 
 sition of a simple landscape? How few would 
 venture, in the presence of an artist of known ex- 
 perience and ability, to express any opinion as to 
 the quality or value of this or that painting ! In- 
 deed, how many of us could satisfy even our own 
 uncritical selves as to whether sky and sea and 
 tree and distant haze have been painted in proper 
 tint and tone, or understandingly comment upon 
 the naturalness or artificiality, the high lights or 
 shadow lines so essential to the landscape's in- 
 tegrity? Even men whose life's work is devoted 
 to portraying line and color accurately, often fail 
 to see much that exists. I know well an artist who 
 never paints the sunshine. His shadows are deep 
 and rich and beautiful, but his pictures know not 
 the gold of the sun. To him one of the most 
 glorious of nature's colors is unseen. 
 
 When music whispers to the ear of our under- 
 standing are we more observant? I fear not, for 
 to-day our land is fairly alive with music-machines 
 whose worn records rasp and creak and squeak 
 and scrape, and we call it music! Pianos out of 
 tune capable of inflicting only pain upon the 
 trained ear are thumped and banged the live-long 
 day, a hideous oifering to the God of Music. 
 Many years ago a child learned her notes from an 
 old spinet, one string of which was untrue. She 
 
THE UNSEEN 5 
 
 became a great singer, a world-famed* singer, but 
 one tone in her register was ever imperfect. Par- 
 ents and early teachers had failed to note the de- 
 fective spinet-string and an otherwise perfect 
 voice was marred. To enjoy music, the majority 
 of us must feel the rythmic, moving throb of the 
 tempo, the air must be "catchy," easily followed, 
 often repeated, frankly keeping step with the ac- 
 companiment. But for such hearers the great 
 treasury of the world 's best music is closed. They 
 have not ears that sense the subtle themes which, 
 as threads of charm, weave in and out, revealed 
 now and hidden anon, forming a pattern as softly, 
 delicately and intricately beautiful as the finest 
 hand-wrought tapestry. Hearing we understand 
 not ! And we stretch and yawn or more consider- 
 ately keep respectfully silent, even when life's 
 most thrilling beauties are vibrating in our pres- 
 ence. 
 
 We have lived thoughtlessly many years, eating 
 and drinking, working and playing as we pleased. 
 We gradually become conscious of a heaviness in 
 the base of the brain, our thoughts become errant, 
 they do not, as formerly, keenly reflect the ebb 
 and flow of our surroundings. We find ourselves 
 from time to time in a bog of apprehension. We 
 grow irritable, impatient and unreasonable; in 
 fact, we are nervously * 'breaking down. " " Brace 
 up, old man, you look blue; come in and have a 
 drink and forget it." We have not been using 
 this stuff, but we certainly do feel braced up, and 
 before we realize it, reason and judgment, and 
 even decency, have gone by the board, routed by 
 
Q THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the seductions of alcohol. Or we invite more 
 sure and rapid demoralization by resorting to the 
 drug which gives artificial rest. We call our- 
 selves intelligent, but we are failing to see a funda- 
 mental truth, a law as unchangeable as that of the 
 Medes and Persians. Man cannot be uninterrupt- 
 edly at ease; comfort must be sacrificed at times 
 for future well-being. The drink and the "dope" 
 are but blindly pushing back the evil day of reck^ 
 oning and intensifying the power of its destructive 
 grip upon our future. It is difficult for one so 
 suffering to see that the quickest and most cer- 
 tain way back to wholeness is to will an unques- 
 tioning surrender of the habits and indulgencies 
 which carried him away from Nature's law of liv- 
 ing, for the early defect in all perverting habits 
 is an inadequate knowledge, not an impotent will. 
 It is difficult indeed to understand that for some 
 days or weeks one must suffer even more acutely, 
 even as one who has fallen down the declivity must 
 struggle with special effort again to reach the 
 highway. In art, in music, in health, and indeed 
 in all that is worth experiencing in life, the great- 
 est joys and successes are those which are rooted 
 well below the surface where the unseen is sought 
 and found and understood. 
 
 But there are truths which are higher than those 
 revealed by the intellect. The ultimate expression 
 of the unseen is what we speak of as the spiritual. 
 On the battle fronts of France no name was held 
 in greater reverence than that of plain, rugged, 
 self-taught Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's intellect 
 was clear, his judgment excellent, his understand- 
 
THE UNSEEN T 
 
 • 
 ing as perfect as is humanly possible; but it is 
 not for these attributes that he is revered. Lin- 
 coln saw not only with the eye of the body, and 
 the eye of the mind, but with the eye of the soul. 
 The future of a great nation hung in the balance ; 
 the armed hosts of Blue and Gray faced each 
 other, ever watching with eager intensity for any 
 possible flaw in organization whereby advantage 
 could be secured. The boy was but eighteen years 
 old. Marches had been long and rest inadequate. 
 He was found asleep on sentry duty. "Death" 
 was the sentence of the Court Martial, Justice 
 said "Even so," the army leaders nodded assent, 
 and the army itself realized that its safety de- 
 manded their comrade's execution for this vital 
 fault. The widowed mother secured an audience 
 with Lincoln. She had little to say; there was 
 nothing she could say to rebut the facts, to ques- 
 tion the right of officers and army to demand this 
 essential protection. Her garb was poor, her face 
 plain, her eyes weary and faded. But she was a 
 mother ! And when she said : ' * Oh, Mr. President, 
 he is my son, my only son," and the mother's 
 tears welled up in the weary eyes, the heart of 
 that great man saw her pain and anguish and need, 
 and he reprieved her boy. The eye of his soul 
 saw further than reason could see, for Lincoln 
 knew that the rights of love are higher than the 
 rights of man's justice. He saw the other side 
 of the question — ^the nation, the army, the critical 
 judges on the one hand, the obscure and friendless 
 woman on the other, justice demanding death and 
 mother-love pleading for life. He saw both sides 
 
8 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 and considered the rights of the lone woman 
 higher than army regulations. For such vision 
 we have heen given souls that we might see the 
 other side of each experience. There is the long 
 disabling and disheartening illness. With occupa- 
 tion gone, our capacity for pleasure curtailed, with 
 suffering of body and inadequacy of mind, we are 
 tempted to slip into despair. We are tempted to 
 surrender to every mood and whim and to cast the 
 shadow of our discomfort over all whom we meet. 
 "You have certainly too much to bear," the logic 
 of our mind will say. "Take the easiest way; 
 your lot is miserable enough at best." But the 
 soul brings another message as it warns, "You 
 are making an enemy of your illness ; why not seek 
 its friendship? When have you ever had so many 
 hours free to cultivate consideration of others? 
 When so many opportunities to exercise cheerful- 
 ness and patience? When again will you have 
 so much time at your disposal to devise kindly 
 plans for family, friends, servants or neighbors?" 
 The soul sees the unseen as the mind's eye never 
 can, and the council of its love leaves in our hearts 
 only a record of joy as the result of such days of 
 illness. 
 
 We moan and groan and sprinkle ashes upon our 
 devout heads and rail at the powers that be when 
 the so-called inevitable "loss" comes upon us. It 
 may be our protector, or friendship, or reputation ; 
 it may be mother, or child, or the life-long partner 
 who is taken, and our mind cries out in bitterness ; 
 but the soul says: "Nay, this is not irretrievable 
 loss ; the only loss which cannot bear also a bless- 
 
THE UNSEEN 9 
 
 • 
 ing is the death of love, or trust, or faith." 
 
 Mother may be gone, but her memory stays to 
 
 hallow ; the memories of her sacrifices, of the love 
 
 which only mother can give — these stay to inspire 
 
 the best life can bring, if faith and trust are there 
 
 to help. The other side of the experience does 
 
 not mean calling the bad "good," but the finding 
 
 of the good which is always associated with the 
 
 bad. Let us remember that heaven itself is coined 
 
 by each of us in our use of life's vicissitudes, a 
 
 use which in one nature makes a hell, in another 
 
 creates a heaven. 
 
 Easter Day returns year after year, the day on 
 which generations have united in rejoicing in that 
 event which changed the tides of human relation- 
 ship twenty centuries ago. To such as so believe, 
 it stands for the certainty of life after death, an 
 irrefutable evidence of the power of the unseen 
 over the grave itself. What do we see in Easter 
 to-day? The one who uses only the eyes physical 
 has reveled in the parade of new frocks and Eas- 
 ter's crop of colorful bonnets. Another has quite 
 forgotten these in the inspiration of the Easter 
 music and his senses have been fairly trans- 
 ported by its exultant paeans. But has either 
 of these seen the Easter message, that message of 
 the re-birth, that message of the death of the 
 physical that the spiritual might the more per- 
 fectly live, the spiritual which is our only true 
 possession, the spiritual which rings down through 
 the ages in tales of courage, in lives of loyalty, in 
 sacrifices untold for honor and home and country. 
 
 The use of that which we handle and taste and 
 
dO THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 see reduces (the very things so utilized, but cour- 
 age and loyalty and honor and righteousness and 
 all the virtues of the unseen are alone the ele- 
 ments of life which multiply by the using. To- 
 day it is for us to realize more perfectly than ever 
 before that we shall never see life aright until 
 we experience that re-birth which teaches us not 
 only to see aright and to understand aright, but 
 which gives that joy of joys, the ability to feel 
 right. The religion is indeed empty which does 
 not conquer and ultimately triumph over suffer- 
 ing, bereavement and misfortune. When a human 
 heart cries out for that help which man cannot 
 give, when it looks upward for help and strength 
 from the Invisible, it matters little what name is 
 called upon so there is a reaching for the best; 
 and no soul ever so aspires, no soul with genuine 
 honesty, forgetting selfishness and seeking only 
 the wholeness of life, so appeals, but finds help 
 from the great and powerful Unseen. To the 
 Christian, Christ stands for as much God as hu- 
 manity can contain. The true Christian, inspired 
 by this perfect life, has known the miracle of 
 re-birth; and in all the multiplied richnesses of 
 human existence, in the wealth which can grat- 
 ify every sense, in this life in which the intellect 
 can revel through the entire space of three score 
 and ten, there is no experience which can equal the 
 soul's Easter — that mystery of the Unseen which 
 changes life from restless discord into triumphant 
 harmony with the Infinite. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE TEMPORAL 
 
 AU flesh is as grass. 
 
 Who has so poorly known the fulness of phys- 
 ical Kfe as to have missed the drowse and thrill of 
 a perfect spring day? How at one the body is 
 with the skipping lambs, frisking calves, and 
 caroling songsters ! Physically wretched, indeed, 
 is he who has not known multiplied hours of the 
 sheer goodness of physical living. Wise teachers 
 insist that this capacity for feeling gladness of 
 heart, nerve, muscle and bone-marrow may be pre- 
 served throughout the allotted threescore and ten 
 if we but know the secret, and knowing the secret, 
 honor the law. But all too much of the goodness 
 of the life of the body is a mere happen-so, for 
 ignorance of the laws of body-care is profound, 
 and even when recognized, the strength of char- 
 acter essential to their execution is most com- 
 monly lacking. 
 
 Given his span of days in the midst of life pro- 
 found, and of life beautiful, the average human 
 fails miserably in the great business of living. 
 His stomach calls; in his weakness or ignorance 
 he fills, he satisfies, he satiates ; and crowded stom- 
 achs hasten the crowding of the cemeteries. His 
 
 n 
 
12 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 mind aspires, and he scurries hither and thither, 
 peering into every nook and book, reading, study- 
 ing, supposedly learning, too often surfeiting and 
 palsying his superb mental powers with hetero- 
 geneous conglomerations, unharmonized and inco- 
 ordinated. And crowded minds are crowding 
 sanitariums and asylums. The rural life is sim- 
 ple ; the rural days are long and the nights short. 
 The farm is a community in itself with its work 
 never done. Glitter, tinsel and glamour are found 
 in the cities. Hours of work are shorter and 
 nights are long for pleasure. All of this appeals 
 to the youth of the land whom now the simple life 
 of the farm fails to satisfy. And he crowds him- 
 self in with his fellow-man to make the cities — 
 the cities with their sweatshops, their dives, their 
 slums, their countless acres of unwholesome tene- 
 ments where the hundreds stifle and degenerate 
 and disintegrate, while only the masterful few 
 rise to the heights. Thus man in his ignorance 
 misuses the possible good until it becomes unten- 
 able evil. 
 
 Superb have been the results of the linking of 
 the human mind with Nature's powers; but only 
 through the fulness of understanding has man 
 made these powers safe. Nature offers the feast 
 but remains uncompromisingly indifferent as to 
 what its misuse will do to human life. King or 
 pope, philosopher or multimillionaire — regardless 
 of station, temporal power, or philosophic erudi- 
 tion — submerged beneath the surface of the sea 
 for a few minutes, becomes an inert, insensate 
 remnant. Fire disfigures, maims or destroys the 
 
THE TEMPORAL 13 
 
 • 
 just and tlie unjust, the brute and the beauty. A 
 few days without food — and it is the same with 
 giant and with pigmy. Nature is equally indiffer- 
 ent to lives, regardless of their apparent value. 
 Man ever pays the penalty of ignoring the physical 
 law. The miracles of to-day are the miracles of 
 understanding, are the miracles of perfect co- 
 operation of mind with the laws of matter. 
 
 In the fulness of youthful strength how prone 
 we are to feel a very eternity of life coursing 
 through our veins ! How strong the temptation to 
 ignore restraining counsel ; how keen the intensity 
 of reckless indulgence ; and how easy to slip into 
 habitual indulgence! Yet even in the power of 
 his strength how truly insignificant is physical 
 man! An unperceived abrasion, the entrance of 
 a few germs almost too microscopic to be detected, 
 a few days of hapless struggle — and the vaunted 
 strength is no more. The master athlete of them 
 all, tossed overboard in mid-sea, manfully battles 
 the mounting billows for a short hour. It would 
 seem that Nature but makes a jest of his superb 
 physique. 
 
 He had been most troublesome, this burly Irish 
 corporal, quick of temper, quick of retort, quick 
 of fist. "Capable but troublesome" kept him 
 alike from the private's berth and from the ser- 
 geant's stripes. A group of oflScers was passing 
 through the trenches when a German grenade 
 dropped in their midst. Death hung imminent 
 over all. With a spring the corporal landed, full- 
 breasted, on the messenger of destruction, and 
 what fragments passed through his body fell inert 
 
14 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 and harmless to the others. Patriotism, loyalty, 
 self-sacrifice, practical Christianity, these and the 
 Irishman's other virtues are immortal; but his 
 body, torn and riddled, was, like all flesh, but as 
 grass. 
 
 Life soon ebbs away in the absence of food. 
 We live because we have a most marvelous diges- 
 tive apparatus. Man is not affected by a few 
 days' absence of any one food, for he can subsist 
 on countless dishes. He can adjust himself to 
 tallow candles and whale blubber in the far north 
 —and history writes of feasts of nightingale's 
 tongues. Less than 15 degrees may the tempera- 
 ture of his blood vary, higher or lower, and he is 
 no more. In this nervous system is the most deli- 
 cate of thermostats, through which the body tem- 
 perature is regulated to an almost unchangeable 
 nicety, be he at the frigid poles, or exploring the 
 torrid crater of a volcano. And the miracle of 
 life goes on through the power of the human body 
 to adapt itself to myriad, changing conditions. 
 But throughout his days he cannot certainly es- 
 cape the hourly call of the temporal. Religious 
 zealots through many ages have striven to rise 
 superior to the demands of time, even while they 
 remained in the flesh. But bodies must be fed if 
 their souls would ignore the teasing tantalizations 
 of appetite. Best must come, rest of muscle, rest 
 of mind, or the poor mortal quickly loses his 
 earthly chance for self-forgetfulness. And who 
 is he who, even though born in solitude, has main- 
 tained a sane span of years without contact with 
 his kind? We are temporal, and of the temporal, 
 
THE TBMPOEAL 15 
 
 • 
 and the law of the temporal lays its hourly toll 
 upon our existence. There are few pseudo-philo- 
 sophic absurdities more limiting to the develop- 
 ment of our race than that which would ignore 
 the physical basis of life. The high function of 
 religion is to teach man to live well ; and any theory 
 which attempts to ignore the fact that man must 
 first live, before he can live well, is false. An in- 
 finitely more far-reaching and rational teaching is 
 that which assures "a sound mind in a sound 
 body," both of which are most perfectly attained 
 through cooperation with laws, a cooperation 
 which, when rationally carried out, demands the 
 utilization of many of the highest virtues of pure 
 religious teaching. 
 
 How pitiably far most of us are from either a 
 dogmatic or a rational religious insistence on phys- 
 ical and mental righteousness! How impossible 
 the task of even cataloging humanity's misuse of 
 things temporal! How far-reaching the tempta- 
 tion to make life a monotonous succession of sol- 
 emn trifles ! Living for the hour or the day, help- 
 lessly preoccupied with the details of kitchen or 
 qlub, schoolroom or laboratory, restless, intense, 
 impatient, we slave on, chained to our tasks. 
 Others travel through life as though it were a 
 country of wild and empty wastes. No uplift, no 
 outlook, no hope! And what an utter weariness 
 it must be to live an unproductive life ! What un- 
 speakable poverty of soul grows out of the mere 
 waste of time! And the wail of life's spiritual 
 pauperis is ever in our ears. "Life is not worth 
 living!" "The whole business of existence is a 
 
16 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 dreary struggle." "I never had my chance," 
 and "Fate has always been my enemy!" Each 
 speaker has forgotten that we all have riches, that 
 life, or fate, or the powers that be have shown no 
 partiality. Your hour and mine has but sixty 
 minutes. You use yours. I waste mine. You 
 grow in wealth of gold, and wealth of soul, while 
 my bones or my memory rest in the Potter's field. 
 One time we were equally millionaires of the min- 
 utes. Yet to-day's minutes and to-morrow's min- 
 utes may be as vitally used as those whose loss we 
 now mourn. 
 
 Life is nothing in particular only to those who 
 themselves are nothing in particular. "Nothing 
 in particular," only because they have not tried. 
 The time comes to each when thoughtfully and of 
 serious mind he will ask, "Has my best been worth 
 while ? ' ' The misused body is a groaning, aching, 
 complaining wreck at thirty. The well-used body 
 is youthful and useful and comfortable at seventy- 
 five. But the tenure of the best life is limited, 
 and age creeps on apace when "The keepers of 
 the house shall tremble . . . and desire shall fail 
 . . . and the silver cord be loosed." There is a 
 limit beyond which no vitality can further bear 
 human life. Great success comes to the artist, the 
 writer, the statesman and the divine; life is for 
 the time a great joy. But as the successes mul- 
 tiply so do the responsibilities, so do the burdens. 
 The higher we are placed, the greater the number 
 of our critics; successes refuse indefinitely to ac- 
 cumulate and they prepare us only too poorly for 
 the inevitable failures. The richest of voices be- 
 
THE TEMPORAL 17 
 
 comes thin ; the most deft of pens loses its inspira- 
 tion ; and fickle public opinion refuses to endlessly 
 follow the lead of the most popular of statesmen. 
 A man of many fine parts had made of his own 
 life a peculiar success. He amassed millions. He 
 used his wealth as a good steward. In the ful- 
 ness of his plenty, he was visited by an old friend, 
 the one in whose presence he could bare his soul. 
 "Yes," he answered, "life seems to hold every 
 charm, and I have so lived that it would seem 
 the present as well as the future could hold naught 
 but the most complete satisfaction for me. And 
 you may well say that there is no legitimate want 
 or need which I cannot completely satisfy. But 
 for me life is a failure. My only son is a fool. ' ' 
 
 For man there must be more than the temporal. 
 Otherwise, how can he conceive limitless space and 
 his mind hark back or look forward across aeons 
 of time, while he everlastingly remains unable to 
 occupy more than six feet of ground, or a few 
 years of life. If his present existence be all, then 
 existence is a mere damnation of tantalization. 
 Who can look this problem fair in the face, brush- 
 ing aside prejudice, willing and eager to overcome 
 ignorance and to replace superstition with demon- 
 strated truth? Who, turning from the hurts of 
 the conflict; who, standing alone in the memory 
 of some sainted one, alone with his thoughts, but 
 feels the reiterated insistence that there is a time- 
 less self which is as imperishable as time itself, 
 as immortal as the spirit of self-sacrifice which 
 inspired the rough Irish corporal to grasp to his 
 bosom the mutilating death, that others might live. 
 
18 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 What an infinite space separates the full soul 
 from the full purse! The minutes which forever 
 count are those which have been utilized in en- 
 riching the life of the soul until it finally becomes 
 capable of using all that the days bring; until 
 good and bad. and indifferent are but relative 
 terms. And how surely Nature teaches us here. 
 The black dust of industry, the ever-flying white 
 sands of the deserts, the far-flung pall of volcanic 
 smoke, give us, with the sun's rays, our blue 
 heaven ; were it not for the world's dust we should 
 look' up into a coal-black dome even at noonday. 
 If we find our days multiplying, with no hint of 
 the blue of heaven, with all above us obscured and 
 colorless, let us know that we have misused the 
 hours, and that we have allowed the things of 
 tiine to gather above our heads as inky clouds shut- 
 ting out the sun of our soul, veiling the things 
 which know not time. 
 
 We age ; we lose prestige in our profession ; our 
 children grow into ingratitude. Is not life with- 
 drawing the joys of the material to make more 
 room for the spiritual? Is it not thus that the 
 timeless self most sharply knocks at the door of 
 our attention? Euclid becomes timeless as the 
 father of geometry. The immortal Shakespeare 
 ate and drank and slept and loved and died as 
 we; but he superseded time in that his soul lives 
 in his deathless tragedies and ever refreshing 
 comedies. Neither Euclid nor Shakespeare may 
 any of us be. But we all can attain the greatest 
 thing in the world, that love which abides; that 
 love which ever takes on the helpfulness which 
 
THE TEMPORAL 19 
 
 • 
 "suffereth long and is kind," which "thinketh 
 no evil." And thus for each may the timeless 
 self within link itself with the Eternal. Thus 
 through the warp and woof of the tapestry of 
 our lives may we ever cherish the golden thread 
 of the timeless, given us to knit ourselves abidingly 
 close to the soul of the Maker. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 This mortal must put on immortaUty. 
 
 The root meaning of evolution is "to unroll," 
 and this simple idea well illustrates the conception 
 which, under the more scientific term, was the 
 "bloody angle" of many years of wordy war be- 
 tween opposing camps of thought. To-day three 
 classes of evolutionists are recognized. The first 
 is the materialistic, which finds in this wondrously 
 ordered and infinitely complex universe no need 
 for the metaphysical. Spencer long since taught 
 us that some principles are humanly incompre- 
 hensible; how the beginning began or who made 
 God are questions equally without sacrilege when 
 asked by little boys or by scientists. Materialism 
 asks only that out of the incomprehensible origins, 
 physical and chemical force and chemical atoms 
 be donated. Attraction of gravitation, and chem- 
 ism with its infinitude of laws of affinity and re- 
 pulsion, will do the rest, forming revolving satel- 
 lites and heartbroken sobs with equal ease. 
 
 The agnostic evolutionist takes things even a 
 bit easier and whenever the questions become too 
 difficult, retreats behind the Spencerian unknow- 
 able, and protects his logic or credulity from un- 
 necessary strain. His opponents, however, object 
 
 20 
 
EVOLUTION 21 
 
 to his assertions that what he does not know is 
 consequently unknowable, and claim for them- 
 selves the right to exercise their developing men- 
 tal powers to dig deeper and yet deeper into the 
 heart of the great mystery. Finally, the theistic 
 evolutionist sees his God as the soul of all that is ; 
 makes his God the essence of all the forces of ma- 
 terialists, and the existing entity of the vast Un- 
 known of the agnostic. 
 
 The Good Book, to which so large a proportion 
 of humanity has turned for light and hope and 
 guidance for their individual life, is truly a story 
 of spiritual evolution — culminating in this fif- 
 teenth chapter of Corinthians. No greater pledge 
 for the future, no greater demand for the pres- 
 ent can be compressed into six words than, ' * This 
 mortal must put on immortality." To the 
 thoughtful mind, every existence is the prophecy 
 of more to come. The vegetable is a miraculous 
 advance over the inert earth which produces it. 
 The animal feeds upon the vegetable, appropriat- 
 ing all of its mystery of life and adding to it 
 something more. From the animal springs man 
 with his earthly physical, his vegetative and ani- 
 mal qualities, to which he adds additional won- 
 ders ; while now and again from the loins of sim- 
 ple manhood spring the supermen, the prophets, 
 the leaders, the martyrs, the Master ; and the very 
 Godhood speaks through their lips. 
 
 Science follows the program of the creation 
 given in Genesis, with remarkable fidelity. Ac- 
 cording to evolution, the grass and herb-yielding 
 seed and the tree are natural steps in the verduriz- 
 
22 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 ing of the earth's surface. And zoology assents 
 to the populating of the sea first with the fishes 
 and monsters of the deep ; then came the fowls of 
 the air — a step higher, and later on, the beasts of 
 the field. Human embryology startles dogmatic 
 theology with its claim that the history of the 
 evolution of the race is shown in the prenatal de- 
 velopment of the embryo as it passes through its 
 various stages, successively assuming and evolv- 
 ing out of the fish, the bird, the lower animal types. 
 
 Theistic evolution sees the perfect law of order 
 in the development not only of the human body, 
 but of the mind as well. The baby is born intel- 
 lectually lower than the animal, to spend his first 
 three years, the years of babyhood, in self -discov- 
 ery ; to require, even in most favorable surround- 
 ings, seven years more, the years of childhood, for 
 attaining self-control ; and another six years evolv- 
 ing personal loyalty, obedience to law, and a ca- 
 pacity for true comradeship. And not till his le- 
 gal majority, and then not without the blessings 
 of struggle, does self-reliance come. And for the 
 few who have thus attained, by a wise steward- 
 ship of these resources may come later in life the 
 qualities of leadership. Such is the evolution of 
 the mind. 
 
 But theistic evolution will not allow man to stop 
 here. Napoleon at his height, Frederic the Great, 
 Peter the Great, the Emperor William — what in- 
 deed are they, highly specialized and masterful 
 as may have been their powers of intellect, if the 
 soul has not evolved? The wisest of all the chil- 
 dren of men recorded, ' ' The fool hath said in his 
 
EVOLUTION 23 
 
 • 
 
 heart 'There is no God.' " As interruption in 
 the process of physical evolution may result in the 
 birth of a blighted embryo: as interruption in the 
 evolution of the mind will produce the imbecile: 
 so the evolution of the soul may be interrupted 
 and human existence cursed by moral idiocy. Let 
 us study for a moment the evolution of a soul in 
 the terms of loyalty. The very lowest realization, 
 loyalty to family, is evidenced perchance in a 
 fierce, murderous devotion which renders the in- 
 dividual a menace to the community. Still, the 
 soul has reached out beyond self and has appro- 
 priated for its protective efforts its own kin. 
 As a later development, loyalty to one's neighbors 
 appears and community interests are placed be- 
 fore personal desires. A step higher is that loy- 
 alty to the State which we term patriotism. In 
 its lower expressions, and when associated with 
 stimulation of the fighting spirit, it is the basis 
 for the man-power of all great international con- 
 flicts. But relatives and neighbors and fellow- 
 countrymen are all elementary objects of soul- 
 loyalty when compared with the possibility of loy- 
 alty to the ideal. Ideals may be countless, but 
 the perfect ideal, the ideal of God, has from the 
 beginning of time laid hold on the souls of good 
 men and women to lead them from the here to the 
 hereafter; to assure them that "this mortal shall 
 put on immortality. "^ From the beginning of 
 time the best of mankind have been listening to a 
 calling voice, even as we have listened — and is it 
 not well for us to face this call squarely and learn 
 whether it is the voice of hope or of truth? 
 
24 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 The avowed reason for science has been its pur- 
 pose to collect and arrange facts. True science 
 does not presume to guess, save to stimulate in- 
 vestigation, and then frankly speaks of its the- 
 ories and hypotheses. True science plods along 
 through the decades under the handicap of the 
 Scotch verdict, "Not proven," unsatisfied until 
 theory can be translated into law. Science, un- 
 like religion, assumes nothing as true which it 
 cannot demonstrate. Ptolemy saw the earth as a 
 plane with the stars above and the unknowable 
 beneath. Early religions, even as enlightened as 
 Judaism and Christianity, accepted the science of 
 the day and placed their heavens in the skies and 
 their hells beneath their feet; they made of the 
 stars mere lights of the night and sent the great 
 sun revolving obediently around its earth. Five 
 hundred years ago it was sacrilege to question 
 the location to which theology had ascribed our 
 future abode, a sacrilege so impudent that death 
 itself was meted out as a corrective. Even when 
 Galileo in the seventeenth century announced his 
 belief and produced his evidence, he raised the 
 vindictive enmity of the church — and it was many 
 years before the most intelligent church-man 
 dared accept the demonstrated truth of science, 
 that this earth so fondly called God's foot-stool 
 is but a speck of dust in the roadway of the uni- 
 verse. Truth after truth has Science forced dog- 
 matism to accept, in the face of bitter opposition, 
 of wranglings and hatred. Small wonder it is that 
 untold thousands have turned away from the 
 teachings of theology, their faith shaken because 
 
EVOLUTION 25 
 
 • 
 
 of its antagonism to the very truth which it should 
 be in the fore to propagate. If religion accepts 
 not demonstrated facts, of what worth is it more 
 than old wives' tales? A whip to frighten the 
 weak, a lash to drive back the ignorant ! 
 
 Science to-day makes our world youthful, assur- 
 ing us that in the great process of world-evolu- 
 tion it is but in its childhood as compared with 
 the cold, lifeless moon, or even with our near 
 neighbor Mars, now fighting for life against the 
 ever encroaching polar ice-caps. Science has har- 
 monized the very elements for human service 
 and added innumerable comforts to life. Science 
 will eventually so enrich humanity that poverty 
 will be a result only of human greed. But while 
 science ever strives onward in its accumulation 
 and association of facts and gives man ever in- 
 creasing power through the knowledge of the law, 
 and develops for him riches unthought by Solo- 
 mon, it has never made man as happy or good 
 as his faith and trust in the Unseen God. And 
 until it has so done, we are most unwise if we sur- 
 render this certain good of Religion for even the 
 facts of Science. Science has yet failed to pro- 
 duce for man love and the blessings of selfless giv- 
 ing which are the greatest needs of his soul. 
 
 We have traced man's evolution; we have 
 sketched the onward and upward steps of science. 
 Let us not think that religion itself has failed to 
 evolve. In the vital matter of religion's attitude 
 toward sin, what a vast change have the centuries 
 seen! Those horrible early religions of dread, 
 terror and torture are now known only in the re- 
 
26 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 mote regions, or linger in the unlighted halls of 
 narrow minds. Highly developed as we find our 
 animal neighbors, we realize that they are in- 
 capable of sin. But when man emerged from his 
 brutehood, he put on moralhood, and since then 
 sin has ever represented a slipping down into the 
 mud through his efforts to ascend. In the earlier 
 books of the Bible sin is condemned most lugu^ 
 briously, and "an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
 a tooth" represents two thousand years of early 
 Biblical progress. What a new light it was upon 
 this unhappy subject when He came who "spoke 
 as one having authority" — and, after bidding the 
 one of her accusers without sin to cast the first 
 stone, dismissed the Magdalene in that spirit of 
 comprehending love — "And neither do I condemn 
 thee!" Did he not see as he bade her "Go and 
 sin no more" that sin is part of man's evolution; 
 that all who would live aright, who would climb the 
 heights, may often take the wrong path before 
 they see the right one ? 
 
 What an evolution it has been from the religions 
 of gloom to the religion of joy! Library shelves 
 are still cluttered with theologic tomes laden with 
 theologic damnations. The wretchedness of the 
 most righteous is a theme which in the past in- 
 spired thousands of pages of woe-begotten litera- 
 ture. As we look into the face of a perfect spring 
 day, as we hear the thrilling voices of the song- 
 sters, we realize that Nature laughs. And the 
 children at play, and happy men and women, in 
 those times when life is most dear, laugh until 
 laughter is contagious. Yet we might read a li- 
 
EVOLUTION 27 
 
 • 
 
 brary on theology, omitting exceptional recent vol- 
 umes, and never have the suggestion that God can 
 laugh. Evolution promises you and me a good- 
 natured heaven, a heaven where much of the laugh- 
 ter will be spent over "What fools these mortals 
 be" in their effort to make of God a relentless, 
 austere, uncompromising, damning Being, to be 
 dreaded, servilely obeyed, propitiated. Modern 
 evolution should strengthen our faith in the Un- 
 seen ! For it is ever making more and more cer- 
 tain the brightness of man's future. Evolution 
 itself is anticipating that day when it can say, 
 "The hereafter has been demonstrated. This 
 mortal will put on immortality. ' ' 
 
 What personal message does the thought of 
 evolution bring to us? Are we not here to be 
 changed, changed from babyhood — to what? 
 Truly that is the question. The responsibility of 
 individual receptivity has always been and will 
 always be a personal one. Spiritual power and 
 force are unquestionably omnipresent, but the win- 
 dow of the soul is locked from within. The spirit- 
 ual does not force itself upon and control the will, 
 but is ever ready to flow into the opened case- 
 ment — and the wider the window toward heaven, 
 the greater our certainty of receiving those bless- 
 ings for which we struggle and pray. As we look 
 back over the past ten years with this thought of 
 evolution before us, has our soul development been 
 retarded, or has it been progressive? Is our vi- 
 sion of the beauty of goodness more clear? Have 
 the harder places in our nature softened? Are 
 we more sensitive to nobleness and truth? Has 
 
28 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 there been a widening of our love for humanity 
 with its needs? Have we realized within our- 
 selves an increasing displacement of self by the 
 Divine ? Do we know in our souls that this mortal 
 has put on immortality? 
 
 "Cosmic dust and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 
 A jelly-fish and a saurian 
 
 And a cave where the cave-men dwell, 
 
 A sense of law and beauty 
 
 And a face upturned from the clod 
 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 But others call it God!" 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EEAUTY 
 
 He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever- 
 lastiMg. 
 
 How universal is the sense of incompleteness in 
 human experience! Youth, maturity, and even 
 old age are ever reaching for the something else 
 which they crave for the hour, which seems to be 
 the essential need of the year ; while we occasion- 
 ally meet natures who are bending every force of 
 their working years to the end of attaining some 
 great ambition, failing in which, life to them is but 
 a fraction. Most obvious is this sense of incom- 
 pleteness in the life of the child. Without a moth- 
 er's care, or its equivalent, none of us would have 
 ever taken his first step. And how intensely keen 
 is this sense of incompleteness in the heart of the 
 lover ! Truly to him the whole unity of existence 
 is expressed in another, without whom he is hope- 
 lessly undone ! And what a world of tragedy has 
 stormed through human hearts because of the need 
 of man for maid and maid for man. Rare is the 
 one who, visited by loss, afflicted by illness, victim- 
 ized by deceit, does not feel an irresistible impulse 
 to seek solace, comfort, understanding in the 
 strength of a friend. Why has this impelling 
 spirit of need been placed so instinctively deep in 
 
 29 
 
30 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 normal human nature? Because in tMs very in- 
 completeness is the origin of two most powerful 
 emotions, fear and desire. Do we not also find 
 herein the basis of the two greatest religious con- 
 ceptions, the brotherhood of man, and the Father- 
 hood of God? 
 
 But how remote from most of our thoughts are 
 these profound but wholesomely stimulating gen- 
 eralities. Unquestionably, exceptional is the 
 mind that spontaneously blends the abstract and 
 the concrete. How removed in most of our lives 
 are our fears and wishes, on the one hand, from 
 the absolute reality of existence on the other. 
 Possibly "removed," for the majority, is not the 
 best expression. Is there not usually conflict, life- 
 long strife, between things as they are, and things 
 as we would have them? For simplicity's sake 
 we may note how closely related are desire and 
 fear. Desire would possess; fear would avoid. 
 Desire carries us toward; fear pushes us away. 
 Hence fear may be expressed as the wish to avoid. 
 And how persistently insistent is the power of 
 the wish-life over us all. 
 
 Placed, as we find ourselves, in the midst of 
 existence which makes its slow evolutionary prog- 
 ress, step by step : which demands of us slow but 
 equally certain progress, day by day, we early 
 discover that we are not mere puppets dragged 
 along by cords of reality, but are entirely able to 
 respond to the drag-back of desire. SlothfuUy 
 we may tarry ; impiously we may rebel ; erratically 
 we may flit here and there; ignorantly we may 
 evade the impending realities of the great Un- 
 
REALITY 31 
 
 • 
 known, hiding our trembling selves behind the 
 poor protection of the Known. Thus in some 
 form of imperfect adjustment do we all miss the 
 knowable potentialities of harmonic union with 
 realities, both seen and unseen. Now and then in 
 the history of the human race one, and again an- 
 other, stand forth, who with philosophic insight 
 have apprehended the truths of material relation- 
 ship; and with prophetic instinct have visioned 
 the truths of divine relationship. In so far only 
 as you and I profit by their leadership, only as 
 we open our souls to the fulness of such lives, 
 can our inner selves, in sickness or in health, ap- 
 proximate the reality of successful living. 
 
 The mystery of the dream is no more. Com- 
 paratively recent investigation in this ever fasci- 
 nating realm of experience has shown that the 
 great sea into which all the happenings of our life 
 ultimately empty, the unconscious mind, is con- 
 scienceless, with no judicial censor sitting in 
 judgment upon its activities; and like the sea it- 
 self it is ever and anon stirred by the winds of the 
 emotions. ' The great wish-fear element of our na- 
 ture is the agitator of this half -hidden subcon- 
 scious. During the conscious hours of wakeful- 
 ness, that crowning attribute of man's intelli- 
 gence, the critical sense — comprising reason and 
 conscience — sits as judge supreme, reviewing in 
 detail each thought brought to his attention. But 
 like the human judge he must sleep. And it is 
 then that desire plays riot with our thoughts. It 
 is then that dreams, wondrous fair, surfeit us 
 with the treasured beauties of the imagination. 
 
32 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 It is then that the hodge-podge of the fantastic 
 bizarre utterly upsets every semblance of reality, 
 and makes sport and plaything of every law of 
 order. And from the heights we fall to certain 
 death, but light instead upon the great cushion 
 of our dream and slip into pleasurable, harmless 
 gliding through space, otherwise experienced only 
 by the aeronaut. Or with equal facility the In- 
 ferno of Dante and Dore is out-sung and out- 
 pictured by the horrors of our own gruesome in- 
 ferno as we are lashed through the perdition of 
 the night by the Satan of our own fears. 
 
 Imagination was given man to go before as the 
 pillar of the cloud and of fire, to lead on from day 
 to day toward the promised land, and what hom- 
 age we owe it as we trace the progress of human- 
 ity through the ages ! The beauty of man's mind, 
 the strength of his intellect have been rooted deep 
 in the almost divine powers of his imagination. 
 But what a horror of horrors this same potent ele- 
 ment may be when it is diseased, and diseased it 
 is as evidenced in thousands of our dreams, not 
 only those of the sleeping hours, but even more 
 emphatically those of the day. Yet who would 
 descend to that low estate which knows not the 
 joys of the imagination, its leadership, its inspira- 
 tion, even though its possession may plunge us 
 into a gloom of terrors. 
 
 But the essence of our theme is found in the 
 relationship between desires and reality. No one 
 can adopt a constructive conception of existence 
 and not believe that our day-dreams, those dreams 
 which the judge of our thoughts may affirm or 
 
REALITY 33 
 
 • 
 
 reverse, are like the architect's blue-prints, the 
 promise of things to be; that they are right and 
 have a place ; and like blue-prints, may be altered 
 from time to time as new and better ideas may 
 render expedient. What contractor would engage 
 to build a worthy edifice without a complete set 
 of the architect's plans? Wherein is human life 
 more rationally completed than in the evolution 
 of an abiding structure, fulfilling the promise of 
 the mind's picture? But judges may be corrupt 
 or weak or ignorant. The world's history is full 
 of the pathos of miscarriages of justice and the 
 judge-censor of our day-dream-life may be igno- 
 rant or weak, or may be corruptible. Dream- 
 thoughts which can never be realized enter into our 
 plans of life, dreams which steel nor stone nor 
 mortar may erect as they violate the laws of re- 
 sistance or the laws of gravity. Such and many 
 other forms of imperfect use of imagination ac- 
 coimt for much of the pathos of individual failure. 
 Eeality may be likened to a granite wall sur- 
 rounding us on all sides, against which we de- 
 structively throw our deluded selves exclaiming, 
 "This is not rock! It is but a painted scene!" 
 Or in pain, and sweat, and weariness, discouraged, 
 we slowly quarry stone after stone and painstak- 
 ingly chisel them into building blocks to rear our 
 tower skyward, to buUd it until we see over our 
 Mountains of Difficulty; until we see with all the 
 clearness that reality brings, into the life of the 
 great beyond. Shall we be victims or masters of 
 the granite barrier of ineffaceably certain law 
 which limits even as it inspires our life 's efforts ? 
 
34 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Shall we recklessly continue to bruise our heads 
 against the clififs, and ignorantly murmur ' ' Canvas 
 only, ' ' falsifying life until its essential reality be- 
 comes our enemy? Shall we attempt by blandish- 
 ments and caresses to soften the rocks of our limi- 
 tations? Shall we be content with erecting our 
 castle from the easily molded clay, and say ' ' This 
 mud is as granite ; this will endure even as your 
 painfully prepared blocks of stone?" Equally 
 dangerous it is in life to accept the false as real, 
 as to deny the certainty of the real. What but 
 an ultimate heap of slimy mud is our castle of 
 clay when beat upon by the storms of adversity, 
 those storms which are vitally and essentially real, 
 and which prove the undoing of lives not built of, 
 and on, the rock. And so with increasingly crit- 
 ical eye should we watch each stone before it is 
 set in place by the builder. The mud of gossip, 
 the melting clay of superstition, the incohesive 
 sands of untruth are building materials from 
 which no lasting reality may be erected. 
 
 Without an invincible determination tBat the 
 abiding, only, may be used as construction-stone 
 in the building of our characters, certain confu- 
 sion will replace clear-sighted thinking.- Such 
 confusion we frequently invite when we attempt 
 to dodge reality. Palms are blistering, heads and 
 backs are aching with the toil of progress ; and 
 why indeed must we so unremittingly work? 
 Why not dream a while ? Why not muse on other 
 plans? Do not the castles grow without labor 
 when we but dream them! and how beautiful and 
 fair we can then build! Bronze and porphyry 
 
REALITY 35 
 
 # 
 
 and marble we can then use. Who has not thus 
 attempted escape when rudely handled by the 
 Eeal? And how insidiously the habit may form 
 till from spending a few minutes of fantasy with 
 their relaxing, refreshing vision, the work hours 
 may go, the work life may go. Instead of piling 
 rock upon rock we find ourselves blowing the 
 many-hued bubbles of the society life, bubbles 
 which reflect in rainbow tints only what is near, 
 with a beauty that disappears even more suddenly 
 than it is created. 
 
 The life of unreality, however, reaches no depth 
 of certain defeat so truly as when it induces its 
 victim to falsify the genuineness of sensation and 
 perception and ideation by the enchantments of 
 drug and stimulant. No reason so secure, no im- 
 agination so perfect, no purpose so pure, no will 
 so potent that these evil spirits may not weaken, 
 pervert, confound, destroy. Let us remember 
 that no matter how small the glass, "Wine is a 
 mocker!" There is a reality of incurable disease. 
 The old ship is fast on the rocks and pounding to 
 pieces in the surge of the surf. In the pain of it 
 all — that certain pain with which Reality often 
 asserts her essential sincerity — in times of un- 
 questioned hopelessness, the temporary forgetful- 
 ness of drug intoxication is a blessing. What cap- 
 tain so stolid but turns away his eyes as his good 
 ship beats to pieces ! 
 
 In face of the superb results in disseminating 
 knowledge accomplished by modem educational 
 efforts, selective mental training is an ideal still 
 far from general realization. The sense of un- 
 
36 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 reality is quite too common these latter days — the 
 feeling of strangeness and unnaturalness, which 
 has gradually grown because of our incapacity to 
 give clear and accurate attention to the multi- 
 plying masses of facts hurled into our faces dur- 
 ing our defenseless student days — ideas, princi- 
 ples, theorems, dates galore. Associations, which 
 would save the mind from practical emptiness, 
 fail to be made. In teaching, each principle should 
 be a hook upon which draperies or utilities may be 
 hung. How many minds present a masterful 
 array of hooks with nothing thereon! The stu- 
 dent who has never learned where to hang the 
 accumulating facts of experience wanders through 
 the corridors of his intellect in confusion. 
 
 The nervous are becoming increasingly numer- 
 ous, those fundamentally fine folk who comprise 
 most of the truly great, whose very sensitiveness 
 to the touch of all about them speaks for a more 
 perfect contact with the real than can be known 
 by those who are less acute. This superb capac- 
 ity to feel keenly carries with it the highest ca- 
 pacity for suffering — and in all ages the neurotic 
 has been he who sought escape from the pains and 
 burdens and heartaches of the real in the falsifica- 
 tions of the fantastic. Unquestionably now and 
 then the individual does make an individual suc- 
 cess in attaining comfort and self-satisfaction and 
 easy-going conceit, through the substitution of his 
 wish imaginings for the facts of his existence. 
 But what an unsafe contribution to humanity are 
 such lives. How clearly they represent those ever 
 recurring sects which, with their faces in the sky, 
 
REALITY 37 
 
 ♦ 
 deny that their feet tread the dust; which would 
 deny the material facts of aching teeth, of garbage 
 piles, of human misery and sin and loss and decep- 
 tion; which presume to falsify the very essential 
 of their earthly existence by denying reality. 
 
 Thus from different viewpoints have we been 
 noting the victims of reality, a throng signifi- 
 cantly large when we consider how devoted the 
 great majority of mankind is to the things of the 
 flesh. Would it not seem that in this very major- 
 ity, the largest number of those who have accepted 
 realism on its own terms would have met and mas- 
 tered the great problems of life's adjustments? 
 But on the contrary, wherever he is found the mas- 
 ter of reality is one who resolutely reduces the 
 indefinite to the real. In his mind there is no 
 place for wishes which may not be turned into 
 deeds. It is he who spans the gulf between the 
 ideal and the real with bridges of steel, bridges 
 which will stand the tramp, tramp of human feet. 
 
 The development of this masterfulness rests in a 
 hospitality to all truth, be it welcome or painful, 
 thrilling or depressing, vital or fatal. Truth is 
 the essential reality which, regardless of the bur- 
 den of its message, is the accepted guest of the 
 master. The reality which is genuine invades life 
 to all its centers. Physical health, mental poise, 
 spiritual serenity — each finds its balance in accept- 
 ing that reality which recognizes the very truth of 
 the present ; which accepts the certainty of all past 
 experience, and estimates the inevitable future 
 consequences. In short, the reality that our 
 Maker would have us know faces life squarely with 
 
38 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 its yesterdays, its to-days, and its to-morrows. It 
 faces fairly regrets, remorses, apprehensions, 
 fears, dreads — the whole sinister aspect which 
 grim life may present. The unrealities of active 
 deception, the character-corroding unrealities of 
 self-deception can never be utilized by a master- 
 ful character as building material. How incon- 
 gruous to any conception of masterfulness is the 
 existence of the melancholy — solemn moumfuls 
 though they be, fairly saturated with the atmos- 
 phere of sanctity. Dolefulness may be assumed, 
 but in truth is more frequently surrendered to, 
 that pluperfect future reward may be secured. 
 What more real than the futility of future joys 
 when one has not developed the capacity for en- 
 joyment? What heaven can bring joy to the joy- 
 less? 
 
 As we touch the lives of those who have mas- 
 tered, we find that their devotion to the real has 
 brought them certain definite assets, negotiable in 
 any bank of human relationships — ^negotiable to 
 redeem notes long past due — assets which assure 
 wealth in eternity. Of these, courage robs life of 
 its nameless, anomalous terrors. Fear can not re- 
 main with him who faces what life brings, and sees, 
 behind the stem gleam of pain and loss and decep- 
 tion, the infinite tenderness of the Maker of life. 
 Sacrifice brings its wealth of blessings which never 
 die. The master of reality has long since risen 
 above self as the object of his living. As age 
 gently whitens the hair of womanhood, and 
 thoughts run back to the days that are gone, which 
 are the joys ineffable? The brocades, the old 
 
REALITY 39 
 
 « 
 laces, the jewels, the damask, the silver service 
 and egg-shell china — all the gifts which husband 
 and friends have showered upon her — or that sin- 
 gle life which stood for months of suffering, for 
 hours of anguish, for years of anxiety? Which 
 blessing will never die in the woman's soul — ^the 
 trumpery of plenty, or the memory of those essen- 
 tial sacrifices that gave to the world her son, a 
 worthy man? 
 
 In the hellish caldron of a world's war nations 
 are seething, blaspheming, murdering. How 
 quickly one single reality, an eternal reality, sprin- 
 kled upon this horrible stench would purify it all 
 and make the whole world, as it has never truly 
 been, akin. The reality of charity is the one only 
 certain element which will make wars to cease, 
 which will strangle sectional hate and dethrone 
 autocratic greed. Certainly "He that soweth to 
 the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlast- 
 ing" — ^he it is who holds fast to the reality, hope, a 
 reality so tangible that it brings eternity into life 
 to-day. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 ABILITY 
 
 "Neglect not the gift that is im, thee. 
 
 In this vast universe, so much of which has been 
 given man to know, his own body is the first pos- 
 session which he recognizes. This body, without 
 which an earthly existence is inconceivable, this 
 body which refuses to be eliminated as an organ 
 for the development of the mind, and in which the 
 human soul is rooted, cannot be neglected without 
 certain disaster to the mind or the soul of the indi- 
 vidual, or to future generations. Surely the wis- 
 dom of the ages should have succeeded, after these 
 uncounted centuries of human living, in making of 
 man a good animal. For while many notable ex- 
 ceptions can be cited, all that stands for might and 
 majesty in man is ultimately dependent on his 
 physical well-being. Yet, as we consider mankind, 
 we are struck with the truth that of all the animal 
 kingdom, his is the most defective species, this de- 
 spite the fact that the means at his disposal, which 
 minister to his needs, are infinitely in excess of 
 those enjoyed by any or even all other animal 
 life. Truly in this very advantage we find the rea- 
 son for his endless list of physical defects. Man's 
 body is overindulged, is unduly cared for. 
 
 40 
 
ABILITY 41 
 
 * 
 
 Three elements, only, are needed to certainly 
 multiply generations of perfect physique, three 
 only, out of the multitude of his choice: whole- 
 some food, fresh air, and hard work! With the 
 majority of mankind to-day, the body, the house of 
 man's soul, is indeed poorly fitted to harbor its 
 splendid occupant. While those people who have 
 ignored the insatiable behests of the physical, save 
 such as supplied these simple elements of health, 
 have never failed to produce men and women of 
 supermight. 
 
 Months following the discovery of his body, the 
 child realizes that most of the world is located be- 
 yond the touch of his fingers. Thus more or less 
 clearly he becomes aware of his own mind, that 
 faithful omnipresent servant, ever eager to do his 
 bidding; yet a servant who may scheme and fight 
 and perjure, even prostitute himself, and who may 
 finally deceive the master of the house into believ- 
 ing that through the mind's cleverness the great 
 rewards of life are to be won. For many, too late 
 the knowledge comes that cleverness alone is never 
 greatness. The cleverest of faces may be found 
 portrayed in the Rogues' Gallery of any large city, 
 faces which show the marks of shrewdness, keen- 
 ness, ability and determination, which should have 
 won recognition in any honorable walk of life — 
 revealing splendid qualities of the mind which in 
 the end brought only disgrace. 
 
 But what of the Master of this magnificent estab- 
 lishment? Who is he? The Creator has made 
 man godlike by breathing into bis body a soul, 
 that sublime gift, the cultivation of which is life's 
 
42 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 only real business, the neglect of which is life's 
 only possible failure; that gift which is superior 
 to any prowess of body or shrewdness of mind; 
 that gift which has brought unselfishness and gen- 
 tleness and loyalty and honor and self-sacrifice and 
 charity into human relationship; that Master of 
 the House which, "speaking through the intellect 
 is Genius, acting through the will is Virtue, breath- 
 ing through the affections is Love." 
 
 This soul looks ever forward, creating its own 
 world in the face of all possible powers that could 
 oppose. Body, mind and soul have been given 
 man, superb gifts all, gifts the proper use of which 
 would, ages since, have realized for him that son- 
 ship of God which to-day seems to most of us but 
 a vague promise. Instead of following the obvi- 
 ous lesson so constantly before us in the animal 
 kingdom — the lesson of adapting our bodies to the 
 simple laws of physical well-being — the treasures 
 of the earth have been searched that we might 
 multiply the means of pampering the flesh. Na- 
 ture provides fruit and vegetables, cereals, milk, 
 simple wholesome foods in plenty. Man fries and 
 seasons, overcooks or freezes each dish that he 
 touches. He slaughters, and concocts, and devises 
 weird dishes that he may find a new taste. 
 Finally, he evolves compounds the complexity of 
 which quite staggers his own powers of assimila- 
 tion. To whip the waning force of his digestion, 
 he adds the stimulant that deceives, which later 
 demands the sedative that comforts. The man of 
 forty to-day is rare who does not choose a rich 
 overseasoned meal with coffee, wines and tobacco, 
 
ABILITY 43 
 
 • 
 
 in preference to the plate of fruit and the whole- 
 some bowl of bread and milk. And by how few of 
 our women is the life of daily, rational, physical 
 effort chosen, which certainly brings in time the 
 ruddy glow of wholesome health, instead of the 
 indulgent years which surely and relentlessly call 
 for powder, pomade and perfume — those ghastly 
 substitutes for the health that spurns artifice. 
 
 Nor is the Master of the House more wise in 
 the care of his servants. Misused minds vie with 
 pampered bodies in frequency. Often the mind's 
 very shrewdness is deceived and the value of its 
 own possessions falsified. Conceit deludes minds 
 outwardly well-to-do, superficially bright and at- 
 tractive, but inwardly destitute of true ability and 
 strength. Self -deceived minds accept that which 
 comes cheaply and easily, and hug to themselves 
 the trash of life, forgetting that being and doing, 
 only, count in life 's final reckoning, that the mere 
 having, the possession of that which is not truly 
 used, is as nothing. Poorly trained servants neg- 
 lect comers, and every house has its darkened 
 nooks where that which is harmful to the Master's 
 health may accumulate and lurk, danger-breeding. 
 So is the mind which holds prejudice, which does 
 not open every cranny to the pure air of reason 
 and the searching sunlight of truth. 
 
 Honorable, indeed superb, may be the qualifica- 
 tions of the mind, the soul's servant. But too 
 often this servant absolutely ignores the soul it- 
 self, and the Master of the House pines in loneli- 
 ness and neglect in his own home. Thus it is in 
 many lives, as it was in the case of the brilliant 
 
44 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 student finishing his law course at the head of his 
 class. In making- a farewell call on the beloved 
 President of the University, he was asked by this 
 good man who, proud of the record of his student, 
 yet realized that more than brilliancy was needed : 
 "What are your plans?" "I go to the city as 
 junior member of a law firm." "Yes, and what 
 then?" "I shall perfect myself as a corporation 
 lawyer. " " And then ? " "1 shall not be satisfied 
 until I am a recognized authority in my profes- 
 sion." "And then?" "I shall establish and be 
 at the head of my own firm. " "And then?" "I 
 shall be sought by the greatest corporations and 
 become financially independent." "And then?" 
 "Why, of course, I shall marry, and have a home 
 and children. " " And then ? " " Well, in my old 
 age I shall have plenty and I can retire early and 
 take my ease. " " And then ? " " Well, of course, 
 finally, I '11 get old and die. " " And what then ? ' ' 
 The young man had forgotten his soul. Even so 
 are we prone to do each day as we neglect those 
 better impulses which struggle for recognition; 
 when we tearfully sympathize and do not lift a 
 hand to help; when we turn from the unselfish 
 thought, awaiting a more convenient season. 
 Then the call of the soul for service is stifled in the 
 shouts and glee of our riotous living ; then, in re- 
 spect for law and decency, we control the crude 
 selfishness of our desires, control merely — ^not 
 correct. We stew and fuss and fume at thought- 
 lessness, or inefiiciency on the part of others, the 
 incivility of our associates, or even of our close 
 relations, instead of living before them in gentle 
 
ABILITY 45 
 
 • 
 kindliness and leaving no opportunity unused 
 which may win their cooperation, their respect, 
 their devotion. A servant but worries and frets 
 where a master and nobility would overcome. 
 
 The admonition to "neglect not the gift" but 
 emphasizes the admonition to properly use our 
 gifts. Thus may "conviction be converted into 
 conduct ! ' ' How common to most of us is the ex- 
 perience of being faced with the conviction of 
 wrong done or duty beckoning; of impulses com- 
 ing strong to worthy action or more purposeful 
 effort, which die still-born; convictions which, in 
 the end, prove only wasteful and weakening, as do 
 all worthy ideals and promptings which do not find 
 their fulfillment in conduct. We have quite fully 
 discussed the proper use of the body and recog- 
 nized it as a truly splendid machine. It is difficult 
 for us, in the face of its apparent complexity and 
 multiplied demands, to utilize it only as the most 
 perfect engine known for transmuting food and 
 air into energy, for changing those things which 
 we breathe and taste into that glorious possession 
 — life. In the midst of all our suffering and sick- 
 ness, we should hold fast to this fact — that a few 
 simple laws, only, need be followed to create, 
 within a few generations, a people of powerful 
 physiques; that the well-used body is a simply- 
 used body; and that no investment in life brings 
 greater returns in strength and vitality than the 
 hour or two devoted daily to the body's well-being, 
 in response to Nature 's simple laws of living. 
 
 The mind is a wondrous expression of vital en- 
 ergy which transmutes all experiences and events 
 
46 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 into law and order and reason. To use these 
 minds aright, that they may be truly cultivated, 
 is much less simple than attaining physical health. 
 The servant of the soul is assailed through so 
 many channels by those who have something to 
 sell, who would bribe and deceive. Each new au- 
 thority is a new school which would train the mind 
 in new channels. One emphasizes life here, an- 
 other there, and it is easy to discern the source of 
 the intellectual chaos which often results from our 
 efforts to educate. 
 
 But our greatest concern is the Master of the 
 House, the living soul — that gift of God which 
 transmutes all experiences, all losses, all pain of 
 body and distress of mind, all that man calls evil 
 into that which proves a benediction to itself. We 
 are never adding to the life of the soul when we 
 fail to derive some blessing from each experience 
 which touches our inner life. We are so prone to 
 ever look beyond the good in us for the God of our 
 salvation. Too often we call some mysterious 
 sensations produced by changes of circulation — 
 changes constantly resulting from fear or great 
 yearning, or any intensity of feeling — answers to 
 our prayers for a message from the unseen God. 
 But truly our ability to recognize God is based 
 absolutely on the quality of our own souls. God 
 is a piece of clay, a myth, a terror, an implacable 
 avenger of his wrath, a benediction of love, the 
 great gentle Father, even as the soul feels, imag- 
 ines, believes. Hence, self must be prepared to 
 know God — ^not by wishing, yearning, dreaming 
 or hoping, but by the daily following of the path 
 
ABILITY 47 
 
 whicli our already best self reveals. So only may 
 we learn to know Grod, to recognize Him when we 
 meet Him on the wayside of life, when we find Him 
 in the heart of a brother. Self, our best self, must 
 ever be given a worshipful place in life, for that 
 best self reflects the only God we can know. 
 "Neglect not the gift that is in thee." A prac- 
 tical lesson should come to us with a resistless 
 intensity, that, no matter what our limitations, re- 
 gardless of our handicap, in the face of all that has 
 transpired, humanly termed "miserable," a pre- 
 cious personal gift is ours. At twenty, or forty, 
 certainly at sixty years, one faces a life fairly 
 bristling with subtractions, but if he has not mur- 
 dered the Master of the House, and will place his 
 life in the hands of his soul, he can still fight a 
 winning battle with his remainders. He can again 
 return to the fighting line from which he so long 
 ago retreated ; he can strangle enemies in his own 
 ranks; he can do his bit with the great enemy of 
 human happiness and progress which confronts 
 all constructive human effort. With Carlyle the 
 soul can ever cry : ' ' Produce ! Produce — ^were it 
 but the pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a prod- 
 uct. Produce it in Grod's name. 'Tis the utmost 
 thou hast. Out with it! Then up! Up! What- 
 soever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy whole 
 might. Work while it is called to-day, for the 
 night Cometh when no man can work." 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 STABILITY 
 
 And having done all to stand. 
 
 Those are rare times when, looking upon the 
 sea, we find it placid and mirror-like as it lies 
 apparently inert, merely reflecting the heaven's 
 blue, the white, idly-hanging sail, or the drowsy 
 gray shadows of the gulls. The great deep might 
 then be but a sea of glass. Ever and anon this 
 polished surface is broken into ripples by some 
 leaping fish, or the whole expanse is suddenly 
 turned into a soft fur by the breath of an oncoming 
 breeze, which, as it strengthens, soon deepens the 
 watery hills and vales into moving rollers, trans- 
 forming the whole into a scene of ceaseless, restless 
 motion. With the freshening of the breeze these 
 same rollers change into waves with their green- 
 white, plumed crests, which travel on and on, curv- 
 ing, curling, breaking, reaching, ever reaching for 
 the helpless, drifting something to bury in their 
 bosom. What spectacle does Nature offer more 
 thrilling, more threatening than the sea in its 
 fury, when with power unleashed it rocks and rolls 
 and dashes and crashes, reckless, regardless, wild 
 and insane in its destructive desire? And the 
 
 strength and beauty and pride of human kind 
 
 the barges, galleons, cloud-like ships of the main, 
 
 48 
 
STABILITY " 49 
 
 * 
 the men of war, the palaces of pleasure, the steel- 
 ribbed, power-pulsating liners, have through the 
 ages proven the hapless food of the frenzied deep, 
 never satisfying the maw of its insatiable desire. 
 And each wrecked ship means more work for men, 
 more weeping for women while the sea but inso- 
 lently taunts, ' * More ! More ! ' ' 
 
 And how like the hungry deep is desire in human 
 experience. It has its hours of calm in which, on 
 the surface, all is peace and beauty, while under- 
 neath, its currents are flowing steadily hither and 
 thither, and constantly the ripples of small wants 
 make for small actions, small efforts, and break 
 the hush of satisfaction. Few days pass that de- 
 sire does not roll in upon us to throw the hours 
 into commotion, and few the weeks that the white- 
 caps of spite or selfish craving do not reach out, 
 discordant to the peace and rights of those near. 
 Unutterably destructive is the sea of desire when 
 lashed into fury, and insatiable the greedy maw of 
 its "I want, I want!" 
 
 Treacherous as is the deep to the plans and 
 pleasures of mankind, equally treacherous is the 
 sea of desire to the plans and abiding pleasures of 
 the individual. Little lives, average lives, the 
 lives of the great, have gone down and will con- 
 tinue to go, in wreckage, the wreckage of desire. 
 Delightful it is to float on the bosom of the deep 
 as it gently rises and falls; how natural to liken 
 this experience to the peaceful sleeping of the babe 
 upon its mother's breast. But if our only de- 
 pendence be a pleasure craft, how false is the sense 
 of security ! What wreckage lurks in the assumed 
 
50 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 peace of the tropic warmth and the tropic calm! 
 From out of the shimmering horizon will come, 
 certain as fate, the heartless, conscienceless storm. 
 Yet how almost universally nian surrenders to the 
 lure of ease. Generations craving luxury toil that 
 future generations may toil not. Parents econo- 
 mize and save and deny that their children may 
 know not work of hands, hut may sit in ample office 
 chairs and scheme with hrain, or even inertly drift 
 and dream. 
 
 To all, some things are easy. It is easy for the 
 strong to he strong. It is easy for the weak to 
 remain weak. For the strong to learn gentleness 
 and consideration and unselfishness and the free 
 giving of their strength for others' good is a task, 
 even as for the weak to prayerfully, patiently, 
 purposefully, insistently produce power throu^ 
 the cultivation of their small strength. It is easy 
 for all to hold and to use for self those qualities 
 or possessions inherently theirs; to fulfill to the 
 limit the whisperings or the commands of desire. 
 To none is it invariably easy to want with a striv- 
 ing and a persevering that which is unquestion- 
 ably right. Much of the problem of living has 
 been successfully worked out when one is ever 
 able to meet that hourly problem of choosing be- 
 tween what "I want," and wanting what I should 
 righteously choose. 
 
 Eare are the days when all nature is ahush, 
 when the only motion underfoot is the unseen 
 stretching upward of grass and reed and shrub; 
 when the drapery of the trees hangs idle and 
 even the aspen has ceased its "ceaseless flutter," 
 
STABILITY 51 
 
 # 
 
 when tlie droning of the bees is but a lazy tune, 
 and the throats of the birds are still, in harmony 
 with the universal quiet; when the dust raised 
 along the country road by the creeping peddler's 
 van hangs suspended, almost too inert to settle 
 again. Persuasive and rare is this all-pervading 
 hush, but certainly soon do the aspen leaves re- 
 sume their flutter and the grasses and the lesser 
 branches nod in greeting to the caressing zephyr 
 as it daintily trips and kisses the sweet fragrance 
 from the clover and honeysuckle in passing. But 
 the hush and zephyr stand for rare manifestations 
 of the ever-changing wind. More usually in brisk- 
 ness it breezes to and fro exacting homage from 
 mountain pine and lowland oak, piling the dusty 
 road into obedient yellow, streaming clouds, forc- 
 ing the bee to hum forth his energies as he hies 
 homeward with the treasures of his flower-vandal- 
 ism, and laying the exactions of effort upon even 
 the fleet-winged birds as they mate and nest and 
 foregather. And how this same wind that lulls 
 and caresses and stimulates breaks forth into 
 riotous gusts, gusts that try and strain and bowl 
 over the weak in their helplessness, which shatter 
 the bloom of lawn and mountain side, and threaten 
 all which is not secure. Suddenly this same 
 changeable force may burst forth with mutterings 
 and cursings, and storm through the land carry- 
 ing affright and loss and disturbance in its wake, 
 banging at every door and window, trampling, 
 wrenching, tearing, wounding, maiming, killing 
 the life which would call it friend. What works 
 of man, what buildings of Nature can withstand 
 
52 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the devil-infested hurricane, as with its forked, 
 burning lightnings and its ear-splitting cannonad- 
 ing and its chaos of annihilation it gathers into 
 its giant arms, in one blinding confusion, life and 
 property and things inanimate, and hurls and 
 dashes them into pieces. The wind that bloweth 
 where it listeth ! 
 
 What more changeable, what forces more vacil- 
 lating than the winds of land and sea? One wind 
 blows the pearly warmth of the tropics to tempt 
 from the security of their buds the young fruits 
 of the spring ; another wind blows the black frosts 
 of the north to the land of flowers and plenty, that 
 flowers and plenty may die; still another blows 
 the cold, damp shivers from the east into the bones 
 of the old that they may go down in pain and sick- 
 ness; while from the lips of the sinking sun the 
 west wind blows dry till the thirsty fields cry out 
 and are burned into uselessness by the hot breath 
 of the drought. Without the winds we should all 
 stifle and the earth would die of its thirst. The 
 good winds refresh and stimulate and make glad 
 the things of life — ^but the most steadfast of them 
 all is ever fickle. And, as the winds shift from 
 hour to hour or from season to season, so it is in 
 human life. Rightfully we think of the child mind 
 as changeable; it is given maturity to ''put away 
 childish things. ' ' The period of childhood is the 
 one of most rapid transformation. The little one 
 fairly alters in form of body, in newness of mind 
 and freshness of desire from day to day. Change 
 after change must be; development, growth, the 
 acquirement of knowledge, the gaining of wisdom 
 
STABILITY 53 
 
 • 
 — all stand for change. But our message is to 
 those who have acquired the stature of manhood 
 and womanhood, still retaining the vacillating in- 
 stability of immaturity. 
 
 Moods stand for much of the changeableness in 
 the lives of many. Smiles and frowns, tenderness 
 and bitterness, exaltation and hopelessness, irri- 
 tability and patience, sensitiveness and crudeness, 
 may troop one after another across the same coun- 
 tenance, expressive of the altering emotions 
 within. And of all guides which man follows, the 
 most instinctively untruthful are his undisciplined 
 emotions. When "I feel" is the governing word, 
 the "I want" of selfishness ever lurks in its 
 shaddw. Instability in plans makes for wasteful- 
 ness and the ultimate certainty of disappointment 
 in many earnest lives. The morbidly conscien- 
 tious are most prone to play battle-dore and shut- 
 tle-cock with their affairs; while another group, 
 energized by much will and vitality, but ungov- 
 erned by stable purpose, present lives of ceaseless 
 activity, an activity as sterile in productive re- 
 sults as the flying dust clouds of the road side. 
 But the wretches of life are the unstable in prin- 
 ciple, such as are fulsome in flattery, subtle in 
 detraction, caring not that half truths are whole 
 falsehoods, knowing shifty cleverness, but reck- 
 ing not the stability of wisdom. "What good can 
 lastingly adhere to the souls who know not cer- 
 tainty of purpose, nor rigidity of principle, who 
 honor not the ideals of the unseen ? 
 
 Suffering comes to the ignorant and to the wise, 
 to the high and to the low, and visits wealth and 
 
54 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 poverty, disciple and Pharisee. Usually suffer- 
 ing is the certain penalty of laws violated — suffer- 
 ing, which should be the schoolmaster bringing 
 home a lesson in the school of wisdom. But with 
 equal certainty suffering comes to the innocent, 
 unoifending victims of greedy power or unscrupu- 
 lous design — to passive heritors of the weaknesses 
 and evils of ancestry. Suffering comes to those 
 who have kept the law and yet must feel the pen- 
 alty. To such, suffering is a test, a test of growth, 
 of worth, the test which proves whether everlast- 
 ing truth has been properly mixed with certainly 
 passing, mutable life. Does suffering bring pet- 
 ulance and resentment, craven hopelessness and 
 despair? Does it create confusion and reckless- 
 ness? Does it dominate and obscure the great 
 promises of the soul? If so, one has been tried 
 and found wanting. Volition's battles mark each 
 day of life's progress, a progress which is punc- 
 tuated with a constant losing and an equally con- 
 stant finding. Change, ever change, is the pro- 
 gram of existence. New opportunities bring new 
 wants ; new associations let loose new desires ; and 
 progress will ever be halting and uncertain until 
 will has conquered inclination; until one's duty 
 is to be done, sick or well. How truly Shakespeare 
 made the indisposed friend of Brutus express this 
 great principle : 
 
 " I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand, 
 Any exploit worthy the name of honor." 
 
 Even so, defeats come, must come, should come, 
 for in the forge of defeat equally as on the anvil 
 
STABILITY 55 
 
 • 
 of victory is character melted and molded, shaped 
 
 and perfected. 
 
 "We turn from the sea with its countless ever- 
 clutching fingers, and from the wind with its fickle 
 cruelty, to the rock for our sheltering safety — the 
 rock, resistant, sustaining, dependable, the rock 
 against which the winds and the waves lash them- 
 selves in fury, and in vain. The desires of the 
 sea are no more insatiable than the desires of the 
 body. The alterations and fluctuations of the 
 wind no more unstable than the visions, ambitions 
 and plans of the mind. The soul may be stead- 
 fast, unchangeable, eternal; it alone is the rock 
 against which craving desire and vaulting aspira- 
 tion may dash themselves into harmless pieces. 
 Inherent in the soul is the power of principle. 
 Everlastingly essential to the development of the 
 child is the binding into inseparable union his con- 
 science and a few simple, fundamental principles 
 of right. How firm a foundation such teaching 
 has proven in many a storm-threatened life — ^with- 
 out it, all that we build has no footing but in the 
 sands. If the years are to bring mastery, the 
 victories must multiply, and what force grants a 
 truer reserve of fighting power than that accumu- 
 lated through former victories of right doing? 
 There is a false stability of obstinacy which is but 
 consistent adherence to selfish desire. Conceit, 
 also a false stability, is but an unworthy faith in 
 the good of our weaknesses. Possession of the 
 power of principle is the only basis for a legiti- 
 mate self-confidence which can stand in the face 
 of adversity, misunderstanding, desire. It is told 
 
56 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 of Lincoln that, after discussing a question of 
 national importance with, his cabinet, a question 
 which he advocated and against which his adver- 
 saries were unanimous, when he called for the vote 
 and met an unopposed chorus of "Nays," he 
 quietly voted "Aye" and. smilingly proclaimed 
 "The Ayes have it!'? No obstinacy there — no 
 small conceit, but a self-confidence which had 
 grown out of a life of deep and soul4rying expe- 
 riences, through all of which he had ever accepted 
 the guidance of principle. 
 
 But many complain, "How can self-confidence 
 come to me? God knows I wish to do right, but 
 doubt is ever at my side and, whatever I attempt, 
 it ridicules and falsifies and denies." Turn back 
 the pages of such a life and see what is ever lack- 
 ing. The record shows evidence that, in no one 
 department of productive living, has a root been 
 sunk deep into the soil of reality. We find that 
 life maintaining no practical hold upon the ever- 
 lasting things that are; it is nourished only by 
 a thousand surface roots, the roots of things as 
 they appear. To cultivate the stability of self- 
 confidence one must master and incorporate into 
 hourly living some principles, one must in some 
 work be worthy. Thus only may he know his own 
 worth, and only in knowing worth may he be right- 
 eously stable. 
 
 Another help to stability is found in changing 
 our point of view. As one approaches the beau- 
 tiful Jung Fran, her mountainous white cliffs 
 seem an impassable barrier across the valley-head, 
 and as we creep close to the foot of this glorious 
 
STABILITY 57 
 
 pile the whole world seems limited and shut in, 
 and the majesty of the great presence is almost 
 threatening. How different the picture to the eye 
 of the soaring aeronaut as he passes high above 
 this towering peak. He sees the mountain's rela- 
 tion to other heights, to other valleys, to the great 
 surrounding landscape ; and the barrier impas- 
 sable to the foot-traveler offers nothing but a 
 picture of symmetrical scenic beauty in the great 
 panorama below. Through the strength which he 
 has acquired by uniting his mind with the forces 
 of matter, the barrier to his progress has dissolved 
 and the burdens and dangers of ascent are no 
 more. The conditions alter and the whole prob- 
 lem disappears with his change of viewpoint. 
 When we realize that it has been given the soul 
 to unite itself in masterful alliance with the eternal 
 powers of the spiritual, how unworthy man's 
 acceptance of the cheap optimism of health or the 
 quick pessimism of illness! How unworthily he 
 lives when fever and pain and physical weakness 
 and sleepless hours, when fickle appetites or over- 
 wrought nerves, or the forced idleness of bedrid- 
 den weeks, rear themselves as impassable barriers, 
 when they press upon him as threatening, impend- 
 ing, stifling mountain heights in the face of which 
 he surrenders. Why not rise upon spiritual 
 wings, rise until all that is cheap and mean and 
 weak and unworthy becomes but part of the great 
 landscape of mountain and vale, of city, plain and 
 river — the handiwork of a beneficent Maker? Not 
 until we can look down upon life with its expecta- 
 tions and disappointments, its troubles, its con- 
 
58 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 fusions and its balking changes, may we have 
 the viewpoint which promises worthy stability. 
 Without such inspiration we can never know that 
 volitional strength which, having done all, stands. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 ATTITUDE 
 
 Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content. 
 
 Man's taste, influenced by Ms purse, decides the 
 character of his clothes, and we are prone to judge 
 our fellow-brethren and "sistren" by the cut of 
 their garments and the quality of the fabric. But 
 there is a more fair way of judging character than 
 by one's choice of garb. The soul has its cloth- 
 ing which is just as obvious, when we come in 
 contact with human beings, as the cut of their 
 apparel. The garment of the soul may be called 
 attitude, and attitude represents most truly the 
 real character. 
 
 As we note our fellow-man in his gayer moods 
 and scan the list of his pleasures and see how 
 various are his means for merriment, we must 
 realize the richness of his equipment for enjoy- 
 ment. By no people, or tribe and, indeed, only 
 in forlorn individuals, is this capacity not ex- 
 pressed in gladsome hours, in fete days, or health- 
 giving vacations, in eating, drinking and merry- 
 making in or out of season. Stunted, deformed, 
 defective, is he who has not the capacity for en- 
 joyment. Resting, as this possession does, upon 
 man's superb ability to react in a thousand wayg 
 
 59 
 
60 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 to thousands of situations, it carries with it an 
 equally rich equipment for suffering. And who 
 will say that the list of human woes is shorter than 
 that of mortal joys? Modern determinism, or fa- 
 talism rehabilitated, would leave man helpless and 
 hopeless with his animal associates, would bind 
 him with the fateful chains of heredity and the 
 steel grip of environment, denying that most obvi- 
 ous of practical conclusions, expressed through the 
 infinite variety of human reactions, the plasticity 
 of man's character — a plasticity subject to the de- 
 termination of its owner in face of chains and steel 
 bands. Every law of the land and every penalty 
 for his misdeeds speak most eloquently for the 
 practical responsibility of the individual. 
 
 Almost countless are the classifications which 
 have been applied to various responses of man- 
 kind to the great stimulus of life — classifications 
 which it would be most interesting to relate, but 
 for practical reasons we shall presume to consider 
 our fellow-man as comprising two groups: the 
 egoist and the altruist, basing this classification 
 upon the conduct of his soul in its relations with 
 his neighbor. 
 
 Every hour of life brings some new touch to 
 influence our conduct and to proclaim our respon- 
 sibility. It is frequently very convenient and com- 
 forting, however, to lay the blame of our conduct 
 of to-day upon the touch of the past — upon those 
 who have gone before. What a handy waste-bas- 
 ket heredity is when we wish to avoid the effort 
 of overcoming our faults, and to unworthily hide 
 behind the selfish fatalism of "I am what I am. 
 
ATTITUDE 61 
 
 » 
 
 and I can 't help having been made so ! " Heredity 
 does place us here in the center of a big existence, 
 but heredity's power to say whether I shall re- 
 main content through being so placed, or lay hold 
 on ambition and climb to the skies, is a myth. 
 Home-training assuredly lays a strong hand upon 
 our developing attitude ; frankness or secrecy, self- 
 ishness or generosity, hardness or the spirit of 
 gentleness, is profoundly influenced by the early 
 years at home. Some of us are uncompromising 
 and quickly resentful because of those developing 
 years spent in an unforgiving atmosphere, while 
 the joy of gentle living is easy for others because 
 of the gentle one at home whose beautiful tender- 
 ness mellowed our souls. 
 
 Strong and pervading as are the hoane influences, 
 the power of education to fundamentally mold and 
 change the attitude is of infinite value. The 
 young man leaves his home of crude religious faith 
 where the coarse rigidity of semi-fatalistic justice 
 has left him much to forgive and more that he must 
 forget, if true manhood is to be obtained. Dog- 
 gedly he works himself through college. Educa- 
 tion makes him at twenty-one a markedly different 
 man than he promised to be at fourteen. His 
 whole horizon has been changed. The unforgiv- 
 ing narrowness of his home religious training had 
 made him almost hate the church; in college, he 
 was given a new outlook ; he learned faith in that 
 Power which stands for the goodness of love, not 
 the weakness expressed through force. His atti- 
 tude toward his f ellowman has changed. He has 
 found the strength of manhood, not in the brutal 
 
62 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 word, the hard fist, but in consideration, in will- 
 ingness to give and take, in arguments wHcli stim- 
 ulate the best instead of developing spite and re- 
 sentment and enmity. 
 
 Our practical business interests, bringing us 
 close to the great problem of "Live and let live," 
 distinctly affect our attitude. It is here that pro- 
 fessions speak weakly and actions are heard most 
 clearly. There are bar-tenders by whom no ap- 
 peal of need is unheeded — men of quick generosity 
 and kind hearts, to whom personal suffering is an 
 irresistible cry. There are ministers whose meth- 
 ods of close dealing, whose niggardliness of re- 
 sponse to need is entirely disproportionate to their 
 capacity for providing their own personal com- 
 forts. Attitude does not find its fulfillment in 
 one's occupation or profession but in the hourly 
 response of man to man. 
 
 Unquestionably the most determining influence 
 upon the attitude of the individual is that of the 
 Unseen upon his soul. Imperfect religions may 
 breed all sorts of ugly attitudes. The religion of 
 spirituality will ever develop the highest type of 
 soul life, will ever unfold the most perfect expres- 
 sion of human character, will ever reveal to wait- 
 ing, needing mankind the latent capacity of the 
 human to take on the Divine. 
 
 In our attitude lies our greatest responsibility. 
 We are imperial truly in our power of choice. No 
 living soul can choose an atom of our attitude for 
 us. Others may decide our food and raiment but 
 none, high or low, can choose our attitude toward 
 our Qlothing, our food, pur friends, our enemies, 
 
ATTITUDE 63 
 
 toward life in its least instance, toward life in its 
 greatest development. The soul ever lives in an 
 atmosphere of its own making. If to-day, resent- 
 ment embitters your thoughts — resentment grow- 
 ing out of past injustice — ^your hours of bitterness 
 are being multiplied because you have allowed in- 
 justice to pervert and turn to gall those feelings 
 which with equal certainty could have sweetened 
 with your pity and forgiveness. The days bring 
 only weariness ; your interest in work, in reading, 
 in the great drama of life, fails to stimulate — and 
 the days drag endlessly. You sneer at life and 
 cynically falsify its richness. But nothing that 
 life offers can discount its interests for those who 
 deeply search each experience, demanding its es- 
 sential truth. A part of the truth can only be dis- 
 appointing, can only fail to inspire and like all 
 defects must ultimately defraud. It has not been 
 life but the superficial unworthiness of the living 
 which has robbed it of interest. If in our read- 
 ing, working, enjoying, we are seeking the best 
 which they all bring; if the best offered by each 
 associate and each passing event is given full val- 
 uation, we shall soon find that the best things of 
 life are not about us, are not represented by other 
 lives, but are within and have become part of us. 
 On the basis of man's relationship to life we 
 have divided human kind into the egoist and the 
 altruist. That we may be a bit more graphic we 
 shall give the egoist a rather uncomplimentary 
 term of the street and call him the "grafter," 
 while instinctively we shall denote the altruist as 
 a benefactor. We could probably find no more 
 
64 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 illuminating illustration of the absolute disparity 
 of individual attitude than is expressed by graft 
 and benevolence. No happening touches our in- 
 terrelated lives which is not reacted to as it makes 
 for self-advantage, or as it affects others. Ego- 
 ism, or the principle of self-interest, has a most 
 legitimate birth — ^we must receive or we shall 
 never have aught to give. When we discover our- 
 selves, we realize that the efforts of others have 
 been poured into our lives, that we have cost much 
 human pain, thought, care, and perchance, love, 
 that the spirit of others has known weariness as 
 part of the price of our being here. But this 
 means nothing to the grafter. The world owes 
 him a living and it is his business to get the most 
 out of life, returning the least. The beauty of 
 soul-life has no appeal for the grafter ; the desires 
 of self have blinded his eyes to the great human 
 need, a need felt in the life of each being he 
 touches, a need which extends from his own house- 
 hold to the antipodes. How unutterably the insa- 
 tiable self can blind the sympathies to the soul- 
 hunger, which is the only real starvation the world 
 has ever known. The grafter is egocentric; his 
 wants, his petted needs and desires direct all his 
 energies, thoughts, feelings and plans, inward. 
 Should it happen that you attract the grafter and 
 are honored with his society, he will, from the first, 
 attempt to fill you with himself ; no adroitness will 
 suffice to displace his interest by those common 
 to both, but the reecho of "I" and "Me" and 
 "Mine" haunts his presence. The world and its 
 great family, the vast heavens above, the acute 
 
ATTITUDE 65 
 
 « 
 present and the impending future are, only, that 
 he may benefit thereby. It is he who makes the 
 work days miserable for his co-workers, through 
 a reckless disregard for their rights and comforts ; 
 it is he that ostentatiously, serenely, brutally 
 tours the land in his high-power motor, caring no 
 jot for the inconveniences and injuries, for the 
 fright and the righteous resentment which follow 
 in his wake. 
 
 But our special interest concerns the grafter 
 when he is sick. Ah then, how he comes into his 
 own ! How insistently he confuses selfishness and 
 suffering ! And what a pity it is that selfishness 
 and suffering are so often united! The sick 
 grafter at home puts under requisition every re- 
 source of comfort, time and loving attention, de- 
 mands the most delicate of foods, commands quiet 
 at the expense and interest of the household, ex- 
 tracts to the last drop the patience, kindness, gen- 
 erosity and forbearance of wife, nurse, physician, 
 children. How suddenly does his sickness para- 
 lyze all normal, constructive routine of home life 
 and, whether in home or hospital, how certainly 
 does the grafter reveal his unworthy inner self. 
 How certainly does he display the illness of his 
 soul as his physical sickness lets loose the imps 
 of impatience, selfishness, unreasonableness, self- 
 pity! The grafter is usually an artist — a bun- 
 gling one to be sure — but an artist in securing 
 sympathy. He belongs to the "not understood 
 folks ! ' ' The invalid grafter is always ' ' the great- 
 est of sufferers." "No one knows what I have 
 gone through" and not being understood, "there 
 
66 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 is no hope for me." How monotonously these 
 themes with multiplied variations are sung into 
 the eaTs of every physician and nurse ! ^It is the 
 attitude of graft in sickness, not the eroding can- 
 cer, the terrorizing delirium, not the ghastly tu- 
 berculosis nor the torturing neuralgias which make 
 suffering a curse. In the multiplying and inten- 
 sifying of the wretched smallnesses of self-love, 
 sickness in humankind displays its most demoral- 
 izing ugliness. Health assuredly influences the 
 attitude of most of us. There is a world of fair- 
 weather good feeling, of sunny-day smiles, of 
 June-day felicitations. It is normally easy to be 
 cheerful in conditions of well-being. Sickness, 
 however, is not necessarily suffering, though the 
 graft of sickness means inevitable misery; 
 
 Human life was intended for happiness. If we 
 are not happy, we are using life wrong. Happi- 
 ness is found in the midst of poverty; happiness 
 has resisted years of unjust misunderstandings. 
 If one is not happy he wrongly blames life; he 
 should scrutinize more deeply his use of it. Par- 
 ents, teachers, friends, servants, the having or 
 having not, the obtaining or failing, these cannot 
 make us happy or unhappy save as we determine. 
 Just in so far as we succeed in crowding fourteen 
 hours of happiness into our day, have we escaped 
 the attitude of the grafter, have we evolved the 
 attitude of benevolence, have we succeeded in the 
 business of living. 
 
 We must receive that we may give ; we must give 
 that we may receive the more. Life shrinks or 
 grows with the meagerness or the fulness of our 
 
ATTITUDE 67 
 
 • 
 giving. We must let go the lesser that we may 
 grasp the larger. There is no painless education. 
 The life which we now live so comfortably will ever 
 stand as our high-water mark until we are willing 
 to give up present satisfactions and replace them 
 with more noble strivings. Would we know the 
 best of life we must give our best to life. How 
 often has this been exemplified in the truly great ! 
 Freely and confidently Socrates gave life for prin- 
 ciple! Fully the Master gave his life for hu- 
 manity ! Infinitely regardless of death is the air- 
 man on the battle front as he flies forth to meet 
 the enemy. With individual skill he may win five, 
 ten, by chance fifty battles, but he knows the bullet 
 has been molded which will dash him to his death. 
 His attitude has long since discredited death. 
 And while we may not pour forth great treasures 
 of truth or sacrifice for human good, each of us, 
 strong in his work, weak in his bed of illness, 
 wealthy in the gold of the realm, or beneficiary of 
 charity, in youth and in age, each has at all times 
 something of helpfulness, whole-souledness, of 
 geniality, tholightfulness, of warmth, of kindly 
 ignoring, of touch, or glance, or word to add to 
 the present moment. 
 
 When the attitude of benevolence has become 
 a master force we find that no pain has been so 
 harassing, no experience so disturbing, that some 
 joy memories have not been left. It is not neces- 
 sary for the beneficent to discuss their religious 
 beliefs, creeds or theories: for them, religion 
 stands for nothing which can be expressed through 
 argumentation, for it has all been said and much 
 
68 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 more, through their lives of generosity. The an- 
 swer of beneficent, peace-bearing, joy-filling, love- 
 inspiring lives, to the searching question, "What 
 are you giving the world?" is a practical, religious 
 argument which theologic dogma can never shake. 
 The attitude of benevolence ever speaks for smil- 
 ing service, and in its very generosity life itself is 
 made more generous. When the graft instinct has 
 laid its shriveling touch upon the soul, the change 
 which makes possible the development of the al- 
 truistic attitude must be a most fundamental one. 
 Rarely this change may come as a flash in the dark- 
 ness of the night — an enlightening of the under- 
 standing which reveals one's poverty of soul. 
 More frequently through months and years of 
 painstaking effort must we grow in the grace of 
 generosity until the miserable self has been stran- 
 gled out of existence. ' ' What may I helpfully add 
 to this occasion?," is a thought which if put into 
 constant practice aids in this wholesome recon- 
 struction. If, even when hearts are heavy and 
 faces tearful, we hold fast aspiration and high 
 resolve, the day must come when we can know the 
 perfect joy of uttermost giving — that joy which 
 has brought the brightness of noonday into mid- 
 night experiences of numberless benefactors of 
 humanity, who as martyrs and mothers and mis- 
 sionaries, as doctors and nurses, and drudging 
 toilers have given their best to the limit of human 
 giving. Calvin was right; our futures are fore- 
 ordained; supreme pleasure or torture are pre- 
 destined. Suffering or serenity will be our lot, 
 but ever dependent on our attitude toward all that 
 
ATTITUDE 69 
 
 « 
 life brings. Let us know that tlie spirit of benevo- 
 lence is a creative force stronger than any en- 
 vironment. Could we, having food and raiment, 
 be therewith content, and like the Master give no 
 heed to our never-sated physical cravings, how 
 certainly the attitude of mankind would be trans- 
 formed and how truly the Kingdom of Heaven 
 would come into our midst. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 HEALTH 
 
 . . . he in health even as thy soul prospereth. 
 
 There is a world of sickness. To the doctor and 
 the nurse the very world itself is sick. Sickness 
 is a condition few escape. We meet it either 
 through experience or contact; and to the untu- 
 tored the subject presents a perfect jungle of 
 darkness and noisome possibilities. Sickness of 
 body expresses itself in a large variety of mani- 
 festations. The human body is like a fine chro- 
 nometer with its many delicately adjusted parts, 
 disturbance of any one of which may throw the ac- 
 curate workings of the instrument awry. Even 
 more intricate are the adjustments of the mind, 
 and most of us stand with bated breath in the pres- 
 ence of mental illness. But all classifications of 
 sickness are utterly inadequate which do not in- 
 clude the sufferings of the soul. 
 
 Physical illness some time during life is a prac- 
 tically universal experience, old age itself becom- 
 ing an inevitable illness if the years are suflSciently 
 prolonged. The forces of nature seem ever wait- 
 ing to thrust or strike, to crush, to infect, even to 
 destroy; and many are and always will be their 
 victims. It is quite impossible to believe that a 
 state of such perfect adjustment will be reached 
 
 70 
 
HEALTH 71 
 
 • 
 that no physical defects or deformities will be 
 handed down from generation to generation. 
 The great accidents of wealth and poverty will 
 probably forever furnish classes either saturated 
 with the disintegrating excesses of plenty or un- 
 provided with a wholesome fulness of material 
 living, in whom through damaging exposure, in- 
 adequate nutrition or the evils of unsanitary sur- 
 roundings, sickness will be bred. 
 
 For a thousand generations disease was accred- 
 ited to unknown evil influences. Superstition's 
 vague, weird, fearsome answers were the only re- 
 ply to the question, "Whence comes disease?" 
 Superstition still answers this question for tribes 
 and communities and a multitude of individuals. 
 "Providential" is the answer of many whom we 
 daily meet, an answer which has remained as a 
 wedge unhappily separating science and religion. 
 An honest, reasonable weighing of this matter will 
 soon relieve Providence of the onus of the ills of 
 the flesh, and will convincingly demonstrate that 
 our physical selves are as subject to divine inter- 
 ference and divine indifference as the grass of the 
 field, the trees in the forest, or the fish of the sea ; 
 that body of man and body of beast are equally 
 subject to the destroying forces of Nature and to 
 her protective laws. And the greatest of these 
 laws is Nature's eternal truthfulness. In this, 
 Nature expresses her divinity. The shark with 
 equal satisfaction snaps the life of the drunken 
 outcast or of the Bishop of the Diocese. In the 
 railroad wreck the crashing forces with impartial 
 truthfulness crush out the life of the negro porter 
 
72 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 and of the railway president. When pestilence 
 stalks the land the children of the king have no 
 immunity superior to that of the peasant. Hu- 
 man flesh and blood are weighed impartially in the 
 great scales of Nature's unequivocal accuracy. 
 The distinction between bishop and vagabond, por- 
 ter and president, prince and pauper will never 
 be found in physical immunity to disease and dis- 
 aster, but becomes instantly apparent when we 
 realize the protective power given each individ- 
 ual through an understanding and a living knowl- 
 edge of the inevitable dependableness of the laws 
 of Nature, both as to health and disease. 
 
 Our closer view of this subject makes it appar- 
 ent that to-day more of the sick are victims of 
 ignorance than of misfortune. With store-rooms 
 fairly bulging in their variety and plenty, our 
 neighbor and our neighbor's neighbor are dying 
 of slow starvation from the use of the wrong 
 classes of food, keeping their systems saturated 
 through the years with the poisons of overeating. 
 Others equally ignorant, frequently conscientious 
 and earnest, and entirely sincere in their efforts, 
 slowly but truly poison the mind with an unceas- 
 ing load of useless and ultimately disintegrating 
 anxiety. The modem physician speaks most truly 
 when he asserts that the greatest single cause of 
 illness of body to-day is the imperfect balance be- 
 tween food and physical exercise; while the men- 
 tal expert will, with equal assurance, assert that 
 the most fertile soil for the development of mental 
 illness is found in lives of unmitigated, carking 
 care. 
 
HEALTH 73 
 
 « 
 
 The science and art of modern medicine are so 
 intricate and profound that universal expertness 
 in all its branches is but a pretense. A mere out- 
 line, at best, of the laws of health, and too fre- 
 quently a misleading one, is all that the average 
 lay-mind assumes. Hence wisdom would dictate 
 that your physician should early be made your 
 efficiency expert in all matters pertaining to phys- 
 ical and mental well-being. 
 
 There is another class of the sick, a class which 
 is an unsavory witness to the weakness of man's 
 will. Though Nature be ne 'er so kind and provide 
 intellectual capacity of highest grade, and though 
 the advantage of most sane medical counsel be 
 available, there will remain many who in the face 
 of these blessings will be sick, the victims of in- 
 dulgence. The only child is too frequently a 
 spoiled child; even in large families the desire to 
 give pleasure for the moment, a willingness to 
 dodge the issue or the situation, the satisfaction 
 which parents find in sacrificing themselves for 
 the pleasure of their children, combine to make 
 the business of child-spoiling a common one. In- 
 dolence of mind and body, made so increasingly 
 possible through the multiplication of modern 
 wealth, accounts for a vast deal of the physical 
 mushiness and mental flabbiness in so many young 
 people who should be keenly climbing the heights 
 of youthful inspiration. As household pets and 
 social dolls, as cigarette-saturated loafers and 
 hammock-swinging, French novel-reading incom- 
 petents, disease of body and mind finds in these 
 classes an easy mark. 
 
74 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 The desires of the flesh exact a mighty toll of 
 disease and suffering through indulgence of the 
 palate. In no great principle underlying health 
 does the physician so constantly realize his impo- 
 tence, does he make himself so quickly unpopular 
 and find his wisest counsel so universally ignored, 
 as when he attempts to teach the rational use of 
 food and drink. For all too many the want of 
 what "I want" becomes an obscuring want, a want 
 insistently translated as a "need." 
 
 Physical sickness in its multiform expressions 
 appeals to most of us as one of the sternest and 
 most dreaded of realities. And the one who does 
 not accept it as an affliction, who has not, tempo- 
 rarily or chronically, bowed to it as master, is ex- 
 ceptional. The thoughtful physician, however, 
 gradually realizes that as true sickness, physical 
 disabilities and afflictions, and even disasters, have 
 but an evanescent hold upon the soul itself. 
 Spend a day in a home for the blind where, through 
 a wise routine, the discipline of productive indus- 
 try is enforced, and note the happy contentment 
 radiating from these unseeing faces. Associate 
 yourself with a family of normally trained, indus- 
 trious mutes, isolated as they are, from the great 
 chorus of the world's speech through their deaf- 
 ness, and feel the cheer that fairly flashes from 
 their nimble, flying fingers. How persuasive is 
 the appeal of the contented cripple who, because 
 of his very inadequacy, has to work longer hours 
 and more laboriously than others. What is the 
 message of these hopelessly defective /~ Most of 
 us think of tuberculosis only as a producer of 
 
HEALTH 75 
 
 • 
 weakness and suffering, of wretchedness — as al- 
 most repelling. Beethoven, Chopin, Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, Keats, Edison, despite their suffering, 
 wrought on through their productive years, giving 
 forth messages of cheer, comfort, beauty and 
 utility; giving freely their best that humanity 
 might be richer. 
 
 Is health a physical thing? Real sickness comes 
 when we surrender. Eeal sickness enters life only 
 when we give up to the powers of gloom. When 
 we accept the creed that "life is a sad, solemn, 
 sorrowful, sinkhole of sin and suffering," then 
 we are sick. One invites such illness when he al- 
 lows the love of ease to become the clutch of dis- 
 ease. When he surrenders to the sordid com- 
 monness of self-seeking he falls out of harmony 
 with the eternal law of love, which is health. We 
 are sick when we hourly or daily surrender to the 
 irritating, the monotonous, the defeating circum- 
 stances, "the inevitables." When circumstances 
 become our master, then are we ill! The only 
 truly sick person in this life is he of the sick soul. 
 The suffering body is ever an opportunity for the 
 soul to claim its own and to rise above the morbid, 
 to stand superbly superior to that lesser self which 
 would dominate life from start to finish. One 
 may roll in physical luxury, and be universally de- 
 spised. Another is powerful in muscle, but a self- 
 ish coward in the use of his strength. Still an- 
 other may be a Croesus in this world's goods, but a 
 miser in spirit, and wretched. Or, learned in all 
 that the ujiiversity can teach, the pedant may re- 
 main an empty fool in the art of gladsome living. 
 
76 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Aches, pains, broken bones, fevers, infections may 
 incapacitate, bnt are incapable of reducing true 
 manhood and womanhood to sickness. 
 
 Does it not appear that frailness of body can 
 never overcome supremacy of the spirit? 
 Throughout the centuries Religion 's supreme con- 
 tention has been that the soul is greater than the 
 body. Nearly one thousand years ago the godly 
 St. Bernard saw this truth, and his "Nothing can 
 hurt me save myself" must ever be a truism for 
 lives knowing soul-health. In the face of this in- 
 spiring conviction the spirit soars clear, untouched 
 by poverty, by plainness of feature, by dulness of 
 speech, by lack of intellectual brilliancy, by social 
 deflections, or by physical ills great and small. 
 All of these, and more, are obliterated by content- 
 ment, cheer, sympathy, patience, modesty and se- 
 renity. 
 
 Would we be well? Then let us accept, as we 
 should fate, the externals ever beyond our con- 
 trol. But within is the eternal choice between the 
 grouch and the smile, despair and cheer ; an eternal 
 option between the whine and the ringing, hopeful 
 voice, between degrading surrender and the fight 
 in the last ditch. Fretful hours will come. There 
 are so many fretting things to fret us. But when 
 domestic affairs are all a-tangle; when servants 
 are incompetent or unobtainable; when finances 
 take wings and you are misunderstood, when ' ' all 
 has gone wrong," then you can go out into the 
 cool night and look up into the eternal heavens and 
 hear the serene stars chide, "So hot, my little 
 man ! ' ' And you loosen your collar to drink in the 
 
HEALTH 77 
 
 restfulness of those abiding eyes of the night and 
 message back, "No, I am not hot. The calmness 
 of eternity is again in my veins." Such is the 
 supremacy of the soul over all that life may bring. 
 Brierly has so well said it: "A heart at rest in 
 God keeps the blood in circulation; helps you to 
 breathe freely, gives relish to your daily bread; 
 makes your sleep sound, floods your nature with 
 the sunshine in which it grows and thrives. This 
 faith does not ask for impossibles. It accepts the 
 human conditions. It knows you cannot be cured 
 of being seventy years old, but it knows that old 
 age and death are God-given conditions." 
 
 Health of soul thrives best under cultivation. 
 Then let us let the sunshine in. There is so much 
 sickness that needs the antiseptic of cheerfulness 
 — for cheerfulness is the greatest disinfectant of 
 mental infections yet discovered. Buoyancy and 
 cheerfulness are not frivolity. There is a weari- 
 some cackle of shallow lives which means nothing, 
 or at best thinly veils a mirthless life. Buoyancy 
 is the sanest form of seriousness. We recall Mark 
 Twain's wholesome philosophy as he kindly re- 
 buked a sad, long-faced some one with "If at first 
 you don't succeed, fail, fail again." And fail 
 again and again we shall before we finally win. 
 But the cheerful outlook upon the grim situation 
 constitutes the only genuine seriousness, and is 
 one of the surest signs of sane health. None of 
 us but may put in our future days less of the whine 
 and more of real cheer; less of fault-finding and 
 more of good feeling; less of wailing at fate and 
 more of willingness that those about us shall share 
 
78 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the best we have. The real benefits of education 
 could be reduced to a sentence. True education 
 develops the ability to put ourselves in another's 
 place; it leads us out of ourselves till we under- 
 stand the writings of this author, the dreamings of 
 this poet, the need of our community, the canker- 
 worm in the heart of our neighbor — some need in 
 each life we touch. How good to meet one so edu- 
 cated ! Whether the learning came through sem- 
 inary or college, or the forge and anvil, it gives a 
 knowledge of the full or empty lives of man, 
 woman and child. It inspires a quick willingness 
 to respond and to forget self. 
 
 Hospitals and resorts are flocking-fuU of health- 
 seekers whose only object is to get well — and the 
 health won for health's sake alone must fail to 
 satisfy. To be well that we may be efficient is 
 worthy of the effort; but the health miser is no 
 better than he who hoards his musty gold. Health 
 is a talent to be put out at usury, to be put to 
 work in the magnificent factory of the world to 
 do its share of humanity's great task. So in addi- 
 tion to cultivating buoyancy of spirit, generosity 
 must grow and wax strong within the soul before 
 it can know robustness of health ; generosity in its 
 large sense, which gives of self freely. A Yale 
 instructor was accosted early one winter morning 
 by a poor man whose hands were bare and blue 
 and cold, and he gave him his mittens. Mr. In- 
 structor had little of this world's goods, and con- 
 sequently went through the winter with his hands 
 in his pockets. One of his students in writing of 
 him afterward said: "This act was a small bit 
 
HEALTH 79 
 
 of generosity for him ; his real generosity was that 
 he gave us of himself; his patience when we did 
 not do our best. His personal interest was for 
 each of us. His generosity made us better men. ' ' 
 The weakening, unworthy, unmanly acceptance 
 of many of the prevalent forms of invalidism, the 
 maudlin pity, popular and rampant, for aches and 
 minor ills and indispositions, which a healthy self- 
 respect, which a small degree of refinement would 
 instinctively hide as beneath the worth of expres- 
 sion, need to be neutralized in the lives of the ma- 
 jority, by the pride of health. An aristocracy of 
 wholesome'ness would thus be created which would 
 ultimately prove an immense force, conserving 
 time and sympathy, increasing efficiency and self- 
 respect, inspiring masterful living, and assuring 
 soul-growth, as would few other reformations. 
 Develop a pride in your health and do not listen to 
 your symptoms, save as they are a warning which 
 directs you to expert advice. Such pride will 
 laugh into nothingness the demoralizing whisper- 
 ings of fear, and if, perchance, the physical worst 
 does come, it will assure the health of soul that 
 descends not to the weariness of complaint; that 
 meets the suffering of pain with the fortitude 
 which is of the soldier ; that accepts the inevitable, 
 incapacitating though it may be, with a sense that 
 the inevitable's worst is but a transient thing in 
 the face of which the soul can smile. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 HINDRANCES 
 
 Who did hinder you that you should not ohey the truth f 
 
 Lacking in imagination or understanding is the 
 man wlio, looking upon the mountain heights, has 
 felt no thrill of desire. These majestic piles — 
 these serene, unchanging guardians of valley and 
 plain — eternal sentinels ever on duty storing en- 
 ergy to be used by future generations, magnet- 
 ically draw the iron in red blood. Who would live 
 his life through and not respond to this call? 
 
 The mountains may be literal ones, veritable 
 masses of granite or pyramids of lava, or the more 
 inevitable mountains of difficulty which no life 
 approximating the normal can avoid. To mount 
 higher! How naturally this desire comes to us 
 all! And there are none but have, in some way, 
 responded to this challenge. There is a symbol- 
 ism in the thought of ascent which lays hold on 
 even the careless pleasure-seekers who set their 
 wits to work that they may know the mountain 
 heights. But for them the pain of effort must be 
 avoided ; hence by cog-road or mule-back they taste 
 unearned pleasures, and unearned, the savor so 
 sought will ever be insipid ; moreover, they add to 
 the burdens of life 's workers even as do the unde- 
 
 80 
 
HINDEANCES 8l 
 
 veloped, the defectives, and the selfishly wealthy. 
 How different the world, how different our own 
 household or neighborhood would be if each of us 
 utilized his own strength for the honest carrying 
 of his own load. 
 
 The mass of mankind seeks the mountain 
 heights by way of the trail which other hands have 
 made. Standing beside this trail the onlooker 
 sees company after company of the burden-car- 
 riers — earnest toilers — seriously, cheerfully, hope- 
 fully and trustingly wending their way upward. 
 But how came the trail? In all ages it has been 
 given the few to try unsealed heights, to attempt 
 untried ascents. These, leaving friends and com- 
 panions, have broken through the tangle of the 
 pathless mountain forests ; have cut new paths to 
 surmount cliff and precipice ; have found new ways 
 from crest to peak. Prophets, inventors, poets, 
 leaders, we have to thank for every upward path. 
 
 There is none so clear of vision, so agile, so im- 
 petuous, so strong of limb but the mountain climb 
 holds back, wearies to the point of rest, causes to 
 pause, to take bearings, and examine the trail. 
 There is no life so well ordered, so sturdily lived, 
 but has its hindrances. There is no great onward 
 and upward movement but has its periods of delay. 
 "We humanly tend to blame the surroundings for 
 our lack of progress, to place the responsibility of 
 our difficulties upon things external to ourselves. 
 Many have never known the satisfaction of putting 
 under foot even moderate mountain-tops because 
 they have never made the preparatory sacrifices 
 necessary to get the body in trim ; they have never 
 
82 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 been willing to put aside the days of luxuriating 
 ease, and get muscle, diaphragm and heart in con- 
 dition to safely master even the mountains of 
 small difficulty. How inane, how pitiful indeed is 
 their excuse ! What a contrast to the many who, 
 apparently lacking even the physical necessities 
 for a comfortable life in the low country, have 
 successfully scaled the steepest mountain-sides of 
 human experiences. Did Milton, during those 
 months of acute physical pain, as one eye, then the 
 other was lost in the night of blindness, find 
 strength of purpose in intensity of suffering? 
 How else, hopelessly handicapped as he was, can 
 we account for the prodigious mental expenditures 
 evidenced in his immortal writings ? 
 
 Count Zichy loved music and he played well. 
 The bursting of his gun lost him his right arm. 
 Was he not face to face with the mountains of 
 impossibility in the realization of his ambition in 
 piano artistry? Not so this noble spirit. The 
 single left hand became so expert, and the soul of 
 the man was so pervasive that for years he gave 
 concerts for beneficent causes throughout Europe, 
 and the best composers of the century created 
 anew that his ability might find full musical scope. 
 Count Zichy gave to the world a higher standard 
 of left hand technic, thus bettering all piano work. 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant was living in a cabin eking out 
 a simple existence, farming and hauling wood to 
 town for sale, when the great war of the States 
 with its countless difficulties called him. What he 
 overcame as a military leader has been repeatedly 
 
HINDRANCES 83 
 
 • 
 
 recounted. But no one knew the true Grant until, 
 in his old age, after he had tasted the highest hon- 
 ors his country and an admiring world could he- 
 stow, he found himself penniless through the ras- 
 cality of a business associate — and not only penni- 
 less but the victim of an incurable disease, one 
 of the most painful known to human flesh. Did 
 Grant send out a call of distress and beg the ease 
 of a palanquin to cross these unexpected mountain 
 ranges? So far from this was his response to 
 the challenge, that out of his dying months the 
 world received his "Memoirs" written by his own 
 pen, and accounted by scholars as among the finest 
 examples of pure English of the last century. 
 These Memoirs he had refused for years to write 
 until the need of family and the call of creditors 
 made the earning of dollars the call of honor. 
 
 When our days taste a bit brackish, when the 
 clouds hang low about our souls and the worthless- 
 ness of self and the uselessness of life are tempt- 
 ing thoughts, how certainly the taste may be sweet- 
 ened, how surely the sunshine returns, and how 
 clearly is the falseness of pessimism revealed if 
 we will but forget our morbid selves in re-reading 
 the wholesome messages of Eobert Louis Steven- 
 son. When we think of him turning from life- 
 long literary companions whose stimulation and 
 inspiration would seem so essential to high liter- 
 ary effort, not only turning away but apparently 
 losing himself among untaught children of nature 
 on the opposite side of the globe; when we think 
 of the beauty of his spirit growing even as his 
 
84 THE SOUL IN SUPPEEING 
 
 lung tissue was melting away under disease, who 
 presumes to say that physical handicap can keep 
 us from the mountain heights ? 
 
 If we are to climb surely, and wish certainly to 
 reach the peaks of beautiful promise, we must look 
 well to our baggage and we must be clothed in that 
 which will stand the wear and tear of rough usage. 
 The sun beats down hot, while the night on the 
 mountain-side is chill — and many never pass the 
 foot-hills because they are inadequately clad for 
 the journey. Others are cluttered with the trap- 
 pings of show; life is so much a matter of what 
 they wear, and what they wear is so influenced 
 by vanity and conceit that existence degenerates 
 into pretense. In attempting this journey no sin- 
 gle element hinders progress like the pride which 
 makes possible illy-shod feet. To-day the sculp- 
 tor must seek his models among the lowly, for the 
 feet of aristocracy must be hidden. Often the 
 bluer the prized blood the less of red iron it car- 
 ries which is able to answer to the magnetic grip 
 of the iron-hearted mountains. 
 
 Food the climber must have. Ample room must 
 be left for it in his knapsack. And yet, how many 
 of us go through life carrying useless food bur- 
 dens, the burdens of digestive disturbance, of pains 
 and neuralgias galore, because we choose the food 
 for our journey unwisely, ignoring the age-old 
 teaching of our guide, that he only makes the jour- 
 ney comfortably and easily and surely who car- 
 ries with him simple food and leaves behind the 
 luxuries. 
 
 A Harvard athlete, a youth of remarkable phys- 
 
HINDEANCES 85 
 
 • 
 ical proportions and development, was trans- 
 planted to the mountains of North Carolina. He 
 had lived in the midst of plenty in the past, with 
 every want satisfied. He looked with disdain on 
 the far-off ridge of bluish haze and ridiculed the 
 expedition to the top of the Craggies as "boy's 
 sport." He was truly conspicuous and good to 
 look upon as he strode forth bare-armed and bare- 
 headed, a perfect young Saxon giant. The re- 
 mainder of the party knew the mountains and 
 were dressed and equipped for the trip. Each 
 carried a knapsack with his share of the provi- 
 sions. Twenty miles to the foot, which was 
 reached early in the afternoon : then five miles of 
 stiff climbing — for orders had been given to go 
 straight up! And it takes a man to go straight 
 up Craggy! Soon the tangle of the heartless 
 bramble, the interwoven laurel and rhododendron, 
 and the relentless rays of the afternoon sun 
 turned the fair skin of the young giant 's arms into 
 scratches and splotches of bleeding red. A call 
 for help could not long be delayed. The proffered 
 sweater was not an unmitigated joy, though ac- 
 cepted for protection. From his vainglorious po- 
 sition in the van he soon dropped behind, and 
 later could keep the track of the rest of the party 
 only through repeated callings. Finally he 
 shouted an appeal that some one help him with 
 his load ! Only the condescending kindness of his 
 associates kept him from being left, confused and 
 helpless. As it was, he reached the top nearly 
 an hour behind the slowest of his companions. 
 At supper time when the provisions were opened, 
 
86 THE SOUL IN SUPFEKING 
 
 his cans of fruit were found to be empty, Ms 
 sheepish excuse being that he was "perishing for 
 water." The chill of the mountain made him an 
 eager sharer of another's blanket. He had dis- 
 dained such feminine comforts and would have 
 suffered severely had he not humbly crawled under 
 the generous protection which his benefactor had 
 carried from home to the top. 
 
 How prone we are in preparing for our journey 
 upward to crowd our baggage with more or less 
 of the trash of life, every pound of which means 
 prolonged expenditure of effort. Of how little use 
 is the trashy novel ! We throw it away when read 
 and have nothing in its place. How much better a 
 few good books which we can read and read again 
 and which have for all of the party a message 
 which inspires. The most reprehensible of all 
 trash is the silver-topped flask. We are so ever- 
 ready to reach out for the false strength, too cheap, 
 so convenient, which has proven in the end a most 
 damaging hindrance to the progress of many of 
 the world's best. 
 
 The choice of trail must be considered. We 
 hear many asking, "Which is the easiest trail to 
 the top?" The easy trail is not the trail up. In 
 youth particularly are we apt to choose the way 
 of easy grades. How much less effort to go down 
 than to ascend! How slow we all are in learn- 
 ing the invaluable lesson of life — the realization 
 that endurance is won only by the overcoming of 
 hindrances. The right path is always away from 
 the valley of comfort and plenty. The right path 
 is always up, and requires that a bit of effort be 
 
HINDRANCES 87 
 
 put into each step. The trail is not always clear. 
 Many false trails have been started by those who 
 have tired of the ever-ascending way ; or the trail 
 itself becomes dim. We are confused. Life un- 
 questionably demands that now and then we pause 
 and assure ourselves past all question that we are 
 on the right road. At these times Fear would 
 persuade us that we are lost, that we are off the 
 trail; we are then tempted to listen to the whis- 
 per of Cowardice that every road down leads to 
 the Valley of Ease. Or again, the trail seems to 
 end abruptly against the Cliffs of Difficulty. 
 Health fails, business ventures go to smash, trou- 
 bles mount before us — ^veritable precipices thrown 
 across our way by Fate to bar us from the Heights 
 of Happiness. And Faith seems to be breaking. 
 These are times which test the soul of man — times 
 when there seems to be nothing left, but 
 
 "... close-lipped patience for our only friend 
 Sad patience, too pear neighbor to despair." 
 
 And the cliffs do present obstacles and dangers 
 which try the best of man's ingenuity and courage. 
 It is here that he who overcomes must go forward 
 seeking the Path of Truth, finding which, even 
 though he go to his death, he is saved. 
 
 But our bodies, our baggage, and the trail we 
 travel are minor elements in their power to accom- 
 plish our defeat when compared with the hin- 
 drances of our inner selves. How utterly helpless 
 are we on the mountain-side if we know neither 
 whence we came nor the goal we seek ; if we have 
 
88 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 no map or compass, or having them are ignorant 
 of their use! There are places in the journey 
 where we must follow or be lost. The sun or the 
 eternal pole-star, the law of God, the leadings 
 of some master must be accepted or we perish 
 through our ignorance. And how Worry with its 
 overadequate provision for future trouble im- 
 pedes our foot-steps ! The mountaineer laughs at 
 the parasol, the overshoes, the rain-coat and the 
 umbrella with which worrying natures burden 
 themselves for the climb ! Then again Fear robs 
 our adventure of its worth! What a miserable 
 journey it is when each crooked tree-root repre- 
 sents a lurking serpent; when each stone harbors 
 creeping, crawling, stinging things; when the re- 
 cesses of the distance are peopled with vicious, 
 moving shapes; when the burden of the day's 
 thought is the dread of a sleepless night — sleep- 
 lessness which can be no more certainly assured 
 than by the hours of mental preparation through 
 anticipation ! 
 
 Few attempt the first ascent alone. Experi- 
 enced guides are available. The history of man 
 would have been changed had youth ever followed 
 the precepts of wisdom! The time should come 
 when, with our accumulated experience, we may 
 plan our own journey, but in our earlier trips 
 obedience to the guide may mean the difference 
 between achievement and disaster. There are un- 
 questioned joys of disobedience, but hospitals and 
 penitentiaries and almshouses and the gutters of 
 the slums are peopled with those who are drink- 
 ing the dregs of this cup. The most pathetic of 
 
HINDRANCES 89 
 
 • 
 
 all mountain climbing is the knowledge that one is 
 lost and may perish alone. We have heard a voice 
 of anguish in the mountains — not the cry of phys- 
 ical pain, of want or hunger or cold — ^but the cry 
 of despair of one who was lost, who alone in the 
 darkness was frenziedly seeking camp. 
 
 Cheerful obedience is a real tonic to the spirits 
 of all the company. Small souls are easily de- 
 feated; small souls living for self are unable to 
 think first of the good of the crowd and early 
 add the tiresome burden of their complaint. They 
 are "foot-sore"; they are "thirsty"; they are 
 "tired"! And complaints multiply, only to de- 
 tract from the common happiness. The one who 
 has not the ability to turn the inevitable annoy- 
 ances of the mountain trip into jollity has no place 
 in a party of climbers. The mountainside is a 
 sorry place for the weak of will, and the lower 
 levels are peopled with failures due alone to indo- 
 lence. The joys of the mountain-top are for those 
 who have cheerfully and resolutely carried their 
 burdens and done their share and earned their re- 
 ward. 
 
 Yet it is the lot of many men and women to make 
 the journey up bereft of companions, to ascend 
 alone or not at all. How isolated the lone traveler 
 appears as he toils upward. Great men and great 
 women have faced this solitude and without a cry 
 of despair, without a wail for help, have won the 
 top. For is not one sure promise theirs ? At the 
 mountain-top are they not certain to find com- 
 panions of their own kind, as there all the upward 
 trails finally end! And those whom we greet, 
 
90 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 when at last the summit is reached, are of the best. 
 This companionship, however, is but one of the 
 joys that comes to the soul of man when for the 
 first time he looks out upon the vast sea of granite 
 waves; as he looks down on the silver-gold backs 
 of the clouds, the world of man's making lost to 
 all vision ; when he feels in his veins the exhilara- 
 tion of victory ; when he feels thrilling within, the 
 answer to the call of the years, the call to mastery 
 not alone of things, but of self. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 GOULYLAimNQ 
 
 '/ complained cmd my spirit was overwhelmed. 
 
 Each day is a making or a breaking. Every 
 year of life we add to the welfare and wealth of 
 character, home, and community, or we deface, dis- 
 organize, demolish somewhat of good. Each life 
 is either one of creating or of destroying. It may 
 not be gross vandalism that marks the trail of the 
 individual's days; indeed, it is rarely through 
 burnings and thievings and maimings that man 
 engraves his record — but some way, somehow, 
 each one creates an atmosphere. Eaiment and 
 trained facial expression are entirely inadequate 
 to successfully mask the character which eventu- 
 ally will unwittingly show forth what we truly are. 
 From the atmosphere of our presence is ever 
 emanating either the incense which stimulates 
 more beautiful living, or noxious vapors which 
 stifle the ever struggling good. If selfish comfort 
 is our objective in existence, no art can effect this 
 attainment without a neglect which means the 
 smothering lof wholesome possibilities in others. 
 But if our neighbor's need and worthy comfort 
 and inherent rights are considered on a par with 
 our own, and we give even as we would receive, 
 
 91 
 
92 THE SOUL IN SUPPEEING 
 
 then are we creators. And in this conception of 
 brotherhood do we not find the very heart of right- 
 eousness? 
 
 How much of life is involved in our touch with 
 others ! This relationship is so vital that wisdom 
 bids us scrutinize its quality narrowly, from time 
 to time. What is your spontaneous thought to- 
 ward others'? Do you instinctively reach out for 
 those elements in the stranger through which your 
 spirit may blend with his? Is the deep want of 
 your heart to be, toward all, that which is com- 
 prised in the beautiful word — friend? Are you 
 ever alert to add the unselfish element to each re- 
 lationship, so that the miraculous chemistry of 
 friendship may be untrammeled? Have you long 
 since resolved in your soul that each greeting, 
 whether in the brisk business world, or in suave 
 society, or in household happenings, shall be 
 brightened by some expression of that better self 
 within? Possibly no resolution can be made 
 which, if kept, so certainly assures joy of living, 
 and when we count its cost in personal effort, how 
 minor the investment! Does such a giving not 
 represent the seed sown which brings forth thirty, 
 sixty, and even an hundred-fold? How different 
 the harvest which comes from the questioning, sus- 
 picious attitude, the forerunner of enmity! The 
 best feelings quickly hide themselves when as- 
 sailed by the elements of discord. The resentment 
 is instinctive which wells up in the face of ques- 
 tionings and doubtings. The destroying force of 
 enmity is equalled only by the inspiring power of 
 friendship. 
 
COMPLAINING 93 
 
 What vast wastes of rocky barrens and desert 
 emptiness are traversed in man's experience as a 
 result of his disagreements. What a simile of 
 human relationship we see in the well-populated 
 barnyard at feeding time. All is friendly duck- 
 ings and quackings and Growings till something 
 mutually desired is thrown into the midst. Then 
 presto ! the din of small rioting is let loose. Why 
 has our higher civilization not more profoundly 
 emphasized the productiveness of agreement? 
 What life would not have been more profitable, 
 have not attained a higher stratum of develop- 
 ment, had the time, the energy, the beauty frittered 
 away in hours and days of narrow self-assertion, 
 been utilized in attaining self-forgetting gener- 
 osity? Who can compute the waste of useless 
 quarreling? The workman is out of sympathy 
 with his employer; the minister complains of his 
 congregation's unresponsive attitude; the sur- 
 geon is impatient with the edge of his scalpel ; the 
 gamester inveighs against the turn of the cards; 
 the boarder resents the monotony of his dinners ; 
 the student sulks about the length of his lessons ; 
 the artist decries the taste of the public ; the mer- 
 chant protests against the competition of modern 
 methods; some mothers murmur at the responsi- 
 bilities of motherhood. Do we not find in the con- 
 stant loss of good, which is the penalty of the al- 
 most universal attitude of damagingly expressed 
 disagreement, the underlying reason for much of 
 the world's enmity? 
 
 How inveterate the complaining habit even in 
 those who would be accredited our best citizens. 
 
94 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 The World's teeth are set on edge and kept on 
 edge by the great stream of destructive acidity 
 which not only the selfish, but the thoughtless, 
 pour into the well-spring of life. And what a 
 variegated procession of oomplainers we meet! 
 It may be those who murmur, those whose sub- 
 dued objections are without strength or spirit, 
 who, because they know not better, rob their sur- 
 roundings of the sunlight of comfort, rob their 
 working days of the inspiration of contentment. 
 Others are mere fussers who complain of trifles — 
 and what a yelping chorus it is! No discomfort 
 is too small to excite their vehemence, no occa- 
 sion so sacred as to check the flow of their plaints. 
 The harmony of home is an ideal unknown to 
 those who are willing to iterate and reiterate the 
 mistakes of omission and commission made by 
 loved ones. And, when illness lays its discom- 
 forting touch upon the fusser, how hopeless are 
 the forthcoming efforts of attention and care to 
 elicit kindliness of thinking or graciousness of 
 expression. 
 
 Every crowd has its grumbler — ^he who in surli- 
 ness contemplates each event, and like the ruts 
 and rocks and dust of the roadway, makes the 
 journey uncomfortable. Five delicately prepared 
 dishes grace his dinner-board, but "The salad- 
 dressing lacks snap" and the salad course alone 
 is the grumbler's text. A family of Americans 
 was making the trip down the legendary Ehine. 
 The day was warm, a waiter was called and ice- 
 cream ordered. "No ice-cream!" And there- 
 upon the w'hole family, from sire to youngster, de- 
 
COMPLAINING 95 
 
 • 
 voted itself to an increasingly comprehensive com- 
 plaint of all things "foreign," of the incon- 
 veniences of European travel, and the fundamental 
 limitations of all minds not American. An insig- 
 nificant disappointment, the inability to supply an 
 absolutely unnecessary want — and the beauties of 
 the Rhine went "glimmering." Castles, cathe- 
 drals, historic land-marks, the cradles of art and 
 music and statesmanship were unnoted; beauties 
 physical and historical, inspiring sights, alone 
 worthy a trip abroad, were unnoted in the chorus 
 of grumblings stirred up by the inability to in- 
 dulge in a few spoonfuls of ice-cream. 
 
 As the child emerges from the protecting arms 
 of mother, grandmother and nurse, we expect it 
 to whine as its tender self feels the early bumps 
 upon the corners of reality. But how can we re- 
 spect the weak, childish complaints of whining 
 men and women — complaints covering those dis- 
 comforts which have long since passed into the 
 oblivion of the unnoticed in lives which have 
 evolved out of childhood? A group of the destroy- 
 ers of harmony is constituted by these, whose 
 wearisome, pettish objections greet each call of 
 duty and are their devitalizing answers to the 
 knock of opportunity. Then there are those who 
 cavil, whose frivolous carpings annoy, even though 
 they cannot destroy the efforts of well-doing; no 
 message of statesman or President escapes the 
 qualifications of their endorsement — qualifications 
 inevitably rooted in the smallness of self. No 
 book but, to hear them, suffers from the lack of 
 their editorship. Do not attend a concert with 
 
96 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 a caviler unless you wish to be kept "on pins and 
 needles" by his discordant solo of disagreement 
 with the "mannerisms of the conductor," "the 
 weakness of the basses," "the blare of the 
 brasses," "the inanity of the interpretations." 
 How like living with an unhealing, festering sore 
 within, to so interpret life. And a step from cavil 
 is cynicism, a step downward. The cynic finds 
 his unholy happiness in laying his tarnishing 
 hands upon the conceptions of virtue, goodness, 
 idealism, the soul and its aspirations, the heart 
 and its purest loves, the mind in its struggle for 
 truth — these and all grace and trust and beauty 
 are cynicism's victims. The habit of looking for 
 faults, of finding the fault that we may hide be- 
 hind it, using it as an excuse, as a weapon of of- 
 fense, utilizing wrong as an opportunity to more 
 deeply hurt the wrong-doer, are some of the almost 
 universal and serious effects which are the harvest 
 of the seed-sowing of complaint. 
 
 The absurdity and waste of complaint are evi- 
 dent when we consider the hourly objections to be 
 heard of the weather. The broker in his stuffy, 
 city office is growling at Providence because of the 
 dust and heat and swelter, for all of which the 
 same Providence has been most devoutly impor- 
 tuned by the rural population of his state, that 
 wheat and oats, the next year's food for man and 
 beast, may be safely harvested. In the great 
 maple-sugar camps there is rejoicing and activity 
 and the promise of rich profit when, in the warm 
 February weather, the unleashed sap bursts up- 
 ward, as though eager to be converted into the 
 
COMPLAINING 97 
 
 » 
 golden essence of sweetness'. This same thaw 
 fairly drowns the rivers and snatches away in a 
 night the winter's work of the lumbermen. How 
 unceasing the droning of complaints about tem- 
 perature and rain and shine, our food, our clothes, 
 the conduct of kith and kin — ^not always dronings, 
 however, for almost vicious is the frenzy of many 
 to reconstruct their "folks" and friends. How 
 obsessed are these to convert others to their own 
 obviously inadequate ways of living and thinking. 
 How industrious in reform are many of the least 
 reformed ! 
 
 Faults we all have and, indeed, too often do we 
 pass the years heedless of habits which detract 
 and even offend, but the complainer is keen to 
 see, and quickly recognizes his own faults, when 
 expressed in other lives, and much of intolerance 
 arises from resentment of that in others which we 
 placidly allow in ourselves. As we analyze com- 
 plaint, does it not stand out clearly that in magni- 
 fying the fault and ignoring the virtue we violate 
 the psychologic law of helpful suggestion? And 
 is it not true that complaints are proverbially in- 
 effective and fault-finders universally lacking in 
 influence? The complainer unquestionably wields 
 a certain power, but truly, is it not an example of 
 the destructiveness of the lower forms of force? 
 The child frequently uses his developing strength 
 in rending to pieces his playthings, in tearing up 
 books and pictures, in the mutilating and killing 
 of helpless insects — expressions of power, yes, but 
 how immature! And is not the nature that is 
 eternally picking to pieces and rending and dis- 
 
98 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 abling through criticism but an example of the 
 spiritually undeveloped? The complainer ever 
 has power which he uses to divert attention from 
 the best and, lacking higher expressions of ability, 
 many so spend their lives. The habit of complaint 
 has its root in the acceptance of fault and weak- 
 ness and evil and the disagreeable, as the influ- 
 ences which most actively attract the interest; 
 herein is the essential defect, for even though criti- 
 cism may never be voiced, the adverse estimate 
 drops into the subconscious another thread to de- 
 termine the texture of the character. As cer- 
 tainly as the tide rises will habits of thought, con- 
 sciously, or otherwise, be tinctured by the subcon- 
 scious — 'and the sick subconscious is the origin of 
 our murky moods. 
 
 Let no word which has been said be accepted as 
 an advocacy for a saccharine, spineless life of om- 
 niacquiescence. From childhood 's first instinctive 
 remonstrance to the sage counsel of ripened age, 
 the protest has its right, its duty. Inane, truly, 
 would be any "wishy-washy" existence which, 
 amceba-like, but oozed and floated in its little mill- 
 pond. There is a time and a place when the pro- 
 test should ring out, clarion-clear and fearless. 
 For those in authority, the duty of protest is fre- 
 quently heavy. For all, in the presence of real 
 wrong, and when raised in behalf of weakness and 
 the objects of neglect, emphatically the neglect of 
 others, the protest is imperative. But a wrong 
 method will instantly degrade protest into irri- 
 table complaint, or common resentment. A clear 
 statement of the case, expressed with temperance 
 
COMPLAINING 99 
 
 and conviction, and a fairness wMcli recognizes 
 the merit first and then the error, gives to the pro- 
 test a relentless righteousness which must ulti- 
 mately prove convincing and effective. 
 
 The immaturity of the child or of the savage — 
 which is the form that makes possible the com- 
 plaining self? And how clearly narrow-minded 
 are they who aim their shafts of destructive criti- 
 cism at those institutions which have added whole- 
 someness, richness and beauty to moral living. 
 How hollow the carpings of one who, reading the 
 Biblical story of Jonah and unable to accept its 
 portrayal of that unfortunate's three days' in- 
 temeship, decries the Book of Books as a worthless 
 guide and turns away from its pages of promise 
 and inspiration and benediction. Equally defec- 
 tive are those who discredit the Church because 
 of its unworthy members. Is it not mockery to 
 attempt to pollute that "well of living waters," 
 which the Church has been to generations, by 
 splashing it with mud from the shallow puddles of 
 cynicism and conceit? 
 
 Would we cure our complaining? We usually 
 find it of lusty growth and are tempted to trim it 
 into less conspicuous proportions. Better con- 
 ventions, higher breeding, Chesterfieldian imita- 
 tions — all tend to keep down its rankness of 
 growth, in fact may prune it quite close. Trim- 
 ming the branches but strengthens the roots. It 
 is only through a vitally changed attitude which 
 introduces the moral element into our ethics that 
 we can destroy the root of complaint. When we 
 look into a countenance and feel that it is lightened 
 
100 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 by the "vision splendid," then we know that we 
 have met one who has passed beyond the lowlands 
 of complaint, whose soul has ascended to those 
 heights which catch the first and hold the last ray 
 of each day's light. We feel that we are in the 
 presence of one who knows whole-sonled living, 
 within whom the larger self has outgrown the 
 power of externals to influence. Such a soul sees 
 life through great principles, and looking through 
 the actual lowly ever realizes the ideal magnificent. 
 Would we reach this highland of vantage? We 
 shall feel the steadiness of our progress thither 
 when we successfully will to let no day pass with- 
 out recognizing the beautiful in other lives, the 
 goodness in the hearts that are near, and the truth 
 in Nature's lessons even as they disappoint and 
 buffet and antagonize. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 SUFFERING 
 
 And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. 
 
 How did it first enter your life ? Were you four 
 years old, and your mother sick? Were you sent 
 into tlie country, eager and excited, and captivated 
 by the ride on the train and the drive along the 
 country road, all so new and so different from the 
 happenings which had come before? And then 
 the supper of strange food served in strange 
 dishes ! And while the evening chores were being 
 done and the evening shadows lengthened, you 
 first realize the strangeness, the loneliness "bf it 
 all — and home and mother and brothers, the fa- 
 ther who but a few hours before kissed you 
 l"Good-by" at the station, all seem so hopelessly 
 distant — and you slip out into the deepening twi- 
 light, too proud to let strange eyes see the pain 
 which is drawing the face you hide as you lean 
 against the woodshed struggling to gulp back the 
 rising sobs which are fairly choking you with their 
 grip upon your throat. Was it in the misery of 
 homesickness your childish nature first wrestled 
 with the great problem of suffering? In this way 
 or in some way it early comes to all, inexorable in 
 its inevitableness as the Fates of the ancients. 
 Out of the pain of this first separation, of course, 
 
 101 
 
102 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 came the knowledge that other hearts are kind, 
 that gentleness, and love for little ones is strong 
 in other homes ; that in the big farm house, in the 
 wonderful farmyard menageries and the myste- 
 rious woods beyond, are thrilling and joyous ex- 
 periences and adventures; and that one can have 
 brimming days of fun and be almost happy away 
 from Mother. But we learn great truths slowly, 
 and so live on with the pain of disappointment 
 obscuring many childhood days. 
 
 We are more worldly wise at fifteen. And yet 
 the great preparations which have been made by 
 our neighbor's mother, for the birthday party, 
 promising wonderful things to eat and a dazzling 
 array of new dresses with gorgeous sashes and 
 ribbons and the vision of a rollicking evening of 
 games and social joys with the best of the youth 
 of the neighborhood, and the certain presence of 
 that certain one who has added a new glow to all 
 life's experiences, hold our fancy captured. But 
 when, with this joyous dream of anticipation, the 
 days pass and your invitation does not come, how 
 inevitably life and the whole business of living go 
 dark, your disappointment becomes a tragedy of 
 suffering and no suggestion of social inequality of 
 mothers can brighten this darkness. For there 
 are and always will be injustices wrapped up in 
 social distinctions. 
 
 We proudly speak of ourselves as mature when 
 we enter into the building of our own home, as we 
 step out to fight our way to success in the business 
 world, when we become earners and supporters 
 and home-makers. But how certainly is that term 
 
SUFFERING ' 103 
 
 • 
 "maturity" to be put to a test, the acid test, by 
 suffering. The little life so promising, so inno- 
 cent, so helpless, so perfectly fulfills its mission of 
 developing big, new, unselfish loves. There is a 
 gruesome knocking, and the little face turns in 
 response — and never again looks back. Sudden, 
 apparently needless, unnatural ! Yes, here is suf- 
 fering for the bereft parents that will test, to the 
 uttermost, fortitude, faith, and gentleness of' heart 
 and all else that goes to make up sterling human 
 character. 
 
 A new variety of suffering for each season of 
 life ! It would seem that, with the ripeness of age, 
 suffering would have spent itself and have noth- 
 ing new to inflict. Yet what of poor old Lear? 
 Literature paints few pictures of more acute pain 
 than that of this proud old man driven to fierce 
 madness through heartless mistreatment by his 
 own blood. "To have a thankless child, how 
 sharper than a serpent's tooth it is. " Does it not 
 appear that from the dawn to the simset of con- 
 sciousness there is no day in which the anguish of 
 suffering may not enter life? A thoughtful mo- 
 ment, and one must realize that any experience so 
 inevitable, so universal, so ever-impending must 
 bear a profound message to our race. But what a 
 weird variety of interpretations has this message 
 received from religion, from philosophers, from 
 ourselves and our neighbors. 
 i — 3?he stab of physical pain is generally expressed 
 in terms of suffering. From the pessimist's 
 standpoint no more perfect arrangement of sensi- 
 tive organs, of vulnerable pain areas, of tissues 
 
104 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 which can fairly scream out in their agony, could 
 have been conceived than the human body. And 
 truly but a tissue-thickness separates pleasure and 
 comfort and enjoyment from smart and ache and 
 rack and torture of sensation. "Given to us as 
 a warning," one may answer — "As a protection 
 against more grievous ills." So be it, all too 
 often pain descends upon our luckless bodies, not 
 as a temporary discomfort but in the form of some 
 chronic disease, such a disease 
 
 "As has no end in view, that makes of life 
 One weary avenue of darkened days 
 The bitter darkness growing darker still 
 "Which none can share nor soothe." 
 
 Truly when one looks down a vista of bed-fast 
 years — companion of the rack of relentless pain — 
 paralyzed by the frailty of perverted organs, a 
 prisoner hopelessly jailed by disease, one so en- 
 thralled may worthily speak of suffering. 
 
 But even louder may the mind cry out in its 
 wretchedness; with more piercing voice may it 
 claim Sympathy's attention when, wearied and 
 exhausted and hopeless, it counts its multiplied 
 anxieties ; when it is obsessed by joy-wrecking im- 
 agination, instant to inject its disturbing questions 
 into every thought or hope or plan for pleasure. 
 How wretched to live with a mind that will not let 
 loose its memory of disappointments, that ever 
 and anon reiterates its wail of misery-bearing ex- 
 periences ! Sane or insane, the mind is capable of 
 crowding into every minute something that makes 
 of life finally but a gray, dead weight of hours. 
 
SUFFERING 105 
 
 • 
 The depths of suffering, however, are known only 
 when the soul, the torch-bearer of eternal hope, 
 the armor-bearer of faith in the immortal and the 
 everlasting, the swordbearer of truth, the garlands 
 bearer of love divine — ^when the soul sickens ; the: 
 truly are the dregs of suffering being drunk. 
 
 Every day of life would woo us with its pledges'; 
 every new minute is portentous with its promise of 
 novelty ; but to every life comes foreordained and 
 calculated refusal. "Suffering is universal, uot in- 
 dividual." Our full deserts of reward and penalty 
 never come to us individually, they are shared by 
 the mass of humanity. Truly these facts point to 
 the essential unity of mankind. One ignores a 
 thousand laws of physical well-being and mental 
 stability with impunity and enjoys other thou- 
 sands of unmerited pleasures and comforts. You 
 are strong and robust in body and clear and whole- 
 some in mind, the gift of a sturdy, worthy grand- 
 sire ; I shiver and stammer and mewl through my 
 years in expiation of the gorgeous high living of 
 a forebear. I might have been as you but for his 
 excesses. Can we not see with what uncompro- 
 mising earnestness the great Maker has wrought 
 in human nature for essential unselfishness? We 
 cannot gainsay that suffering is for all the chil- 
 dren of men, but without argument we may as- 
 sume that ignorance and selfishness create a vast 
 deal of the world's anguish, unnecessarily. The 
 fundamentally practical question is, "How shall I 
 use this experience?" 
 
 Suffering has been called the curse of existencel 
 — and curse it does to the very depths. Few ex- 
 
106 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 periences so quickly undermine accuracy of ex- 
 pression. Even the minor pains of daily bumps 
 and aches are prone to occasion overstatement. 
 Is it not evidence of the abnormality of pain that 
 we are so wont to exaggerate it, and so tenacious 
 of its memory? But the tendency of suffering to 
 excite hyperbole often defeats the very object of 
 such mis-statement. The kindest of sympathy ul- 
 timately refuses to give its best self to the endless, 
 "untenable agony" and "excruciations" of the 
 headaches, toothaches, backaches of the self-pityt^ 
 ing. Imagination plays so large a part in suffer- 
 ing that multitudes of minor ills are magnified 
 into mountainous proportions, even as the specta- 
 tor often suffers manyf old more through his sym- 
 pathetic imaginings than the victim of the acci- 
 dent or the patient in the operating chair. One 
 of the weaknesses of civilized refinement is the 
 hypersensitiveness which distorts minor hurts and 
 aches and pains and discomforts into most un- 
 truthful disproportion. 
 
 Nature is stern; she is also kind. In spite of 
 lurid adjectives of excess, of descriptive pages of 
 writhing anguish, she limits physical suffering 
 most mercifully. The mists of unconsciousness 
 close the senses to pain when it reaches a certain 
 intolerable acuteness — even the gnawing fangs of 
 dread cancer gradually become dulled by use. It 
 is rare that the experienced physician actually 
 meets the popular "intolerable," "unbearable" 
 suffering. Much of ease and the multiplication of 
 comforts have rewarded the progress of civiliza- 
 tion. But misuse of these is most certainly effemi- 
 
SUFFERING 107 
 
 • 
 nating, and comforts may create cowardice. In 
 the very avoidance of the disagreeable we but ac- 
 centuate our liability to discomfort; in our very 
 insistence upon ease we increase the certainty of 
 disease; in our eagerness to muffle the warning 
 whisperings of pain we lose the very protection 
 which may save us later from the uncontrollable 
 cries of suffering. 
 
 Few to-day know practically the wisdom of de- 
 veloping the capacity for suffering; we prefer to 
 live in a fool's paradise refusing to acknowledge 
 the inevitability of its visitation. On the contrary 
 we even augment our susceptibility by making our 
 ills the tiresome center of our converse, utilizing 
 the genial "How are you" as an hourly oppor- 
 tunity to descant on corns, or joints, or throats, or 
 eyes, on nerves and stomachs, on itches and aches 
 and ailments, on our susceptibility to draughts and 
 cold feet, on "I can't eat this," or "I love that, 
 but it doesn't love me." How more adroitly in- 
 crease one's propensity to discomfort than by 
 keeping it before the attention by such wearisome 
 reiterations? What a tonic to meet those rare 
 persons who are always "Tip-top," "Feeling 
 fine," "Never better, thank you," "Bully!" 
 
 But discrepancies in accuracy of feeling or an 
 increasingly defective preparation for the suffer- 
 ing that will come, constitute but lesser degrees 
 of the curse of suffering which only reaches its 
 fulfillment when it defeats the moral self. And 
 what a tool suffering has been in the Devil's work 
 shop ! How many wretched destinies has it carved 
 out of human characters! Who can number the 
 
108 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 execrations or measure their vileness? Who can 
 sound the dppths of cowardice or count the lives 
 of .skepticism, hidden or proclaimed; or tell the 
 toll of craven worshippers groveling in the dust 
 in homage to a pitiless god — all victims of the 
 curse which suffering may bring. How prone is 
 recklessness to brush aside in an hour the products 
 of months of temperance and patience and .good 
 resolutions, recklessness springing from physical 
 pain or the anguish of loss. What deformed effi- 
 gies of humankind are those who have allowed 
 suffering to fairly saturate every cell of their be- 
 ing with selfishness! And what more complete 
 failure in life can be conceived than to possess a 
 heart which transforms pain and loss and disap- 
 pointment and grief into bitterness of spirit; 
 which thinks bitterness; which feels bitterness; 
 to which all the promises of loss and the richness 
 of suffering have become as gall and wormwood. 
 
 Can the sane mind accept this picture as stand- ■ 
 ing for the true mission of suffering to humanity? 
 As you scan your character and recount its ele- 
 ments of strength can you honestly separate them 
 from some expression of painful experience? 
 Has it not cost the irk of days and nights of 
 scholarly application, the wearisome effort of 
 many thousand hours of physical striving for 
 physical strength, the battles numerous with a 
 temper lying encrouched, tiger-like, waiting only 
 for the word to spring, or with the pride which in 
 all guile would tempt you to appear to be what you 
 really are not? The richness of your character 
 has come through pain. Subtract from your life 
 
SUFFERING 109 
 
 • 
 all that is good whicli has come to you through 
 effort and sacrifice, and how paltry the remainder ! 
 Is suffering not the angel which comes ever and 
 anon to wrestle with the human spirit throughout 
 the day, through the long night hours, perchance 
 departing not at dawn? And may each of us not 
 grapple and regrapple and ever refuse to loose 
 our hold until we receive our blessing? Yet how 
 unworthily, how impotently we strive with our 
 adversary if we are not in training. Only through 
 an intelligently directed will may we keep our- 
 selves fit for the inevitable strife. Only by a daily 
 choosing for ourselves of such discomforts of ef- 
 fort or denial or self-control or unselfish thought- 
 fulness, as will in the years furnish us a gradually 
 accumulating reserve, shall we ultimately be pre- 
 pared to meet any force which illness and bereave- 
 ment may bring against us, and rise superior to it. 
 Cheer has a peculiarly disarming quality in the 
 face of suffering. The busy operating room was 
 hushed. V A pall seemed to have stilled, for the 
 minute, its active workers and, as the door swung 
 open, the deep pathos of the wasted, pinched face 
 of the doomed girl, gripped the most experienced 
 hearts. For the moment even the matter-of-fact 
 surgeon lost his cheery greeting. But with her 
 waxy finger touching the rubber tire of the wheeled 
 stretcher, she, in her faint voice exclaimed, "Oh, 
 doctor, I have just had my first auto-ride. Do 
 you think there are autos in heaven?" Her an- 
 swer came next day as her beautiful, cheerful 
 spirit left its wretched and deformed body. We 
 can will cheer, or, if not, most certainly we can will 
 
110 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 silence. The physician soon learns that it is not 
 in the voluble expressors of ailments that the 
 depths of suffering are found. He learns to 
 search most carefully when little is said — ^f or great 
 souls suffer in silence. 
 
 It was for the twentieth century to reach the 
 acme of learning and culture. It was left for the 
 same century to develop a warfare the horrors of 
 which have never been approximated by the sava- 
 gery of the past. Men herded by millions in the 
 slimy confines of the indescribable trenches, hourly 
 companions with suffering in ten thousand of its 
 vilest aspects, revealed to the rest of the world the 
 power of the human soul to triumph over the worst 
 that perverted, civilized intelligence can do. And 
 herein is the "Glory of the Trenches," for men of 
 twenty nations lived and suffered and died with 
 their souls untouched by this calamity of hate — 
 men even as you and I, they were, those who 
 trained and wrought and suffered and died with 
 ever a smile, with ever an outstretched helping 
 hand, with ever an uttermost giving. Their or- 
 deals you and I may never know, but as we make 
 of the suffering of the day our training camp, 
 as we convert home and office, study and shop 
 into trenches and fight fairly the enemies of the 
 soul, we too may know the glory of living above 
 calamity. Each life will prove ultimately one of 
 suffering or of serenity. Misuse of the evil the 
 days bring insures the former, even as the victory 
 of serenity may be won by transforming life 's in- 
 evitable refusals into good, as did "He who met 
 His human doom and took it for a crown." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 DEATH 
 
 He that believeth is passed from death to life. 
 
 What, like time, is ever present yet never abid- 
 ing? What so constantly in evidence, yet so eter- 
 nally elusive ? We look forward through the years 
 to a certain hour — we say it comes, yet where is 
 the pause which marks its presence ? Its minutes 
 are divided into seconds, yet no one of these hun- 
 dreds tarries the least fraction. We say it has 
 come and with the passing of the breath it is gone. 
 What is this time of which we speak so familiarly, 
 concerning which we jest and laugh? In what 
 least particular does it differ from eternity, the 
 eternity which we mention with awe, and which by 
 most of us is only thought upon with solemnity? 
 Is this distinction not a striking evidence of our 
 limited, human viewpoint? Do we not, each one, 
 arbitrarily separate a few years from the unend- 
 ing span, the years between our birth and passing, 
 and distinguish these as time? In other words, 
 we associate life with time, and death with eter- 
 nity. And herein are we not pagans, for it is not 
 a question of time and eternity, but of our rela- 
 tionship to time, whether we are of the body or of 
 
 the spirit. Time is for the body, but for him of 
 
 111 
 
112 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the soul, the Eternal is now. If the dead live, 
 they are as much in time as we ; if our souls live, 
 we are as much in eternity as they. 
 
 Small wonder it is that we so commonly err in 
 our thought and expressions of Time and Eternity. 
 It is but one of the evidences of the sharp limita- 
 tions of this thing we call life — of this transient 
 partnership of body and spirit. The great won- 
 der is that man, receiving all his knowledge 
 through senses which are rooted in the physical, 
 and senses themselves narrowly limited, has been 
 able to evolve such magnificent conceptions of his 
 infinity. A large part of his understanding comes 
 to him through sound, and yet his ears are attuned 
 to but a limited scale of the aerial vibrations about 
 him. Most of his knowledge is born in his sense 
 of sight, still the eye transmits but feebly the 
 symphony of the universe. Physical conscious- 
 ness at its highest can know but the fringe of real- 
 ity. The vast known is infinitesimal when com- 
 pared with the unknown vast. No human under- 
 standing has pretended to estimate the depths of 
 sidereal space. Students have reached deep into 
 nature's cornucopia of secrets, but the most astute 
 stand abashed before the mystery of a pansy- 
 seed ! What is within this fragile speck which is 
 to burst forth so soon into foliage and wealth of 
 nodding, smiling, colorful blossom? How utterly 
 impotent is the whole machinery of science to 
 create one such seed. The origin of life lures in- 
 vestigators with a witchery they may not resist, 
 but, like the Lorelei's song, the promise is ever 
 lost in the anguish of defeat. 
 
DEATH 113 
 
 • 
 Theoretic, problematic, speculative, we may 
 agree, is this discussion. But to-day, as every 
 day, a vitally practical question is awaiting the 
 answer of every man. What is life? A passage 
 of years, you may answer — inadequately, for the 
 true answer will only be found when we state how 
 these years are passed. Time ticks the identical 
 seconds for a Hottentot and a Milton, yet who can 
 voice the difference in the actual life of the poet 
 as compared with that of the savage? For some, 
 life is a span of dining and wining and gayety; 
 f br them who see life only through sensuous eyes, 
 whose motto is "Youth must have its fling," or 
 "We never go this way but once," all which fails 
 to appeal to the pleasure-sense is not deemed liv- 
 ing. Many of the clever fill their hours with 
 scheming and conniving, leaving a record only of 
 trickery and falsifying; to shrewdly outguess, to 
 craftily overreach their neighbors, is for them 
 the sum of existence. Still others devote their 
 days to carping and fault-finding, destructively 
 critical, morbidly analytic, with cynicism they in- 
 vestigate each object of their attention — the dis- 
 ease-loving pathologists of human nature who 
 enjoy the character-destroying, who shun the con- 
 structive. In close sympathy with the Hottentot 
 are they who leave life as they find it, dull, stupid, 
 empty. And there are many wretched mortals 
 who have made of life a thing of terror, who 
 cringe before fate, fear-smitten, who anticipate 
 each day with dread, who live a deformed, terror- 
 smitten existence. Do such unfortunates know 
 life — have they not all listened only with physical 
 
114 THE SOUL IN SUFPEEING 
 
 ears? Have they not viewed mortal days with a 
 narrowness of human vision? Is it not well that 
 we have other lives than these to point us to whole- 
 ness of living, to leave undying records of what 
 life is and can be ? Is not each one a missionary 
 who points his neighbor to some whole-souled life 
 of cheer, to some whole-hearted life of giving, to 
 the lives which create, to the lives glorified by the 
 simple fulfillment of each day's duties? 
 
 Man, only, contemplates death. And how ap- 
 parently profound is the change it brings ! How 
 sudden it always is, even when expected. That 
 vibrant, restless bundle of activity, that ceaseless 
 heart and untiring breathing so hopelessly stilled, 
 that flush and warmth so unnaturally paled and 
 chilled, that mind, stored with a life-time of expe- 
 riences, so mute beyond recall! But we picture 
 here only physiologic death — some defect in mech- 
 anism has robbed the body of its powers of expres- 
 sion. For hours and days, the lives of its myriad 
 individual cells go on; cell death is gradual, no 
 matter how sudden apparent death; while for 
 months chemical activity continues, transforming 
 the rich materials of body composition into other 
 fornis of life. Thus even the physical life con- 
 tinues in other expressions. Scientists to-day are 
 thoroughly agreed that matter is eternal. But 
 what of the life of the mind, the spirit — are these 
 not more than matter? Was not Goethe right 
 when he said, "I am fully persuaded that our 
 spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible ? ' ' 
 If the dust of our bones is never lost in the great 
 economy of nature, can we conceive that the rich- 
 
DEATH 115 
 
 • 
 ness of our souls can be destroyed in the great 
 economy of heaven? If our dust survives after 
 death in some form, how infinitely more certain 
 that our soul's individuality, that true product of 
 our years of living, will pass from death to life. 
 And into what a wondrous new life it must pass ! — 
 a life where ears are only limited in their hearing 
 and vision only shortened in its seeing by the un- 
 derstanding of the soul; a life in which seeds 
 that have lain latent in life's shallow soil will 
 spring into a fruition given to the few only, here, 
 but promised all in a hereafter which knows God. 
 Do we not see how fully the hereafter is bound 
 up in the quality of soul which we take into it ? 
 
 For us all, death will remain the Great Adven- 
 ture. Nature and science and revelation and God 
 himself have been most reticent concerning death, 
 and many of us dread the unknown bourn because 
 we have not led our souls to find that only sure 
 guide for the unknown — righteous faith. As it is 
 given men and women from time to time to watch 
 the passing of one who has bound faith in the 
 Eternal Goodness to his forehead, and to see how 
 surely such a one makes death blessed, we realize 
 that divinity has entered other souls than His who 
 in the agony of a death by torture could say, "Fa- 
 ther, forgive them. ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 DESERTS 
 
 Lest ye he wearied and faint in, your minds. 
 
 How devious is the way of life ! Each one finds 
 that in the face of the most earnest plans of par- 
 ents, despite his own most eager efforts, the path- 
 way of his life relentlessly leads where choice 
 would not direct. Through the quiet hominess of 
 the village street, beside the gentle meanderings 
 of the friendly meadow brook, o 'er moor and fen, 
 through the crowded loneliness of the city's ave- 
 nue, far and away over the trackless trails of the 
 sea, past the rise and fall of monotonous plains 
 and, sooner or later, dragging through the torrid 
 sands of the starving desert, may we travel before 
 we can know the joys of the mountain heights. 
 And who would not avoid the desert's emptiness, 
 whether it be the choking, blinding stifle of the 
 great alkali plains of the southwest, or the frigid 
 wastes of the cold-smitten polar regions, or the 
 stretching vastness of the barren Siberian 
 Steppes, or that relentless graveyard of the ages, 
 that incinerator of flesh and blood, that sandy fur- 
 nace, Sahara. But even as we speak of the earth's 
 great waste surfaces, we know that her untrodden 
 places are being rapidly obliterated. Not only 
 
 116 
 
DESERTS 117 
 
 has the spirit of venture taken man*to the utter- 
 most ends of our sphere, but his industry and in- 
 genuity and wisdom are being combined to redeem 
 the empty places and convert regions of desola- 
 tion and death into bowers of bounty ; and through 
 irrigation and scientific feeding of the soil, many 
 a barren plain has turned productive, many a des- 
 ert waste smiles with oases. 
 
 But are not the true deserts those which enter 
 our life's experiences? Is the physical pain of 
 the crying thirst of the alkali plain equal to the 
 burning, blinding, choking dust of misunderstand- 
 ing? Who does not know the smart of suffering 
 through losing the refreshment of trusting eyes, 
 through losing the upward push given by affec- 
 tion's touch, and thus having the heart's call for 
 sympathy answered only by silence! Thus and 
 otherwise we each learn to know the solitudes of 
 life, for as though ordained, our path certainly 
 comes to the desert places; then, whether in the 
 crowded street, at the theater, or in the church, 
 even within the circle of our own home, are we 
 alone. The smother of the emptiness of loneli- 
 ness now throws us back upon our own soul for the 
 answer to our need. As inevitable as life is the cer- 
 tainty with which each man is finally brought face 
 to face with his own soul, and the knowledge made 
 sure to him that there are distances which no hu- 
 man sympathy or understanding can traverse, that 
 there are extremities which every man must meet 
 alone with his soul and with his Maker. 
 
 Exhausted travelers who have experienced 
 lengthening days and nights of the solitude of sea 
 
118 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 wastes, of arctic emptiness, or of the blinding 
 sandy plains, speak of the bewitching mirage — 
 the saving sail, the campfire's smoke, the nodding, 
 beckoning palms of the oasis. Figments painted 
 by the imagination, inspired by the intensity of 
 hope and suffering! Even the most resolute will 
 then doubt the compass' truth and change their 
 course from certain safety in pursuit of these 
 tantalizing vagaries. And with what certainty 
 the mirage of temptation dangles its promises be- 
 fore our strained and wearied eyes during the 
 desert days of loneliness, when the powers of re- 
 sistance are least prepared. But the choking 
 dusts of misujiderstanding, the heartlessness of 
 life's solitudes, the mirages of temptation, do not 
 equal in certainty of destructive damage the star- 
 vation of self-pity. What more relentless enemy 
 to masterful human effort than this same pity, a 
 constant tempter to petty living. Such pity 
 counts and recounts each tiresome step of the 
 way, remarks only its own foot-soreness, decries 
 the very wholesomeness of deep breathing in the 
 effort of going, resents the burning of the sun, and 
 reiterates the coolness of the shade which has been 
 left behind. Unnoting, self-pity passes along the 
 path so self -centered, so engrossed in its own foot 
 steps that the provision for the better man is un- 
 seen. Willing to cast away the good, refusing to 
 look up and out for good to come, self-pity starves 
 hope, ambition, loyalty, love. 
 
 The desert's menace is vitally real. Even 
 though we may trudge along, not complaining of 
 our own lot, we must be made heartsick as we' 
 
DESERTS 119 
 
 pass those who have dropped by t^e way, dying, 
 festering, bleaching, and in the face of such evi- 
 dences of the vastness of human misery, cynicism 
 and bitterness may easily displace faith. What 
 a desert do our own souls become when we look 
 out upon God's universe with a heart bitter and 
 resentful toward its Author! Why God allows 
 human misery, is a question which, unanswered, 
 has turned many souls from the upward path of 
 high resolve to the lowlands of low living. These 
 have yet to comprehend that the Maker has en- 
 dowed us with ability suflScient to work out our 
 own problems of wholesome physical and right 
 mental living ; that from the first trembling breath 
 of the infant to the everlasting stability of the 
 granite Eockies, the laws of existence and persist- 
 ence, the laws of health and disease, are, like the 
 Author of it all, unalterable. Nor is the Maker 
 untrue to Himself — He varies them not. Only as 
 man learns this principle and blames his own igno- 
 rance and weakness, will he be cured of his bitter 
 rebellion against human misery. There is enough 
 for all, and only through violated law do we suffer, 
 only because we have not laid hold upon everlast- 
 ing truth do we know misery and emptiness and 
 poverty and deformity and crime. Are we not 
 thus clearly shown that great Mother Nature is 
 little concerned about our bodies, or about much 
 of man which is of the temporal? Her concern 
 is in something much finer, that transcending, im- 
 mortal self which we first find in some dark and 
 lonely hour, from which we so often turn during 
 the prosperous days, to meet, facing us again, 
 
120 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 gently beckoning us from the bitterness of a dis- 
 appointment. Forgetting through long months, 
 we find again at our side, as athirst and famishing 
 we sink down lost in the pathless desert — our soul, 
 near and waiting to lift us and direct us and save 
 us. 
 
 The small nature is heedless of the certain tests 
 of endurance and faith which are to come. Com- 
 pass and map and useful burdens are recklessly 
 cast aside, as the heat of the day burns down; 
 as true reserve and patience and reason are thrown 
 to the winds by small souls when the prick of 
 physical suffering is felt. Pain is greeted with 
 curses, as though it were the penalty of an aveng- 
 ing power, instead of a warning voice that would 
 protect. Each pain has its message to those who 
 will patiently and intelligently listen. Each sleep- 
 less night has its significance, which may be recog- 
 nized as a guiding hand, by the eye of understand- 
 ing. Too universally, pain is treated as an enemy, 
 and driven from us as an intruder. 
 
 In the caravan some must lead, others may ride, 
 but the many must follow and trudge along 
 through the hot sands. The best cannot always 
 be ours. Our best efforts and our best prepara- 
 tions are frequently rewarded with minor suc- 
 cesses. Some of us can never be first in any 
 day's leadership, but there are second-bests and 
 third-bests which are everlastingly good. To be 
 in the caravan at all is best, when compared with 
 the wasteful life of non-effort. But we often al- 
 low envyings and jealousies to creep in and by 
 them are unutterably defeated. Refusing to use 
 
DESERTS 121 
 
 our one talent, with murmurings and resentments, 
 we fold it in a napkin and bury it. 
 
 Fear creates other deserts, which would defeat 
 us in our journey. Its gruesome fingers reach out 
 from above, around, about, even clutching from 
 the grave they would grasp us and hold us im- 
 potent. Who could unroll the scroll of hrtman 
 fears and recount the souls which have gone down 
 in choking surrender? The weak and selfish ever 
 fear the solitude. To be alone with their ineffi- 
 cient selves is enough to strike panic to their 
 hearts. Instinctively they realize the emptiness 
 of the soul with which they must commune, and 
 any company, any association, is better than their 
 own. And with what certainty must they know 
 hours of terror, for the hours do come when man 
 has nothing but the spiritual at his side. And the 
 small soul knows only a small god, a god which, 
 like itself, is easy of offense and forgives not. 
 Terror must strike deep indeed to one in the pres- 
 ence of so implacable an Almighty. We should 
 learn that each man makes his own God, that each 
 individual's God is but the sum of his highest 
 aspirations. The best vision of the Almighty 
 must be an inadequate one, but a conception of 
 Him which makes Him a God of easy offense, is 
 pitiably childish, and the thought of a Maker who 
 has not an infinite capacity for forgiveness, is 
 unworthy enlightened humanity. If of all man's 
 qualities revenge is highest and sweetest, his God 
 will be one of vengeance. If symmetry and order 
 and unchanging penalty for perversity stand to 
 him as the acme of majesty, his God will be one of 
 
122 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 human justice. If the healing touch and inspiring 
 word, the beauty of sharing and the immortality 
 of sacrifice have been his vision, he sees his God 
 upon a cross. 
 
 But what of those starving of self-pity? In the 
 midst of plenty, even, they hunger and thirst. 
 Food and drink upon which others strengthen and 
 thrive will not satisfy their self-analytic needs. 
 Ever craving the special, the unusual, the select, 
 they are sickened by the very unnaturalness of 
 their false foods. Is not self-pity a veritable can- 
 cer, which, starting insidiously in some small hurt, 
 develops unnoticed, scattering its microscopic, ma- 
 lignant cells into the blood stream to be carried 
 to other organs, until finally even the vital centers 
 are being destroyed by this self-produced, self- 
 nourished malignancy? When the wholesome 
 truth that much of disease has an unmoral, if not 
 an immoral subsoil, that much of mental and nerv- 
 ous illness grows out of moral failure, is accepted, 
 then, much of the present day respect for invalid- 
 ism will be displaced by the sympathy which we 
 now reserve for the weak in character. Just as 
 successfully as the mind may recall the haunts of 
 boyhood, the classroom faces of college days, the 
 thatch roofs or the gilded cathedral domes of the 
 trip abroad, so can the mind make for itself its 
 world at any moment — so you and I may choose 
 our inner health. The giant in frame may convert 
 his powerful hulk into a self-condoling invalid. 
 The blind and disfigured youth from the trenches, 
 who may never again know an entire day of phys- 
 ical conif ort, may carry a glow of that health of 
 
DESEKTS 123 
 
 soul which, hero-like, eternally resents commisera- 
 tion. 
 
 And so it is given each one to make of life a 
 desert or a paradise. The seeds of love have been 
 placed in our hearts. Neglected, they die and 
 leave but barrenness; cultivated, they bloom as 
 flowers beside the path, and no desert is so drear 
 that loving hearts may not strew fragrant petals 
 along the way. But prone we are to neglect even 
 the rose garden of love. We see one beautiful 
 bloom, perfect in its color and form and fragrance. 
 We call it the love of our heart ; eagerly we clasp it 
 close and forget, and neglect the roots and the 
 branch from which it grew; and when it shatters 
 and fades and its fragrance is no more, we find 
 ourselves alone upon the unflowered desert. We 
 have cherished the object of our love and neglected 
 to cultivate the capacity for love. Forlorn we 
 journey on. Such are the lonely mothers and 
 widows and lovers and friends, whose capacity for 
 loving has been expressed in one beautiful rela- 
 tion, who drag out an eternity of weary days alone, 
 because, satisfied with their rose, they neglected 
 their rose garden. 
 
 The desert places come to teach us there is much 
 we may be happier in not having. For just as 
 perfect living demands the cultivation of certain 
 blessings, it also demands that we learn that ease 
 and plenty are ancestors of failure. Each day of 
 real living has its tangle. Nature is a rough 
 teacher, ever seeking to multiply the powers and 
 abilities of her children by the obstructions of the 
 "wilderjies? ajid the impeding ^ands of the de§ert 
 
124 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Down the village lane, in the highways and by- 
 ways, and through the crowded city thoroughfare, 
 we may pass, our arms filled with comforts and 
 needless luxuries. We go not far into the desert, 
 however, till the insistence of our needs and the 
 uncompromising call of reality cause us to cast 
 away these impedimenta. And it is here we learn 
 the sterling value of grit and spirit and how few 
 are the absolute necessities of life. Another of the 
 gifts — those gifts which die not — brought us in 
 our desert experiences, is our introduction to the 
 strange land of sorrow. Experience is unconvinc- 
 ing and inadequate until it has brought us this 
 knowing! Many in their journey through the 
 land of sorrow forget to sing. The Daughters of 
 Israel complained that they could not sing the 
 Lord's Song in a strange land. But truly no song 
 ever reaches the heart until it is sung with the 
 voice that has known sorrow. Jenny Lind sang 
 with remarkable clearness and fulness of register, 
 and the wise critic said: "She sings now as no 
 other woman can sing. If she could know suffer- 
 ing, she would sing as the angels." And as 
 though a prayer was being answered, a year of 
 deep pain of spirit was hers, and from the land of 
 sorrow came a new note which made of Jenny Lind 
 the Angel Songstress. 
 
 The deserts stand across life's pathway, veri- 
 table gates of fate, sifting, ever sifting the cow- 
 ards from the men, the spiritless from the deter- 
 mined, the self-pitying from the self-sacrificing. 
 The desert is never crossed save by those whose 
 souls are strong, by those who face the pain, and 
 
DESERTS 125 
 
 master discomfort in self-f orgetfulness. The soul 
 is a very alchemist, which transmutes the base 
 metals of calamity and disaster into the refined 
 gold of victory. Science is converting the waste 
 places into modern gardens of Eden; so the soul 
 may make the commonplace miraculous. 
 
 The desert may even be loved! The Arab 
 droops and weakens away from his Sahara, even 
 as the Highlander away from his heights. And 
 he will tell you, with a lover's eloquence, of the 
 desert at night. For him no couch can equal its 
 yielding sands — those sands which to him are redo- 
 lent with a fragrance he cherishes. He yearns for 
 its eternal quiet. No quality of nature is more 
 absolutely fulfilled than the desert's silence. 
 Even the sea, with all her mystery, fails to keep 
 her secrets as the sifting, shifting sands. And 
 with the cool of the desert nights, the heavens are 
 uncovered, our Arab says, as nowhere else. Let 
 us not forget as the dust from the high noon blinds, 
 and the sun burns and tortures, and the heat rises 
 as from a scorching oven and the parched feet sink 
 ever deeper into the heavy sands, through all this 
 pain and stifle and wretchedness, that the night 
 will come — the wonderful desert night, when the 
 hot sands turn cool, and the heavens are revealed 
 in their most perfect glory, and rest, the perfect 
 rest of that eternal quiet, succors the soul. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONTENTION 
 
 Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, 
 but not to doubtful disputations. 
 
 Those venturesome spirits who have penetrated 
 the heart of the tropics report that the most nerve- 
 racking element of their experiences in these vast 
 solitudes is the ceaseless chatter of animal and 
 bird life. The different varieties of monkeys and 
 parrots, especially, approaching so shrewdly, as 
 they do, human action and speech are the most un- 
 compromising offenders. From before dawn into 
 the depths of night their ceaseless chatterings and 
 cries of irritation and anger beat upon the wearied 
 ear-drum — an incessant throb which becomes ac- 
 tual pain, a torture not relieved by the quiet of 
 the night, for even that is periodically broken by 
 contentious choruses which ultimately take on the 
 nature of fiendishness in the overwrought judg- 
 ment of the distracted traveler. And when we 
 stop to think, are we so certain that such discord- 
 ant intonations are confined to parrots and apes? 
 Does not the discerning ear detect a never-ceasing 
 war of words as humanity insistently seeks her 
 own? Has not man argued endlessly, striving to 
 drown his opponent in a torrent of sounds, since 
 Adam had sons? Let us look into man's life po- 
 
 189 
 
CONTENTION 127 
 
 • 
 
 litically, socially, even religiously, as he employs 
 intensity, sarcasm, false arguments, invective to 
 gain his point. How much higher is he than these 
 inhabitants of the primal forest who render day 
 and night hideous by their contentions for food 
 and for position? How much superior in prin- 
 ciple is he when he uses vituperation and calumny 
 to prejudice voters against his opponent for 
 higher office? Does not the situation suggest the 
 interesting psycho-biologic question : is this habit 
 a remnant of man's evolutionary ancestry, or are 
 these intelligent understudies developing human 
 nature? 
 
 Much wordy strife is based upon ignorance. 
 The unthinking man sees constant strife about 
 him in Nature. In spring and fall the seasons 
 are at war, and cloud chases sunshine, and heat 
 and cold, summer and winter are antagonists. 
 The same soil grows the plant for food and deadly 
 poison. In richness of color the noxious shrub 
 would woo man to his undoing. Nature is prod- 
 igal of health-giving surroundings, and apparently 
 equally generous in that which deals pain. The 
 animal kingdom produces man's best friends and 
 his implacable foes. His own desires change with 
 the shadows, and he finds war about him and war 
 within him. The miracle of it all is that man 
 possesses the stability and faith which he now has. 
 But science has long since shown her students that 
 these seeming contradictions, when understood, 
 stand for the unity of Nature. Most rugged 
 health is found where heat and cold alike temper 
 the fiber even as they do the steel. Most valuable 
 
128 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 medicines have been produced from that poison 
 vegetation which ignorant man so dreaded, while 
 the reptile and other abhorred crawling things are 
 now known to be greater enemies to man's enemies 
 than to man himself. The calm and the storm 
 make for that perfect ventilation of the earth's 
 surface without which high health is impossible. 
 The same wind which blows the fisherman 's smack 
 upon the rocks, drives the fleets of commerce- 
 carriers from land to land. The decimating dis- 
 ease proves the goad which stimulates medical sci- 
 ence to a more profound understanding of all 
 disease, a step in the progress toward that true 
 knowledge which will ultimately eliminate infec- 
 tion as a source of human woes. When knowl- 
 edge displaces ignorance, we realize that Nature 
 in all her variations and apparent contradictions, 
 is harmoniously working for man's good in pro- 
 portion as he understands and obeys her laws. 
 
 True "contention for principles" is ever an 
 effort to get a step nearer truth. Unfortunately, 
 this phrase may be used as a cloak to conceal the 
 true motive of disagreement and insistence. No 
 one possesses the whole truth. No one may pre- 
 sume to express his opinion as the last word upon 
 any matter of discussion. The large majority who 
 mask behind the savory-sounding phrase "I am 
 contending for principle's sake" not only ignore 
 the great law of natural unity but violate, as well, 
 the yet higher law of spiritual harmony. 
 
 While much of the ceaseless war of words has its 
 basis in half -seeing ignorance, much more of hu- 
 man contention has its origin in wilfulness. It 
 
CONTENTION 129 
 
 is in the one element of selfishness that the bab- 
 bling, chattering mass of denizens of the forest 
 are one with man. Could this single element be 
 eliminated from wordy strivings, that joy of peace, 
 for which so many generations have prayed, would 
 hover close to human hearts. But where would 
 you place personal rights? The question echoes 
 in the mind of every thinker. Many of the most 
 far-reaching and uplifting movements for man's 
 welfare have been launched under the banner of 
 personal rights. And the contenders for personal 
 rights have marched forward through the ages, 
 millions strong, under the silken banners of aris- 
 tocrats and monarchs, clad in the white aprons 
 of the saloonist and bar-tender, fat-pursed with 
 the gold of poverty, as wine merchants and dis- 
 tillers. Personal rights have sailed the seas un- 
 der the black flag with skull and crossbones of 
 the pirate. Anarchy and lower forms of social- 
 ism have for years been waving defiantly the 
 blood-red flag as their emblem of personal rights. 
 The quintessence of selfishness, the highest devel- 
 opments of persecution and the lowest forms of 
 brutality have been marshalled under this ban- 
 ner. There are personal rights as inviolate as 
 the breath of life: personal rights which no law 
 of man or force of man's making can deny or 
 usurp: the tight to live, to toil, to suffer and 
 sacrifice, to die, it may be, that the rights of man- 
 kind may thereby be augmented. This is the one 
 inalienable right of each living soul — that through 
 his life, humanity in some part, large or small, 
 shall be bettered. Any other conception of per- 
 
130 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 sonal rights is rooted in selfishness. Any other 
 assertion of individuality but puts off that certain 
 day when the highest rights of all will be recog- 
 nized and respected and contributed to by all. 
 
 When we listen to the bickerings of politicians 
 with their verbose, partisan argumentations, with 
 their facile juggling of facts and figures that they 
 may befuddle voters and thereby attain their ends 
 through false pretenses, we are prone to long for 
 the days of the "good kings," when the destinies 
 of the people were safe in the hands of one who, 
 with his advisers, was ever ready to shed blood 
 for their welfare. It is hard to see in the inces- 
 sant turmoil of oft repeated campaigns the prog- 
 ress man is making toward that ideal of self-gov- 
 ernment which has for so long been the reputed 
 goal of political leadership. 
 
 But of all the disheartening contentions to which 
 man has so eagerly lent his energies, the religious 
 wranglings of all ages have been the greatest 
 impediment to his highest development. The un- 
 holy holy-wars of the past are legion. Enough hu- 
 man blood has been thus shed to discolor the very 
 seas — shed because of religious bigotry and re- 
 ligious hatreds. Enmities have developed in com- 
 munity, church and home, turning peaceable men 
 and women into ferocious, death-dealing creatures. 
 The human misery growing out of religious 
 wranglings cannot be conceived — and religious 
 harmony is a far guess, even in this late century; 
 for high church and low church, conformity and 
 non-conformity, infallibility or human inspiration, 
 sprinkling or immersion, daily communion or 
 
CONTENTION 131 
 
 yearly communion, the power of pop^s and bishops 
 or the democracy of the congregation, the trans- 
 mutation of the elements or grape juice, free-will 
 or predestination, the humanly divine or the di- 
 vinely human — these are but a meager few of the 
 elements of disputation active to-day in one or 
 another grouping of the world's religionists. 
 
 Much of the evil of contention has already been 
 suggested. The resulting waste of time and en- 
 ergy explains much of the deficit in humanity's 
 progress. So long as our monkey neighbors spend 
 their days and nights in garrulous chattering, 
 even evolution cannot promise them any hope for 
 mounting higher in the scale of being. And is it 
 not so with verbose, contentious, riotous nations? 
 
 It is ever the doing that counts, not the talking. 
 But the waste of time and energy is a small hurt 
 when we consider the damage that contention does 
 the better man by defacing truth. Religion with 
 its insistent dogmas, statesmanship with its per- 
 suasive rhetoric, poetry and literature and art, 
 with their melting sentiment, cause us all to wan- 
 der from the path of literal truth. But how cheap 
 and empty does such wrong emphasis become when 
 finally the understanding uncovers the facts, which 
 alone are permanent. Somebody set a date over 
 the first chapter of Genesis, and 4004 b. c. became 
 an idea made sacred by all the beauty of the Good 
 Book — an idea about which to wrangle and dis- 
 pute, raising doubts as to honesty of purpose and 
 piety of thought, to question which was as sacri- 
 legious as to dispute the very emblems of salva- 
 tion. The pick of the geologist began to turn up 
 
132 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 ■unsentimental, apparently irreligious facts. The 
 strata of the earth's surface began to speak with 
 a certainty unshakable by arguments. The white 
 chalk cliffs of England, formed as they are of the 
 remnants of the microscopic globigerinae which 
 to-day are slowly, so slowly, building the floor of 
 the great Atlantic — a floor of their dead selves — 
 produce an incontrovertible argument of facts 
 which make the 4004 b. c. stand only for some 
 man's opinion, worthless at once when disproven 
 by God's facts. 
 
 His nature is rare who can enter into a contro- 
 versy and adhere accurately to even the truths of 
 his own knowledge through the heat of contentious 
 disputation. The love of argument is prone to 
 mount stronger than the love of truth. Is it not 
 a serious misfortune that a large class of our 
 public men have had their training as advocates in 
 an atmosphere which quite too emphatically for 
 the development of plain truth and simple justice 
 puts a premium on purposed inaccuracy, the busi- 
 ness of the average lawyer being to disparage each 
 particle of truth emanating from his opponent's 
 side, and to so disguise doubtful statements of his 
 own witnesses as to cause them to masquerade as 
 truth? In our relations with our better selves, 
 when desire begs and conscience says "Nay!" 
 how willing we sometimes are to undermine the 
 very truth that is within, as we allow desire to be 
 the chief advocate and argue restraining right- 
 eousness into silence. 
 
 But another evil growing out of contention cries 
 even louder for a remedy, an evil which destroys 
 
CONTENTION 133 
 
 the finer qualities of the heart, even as untruth 
 defaces the finer qualities of the mind. From the 
 beginning, contention has proven a breeder of 
 hatred. Whose experience is so limited that it 
 does not contain the history of at least one break 
 in a friendship which was bearing its fruit of bless- 
 ing, a break starting in a trivial difference of opin- 
 ion, ushered in by an argument which at first in- 
 volved points of most minor importance? But 
 the contention waxed warm. Neither one at the 
 right time made the saving concession, and sparks 
 were struck which burned into the very warp of 
 friendship's fabric — a heat of fire, followed by 
 wretched years of coldness. And friendships are 
 few which can stand the strain of repeated and 
 continuous discussions of personal differences, and 
 still retain the delicacy and fineness which make 
 friendship one of life's most beautiful relations. 
 The bickerings, the jowerings, the disagreements 
 big and little, the wordy wars and the quarrels 
 which are part and parcel of the atmosphere in 
 certain homes, constitute one of humanity's sad- 
 dest and darkest chapters. There are undoubt- 
 edly many homes in which a contentious atmos- 
 phere is common, and yet the family loyalty re- 
 mains strong. Family loyalty, ho-v^ever, is highly 
 developed in many types of animals, and in most 
 of the lower tribes of men, and the home in which 
 this quality represents its highest standard shows 
 what a low degree of civilization has been attained. 
 How frequently family discords grow into enmities 
 of the most uncompromising nature is eloquently 
 recorded in the divorce annals. Of all the pos- 
 
134 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 sible evils growing out of unrestrained contention 
 the tendency to tear asunder the ties of friend- 
 ship and of love constitutes its unmitigated evil. 
 But why is the desire to express our differences 
 of opinion so inherent? Why is the impulse so 
 strong, so ready with its expressions? Has the 
 forum of life no place in which red blood may as- 
 sert itself? Is the law of repression to nullify 
 the great instinct of expression? Are we to stand 
 with closed lips in the face of manifold evils to 
 be found on all sides? Would not the very stones 
 cry out if certain injustices were not combated by 
 every possible word and work? Yes, there should 
 be a forum where all sides of questions of impor- 
 tance are discussed. But even in the lower courts 
 certain qualifications are demanded of the attor- 
 ney, so, if we would avoid the evils of contention, 
 if we would not have a part in that incessant ear- 
 deafening war of words, we should know and prac- 
 tice the art of argument. And the first lesson in 
 this art is to know the great argument of silence. 
 Until one can listen well and calmly, he may not 
 rightfully raise his voice in discussion. The 
 greatest number of contentions are based on the 
 trivial and the non-essential, and the single argu- 
 ment of silence is for them a most eloquent an- 
 swer. One may scold and abuse; it requires two 
 to contend or quarrel. But in speaking of silence 
 we mean far more than negative muteness. The 
 silence of patience, the persuasive silence of self- 
 control, the effective silence of the higher under- 
 standing may fairly paralyze antagonism by its 
 deafening appeal. Again, let us note how Nature 
 
CONTENTION 135 
 
 • 
 refuses to contend. Every generation since the 
 
 death of the Master has planned an ever new day 
 
 for the end of the world. A new date is being 
 
 set by our generation. But Nature goes on 
 
 quietly, progressively, certainly maturing her 
 
 plans — the silent answer of Time to the wasteful 
 
 nonsense of her children. 
 
 Before we are warranted in asserting ourselves 
 in discussion we should know the argument of un- 
 derstanding, of understanding, first, wherein we 
 ourselves are wrong, seeking first our error, our 
 defect, and thereby ridding ourselves of the great- 
 est possible obstacle to finding the common truth. 
 For it is rare that two sides of an argument are 
 so hopelessly distorted that some mid-ground of 
 understanding may not be found. To the thought- 
 ful reader it has long since been clear that the 
 essential value of contention is agreement upon 
 truth ; that argumentation carried on for any other 
 motive is wasteful or harmful. Pope wrote help- 
 fully of the admission of our errors, when he said 
 "To own one has been in the wrong is but saying 
 he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. ' ' 
 
 When one has developed the power of silence 
 and the potency of understanding, but one other 
 element is needed to raise him to mastery in con- 
 tention — the argument of kindness. Much that is 
 profitable, distinctly stimulating, illuminating and 
 helpful, is found in the academic argument. Here 
 the best minds cross swords with all the agility of 
 thrust and parry and counter of the skilled foils- 
 man, here steel strikes fire on steel and every 
 force is alert and agile, here as with the foils-man, 
 
136 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the sword is never for blood or wounds, or that 
 marring scars may result, but that both may be 
 bettered by the interchange of give and take. In 
 academic argument the spirit of fair play is ever 
 present, and no illness of feeling is allowed to per- 
 vert the wholesomeness and essential thought- 
 growth which come through sane, kindly-inten- 
 tioned comparison of views and opinions. In the 
 fulness of counsel wisdom should be found; and 
 even as silence presents an insurmountable argu- 
 ment, kindness presents an unanswerable one. 
 Kindness goes further than mere intellectual un- 
 derstanding. Kindness accepts lack of advan- 
 tages, looks beyond the narrowness of prejudice, 
 sympathizes with the defect of quickly-mounting, 
 poorly-handled temper. Kindness stays kind 
 through it all, and kindness is an incense which lin- 
 gers over the battlefield. 
 
 How unanswera:ble the kindness of Lincoln! 
 What a wealth of understanding is illustrated in 
 many of the records of his relations with high and 
 low ! And how characteristic of these qualities is 
 the story of one of his dealings with the always dif- 
 ficult Secretary Stanton. On this occasion a ques- 
 tion arose as to the movement of certain troops. 
 When the messenger returned after carrying Lin- 
 coln's objection to Stanton's desire in this mat- 
 ter, the patient president asked what comment the 
 crusty secretary had made. With some hesitation 
 the messenger replied that Stanton had said "Lin- 
 coln is a damn fool." The president of a great 
 nation in the midst of its greatest war, "a damn 
 fool!" What other potentate but Lincoln would 
 
CONTENTION 137 
 
 • 
 have restrained the swift thrust of authority? 
 But Lincoln knew Stanton's value. Lincoln knew 
 the need of the nation for his wisdom and judg- 
 ment, and Lincoln was incapable of any personal 
 smallness. Yet who but he could have responded : 
 "If Stanton said I was a damn fool, then I must 
 be one, for he is nearly always right. I shall 
 step over and see him about it." Such develop- 
 ment of contention, rising superior to all doubtful 
 disputations, implies a vision of that perfect re- 
 ceptivity so constantly illustrated in the life of 
 Lincoln, and others of his kind, so perfectly exam- 
 pled in the life of the Great One who, all-wise and 
 all-knowing, proclaimed "I can of mine own self 
 do nothing." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 MOODS 
 
 Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee he not dark- 
 ness. 
 
 In what infinite variations does the human face 
 find expression! In madness of joy, it seems 
 fairly bursting with the pent-up emotional power 
 it so vividly portrays. Happiness, which is one 
 of life's wholesome infections, orders its lines and 
 features into a harmonious ensemble which cannot 
 be misunderstood. Pleasure, not so molding or 
 convincing as Happiness, seems ever ready to 
 brighten the eye, gladden the lips, enrich the cheek 's 
 color and, for the time, to iron out the care-wrin- 
 kles. More sedately. Satisfaction, if worthy, 
 brings to the face an illuminated repose ; if other- 
 wise, a beam of unholy light seems incongruously 
 mixed with the quietude. Tranquillity comes to 
 rare faces, or waits for the rare occasion — the 
 calm after the soul-stirring confiict, the calm of 
 righteous victory. The faces of the Madonnas, 
 mothers and martyrs, of the great artists — and 
 prophetically, the faces of most of our dead, show 
 forth the beautiful lineaments of tranquillity. 
 How simply Surprise is manifested! A sudden 
 arching of the eyebrows, a slight contraction of the 
 
 138 
 
MOODS 139 
 
 • 
 muscles of (the mouth, and more is often said 
 thereby than can be crowded into words. From 
 Surprise to Astonishment is but a slight further 
 alteration, yet what an emphasis is expressed by 
 these few muscular changes! The heavy cheeks, 
 the drooping eyes, sluggish eyelids, the lengthen- 
 ing lines, the down-curved mouth, all immobile, 
 masklike, speak forth the gloom of Despair to each 
 passer-by. Dejection touches the features less 
 markedly. It is skin deep, rather than soul deep ; 
 it even seems to be furtively waiting for some 
 happier expression with which it can mingle. 
 Something fixed within paints the fear-face — 
 something so deep as to change its color, relax its 
 muscles, dilate the eyes; so deep that the very 
 will of iron can but poorly mask its portrayal. 
 More intense. Horror fairly mutilates the counte- 
 nance, so vividly does it disfigure the normal ex- 
 pression; the eyes' uncovered whites cause the 
 balls to seemingly start forth from their sockets, 
 forced by the anguish within. These and other 
 elemental expressions, with unending combina- 
 tions, indicate the almost endless variety of feel- 
 ings, to mirror which Nature has provided the hu- 
 man face. Who so dull as not to be versed in the 
 eloquence of the face ! Who so thoughtless of the 
 soul within that he does not watch eyes and lips 
 and cheeks and forehead for the real truth be- 
 hind the uttered words ! Who does not see more 
 deeply in his contact with men and women than 
 he hears ? With what a procession of changes do 
 we touch life here, there and yonder, and how 
 many different selves we have to express, as many 
 
140 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 different selves, we might think, as there are va- 
 rieties of experience. 
 
 With what pervasive effects may the expression 
 be utilized ! Sadness for the day may reflect from 
 a momentary frown. The love of a heart may be 
 chilled by a passing manifestation of revulsion. 
 The destiny of a relationship is held in a glance — 
 a glance which may impel faith, hate or devotion. 
 The secret of a lifetime, crowded deep down and 
 hidden, may flash forth in a revealing look and 
 be a secret no more. The gloom-molded face 
 passes along the shadowy side of the street, miss- 
 ing the joys and smiles, knowing not the quick, 
 lightening response of sympathy and understand- 
 ing. The face of hatred sees distrust and dislike, 
 aversion, enmity reflected from each face into 
 which it looks, and thus may moods unconsciously 
 control destinies. Truly has the historian re- 
 corded that an extra half inch in the length of 
 Cleopatra's nose would have changed the history 
 of the world. For a face of bewitching beauty 
 Anthony lost an empire. Might it not be well for 
 us, without the touch of artifice and devoid of 
 prejudice, to read the mirror's estimate of our 
 own faces? What is its testimony when guile 
 pencils not the features'? Into what lines do they 
 fall when unmoved by feeling? Is it the face 
 which you can comfortably allow scrutinized un- 
 wary, unholden, unarranged? Or is it a face 
 which ever and anon you must alter for the on- 
 looker? Does it when in repose stand for content- 
 ment or dissatisfaction? Is it a record of accom- 
 plishment within, or does it mark only the passage 
 
MOODS 141 
 
 • 
 
 of empty years? The sum of a life's influence 
 carried by each face is so great that it certainly 
 behooves us all to look well to the happiness of 
 our great portrait-artist — the soul. 
 
 Much of life finds expression through the hu- 
 man face — that mirror of the heart of life, our 
 feeling self. To feel is as natural and instinctive 
 as to breathe, and feelings are man's veritable 
 bosom companions. Instinctively one rejoices in 
 one's good fortune. One laughs at the well- 
 turned joke, the witty jest. Sudden horror brings 
 an irresistible shiver, while bereavement settles 
 over the spirit as a solemn pall. Such reactions 
 are inherent to all normal persons, but science and 
 civilization have as yet failed to cure man of his 
 tendency to emotional exaggeration. Emotional 
 expression entirely disproportionate to the facts, 
 emotional perversions, emotional distortions, all 
 are a common handicap to rational living. The 
 victim of insomnia is often sleepless simply from 
 his fear of not sleeping. Change his surround- 
 ings, and often for a night or two his faith in the 
 effect of a new doctor, new medicine, new scenes, 
 will permit him to sleep as in youth. But all too 
 soon incoordinating fear will lurk in again, and 
 the rest Faith gave is a fugitive. For many the 
 sight of blood so powerfully affects the feelings 
 as to produce faintness or even actual syncope. 
 Again it is fear which is the enemy to emotional 
 serenity — frequently an unformed fear suggested 
 by the sight of this vital fluid. And do you not 
 know the household which has spent its days, even 
 its months, in riotous mourning for some dead 
 
142 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 poodle or canary? The passing of an Angora 
 means weeks of effusive, hopeless despair for cer- 
 tain types of petted women. Emotions may be 
 as truthful as the course of the sun, but these emo- 
 tions are as false as hypocrisy. Suspicion may so 
 tincture one's seeing that an inquiring glance may 
 be interpreted as a disguised reproach, while in 
 the averted eyes the self -damaging falsifier sees 
 personal aversion. And so on their own little 
 cookstoves the hypersensitive stew their own lit- 
 tle hells. 
 
 But probably the most commonly disrupting as- 
 pect of false moods is the lack of the power of sta- 
 bility. Those typifying this lack are changed by 
 each external influence, comfort or distress hangs 
 upon each change of temperature, each veering of 
 the winds, each altered intonation of address. 
 Fickleness and irritability may be as definitely 
 moods as persistent years of hopeless gloom. Is 
 it not true that the whole matter of moods is based 
 upon "I feel" and "I don't feel" living? Are 
 moods not the expressions of emotional habits? 
 These chronic emotions may be small and petty, 
 as is seen in pouting lives and sulking dispositions. 
 Others, acrid as creosote or dark as desolation, 
 speak of the surrender to the ever-tempting coun- 
 sel of despair. On the other hand, gayety may be 
 as disfiguring as gloom — gayety unrelieved, the 
 gayety which, in and out of season, chuckles and 
 snickers and giggles and refuses to honor the 
 sacred with seriousness. The shriek of delirium 
 carries no greater thrill of apprehension than does 
 the mad laugh of mania. 
 
MOODS 143 
 
 Many great men have been moody. Saul 's were 
 the moods of emotional insanity, Carlyle's the 
 depression of chronic food self-poisoning. With 
 Lincoln the seriousness of responsibility lay heavy 
 upon his life's expression, but his emotional san- 
 ity was revealed by the high lights of his humor, 
 as rare as they were frequent. There are moods 
 truly great. The heroic mood blazed forth in a 
 million lives during the great World's War; and 
 there are everyday heroes and heroines whose un- 
 failing cheer, not levity, not cheap gayety, not 
 empty humor, fearlessly, gladsomely welcomes 
 each day's experience. Unaltered by ill-health or 
 bad fortune, untouched by the weariness of the 
 flesh or the perplexities of the mind, the very smile 
 of their souls shows forth through each expression 
 of the face, hand or relationship. And do not 
 such moods proclaim the life which has overcome 1 
 Do they not testify that in such characters the goal 
 of life, which is the overcoming of the world and 
 self, has been realized? 
 
 Who would not so attain, who has not stood 
 before his soul appalled at its needs, its impo- 
 tence, as measured with his ideal? How sadly 
 large is the number who, having made such com- 
 parison, have surrendered to hopelessness because 
 of the apparent inaccessibility of the heights 
 above. And the heights of our ideals are supreme. 
 They pierce the clouds, they reach beyond the 
 everlasting blue. But they are accessible, and the 
 ascent is only a matter of one step at a time — 
 steps which we all can take. Physical health is an 
 attainment far more commonly possible than 
 
144 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 usually considered. Our rational efforts health- 
 ward are righteous steps Heavenward, and the 
 sound hody may most easily be the supporter of a 
 wholesome soul. Soul and body are both benefited 
 by the morning's fifteen minutes of vigorous hill- 
 climbing or similar muscle-stretching effort. 
 Muscle-use for the strong is muscle-abuse for the 
 weak ; but rational muscle-use means at least once 
 a day the pushing of biceps, quadriceps, heart and 
 diaphragm to the point of acute fatigue. Body 
 motion can thus truly be converted into soul mo- 
 tion, and the man who daily suffers the pain of 
 physical fatigue for his health's sake is multiply- 
 ing strength in his soul. The cold bath start 
 means a better day of feeling and being, and does 
 much to develop strength for the fight for cheer, 
 even as do the insistent courtesy of greeting and 
 the kindliness of meeting. 
 
 Mental help comes to our feelings through our 
 marvelous capacity for choice of thought. Fre- 
 quently a strain of music, a snatch of song, a 
 cheery voice, the play-prattle of a child, dissipate 
 the weary thought, displace the haunting care, 
 capture the rebellious mood, and harmonize the 
 tangle and the jangle. Underneath all mood 
 transformation, we cannot escape the necessity for 
 will action. Life is a contest — essentially an in- 
 ner conquest. And in the force of the multitude 
 of its demands, the temptation to surrender and 
 let the instincts and externals govern is known 
 to all. Were it not for the accumulating power of 
 energy conservation which abides in the laws of 
 habit, surrender and failure would be practically 
 
MOODS 145 
 
 • 
 
 universal. But it is a saving fact that all develop- 
 ment tends toward automatism — that good 
 thoughts, fine feelings, kind deeds may become as 
 habitual as those of lower value. No reward of 
 high striving is more certain than that with each 
 repetition of wholesome action the effort needed to 
 reproduce that action is less. Moreover, the 
 strength gained in any series of battles for the bet- 
 ter adds to the sum of the forces to be utilized in 
 all of life's campaign. Thus we understand the 
 sensitiveness to coarseness or wrong so obvious 
 in natures who have truly surmounted. It is pos- 
 sible to refine self until it is more painful to react 
 selfishly than magnanimously. 
 
 We have all seen the deadening influence of 
 damaging moods in the lives of many. Each cir- 
 cle has its slaves of feeling who have long since 
 ceased to struggle, who have even forgotten that 
 they are enslaved. The battle of emotional right- 
 eousness is a keen one, but the master of life, he 
 who radiates cheer and strength, to whom we turn 
 for soul succor, is victor of feeling. He alone, of 
 all the sons of man, has won the pinnacle of un- 
 dying joy, and his soul, that light which is within, 
 can never be darkened. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 ENDURANCE 
 
 Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier. 
 
 Life is truly a series of conflicts from which 
 none may escape with honor. The battle-field may 
 be far distant, so far that none of its din is audible, 
 nor sight of its carnage visible, yet we are all 
 sharers of the strife. Even the independently 
 wealthy, through the very largeness of their in- 
 come are grasped and forced into the conflict. 
 For through the payment of war-taxes they are 
 purchasing shrapnel, submarine-chasers, bayonets, 
 to destroy their country's enemies; or blankets, 
 canned-beef, or chloroform to save the fighters. 
 The remote bottom-planter and the hillside small 
 farmer may read scant war news in their local- 
 weekly paper, yet they too are drafted, as every 
 bushel of food they produce goes to replenish the 
 red blood daily being poured into the trenches. 
 The factory man and the mechanic, in or out of 
 sympathy with the great cause, are consciously or 
 unconsciously contributing to the fighting strength 
 of their nation, by each productive turn of the 
 lathe or stroke of the chisel. Senators, congress- 
 men, judges and civil authorities, high and low, 
 through preserving order at home, by ferreting 
 
 146 
 
ENDURANCE 147 
 
 • 
 out and controlling sedition and disloyalty, are 
 hourly contributing strength to their country's 
 offense and defense. 
 
 We naturally think of the enlisted man, private 
 or officer, as a literal fighter, yet the wearers of 
 uniforms behind the lines find a gigantic task, a 
 vital task. The members of the commissary de- 
 partment know that with no food there is no fight. 
 And day and night they must labor that food, and 
 plenty of it, food of the right kind be obtained 
 from somewhere to supply the insatiable thou- 
 sands, mayhap millions, who sow not nor reap. 
 Close to the front, too close for safety, is the work 
 of many of the army's helpers. But closer still, 
 even touched by the shock of combat, we find those 
 other helpers who fight not with steel and powder, 
 those who never kill, but who with science and 
 saving skill combat disease and restore the shat- 
 tered. To them the wounded turn that their ebb- 
 ing lives may be stayed. At the war 's very brink 
 are found the members of the medical corps. 
 
 As one approaches the battle-field from the rear, 
 he sees line after line of equipped soldiery, in- 
 active, taking no part in the actual battle, safe 
 and protected from danger — the army's reserves, 
 the forces held back to be used at the opportune 
 hour to add a smashing blow to the successful 
 pressure of assault, or to be thrown across the 
 gaps of the weakening defense. It has been the 
 lot of many of the rank and file to go through a 
 campaign, even years of war, always in reserve, 
 never knowing the thrill, the exultation, the frenzy 
 of the actual struggle. Thus we have seen how 
 
148 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 small a percentage of the manhood of a nation at 
 war is in fighting contact with the enemy. But 
 who would not be on the firing line ! What spirit 
 so cold, what blood so pale and thin, what char- 
 acter so craven that does not feel the burning, 
 throbbing, exalting impetus to be in the thick of 
 the actual fight? A righteous envy have all real 
 men for those who can realize through every sense 
 of their being ithe glory and the horror of the car- 
 nage. War lays the extra burden of its mailed 
 hand on each son of the nation. To fight or to 
 help the fighters to the limit of strength and abil- 
 ity is each man 's privilege. 
 
 There are still others that we have not men- 
 tioned; others upon whom the burden of war 
 falls with even graver force. The wives, whose 
 husbands go out thrilling with the strength of 
 their manhood, to come back sightless, reasonless, 
 mutilated shreds of humanity, forever disabled — 
 these wives and sweethearts give men and re- 
 ceive back wrecks. And the mothers, whose 
 prayers began in those sacred months of waiting, 
 whose pain and patience and sacrifices paved each 
 step of their boys ' development ; the mothers who 
 give the fruit of their bodies, the loved of their 
 hearts, the incense of their own souls ; the mothers 
 who give their best to the charnel-pit of war — 
 these mothers give men and receive back corpses. 
 To the women at home the weight of war bears 
 down with its heaviest anguish. 
 
 Most battles of life, however, are not between 
 nations. Peace itself has its strife, its cruelties. 
 Whole communities consist of families who pass 
 
ENDUEANCE 149 
 
 the years in a death-struggle with poverty — not 
 enough to wear, too poor for education, no means 
 with which to buy the saving vacation or the pro- 
 tecting hours of relaxation, often without suffi- 
 cient bread. Hunger and ignorance, filth and 
 cold stalk through life at their sides, fateful shad- 
 ows. The greed of the strong, the essential dis- 
 honesty of the stock exchange, with money lend- 
 ers and profiteers, tell half of the tale of penury; 
 vicious indulgences and the weaknesses of vice 
 account for the other half. Victims of poverty 
 wastefuUy war amongst themselves and against 
 their affluent neighbors. Competency and wealth 
 have their battles too. Multiplied years of ease 
 are never a blessing. Ease often is a mischief 
 maker, and excess of plenty even as excess of 
 poverty aids in the deterioration of ability and 
 character. It is a hard guess which is the more 
 threatened by his rearing, the child of the poor or 
 the son of opulence. The rich man's child too 
 often has a servile mother who makes a pretense 
 of industry and sacrifice by slavishly ministering 
 to her own, which, with the constant attendance of 
 money-serving, hired trucklers, almost certainly 
 produces men and women with the ' ' trashiness of 
 character" so well characterized by James. 
 
 Human progress and the steady rise of the 
 standards of civilization are increasing the pres- 
 sure of life. The dissemination of education is 
 increasing competition in every walk of effort. As 
 a result of scientific economics the margins of per- 
 sonal requirements are becoming more exacting 
 and more narrowed. The weak go down under 
 
150 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 stress. Thousands who could live comfortable, 
 easy-going lives go to pieces under strain. Sci- 
 entific utilization of byproducts, scientific rearing 
 of Holsteins and Berkshires, scientific cultivation 
 of corn and tobacco, are becoming universal, while 
 the scientific training of human character has so 
 far been left largely to "queer" families and 
 "cranky" mothers. But extra pressure in life 
 should not be an evil — ^with individuals and na- 
 tions it should be counted a real good. It is dur- 
 ing the strenuous days and years that history is 
 made. We all look back to the intense hours when 
 it seemed as though we should be fully spent in 
 the fight and know that in those hours came vic- 
 tory which made for lasting strength, or defeat in 
 which new wisdom was born. The history of the 
 liberty of nations is a history of bloody wars. 
 The seal of human liberty has ever been set in 
 human blood. 
 
 We are all students of character. Uncon- 
 sciously we are daily estimating and forming opin- 
 ions, we are being deceived, we are meeting revela- 
 tions in human nature. We are ever looking for 
 strength of character, ready to admire, to do 
 homage to this supreme quality. And what is 
 this strength but the measure of one 's capacity to 
 endure ; to endure hardships ; to endure pain with- 
 out surrender; to endure loss of things and dollars, 
 without loss of heart ; to endure days and years of 
 misunderstanding and discord? Even sol To 
 endure praise and prosperity, success, cleverness 
 and popularity — here is the threatening strain. 
 As by the lapping of many waters, character may 
 
ENDUEANCE 151 
 
 • 
 be undermined by "good fortune" till, while ap- 
 parently intact, it is literally ready to crumble. 
 
 The zone of the battle line just beyond reach 
 of the enemy's fire is often a scene of apparent 
 confusion, and certain it is that among the work- 
 ers in the rear will always be found the cowards. 
 Some have been barely touched and welcome their 
 small hurts as excuses to escape larger perils. 
 Others, even less worthy, are mere slackers, strag- 
 glers and potential deserters, glad for every pre- 
 text or opportunity to turn their backs upon dan- 
 ger. In the first real test of endurance every 
 army discovers its defectives. Some are phys- 
 ically unfit ; others mentally incapable of standing 
 the strain and struggle; still others prove moral 
 weaklings, whose "yellow streak" can no longer 
 be hid. Especially when the tide sets in against 
 success, the deserters multiply. We have to learn 
 to lose. The bully, even the coward, may stick 
 in the winning battle. But it takes a man to be 
 game in loss, to fight back each step of the retreat, 
 to recognize superior merit and ability generously, 
 to accept graciously the decisions of defeat. How 
 far from this standard are the many who are eager 
 and insistent in their retailing of self, of their er- 
 rors, of their misfortunes, of the spite and par- 
 tiality which they have met, of their bad feelings, 
 the ever-lengthening catalogue of things personal 
 and sacred, all of which the strong nature by very 
 instinct reveals not. To counselors personal and 
 tried, or even better, the worthy professional ex- 
 pert, the minister, the physician, the lawyer, to 
 these, and then only on rare occasions of special 
 
152 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 need, does the man of strength resort with his 
 intimate affairs. 
 
 Corporal's guards are constantly patrolling be- 
 hind the lines searching out would-be deserters. 
 Many who, through one excuse or another, have 
 drifted away from the front are perfectly satis- 
 fied to bask in the sunshine of safety, avoiding the 
 hell of it all. But we find more deserters in the 
 battles of civil life. Every community has its sat- 
 isfied invalid, who is using his physical deficien- 
 cies, present or has been, to relieve him from the 
 burdens of family support, from the details of 
 house-keeping, from many responsibilities which 
 duty would place in his hand. And when added to 
 the immunity from the routine of effort, the in- 
 valid is the object of hourly attention, of unweary- 
 ing sympathy, the daily recipient of the comforts 
 of devoted coddling, it becomes easy to under- 
 stand with what tenacity such invalids hold close 
 their indemnifying weaknesses. A well equipped 
 young minister, whose work in his early pastorates 
 had been most satisfactory, met and loved and 
 wed a lady of frail physique, sensitive nerves and 
 robust bank account. She had plenty for them 
 both though he toiled not. It was before the days 
 when even the specialists had conceived the mod- 
 ern methods of successfully reeducating the nerv- 
 ous invalid to useful living. "Best," "Avoid 
 this" and "Don't do that," was the burden of 
 her physician's orders. And if "rest" was good 
 for the minister's wife, why not equally good for 
 the "tired" minister too ! In order the more per- 
 fectly to conserve his sensitive and easily ex- 
 
ENDURANCE 153 
 
 • 
 
 hausted energies, he bought him an easy-chair, a 
 most comfortable and durable easy-chair. As the 
 years passed the hours daily spent in this chair 
 by our unfortunate divine increased, and their 
 increase was paralleled by a decrease in his effi- 
 ciency, until as he neared his forties, he consid- 
 ered himself entirely unable to longer keep up 
 pastoral duties. The two invalids then traveled, 
 seeking health in comfort-administering health- 
 resorts, and indolence-indulging sanitaria, but 
 from each trip he returned to a more inveterate 
 occupancy of his easy-chair. At sixty-three it was 
 practically his only solace, his only desire, his only 
 inspiration. Then rather rudely, but nevertheless 
 efficiently, he was transported into health-breed- 
 ing surroundings, where, under a beneficent des- 
 potism, he learned to earn his bread with pick and 
 shovel. No physical defect was found but flabby 
 muscles of disuse. Soon strength was given him, 
 and for weeks he labored well, and gained in all 
 that stands for health. He returned home almost 
 convinced that he was restored and again took up 
 church work with much of his youthful success. 
 But the easy-chair was still in his library. It was 
 not long before he exchanged the endurance-de- 
 veloping helpfulness of daily physical work for 
 the seduction of its devitalizing, yes, demoralizing 
 embraces. To-day he is miserable, and a breeder 
 of misery. And so the battle ever produces the 
 deserter through self-indulgence, even as it pro- 
 duces the hero made through self-discipline. As 
 we look back upon the formative events of our 
 lives we must ever be impressed that the real 
 
154 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 importance of lucky strikes, of illness sudden or 
 prolonged, has never existed in the events, but in 
 the effect which the happening has had upon our 
 characters. 
 
 Side by side with the weaklings we find, on the 
 safe side of the fighting line, the beggars. Many 
 travelers in the East bring home as their most 
 intense impression of the Oriental character the 
 uncountable beggars of city and country. The 
 reiterating din of "Backsheesh" there greets the 
 tourist at every turn. The beggars' cry echoes 
 through the passing hours like the unceasing wail 
 of the lost. But all beggars are not found in rags 
 and tatters infesting far countries. In our own 
 land, in the homes of plenty, we find the beggar — 
 the unproductive son, the self-indulgent daughter 
 — living parasitically upon the efforts of a suc- 
 cessful father, or the inheritance of a loving 
 mother. The begging son's assortment of har- 
 monizing cravats and silk socks stands for no 
 higher productive effort than the shrill cry of 
 "Backsheesh" from a leprous Oriental. Parents 
 make beggars of their children through their fail- 
 ure to early demand an equivalent in effort for all 
 remuneration; by failing to inculcate a sense of 
 the fundamental dishonesty of living through the 
 productive years of life, fed and clad by the ef- 
 forts of another ; by failing to impress the honesty- 
 breeding conception that every meal eaten repre- 
 sents the labor of some hands. Clear indeed is the 
 parent 's duty to see that his children receive every 
 instruction, cultural and educational advantages, 
 which make for independent self-support. The 
 
ENDURANCE 155 
 
 son's duty is equally clear that every dollar lie 
 receives from his parents be invested in honest 
 work at college, in clean living or in strength-de- 
 veloping pleasures. Productive work either by 
 choice or by force is the only cure which will save 
 many a youth from a lower degradation than the 
 mendicants of Cairo. 
 
 Resolutely facing the enemies of our nation, our 
 communities, our families, our souls, we will find 
 the heroes. The most conspicuous of these are the 
 heroes of industry, the workers. Inestimable as 
 are the accomplishments of the past, incalculable 
 as are the efforts of the present, a sober survey 
 shows that our world's work is just begun. It 
 would seem that the wildest dreams of the in- 
 ventor, the most extreme opinions of the theorist 
 could ultimately be fulfilled when the world-of- 
 workers finally come together, scientifically and 
 harmoniously, to do the world's work. It is only 
 begun, this great possible task — ^well begun in 
 many lines, but so far we have been able but to 
 touch the task's surface. In our cities — alleys, 
 backyards and mill districts ; in our homes — cellars 
 and attics, closets and too often kitchens, speak 
 eloquently of the much work undone. We are all 
 prone to give our energy and attention to the 
 pleasanter, more congenial duties, but the earnest 
 and honest worker will show his stuff by ever 
 tackling his toughest job first. And would we 
 add endurance, that superb fighting and winning 
 quality, to our equipment, we shall find few helps 
 more practical than getting the difficult, the dis- 
 agreeable, the undesirable work of each day be- 
 
156 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 hind us early. The real fighter is a worker; the 
 real worker is a fighter. There are Utopian 
 dreams of warless centuries, of peaceful millenni- 
 ums. While man is man, this can never be. Man 
 is a fighting creature and is made of fighting stuff, 
 and fight he will unless he degenerates into a lower 
 order of being. He will learn, he is learning not 
 only how to fight better, but, at last, what to fight. 
 The days of man 's going to war with his kind are 
 numbered; the ages of man's enlisting to fight 
 man's foes have begun. The horrors of man's 
 fighting to make his brother-man miserable are 
 doomed. The wars of the future will be cam- 
 paigns for human happiness. Labor's heroes will 
 then receive the meed now so eagerly pressed upon 
 the brows of the heroes of blood. 
 
 The worker has mastered endurance, and to en- 
 dure is heroic. There are limits, however, which 
 even the staid son of toil is refusing to accept. 
 The street car was crowded. A conspicuously 
 dressed "lady" came aboard, fashionably be- 
 gowned, behatted and beshod. Seeing her, in aris- 
 tocratic helplessness hanging to a strap, the soiled, 
 overalled, redolent mechanic, honestly weary from 
 .his ten hours of effortful toil, in kindness and self- 
 forgetfulness proffered his seat, respectfully tip- 
 ping his cap. Complacently the "lady" seated 
 herself — the donor and his courtesy serenely ig- 
 nored. The weary features lighted significantly, 
 and a moment later a grimy knuckle was tapping 
 the immaculate dress-sleeve. Startled, the owner 
 looked up — "You forgot something, mum," and 
 
ENDURANCE 157 
 
 • 
 as in mild perturbation she rose, he slipped into 
 the vacated seat — "Your manners, mum!" 
 
 Of all classes of soldiers, the volunteer deserv- 
 edly is the most prized, for in him is expressed the 
 potency of willingness. Whether in camp or on 
 the firing line, on great occasions or in the daily 
 task, the men and women who assume the burdens, 
 who add the inspiring quality of willingness to 
 the fact of their doing, represent the highest type 
 of the hero. Endurance of hardships is an essen- 
 tial quality for the fighter. Endurance is the first 
 essential of heroism, and occasions come to all 
 when sheer endurance alone is a contribution to 
 life. Physical hardship, the pain of wounds and 
 the weeks and months of deprivation must truly 
 not be enemies. For none are so eager to get to 
 the front, as long as battles are raging, as those 
 who have fought and bled, who have courted death 
 with that "familiarity which breeds contempt." 
 They yearn for the crash and ugliness, for the 
 suffering and the sacrifice, for the ever impending 
 menace, with an intensity which cannot be said. 
 In knowing in its fulness and completeness the 
 blessing of offering all for others, in the perfection 
 of their power of endurance, through training, 
 self-denial and the actual experience of pain, they 
 have made Fate harmless, as may we all when we 
 will to "endure hardness as a good soldier." 
 
CHAPTEE XVII 
 MAEGINS 
 
 Whether is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifieth the giftt 
 
 The "Way of Life, starting from the Sea of 
 Nothingness, traverses the Continent of Existence 
 to the Sea of Eternity. This Way begins as a 
 mere thread — the physical path of infancy; later 
 it is joined and broadened by the path of mental- 
 ity, and life is less hemmed in. But it is not until 
 the great table-land is reached that the Highway 
 is completed by merging "with the spiritual path. 
 
 Precarious is the physical way in the first days 
 of infancy, barely crawling along a ledge with 
 precipitous sides — a mischance here and irretriev- 
 able disaster follows. As we go onward the path 
 widens, its sides are less forbidding, we may ven- 
 ture to the right or to the left a short way with- 
 out danger, for understanding has widened our 
 margins. Still the reaches of the mind alone, no 
 matter what its cleverness and ability, will not 
 keep us from the pitfalls so numerous along life's 
 way. The broad highway, the King's highway, 
 leads us straight forward over highland and 
 through lowland, for spiritual breadth and safety 
 are added when the spiritual awakening comes. 
 Then only are we safe from dangers physical, and 
 errors mental. 
 
 158 
 
MARGINS 159 
 
 • 
 
 The way of the body has its thousand delights, 
 the fragrance of flowers, the very goodness of 
 physical well-being, the soothing touch of soft 
 hands, the luxuriant caress of silken raiment — so 
 strong their appeal, so temporarily satisfying! 
 But the narrowness of its margins! From the 
 clenching of dimpled fingers at birth to the relaxa- 
 tion of bony hands at death, there is no hour in 
 which physical limitations are not threatening. 
 The crushing force, the molten metal, the corrod- 
 ing poison, the decay of youth, regardless of high 
 or low estate, rend and destroy, and ultimately no 
 wisdom, no sanctity can stay their vandalism. 
 
 With what intensity the appeal and the promise 
 of the intellect thrill the youthful fancy. Indeed, 
 life is much too short to satisfy their possibilities. 
 Who can limit the excursions of the mind as it 
 haunts the corridors of the past, bringing to light 
 its secrets and its treasures; or limit its visions 
 of the future as it paints on "a ten league canvas 
 with brushes of comet's hair!" Would it not 
 seem that man's memory and imagination are his 
 supreme gifts and allow him all the latitude to 
 meander over the face of the universe that ambi- 
 tion could desire? But the mind has its unscal- 
 able boundaries, the limitations of Eeality. Cold 
 as Truth, relentless as Fate, Eeality melts into 
 dull mist the castles of the air. With hunger and 
 pain and the cry of need she wakens the dreamer. 
 Reality says ' ' Thou shalt know the truth or taste 
 failure." Cold, apparently heartless, uncompro- 
 mising as is Reality, it ever points to the spiritual 
 way, it ever proclaims the certainty of the unseen, 
 
160 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 it would fairly force body and mind to the recog- 
 nition of the soul. 
 
 The face which looks from out the window as we 
 pass reveals more than ivory skin and hazel eyes, 
 more than emotional intensity or asserting wil- 
 fulness ; it speaks of discontent or hope, of mother- 
 love or mother-anxiety, of pride, of sorrow ; it ex- 
 presses more than beauty or intelligence — it 
 speaks of the richness or emptiness of a soul. 
 From lives of ease and littleness and weakness 
 hundreds of thousands went to the training camps, 
 crossed the seas and swarmed into the unspeak- 
 able trenches, faced for months filth of surround- 
 ings, "the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the 
 destruction that wasteth at noonday," atug at 
 the leash of command which held them back, soul- 
 thrilling through it all for just a chance to dash 
 to death. Farm-hands, shipping clerks, theolog- 
 ical students, mother's pets, east-side rowdies, all 
 merged into oneness of soul by the irresistible 
 potency of the spirit of the Unseen. "War is 
 hell" but it has its glorious heaven — heroism, the 
 power which lifts men from weakness and sordid- 
 ness to immortality. How inexpressibly the mar- 
 gins of every phase of possibility broaden when 
 the spiritual leads the physical and the mental. 
 What does the gift of physical life mean? What 
 is its greatness when compared with the soul which 
 sanctifieth the life? "Whether is greater, the 
 gift, or the altar which sanctifieth the gift. ' ' 
 
 Have there not been multitudes, however, who 
 have made the whole journey of life destitute of 
 any conception of the central highway — multitudes 
 
MARGINS 161 
 
 • 
 who have merely crept along narrow paths? 
 With unbroadened physical margins they suffer 
 from the touch of any unusual draft; they stifle 
 in a crowded room. Ventilation, too much or too 
 little, commands their untiring but wearying at- 
 tention. The normal changes from day to night 
 demand abnormal changes in the regulation of 
 windows and doors and clothing. The seat near 
 the window threatens pneumonia. God's fresh 
 out-of-doors which should make for strength and 
 robustness, they treat as an enemy; they have 
 coddled themselves with warmth of room and 
 clothing so long that the power within to convert 
 the heat and chill into added strength and com- 
 fort has never been won. With skin untrained, 
 they fear the sweat from the heat, the chill of 
 the night air; nature's periodic shower baths and 
 cooling blankets of fog and mist they must flee, 
 enemies so easily wooed into strength-proffering 
 friendliness when the margins of physical resist- 
 ance have been broadened through proper use of 
 heat and cold, rain and shine, the skin and its 
 clothing. As a result of defective physical habits, 
 of lives courting only ease, many live physically 
 on the narrow margins of babyhood. Their path 
 still creeps along the fearsome mountain ledge. 
 Food abuses, especially during the first fifteen 
 years of life, produce throngs of dyspeptics whose 
 limited margins of digestive strength have made 
 their life's problem "what to eat," "how much to 
 eat," "when to eat." Digestive strength, one of 
 the corner-stones of physical health, is not theirs, 
 and they sit at the feast with the Sword of Damo- 
 
162 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 oles dangling above their heads. How miserably 
 limited the living that must inspect each bite, and 
 weigh in the balance of hope and experience each 
 meal. As you start the day's work, do you feel 
 the need of your cup of coffee? Then your nerv- 
 ous margin is narrow — you, yourself, lack some- 
 thing of greater virtue than your morning bever- 
 age. Why should you need a whip? What is 
 the matter with your self-starter? Why are the 
 first hours unlike those of the healthy child, the 
 hours of keenness and feeling fine? Why should 
 you not welcome the day with its opportunities, 
 coffee or no coffee? Through lack of wisdom or 
 lack of will, you have allowed your nervous cap- 
 ital to become reduced. Your need for the pick- 
 me-up of coffee, cigarette or the dope of the soda- 
 fountain, indicates unerringly the narrow margin 
 of your reserve. Not that the cup of coffee may 
 not be taken, but the day you feel the need for 
 its artificial help is the day to quit its use. 
 
 He was a young bank president, only forty- 
 three. Some farm life, some athletics at school 
 gave him a good start, ambition prodded, oppor- 
 tunity smiled and he burned his candle at both 
 ends. At the head of his bank at thirty-six, he 
 was working hard — systematic and energetic. A 
 sharp hour in the saddle almost every day was 
 helping to keep him fit, Havana cigars helped to 
 push. At forty-three nicotine, not old age, palsied 
 his signature ; nicotine had robbed him of his snap. 
 His desk, a few years since a model of system and 
 order, was aclutter. Nicotine had put a saw-edge 
 on his affability, and querulous irritability lost the 
 
MARGINS 163 
 
 bank a customer now and then, fie said there 
 was no time for exercise, he knew there was no 
 desire — for nicotine had robbed him of physical 
 and volitional efficiency. Each cigar stump was 
 used to light a fresh Havana, fifteen of which a 
 day had in a few years caused a fine, strong, pur- 
 poseful young man to come face to face with nerv- 
 ous wreckage. Our ambitious banker was a to- 
 bacco-soaked toper. 
 
 What a universe is opened to the activities of 
 the mind with our free libraries, with the volumes 
 of the world's best writing on all subjects to be 
 bought for a song, opening a hundred fields of 
 education to every reader. There is no excuse 
 for passing one dull, unimproved hour, and if our 
 will margins were sufficiently widened what a 
 wealth of knowledge we should all attain. But 
 the habit of losing sight of our needs and priv- 
 ileges in the indulgence of our wants is as com- 
 mon as mumps. As a result the average mind is 
 one of but local interests: the speckled hen's 
 chickens, the week's batch of bread, the Friday 
 afternoon sewing circle, the amount of the day's 
 business, the price of cotton, the children's sore 
 throats, or their monthly school report, the daily 
 news, the weekly Sunday-school lesson — and the 
 list of many a family's interests has been re- 
 tailed. With others rich in the possession of ca- 
 pacity, the working hours are frittered away by 
 the exhaustion of detail. Their energy is not 
 saved by classification, generalizations — the re- 
 duction of a score of particulars to a single prin- 
 ciple — without which there is no true education. 
 
164 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 If we carefully note those who complain most con- 
 stantly of their lack of energy we shall usually 
 be impressed by their chronic failure to ultilize 
 energy-creating effort. For them the alarm-clock 
 has neither terrors nor joys. Their time of aris- 
 ing is a movable festival, having no certainty but 
 that of inclination. And the alarm-clock may 
 either broaden or narrow our margins of will 
 strength.^ When its call is habitually ignored, 
 other calls of duty may share a like fate. Used 
 rightly, set regularly to announce a predetermined 
 rising hour, its summons invariably finding one 
 out of bed and on his feet before the last stroke — 
 and the day has begun with a purposeful impetus 
 which augurs well for the forthcoming hours. 
 
 We must ever be impressed with the limitless 
 pervasiveness of things spiritual. In our willing- 
 ness to live lives of inadequate physical sturdiness, 
 and in our contentment to idly float down the 
 stream of mental life, in being satisfied with nar- 
 row physical and mental margins, we show spir- 
 itual deficiency. So often we do not see clearly 
 for we allow the part to obscure the whole. A 
 hand over the eyes will shut out all of God's visi- 
 ble universe. The evanescent pleasures of the 
 day may eclipse the lasting rewards of "Well 
 done." Even more commonly the loss destroys 
 the gain; thus with the fire which consumes the 
 worldly goods — ambition, incentive, even faith 
 may go, even as the accident which mars beauty 
 of body may disfigure character and mutilate sym- 
 pathy. With enlarged margins, we are ever re- 
 ceiving larger dividends with compound interests. 
 
MARGINS 165 
 
 while narrow margins unfailingly exact compound 
 penalties. As the soul broadens, life's properties 
 and amenities become of increasingly less value. 
 Walt Whitman with none of the inspirations of 
 home associations saw, and wrote, as have few 
 others of the beauties and sanctity of human rela- 
 tionship. Wordsworth, who never owned a rood 
 of land, sang Nature's songs most sweetly. 
 
 Do you live for appearance ? Are you more or 
 less than you seem? Then indeed are your mar- 
 gins limited for we are ever hemmed in by our 
 pretensions or their ghosts. With what unthink- 
 ing freedom does the artisan whistle at his bench, 
 and with what liberty he meets friend and stranger 
 as compared with the hunted uneasiness of him 
 who makes his living by his wits. Uneasy lie 
 many heads wearing unmerited social, artistic, po- 
 litical or business crowns. 
 
 Margins are the most elastic of our possessions. 
 Only through neglect and disuse does the path 
 grow up with weeds and become a tangle of under- 
 growth and briers. The right use of our facul- 
 ties causes the way to become ever more clear. 
 Men and women of fifty and sixty have changed 
 their physical habits, have learned to eat for effi- 
 ciency — ^not indulgence, have learned to invest 
 their strength wisely in the daily exercise which 
 makes healthy, effort-enjoying activity welcome, 
 and thereby have enriched the latter days. Others 
 go through years supposing that they are doing 
 their daily duty to their muscles, performing pallid 
 caricatures of physical exercise, efforts persevered 
 in which barely increase rapidity of heart-beat and 
 
166 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 depth of breathing. That marginal strength 
 which keeps the body constantly prepared for the 
 unexpected, which gradually and certainly devel- 
 ops physical independence, is won only through 
 daily putting the voluntary and vital muscles to 
 an honest strain of effort, making them fairly 
 crack and pant and pain, for with our physical 
 selves we wring lasting comfort out of discom- 
 fort. In truth, our only safety from the growth 
 of uncomfortable sensations is to resolutely stran- 
 gle them in their early days. Coddled and nursed, 
 fed by attention and wrapped in soft flannels, 
 they grow into veritable pampered monstrosities, 
 ever waxing more burdensome. 
 
 Our mental margins will grow apace when we 
 rightly invest our will in mastery. The daily gra- 
 tuitous mental effort, the learning a verse, the 
 careful reading of an abstract chapter, the solv- 
 ing of some problem — the extra doing is the price 
 for the extra strength. Who can measure the 
 ultimate possibilities of the human will? Genera- 
 tions of red men stood in worshipful awe beside 
 the onrush of the mighty Niagara. To-day the 
 will of the white man has already lessened its vol- 
 ume and would have reduced this awful and tre- 
 mendous thing to a mere trickle had it not been 
 saved by the laws of two countries — utilitarianism 
 held in check only by sentiment. The mind is a 
 giant in its possibilities of power. The certain 
 annoyances of daily living are most frequently 
 leakages of will strength, yet they all may be eon- 
 verted into will power. Late trains, delayed ap- 
 pointments occasion fidgets and fuming, fussing 
 
MARGINS 167 
 
 • 
 and strong language, or the vigorous burning of 
 unneeded tobacco, with resultant lessening of the 
 margin of patience. A vestpocket edition of 
 poems or classics or essays will not only save the 
 tobacco and the patience, but surely add to one's 
 mental store and will strength. 
 
 The only margins which cover and compensate 
 for deficiencies of body and mind are those which 
 can be acquired equally in sickness or in health, 
 by the uneducated as by the college-bred. No 
 heritage of gold, no finesse of tutelage assures de- 
 velopment of soul. The spirit cannot be bought, 
 cannot be given by teachers — it must be wrought 
 within. No wholeness of life is possible in its 
 absence. Even materialistic Huxley thus spoke 
 of beauty: "When I look out upon the fields and 
 when I hear music, I feel that these are gifts from 
 the Great Author. They are not essential — man 
 did not need music and beauty and flowers and 
 fields in order to develop his body and his mind. ' ' 
 Huxley realized there is something more than 
 body and mind — ^he did not say it — let us say it 
 for him: God gave beauty to woo man's soul, to 
 make him realize there is more than the physical, 
 more than the mental. While Germany remem- 
 bered this she was truly great. When we count 
 her glory it is the glory of Germany poor and 
 struggling. German art, German literature, Ger- 
 man music, German religion were the products of 
 Germany aspiring. Germany strong, successful, 
 masterful, wealthy, was Germany showing a pitiful 
 poverty in the idealistic, the artistic and the hu- 
 manistic. 
 
168 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING - "" 
 
 We may illustrate tlie all-comprehensive spir- 
 itual by its expression of love. Self-love is a 
 physical heritage and to stimulate it the sensuous 
 body offers a most enticing list of gratifications, 
 from coarseness to nicety. The developing mind 
 demands a higher quality of love and accepts the 
 value of others' acts, recognizes merit, honors 
 ability — and we are attracted thereby to those hav- 
 ing superior qualities. It is for the soul to know 
 perfect love, the love that sees the need in weak- 
 ness, the love that pities misfortune, the love 
 that suffereth long and is kind, that thinketh no 
 evil, that endureth all things, the love that never 
 faileth. Such love finds new sympathies in every 
 failure, in every aflfliction. Charitable love en- 
 riches itself by mining for the gold of good, hid- 
 den somewhere in each soul. Through charitable 
 love we may broaden our margins into that divine 
 unity which finds something in common with all, 
 the sure promise of something in common with 
 eternity. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 HEALING 
 
 Thy ■faith hath made thee whole. 
 
 To the average man, the matter-of-fact m^n of 
 the street, disease is a certainty, an entity to be 
 reckoned with when it arrives. Colds, rheuma- 
 tism, tjrphoid and tuberculosis, scarlet fever and 
 blood-poisoning are as unquestionably real to him 
 as the storm that blows down his fruit-trees or 
 the prostrating 105° in the shade. But all peo- 
 ple are not matter-of-fact ; many assume and hold 
 fast to one of two extreme attitudes toward sick- 
 ness. The numerically larger group is composed 
 of disease-mongers. To these unfortunates, dis- 
 ease in its many possible and more impossible 
 forms is their point of least resistance, the subject 
 of their most instant response, the burden of their 
 thought, their feeling, their converse. From mere 
 careless retailers of their own symptoms to ready 
 delineators of multiplied experiences, the gamut is 
 a long one. These pitiful, self-centered natures 
 ignore the unquestionable power of fear-sugges- 
 tion and selfishly regardless of the unwholesome 
 boredom they inflict, they relate and reiterate the 
 wearisome details of their sicknesses ad nauseam. 
 To the disease-monger, the unhealthy abnormali- 
 ties of physical experience attain a mental fascina- 
 
 169 
 
170 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 tion which would suggest at least a degree of men- 
 tal disorder. And to this class facts are rarely 
 sufficient. Each ailment is exalted into a serious- 
 ness which is not moral. A mere fainting-spell 
 in childhood, of no more danger or real moment 
 than a sneezing-spell, is sufficient, with the disease- 
 monger, or especially with the disease-monger's 
 mother, to forever alter certain habits of thought 
 or methods of living. From that momentous 
 event, "hard study," "household responsibili- 
 ties," "violent exercise" are avoided as a fatal- 
 ity — the doing avoided but the discussing, never. 
 
 The normal person feels an immense relief 
 when he escapes the noisome vaporings of the re- 
 tailers of disease, and finds himself in the com- 
 paratively wholesome society of those avowing 
 the other extreme attitude, the disease-deniers. 
 Is it not a hint of "what we shall be" to know 
 those who have experienced some special dispen- 
 sation of Divine Power and have risen above any 
 possibility of sin, as claimed by the self-termed 
 Sanctificationist? Is it not equally suggestive of 
 a super-mundane existence to assume that aches 
 and ills are entirely extraneous to human life? 
 Prophetic, we may grant, but authentic, rational, 
 righteous — no ! 
 
 Seated at one's fireside, well-fed and with all 
 needs and most desires fully filled, or in the in- 
 spiring atmosphere of a classical temple of wor- 
 ship, with senses caressed by the mellow tones 
 of the great organ and the softened light filtering 
 gently through beauteous art-glass windows, smug 
 and comfortable, fairly hypnotized by physical 
 
HEALING 171 
 
 • 
 
 good-feeling, mental tranquillity and spiritual 
 contentment, it is easy to believe that there is no 
 such thing as disease, that it is but mortal error. 
 Yes, it is easy to be deluded — easy to delude self. 
 It is easy to stop one's ears to the call of the 
 slums, to the groans of the suffering thousands, 
 who find relief and hope only in the heart of char- 
 ity — the charity which founds hospitals for the 
 helpless, the charity that enters into the lives of 
 surgeons, physicians and social workers who give 
 not only their tenth but often their half of total 
 working strength, who even sacrifice their all in 
 their noble efforts to roll back the rock of Si- 
 syphus, which would crush out decency and hope. 
 It is easy to grip one's bankbook and refuse the 
 heroic medical missionary the paltry dollars 
 needed to make him a literal savior of his kind. 
 Let us understand that we in no wise alter a con- 
 dition by changing its name, and the ** error" of 
 the disease-denier is but a fictitious name for dis- 
 ease itself. "Error" or disease, the slums are 
 there in their squalor, with their hollow cheeks 
 and hacking coughs. The hospitals fairly swarm 
 with the deformed, fairly groan with the mangled 
 and the dismembered, and fairly choke with the 
 putridity of foul infections. The modern battle- 
 trench is a conglomerate mass of muck and clay 
 and the partially decomposed remnants of human 
 beings, a few weeks since, living men, digging 
 themselves into safety in this same charnel-house. 
 Disease and death not reality? Then did the 
 Master Heart deceive the Master Mind when 
 twenty centuries ago the "Wisest of them all min- 
 
172 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 istered daily to the sick, the lame and blind and 
 the devil-possessed. 
 
 Medical science groups diseases into three 
 classes — mechanical, chemical and psychic. Ex- 
 amples of the first of these are most obvious : the 
 dislocated joint, the mangled hand, the deforming 
 tumor, the corroding cancer, burns, crossed eyes, 
 cleft palates, clubfeet and blindness, illustrate the 
 many varieties of physical disturbances due to 
 mechanical deficiencies or injuries. The chemis- 
 try of the human body is most intricate and in- 
 volved, most delicately sensitive to alteration. 
 The body is indeed one of the most remarkable 
 chemical laboratories known. Certain of its chem- 
 ical reactions must be constant, otherwise illness 
 or death supervenes. Thus it is impossible to 
 combine with it even small amounts of arsenic, 
 strychnin, aconitin, without hopelessly damaging 
 vital centers of the brain or action of the heart. 
 A few breaths of the vicious gases used in trench- 
 warfare, and life is extinct. Germ-produced tox- 
 ins may be fatally virulent, for through their 
 chemical effect upon blood cells or the tissues of 
 the body they cause tuberculosis, dread cholera, 
 the suffocating membraneous-croup, the disin- 
 tegrating leprosy and scores of dther infections. 
 No less common are chemical disturbances of a 
 damaging or an ultimately fatal nature, caused 
 by wrong habits of nutrition. Countless sufferers 
 have robbed their lives of reasonable comfort, 
 have wretchedly reduced their daily efficiency, 
 have woefully lessened their length of years by 
 eating and drinking themselves into disease. 
 
HEALING ' 173 
 
 • 
 
 Mental and moral hurts and defects account for 
 tlie remaining large class, the psychically dis- 
 turbed. The belief in the presence of a disease 
 which is not existent may be as debilitating as the 
 disease itself. We all have neighbors who catch 
 whatever is going the rounds. During epidemics 
 each physician visits patients to find them covered 
 head and ears in bed, yet presenting no sign what- 
 ever of the grip, the typhoid, or the diphtheria 
 then prevalent. Numberless ailments of stom- 
 achs and hearts, of glands, of throats and eyes are 
 but disorders in action resulting from disturb- 
 ances of the sympathetic nervous system, scien- 
 tifically termed "functional disorders." In such 
 patients, no nicety of physical or chemical exami- 
 nation will show the slightest alteration of tissue, 
 the trouble ]peing in the emotional centers, a trou- 
 ble which no microscope can discern. 
 
 Self-centeredness and fear are the arch-demons, 
 introducing psychic disorders, and it is enlighten- 
 ing to note how frequently we may substitute the 
 word "moral" for psychic. So long as self with 
 its feelings and interests is made first, occupying 
 the spot-light of one's attention, the threat of 
 psychic suffering is imminent. Few penalties are 
 more unerringly exacted than the development of 
 hypersensitiveness by which the mind punishes 
 the essential immorality of the self-centered life. 
 
 Analyzed, fear is found to be usually but an- 
 other expression of selfishness. The majority of 
 fear-sufferers would refute this imputation, would 
 claim that fear is instinctive, would emphasize the 
 protective feature of fear, would quote authority 
 
174 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 on the righteousness of fear — and fear is protec- 
 tive and may be righteous. It all depends upon 
 what we fear and when, and what fear inspires 
 us to do. The fear of typhoid fever is protective 
 if it keeps us from drinking unboiled surface-wa- 
 ter, if it sends us to the health department regu- 
 larly that we may be scientifically vaccinated. 
 But the fear of typhoid which causes us to shun 
 the bedside where help is needed, the fear which 
 haunts our eating and drinking and disturbs our 
 daily duties is the coward's fear. Many wretched 
 souls are unable to drive a mile in an auto or take 
 a railway or steamer trip without morbid fear of 
 accident. Theirs are perfect dread-lives; they 
 early infect their children, whom they deny, from 
 the first, health-giving and courage-developing 
 sports. Tree climbing, coasting, skating, swim- 
 ming, baseball, football are not for the fear-in- 
 fected mothers' boys. Even running, jumping, 
 rope-skipping and swinging are not for her daugh- 
 ters. The fear of death to the fearsome is so 
 constantly an apparition that no day passes but 
 their throats feel the threat of his strangle-hold, 
 or their spines shiver from the chill of his breath. 
 No description is adequate to give more than a 
 hint of the vast world of psychic suffering. 
 
 Folks get sick, and folks get well. There are 
 accurate laws of healing. The watchmaker does 
 not inject quinin into the internals of an erratic 
 clock, nor does he take it to church and pray for 
 its soul; he oils and regulates its springs and bear- 
 ings. The surgeon does not dose the man's broken 
 leg with quinin, nor request the prayers of the 
 
HEALING 175 
 
 • 
 
 congregation for the unfortunate femur. He sets 
 the displaced bone-ends according to the simple 
 laws of mechanics, and carefully keeps them in 
 place for three weeks with practically adjusted 
 splints. The gaping wound is no longer an object 
 of mummerings or incantations, but is deftly 
 tailored on the same principles as the rent trous- 
 ers. Charms and amulets have long since been 
 proven disqualified to renew decayed teeth. The 
 dentist with his skilful mechanical ingenuity re- 
 moves diseased areas and repairs and restores. 
 The half -ounce of carbolic acid swallowed by mis- 
 take quickly proves fatal in the face of bandages 
 swathed around the burning throat or poultices 
 applied over the painful stomach. Priest and 
 prayer-book are alike helpless save as a solace to 
 those left behind. But the prompt administration 
 of a few spoonfuls of Epsom Salts, in solution, 
 promptly neutralizes the burning, destroying poi- 
 son. A chemical law of healing has been right- 
 eously invoked. Even so do we show forth our 
 righteousness when we protect ourselves against 
 disfiguring smallpox, the death-dealing lock-jaw 
 and hydrophobia, by combating these infections 
 with the scientifically truthful vaccine or antitoxin. 
 Less dramatic but none the less certain is arrest 
 of the health devastation produced by poisons 
 emanating from undeserved foods or from irre- 
 ligious tobacco and alcohol, by rigorously check- 
 ing these excesses and by daily cleansing the phys- 
 ical house, by sending the refining oxygen to each 
 body-cell through energetic and adequate exercise. 
 Ever the law of healing is the restoration of har- 
 
176 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 mony between man and the forces of the physical, 
 the mental or the spiritual. 
 
 In psychic disturbances the ideas of disease and 
 weakness must be displaced by those of health and 
 ability. The power of self-centeredness will con- 
 tinue to deform the soul until it gives way to un- 
 selfishness, that power which enlists the best of 
 self for the good of others. Dwarfing fear will 
 continue a growing menace to the soul until dis- 
 placed by the faith which says and believes "I 
 will fear no evil" — a faith which faces danger, 
 when its presence is needed, sublimely superior to 
 its threat, superbly conscious of duty. Faith is 
 the great curative of the numberless disorders 
 caused by fear. Faith in magic and symbols, faith 
 in rubbing and electricity, faith in belts and braces 
 and patent medicines — the faith, not its object, 
 works the cure. The miracles did not end with 
 the Apostles. For many centuries the tomb of 
 Becket was a yearly repository for the canes and 
 crutches of the halt and lame, left as testimonials 
 of restoration. Within a generation forty thou- 
 sand professed physical healing through the influ- 
 ence of an illiterate, crude, licentious monk, the 
 Cure d 'Ars of Lyons ; while but recently Lourdes 
 has been a world-famed curative Mecca — all evi- 
 dences of the psychic law of healing: that faith 
 in health, no matter how inspired, can dissipate 
 the physical manifestations of disease due to fear. 
 
 Faith is given man to lead him to a saving 
 knowledge, a practical working knowledge of the 
 known ways of the law; faith is given man to 
 lead him in safety through the wilderness of the 
 
HEALING ' 177 
 
 • 
 
 unknown. We cannot too highly exalt this qual- 
 ity of the soul. Faith would fasten our grip even 
 more firmly upon the known and demonstrated 
 laws governing physical and mental life; while 
 faith in the unalterable goodness of the Unseen 
 would rob the vast and inscrutable future, here 
 and hereafter, of all fearsome uncertainty. The 
 first act of wholesome faith as a health-saving 
 power is to replace the ignoble spirit of infirmity 
 with the ideal of the masterful sense of health. 
 The worthiness of Christian Science is found in 
 its demonstrated ability to stop the nervous in- 
 valid from talking and thinking about his ills by 
 substituting a joyous, even if a blind optimism. 
 We have already seen that well-being can never 
 be a matter of avoirdupois or digestive power, but 
 will ever be based on that faith which accepts 
 understanding, and when understanding cannot 
 be, the faith that passeth understanding. Disease 
 and physical failure are sure to come; they are 
 indeed God-given conditions which can be made 
 beautiful and wholesome. The human soul may 
 wring blessings out of illness, as all are blessed 
 who determine in their hearts to suffer perfectly, 
 when suffering comes. Who may not with David 
 exclaim: "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in 
 distress." How wholesome we may make our 
 sickness! What a largeness of vision, a growth 
 of charity, an unknown and unwonted tenderness, 
 a saving profusion of patience may come ! With 
 these virtues added, what a new largeness of life 
 is ours, how comparatively small becomes any 
 mere wholeness of the body! 
 
178 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Through all this discussion of suffering and 
 healing have we not already visioned the profound 
 and all but saving truth that physical healing is 
 incidental? It is only with the shallow nature 
 that health of body can long remain life's vital 
 factor. The faith which has made thee whole 
 bears thy soul triumphant through every illness, 
 and promises that even the apparent defeat of 
 death shall prove the perfect healing, shall be, 
 indeed, the eternal restoration. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 WORK 
 
 Work with, your oicm hands. 
 
 "We cannot escape Nature's quiet but reiterated 
 intimations that our world was made for work- 
 ers. Nature herself stands as the perfect exam- 
 ple. The most powerful reflector discloses pro- 
 gressive activity in the deepest depths of the heav- 
 ens. The modem oil-immersion lens reveals 
 multiplied activities in the most minute of sub- 
 stances. Modern chemistry proclaims that its ul- 
 timate theoretic division of matter, the atom, is 
 a whirlpool of energy, an infinitesimal solar sys- 
 tem. The stolid mountains in the distance rep- 
 resent unbelievable masses of potentiality with 
 activities humanly inconceivable, thrilling their 
 very core. We peep over the edge of the nest 
 and note those inert globules of robin's egg blue. 
 Surely they are at rest. But Biology says "No." 
 Even here Nature 's hand, with the cunning of the 
 artist, is modeling with almost incredible activ- 
 ity that plastic mass of protoplasm ; and from its 
 formlessness, the delicate unseen fingers deftly 
 shape first the spinal cord, then add line to line 
 through an ascending series of changes, molding 
 the contour of the body, fashioning the wings and 
 
 179 
 
180 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 those organs whicli stand for vital expression, pol- 
 ishing to brilliancy the alert and appealing eye, 
 planting the thousands of cells which are to grow 
 into a foliage of feathers, and tuning the throat 
 for its wealth of perfect melody. In a few days 
 this living thing is ready to greet life — to meet it 
 on equal terms, fulfilling the eternal law of the 
 universe, of first receiving and then giving. In 
 these few days Nature has wrought what the 
 myriads of mankind, past and present, have been 
 unable to imitate. 
 
 To primitive man such conceptions of the fine- 
 ness of workmanship were unthought. For him it 
 was to secure food or to be used as food — and 
 there was no escape for Adam and many of his 
 line. As we consider the masses to-day, the prim- 
 itive necessity for meeting the primal need of 
 something to eat constitutes their chief problem 
 of existence — and it still is "Work or starve," 
 for millions of humanity. Even in times of peace 
 when fortunate nations were luxuriating in the 
 midst of decaying plenty, the inhabitants of India 
 and of China and nearby Ireland were periodically 
 desolated by starvation; while it will ever be an 
 incontrovertible law that when war starts, the 
 hand of production is changed into the fist of de- 
 struction, and arm-in-arm with the specter of war 
 will stalk mocking starvation. And so it was that 
 Nature started man early on the right road, com- 
 pelling him to work for his very existence. 
 
 But with the command for work came the prom- 
 ise of progress, and the choicest of the children of 
 men have ever approached the solution of the prob- 
 
WORK 181 
 
 « 
 
 lem of happiness led by their realization of the 
 joys which come through ordered, intelligent, in- 
 dustrious work. The influence of such workers 
 has gradually permeated civilized habits, until 
 now in normal times one man's labor easily feeds 
 a family, when utilizing the innovations of scien- 
 tific agriculture, the chemistry of food preserva- 
 tion, and the complicated but strikingly efficient 
 methods of food transportation. He has found 
 these modern helps to industry powerful levers 
 multiplying his strength manyfold. And it is 
 here that we uncover the first great curse of work ; 
 the work of one may permit the idleness of an- 
 other. Instead of the burden which hung so 
 deadly over primitive man being lightened by 
 progress, giving to all mitigated seasons of labor 
 and augmented periods of repose, the evil in man, 
 the selfishness of humanity has perverted advance- 
 ment to ease-loving ends. 
 
 Slavery was then instituted. The family lived 
 in self-indulgent idleness, fed and cared for, 
 slaved for by its group of unfortunates. "Di- 
 vine right!" proclaimed the voice of the strong. 
 But is divine right that damnable right of might? 
 Inevitably the stench of human slavery rose 
 heaven-high until even the most primitive sense of 
 justice could but question the love of Grod for 
 man. Our kind is to-day dwarfed and soulless in 
 comparison with its possible developmental op- 
 portunities as a result of this curse of our ances- 
 tors. The slavery of the present is less obnoxious 
 to the sensitive, but almost equally disheartening 
 to the earnest seeker for man's high estate. The 
 
182 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 divine command "Work!" is evaded by more 
 and more of the self -termed " Fortunates, " and re- 
 sented by increasing numbers of the self-pitying 
 "Unfortunates" who go to their daily tasks 
 driven still as galley-slaves, having no glimpse of 
 the joy of doing, but mutely, or petulantly or an- 
 archistically rebelling at their lot — filled with en- 
 vyings of the idle rich. They rail at the monotony 
 of the day's work, blind to the vision of Adam 
 Bede who with his feet fairly buried in shavings 
 from his industry ever tuned forth that joyous 
 whistling which was but the overflow of perfect 
 contentment, the contentment of noble, high think- 
 ing. Resenting what they call the slavery of their 
 lot, they remain "Unfortunates" through the vital 
 error of failing to master even that lot, and drag 
 on dissatisfied and dissatisfying, illy-tolerated in- 
 competents. The very wood and stone and clay 
 with which they toil lament their lack of skill, 
 their indolence ; for even obdurate wood and stone 
 and clay reveal their treasures according to the 
 character which we bring to them. The slave of 
 to-day feels in his heart that he is too good for his 
 job : he is too good to work with his hands. Labor 
 became a dishonor, an occupation for slaves only, 
 in ancient Greece and Rome, and these great em- 
 pires fell through the demoralizing vices bred of 
 idleness. Nor is individual character to-day more 
 proof against the rotting infections of sloth than 
 were those empires of the past. Is it not clear 
 that when man began to use his cunning to relieve 
 him of the necessity for work with his hands, and 
 thus divided mankind into masters and slaves, 
 
WORK 183 
 
 • 
 
 both were alike cursed? The pride of idleness 
 develops, and with it the contemptible childish 
 ostentation of conspicuous waste. Condescend- 
 ingly, flamboyant wealth tosses its gold to the 
 struggling lower classes, who, grasping it fist- 
 tight, can but poorly hide the instinctive wish 
 that it might be throats rather than dollars they 
 clutch. 
 
 We rightfully grasp at and strive for the best; 
 but there is an infinite gulf between getting the 
 best for self, and getting the best out of self. 
 And our ignorance of, or blindness to this truth, 
 has served to destroy the possibilities of perfect 
 joy in the lives of those worked for, not less cer- 
 tainly than in those who slaved. What if we 
 were all millionaires arid refused to work with our 
 hands! What a shabby, starved lot we should 
 soon be ! Who would replace worn-out shoes and 
 wash soiled frocks 1 Who could invent bank-notes 
 that would woo the coal from the mine or the 
 wheat from the soil or the fish from the sea? At 
 the end of one month starvation would be rife. 
 Or should invention ever reach that pinnacle of 
 perfection where machinery could do all these 
 things and thus allow man 's muscles to dally only 
 with idleness, where would the machine be that 
 could manufacture happiness — or even an imita- 
 tion of that wealth of well-being which comes to 
 all who have wrought worthily? 
 
 Another class would know both the joy of serv- 
 ing and of being served. They plan to remain 
 industrious until forty or fifty, then to retire with 
 a competence, retire to become fat and flabby and 
 
184 THE SOUL IN SUPFEEING 
 
 out of breath and soon dependent upon tailor or 
 modiste to fix their figures presentably. It is sig- 
 nificant how soon their features, recently alert and 
 contented, take on the critical, bored look of the 
 well-to-do idle. He who evades the command to 
 work, the command of Nature, of our own brain 
 and muscle, fairly jeers the gods. 
 
 Weariness is normally but a passing phase, of 
 no harm save as we resent or fear it, excepting 
 only when it is the weariness of weakness, which 
 is usually the weariness of indolence, and to those 
 who surrender to such weakness, mere physical 
 comfort finally becomes the great problem of life. 
 Exercising the jaws only, fairly stewing in their 
 own juices, they finally become so saturated with 
 the certain poisons of indolence that the simplest 
 effort stirs up a hornets' nest. And it is a pain 
 here, a neuralgia there, and a jab of acute suffer- 
 ing somewhere else until the victim is semi-para- 
 lyzed in anticipation of the ' ' excruciations ' ' which 
 are the penalty of unwonted, unaccustomed effort. 
 
 Have we thought of the true mission of work? 
 Have we realized that it represents the obstacles 
 between man and his desires? To many the 
 world's evil has been the world's riddle. The 
 world's evil is simply man's false method of satis- 
 fying desires. Desire is humanity's greatest as- 
 set. The intricacy and multiplicity of his desires 
 have been the basis of all man's progress, but 
 whenever he has been willing to satisfy desire at 
 the expense of another's denial, loss, or suffering, 
 the falseness of selfishness has entered in to curse. 
 Humanity has too long sung the siren's song of 
 
WORK 185 
 
 • 
 the joys of rest. If we "sing the Lord's song," 
 it will be of the joys of work; and to know these 
 joys a few simple axioms will suffice. The funda- 
 mental harmlessness of fatigue will readily be 
 obvious to all with open minds who watch the play 
 of healthy children and listen knowingly to the 
 glad voices of sport. But there will be a few who 
 are inflated with the conceit that they are essen- 
 tially exceptions to the established laws of flesh 
 and blood; who are quick to excuse themselves 
 with the "I am different, you know." Let them 
 think for a moment of that victorious muscle 
 which, through all the ages, has been behind the 
 execution of every activity, constructive or other- 
 wise, born in man's marvelous brain. Conceive 
 of that muscle which from birth to death is in 
 ceaseless activity, not for six or even eight, but for 
 ten solid hours of each twenty-four. Through 
 months and years, it labors on, in contraction two- 
 fifths of the time. Think of the tireless, trium- 
 phant human heart when you would protect your 
 flabby selves ! Then understanding should accept 
 the renovating power of healthy muscles in use 
 as a more perfect house-cleaning system than 
 man's most effective vacuum cleaner. 
 
 How rarely is it muscle fag that keeps us from 
 work! And yet cheap aristocracy allows us a 
 certain pride when we speak of our physical weak- 
 ness; and how that same aristocracy resents the 
 blunt truth which answers "Not muscle fag but 
 will fag." Were human wills as enduring as hu- 
 man muscles, we should hear infinitely less of the 
 inability to work because of weak backs, or sag- 
 
186 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 ging, displaced interiors. The thinking, and 
 thereby the leading classes, have so long been sat- 
 urated with false ideas of work, that the man or 
 woman who finds in his daily task the genuine joy 
 of productive effort, is a nota.ble exception — a 
 curiosity to be "monocled at." 
 
 There is a wealth of joy in play which the masses 
 do not know, but the world's true store-house of 
 joy will ever be found in the teaching of Mother 
 Nature which would lead us to the work-shop. 
 To discover this we must go deeper than the 
 psychology of work, for it has its moral side which 
 must not be minced. Many are willing to work 
 as masters ; many others, defectives or slaves per- 
 force, serve through life. It is only when you and 
 I and the higher grades of men and women do our 
 daily bit shoulder to shoulder with high and low 
 alike, and become fellow- workers ; it is only when 
 the world's great problems of effort are wrought 
 out in universal fellowship that man can honestly 
 speak of the "brotherhood of man." The ascend- 
 ancy of labor and the ascendancy of character will 
 be worked out hand in hand. For through labor 
 only do we truly give, and giving is the great 
 cosmic law. ' * Work with your own hands, ' ' is the 
 gospel message of hope, morality and religion. 
 Should we need conviction of this, let us look from 
 the mortal to the Divine, where we are met by the 
 picture of the Perfect Man, quietly, earnestly 
 working as a carpenter with his own hands for 
 eighteen years, that he might the better minister 
 three. 
 
CHAPTEE XX 
 COOPERATION 
 
 One soweth cmd another reapeth. 
 
 Truly meekness is becoming to our estate. 
 When man considers his utter dependence upon 
 many of his surroundings and his absolute help- 
 lessness in the least to change them, the spirit of 
 meekness should cover him as a mantle. Man is 
 a microscopic mote upon his whirling planet, 
 whose ultimate course he can but vaguely prophesy 
 though in no fraction modify; scorched by the 
 burning rays of the sun which gives him life, 
 frigid in the absence of its saving warmth, yet 
 with all his vaunted progress, he remains power- 
 less to change one degree its total supply of heat. 
 Hanging upon a military decision, the political 
 life of a nation trembles in the balance. The 
 success of a surprise attack upon its enemies is 
 the measure of its fate, and a people pray for 
 midnight darkness. Unbedimmed the full-orbed 
 moon reveals every evidence of their preparation. 
 The war is lost and for two generations the prog- 
 ress of a people's liberty is checked. The crops 
 fail and the unfortunates of a country slowly 
 starve, yet a world's need cannot hasten seed time 
 a,lid harvest by so much as a week. At our very 
 
 W 
 
188 THE SOUL IN SUFFEEING 
 
 doors the ocean-tides ebb and flow recking not con- 
 venience or inconvenience, utility or waste, sub- 
 merging life and property, daily leaving millions 
 of marine creatures stranded and drying on the 
 sands to perish. The master of the earth may 
 not alter even an inch the rise and fall of the sea 's 
 great bosom as it breathes through the ages. 
 
 Helpless is this human mote in relation to the 
 fixed laws of change governing the universe and 
 its planets. Equally limited does he find him- 
 self when he considers his own estate. Capable 
 of sending his mind to the very ends of spatial 
 confines, amply able to seek and know the laws of 
 nature's inevitable movements, equipped to pic- 
 ture states and conditions of existence where 
 change and pain and enmity cannot be, he finds 
 these very abilities rooted in an intimate relation 
 of a timeless soul with a rapidly altering body. 
 Body-cluttered his soul is, yet he is convinced 
 that the very stability of that soul depends upon 
 lengthening years of association with its frail 
 tenement. Fifty years — a mere half century — 
 represent the limit of man's productive days; a 
 few more mark the span of his existence here be- 
 low. How momentous the choice of these years, 
 yet in no least way may he choose his generation, 
 may he choose his country, his parentage, the qual- 
 ity of his flesh, the blueness of his blood. "Help- 
 less as a babe" is this acme of impotence. 
 Through birth, rearing and his years of account- 
 ability, he is held vise-like by the limitations of his 
 senses. The avenues which he traverses in quest 
 of knowledge are few. They run in a half-dozen 
 
COOPERATION 189 
 
 * 
 
 directions only, and leave him ever conscious of 
 the vastness of the unknown. Through touch, a 
 large but still limited group of sensations brings 
 him information — pain and pleasure travel this 
 road. Sight and hearing disclose other vistas, but 
 to the Songs of the Pleiades he must be deaf. Nor 
 can he in any wise change the law of his senses so 
 as to bring the great unseen world before his vi- 
 sion. A creature indeed, a prisoner of time, an 
 atom in the cosmos — such truly does this estimate 
 of his powers characterize him. 
 
 Probably physical man will never transcend his 
 temporal limitations. But there have always 
 been those who have presumed a worldly self 
 higher than time, more important than the inevi- 
 table, superior to the Universe itself. Unthink- 
 ingly many have so believed and lived, as do all 
 who reject the unchanging certainty of underlying 
 laws of the body, mind and spirit kingdoms. Co- 
 operation is the fitting of self into the best needs 
 of the hour. Only as we accept law as the essen- 
 tial condition to life do we truly live ; only as we 
 cooperate with the unswervable principles of ex- 
 istence may we attain whole living. Our obliga- 
 tions of devotion are never met by mere homage 
 to the powers that be ; the law of life is never ful- 
 filled until our debt to humanity is met. Man can 
 occupy no estate so high that its very creation and 
 continuance do not leave him a beneficiary. Bene- 
 ficiaries we all are of the pain, the thought and 
 toil of our kind. The dawn of life is but the culmi- 
 nation of months of discomfort and pain, is but the 
 beginning of years of personal care and of all the 
 
190 THE SOUL IN SUFFBEING 
 
 thoughtfulness whicii love may create. Bach 
 shred of garment, each dish of food, every hour 
 of pleasure stand for the patient toil of unknown 
 others, without which the King would starve — a 
 gutter-beggar in a few days. 
 
 Dependent surely is every man upon unnum- 
 bered agencies outside himself. Yet who does not 
 strive for individuality; who, in his eagerness to 
 rise, has not ventured down some of the thousand 
 unwholesome roads of self -exaltation ; who has not 
 at some time believed that in this great cosmic 
 entity his selfish interests were not sacred? In 
 palace, counting house and homes innumerable, 
 the aggrandizement of self, the pluming and preen- 
 ing of self have added their certain share to the 
 totality of human misery. Of the ways of life, 
 the one which most unescapably leads to the blight 
 of human emptiness is an aimless existence. The 
 second way, that of personal ambition, of selfish 
 fightings, strivings and connivings, can only finally 
 end in the blank darkness of soul-isolation, the un- 
 utterable loneliness of a selfish self. 
 
 Any conception of man's estate, nevertheless, is 
 but a half-truth which does not recognize his un- 
 assailable independence. Man may be more than 
 man — ^who has not felt the call of the superman 
 within? He may not alter to the millionth of a 
 second the time of his earth's revolution, the mil- 
 lionth of an inch the course of his sun, the moon 
 or the tides ; he may not add one uttermost frac- 
 tion to the fulness or the emptiness of the sea- 
 sons, nor change the hour of his birth. But 
 neither can sun, moon nor stars, nor all the pow- 
 
COOPERATION 191 
 
 • 
 ers which grip his helpless frame rob him of his 
 superhuman ability to make certain resolutions 
 and to keep them. His soul bows in homage to 
 no forces of the corporeal. The achievements of 
 man have shown that he is an engine with a will, 
 that within his limitations he acknowledges no 
 master. It is not remarkable that he becomes 
 puffed up : that, having independence, he falsifies 
 his power, and that through all the ages he has 
 multiplied his privileges until the power of liberty 
 has been degraded by the ignorant and the weak 
 into the slavery of license. Through the wilful 
 abuse of pleasure he has violated the unalterable 
 laws of happiness. He has thus through the gen- 
 erations been missing joy and finding pain. 
 
 Few of mankind's errors have been more fatal 
 to the progress of our race than the misuse of free- 
 dom. Freedom calls to all. Freedom would en- 
 list every son of man in her ranks, but she ever 
 maintains her high tribunal and places a brand 
 of defeat upon all who offend her rigid law of 
 discipline. Freedom without discipline must ever 
 be false. Yet with what bounty nature rewards 
 the obedient. Nature 's laws, when known, will be 
 found ever dependable; whether the law of the 
 soil, the law of the heavens, the law of assimila- 
 tion, the laws of charity, of wrath, of purse, of 
 body and of soul they are as certain as the shin- 
 ing of next summer's sun. Science and whole- 
 some religion have already entered the domain 
 of the vast unknown and robbed it of its terrors 
 to ages past, and made it friendly to man. Man 
 is learning that the truthful impartiality of na- 
 
192 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 ture is never an act of enmity, that Nature is 
 not loveless, but that her laws are as sacred as 
 the God who gave them, as available to me as 
 to you, as certain for us both as the tireless attrac- 
 tion of gravitation. Science has shown that there 
 is no impartiality, that the forces which govern 
 our onrushing planet are identical with those 
 which hold the flaming constellation of Orion safe 
 in the trackless heavens. Ambition has been 
 given and is as subject to law as the stars them- 
 selves. The ambition which damns is but a per- 
 verted use of human individuality. Pure ambi- 
 tion is that greatest of all calls to the human soul, 
 the call to service. And service with all it costs 
 of weariness and self -forgetting, is but the soul 
 which converts the experiences of life into death- 
 less character. 
 
 As we review the great forces in the midst of 
 which man's lot is cast, as we weigh his known 
 limitations and powers, the revelation must come 
 clear that life's highest obligation is our willing 
 and persistent cooperation with the higher. The 
 soldier who honors not the authority represented 
 by his officer is so far a traitor; the nurse who 
 does not give homage to the office of her senior is 
 unworthy her high calling ; the child which honors 
 not its parent is an ingrate; the man who looks 
 not up in devotion to his God has lost his way. 
 "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God," 
 and all who respond not in hourly homage to the 
 superiority of ability and accomplishment, to sus- 
 tained high resolution to godliness of life and 
 heart are of the foolish. A wholesome attitude to 
 
COOPERATION 193 
 
 superiority is a certain seal of wisdom, for the 
 honor of leadership is only worthily held when 
 earned through the ability to recognize right and 
 to follow it. Let us never be deceived into think- 
 ing that cooperation stands for the submergence 
 of individuality — the very power of cooperation 
 must ever assume the power of individuality. 
 
 Education in its high sense is the elevation of 
 the individual, the exaltation of self by systematic 
 cooperation with the laws of knowledge which must 
 ever be the coordination of truths. 
 
 Who has not heard the call of duty? Who hhs 
 not felt opportunity pluck his sleeve and urge 
 "This task now"? Who has come to his years 
 of maturity and not heard again and again the 
 cry for help — the cry which to many comes first 
 from the kitchen, the barn, the field, the shop, the 
 store, from the poor unkempt, even from the un- 
 worthy. Each of us has his hourly call to duty, 
 and by his response is hourly presenting his con- 
 tribution to life. 
 
 None can escape individual work without au- 
 tomatically becoming a parasite. Pauperism and 
 invalidism lay their heavy toll upon the produc- 
 tive efforts pf the workers. Invalids are not 
 found in animal life; the well and strong refuse 
 to be burdened by nonproducers, and quickly drive 
 the disabled from their midst, to die. Thus the 
 blood of the weaklings is not handed down to crip- 
 ple coming generations. One of the saddest bur- 
 dens which humanity has developed, one of the 
 most useless parasites known, is the self -pitying, 
 domineering, satisfied, unproductive invalid. Out 
 
194 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 of harmony with the wholesome principles of co- 
 operation, the invalid exists through the mercy of 
 his kind. There are those, it is good to say, who 
 from beds of sickness have flashed forth daily 
 messages of fortitude, have been gripping exam- 
 ples of inspiring gratitude, have, in their frailty, 
 softened hearts selfish and hard, by practically 
 proving that the power of the Divine can quicken 
 frailty into the heroic. 
 
 The earth, the skies, the sea, our day and genera- 
 tion have lavished the stores of infinity upon us 
 all. The very heavens have opened in a revela- 
 tion of the Perfect Character to call each one to 
 a definite duty. It will rarely be the duty we 
 would choose, but until we learn the beauty of the 
 common-place, the riches of a high calling will 
 never be known. 
 
 The only daughter, she was, in a home of mod- 
 erate means; two men-folks required much feed- 
 ing and housekeeping; the mother was unusually 
 industrious, cheery and uncomplaining. Play- 
 days passed with no thought of duties for daugh- 
 ter; the grammar and high-school years, with 
 their home study and the inevitable piano-thrum- 
 ming, crassly termed "music," left apparently no 
 time for house-work. At eighteen. Daughter had 
 practically never made a bed, cooked a meal or 
 washed a dish, while the details of the mother's 
 work had increased. To no one in the family did 
 the thought come that Daughter should help 
 mother. So while one toiled, the other's life was 
 given to the reading of many novels — good ones, 
 a Sunday-school class and small town parties. 
 
COOPERATION 195 
 
 • 
 
 From the first she had been saved for big things. 
 Her provincial successes convinced her that she 
 was of the chosen, and she confidently awaited the 
 call that would enlist in an intense and satisfying 
 measure the yet unused richnesses of her nature. 
 Five years of unproductive waiting passed with 
 daily references to her ever-present desire to find 
 her life's work, to take up the burden of her duty 
 if she "just knew what it was." Meanwhile, the 
 crispness of the piecrust, the brightness of the 
 kitchen kettles, the spick-and-spanness of cellar 
 and garret enslaved her mother, who aged rapidly 
 and, suddenly, in a night, left her home of toil, 
 fifteen years before her time. Home was now 
 no place for Daughter. Through influence, she 
 was appointed to the Mission field. She repre- 
 sented a struggling denomination, and was sent to 
 the Far East, righteously enthusiastic in her call 
 to a great service. This enthusiasm lasted three 
 months, then came three months of struggling wit' 
 reality, three months then of disability for this 
 girl, naturally above the average in health and 
 physical strength. The long trip back to the 
 States was followed by months in a sanitarium 
 for the nervous, and thousands of dollars of the 
 Lord's money had been wasted by one whose years 
 of avoiding plain, homely, mother-saving duties 
 had created a sham character, ready to crumble 
 at the first pressure of service. At forty, she is 
 still negotiating with doctors for unearned health 
 and undeserved happiness. 
 
 To delight in the simple is one of the finest evi- 
 dences of culture. To be able to smile back the 
 
196 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 violet's nodded greeting; to reread old books, and 
 to find the old joy rekindle as the old-fashioned 
 faces gravely or gayly come forth from their 
 pages; to rummage the old attic chest and feel 
 again the tenderness of early associations, so ten- 
 der that we fairly hallow the quaint old gown and 
 stiff, almost forgotten dress of those who came 
 before — to live thus is to live finely. Where can 
 we go, what can we touch, whom can we meet, 
 but we find some need with which to share our 
 good? Our one talent — only one it may be, con- 
 tains riches not possessed by another. Something 
 to share each has. It may be mere excess of dol- 
 lars. Then let no day pass that sees not some 
 alleviation of another's want. It may be the 
 greater wealth of patience, the only virtue we 
 possess, but how the world thirsts for that single 
 quality. Give it, and freely! The still greater 
 wealth of abiding faith, or the greatest of all, 
 charity, may be yours to use. But whatever your 
 talent, the daily giving, the daily transferring 
 your good into other lives is a cooperation with the 
 Infinite which will merit the Infinite "Well-done." 
 
 Who digs a well or plants a seed 
 A sacred pact he keeps with sun and sod, 
 With these he helps refresh and feed the world 
 And enters partnership with God. .. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 FREEDOM 
 
 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, . . . faith, . . . 
 temperance; against these there is no law. 
 
 Who would not solve the mystery of existence? 
 Who does not crave revelation of the riddles of 
 the whence, the why, the whither of human life? 
 Philosophers have pondered, imaginations have 
 soared, reason has investigated through the ages 
 that these questions, so easily asked, might be 
 answered. But the enigma remains unanswered, 
 the chaos continues nebulous till the understand- 
 ing turns to and begins to comprehend law and its 
 follower, order. To the untaught a lump of clay 
 is a mystery which curiously does not excite curi- 
 osity. Families have starved, peoples have sub- 
 sisted in want and poverty for generations, be- 
 cause the chemistry of the soil of their fields was 
 unknown or unstudied. To-day the comparatively 
 simple laws of inorganic chemistry are being util- 
 ized on farm and in factory to quadruple produc- 
 tiveness. 
 
 Much more complex — still offering even to the 
 scientist much of the unsolved, are the problems 
 of the chemistry of life. Workers in physiologic 
 laboratories chafe at the slowness with which the 
 
 197 
 
198 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 laws of the intricate reactions of the living tis- 
 sues to food and disease are revealed. Here sci- 
 ence becomes almost impatient, for more perfect 
 human health, and therefore man's greater com- 
 fort and efficiency, lie behind Nature's silences. 
 
 Of still higher value and even more baffling are 
 the laws governing the mind. The intricacies of 
 the intellect, the subtleties of the emotions, the 
 mysteries of the will are yet understood but super- 
 ficially. The tremendous force represented in 
 man's mind is manifest when we realize that it has 
 raised him from brutehood to manhood. Much, 
 very much is already clear, though we know that 
 the depths of our understanding of mental law 
 have but begun to be sounded. Certain it is that 
 the thought-life is subject to definite, ordered ex- 
 pression. "When we are tempted to turn away 
 from efforts in mental improvement because we 
 are apparently so hopelessly outdistanced by an- 
 other whom the world terms a "genius," feeling 
 that the gifts of life have been unfairly distrib- 
 uted, we mistake. The genius who makes good, 
 works — even as you and I — ^yes, his success will be 
 found not a happening, but always the product 
 of intensive efforts. Has it not graphically and 
 truly been said "G-enius is one-tenth inspiration, 
 nine-tenths perspiration." Wisely as well as in- 
 tensively must genius work — work will ever re- 
 main the only road to intellectual achievement. 
 
 There remain the laws of the spiritual — ^those 
 gentle powers, within which abide the mysteries 
 which raise man from humanity to divinity. How 
 poor are most of us in our comprehension of the 
 
FREEDOM 199 
 
 • 
 
 soul and the metaphysical. How thoughtless in- 
 deed are most of us, in the hurly-burly of the 
 day's work and play, of that potentially eternal 
 self we have been given as our most vital posses- 
 sion. It, too, is under the law, but the expressions 
 of spiritual law are so constantly in conflict with 
 the apparent laws of the body that we remain 
 mystified, if not altogether careless, till the great 
 light of the eternal breaks in upon our soul's un- 
 derstanding — till the vision above reason is ours 
 — the vision of faith in the Everlasting. 
 
 The world dangles a million pleasures and hopes 
 before our vision, many of which would defy the 
 laws of the soul, of the mind, even of the physical. 
 Shall we master these profound, far-reaching and 
 apparently irksome laws of existence, or shall we 
 simply live a life of enjoyment? The question 
 would seem foolish to most of us, were we not 
 surrounded by the many who have trod the prim- 
 rose path to find it leads to barrenness and failure, 
 to suffering and servility. Servility is truly the 
 curse of the law. The law that would save may 
 as truly enslave. From the dawn of history the 
 strong have enslaved the weak. The inferior in- 
 dividual has served the superior. Undeveloped 
 races have borne the yoke of the more advanced. 
 Two generations ago the law of much of our land 
 recognized man's right to hold the negro enslaved 
 — a ' ' divine right, ' ' many claimed. ' ' The negro is 
 inferior, he has no soul, he is better off cared for by 
 his master." These statements express much of 
 truth, and the negro would have continued a chat- 
 tel through future generations had it not been 
 
200 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 that now and then a soul of purest white was 
 found encased in dusky skin. The exceptional 
 negro, through his ability to perfectly adjust him- 
 self to his lowly lot, to show forth in his life the 
 beautiful principles of the meek and lowly One, 
 disclosed to honest minds that the Creator had 
 not denied the negro a soul and the possibility of 
 divinity. Crude, brutish, essentially inferior the 
 race may have been ; but the ability of the rare in- 
 dividual to rise albove the law of the mere physical 
 made it impossible for Christian nations longer 
 to keep in slavery the manifestly human. No 
 Emancipation Proclamation, however, has stricken 
 the shackles of servility from the wrists of the 
 poor. Strength of body and mind, the potency 
 of health, too often the very aspirations of the soul 
 are enslaved by employers who are willing to 
 wring blood from human hearts that they may 
 multiply their wretched dollars. Our vaunted 
 liberty will remain a mockery until poverty ceases 
 to deny the individual the right of physical 
 health, of practical education, of the opportunity 
 to develop his single or his ten talents. Civiliza- 
 tion will continue to be a cloak for the exploitation 
 of criminal selfishness so long as it can buy man's 
 freedom to live his best. 
 
 Our bodies with their unnumbered calls for sen- 
 suous gratification, running the gamut from high- 
 est esthetic expression to the repelling comforts 
 of the gutter, tend to bind man ever more securely 
 with the chains of habit — silk-sn threads only they 
 seem at first, but how fatally they twist and twine 
 and harden into links of steeL Through slavery 
 
FREEDOM 201 
 
 to physical desires many of the bluest blood have 
 sunk out of the category of manhood. The mind, 
 too, has its slaves, its cringing, moaning, pitiable 
 victims — those who have failed to harmonize their 
 mental lives with the laws of thought and feeling. 
 The weird imaginings of fear, the vain imaginings 
 of credulity, the murderous imaginings of hate, 
 these and other common mental defects plunge 
 sometimes the individual, often his family, now 
 and then the community into a slavery of wasteful 
 turmoil and feud. The soul itself may reduce its 
 owner to wretched servitude, when the laws of its 
 well-being are violated. An unappeased con- 
 science, a morbid conscience, may fairly curse self, 
 embittering and degrading its length of years 
 through unremitting remorse. 
 
 The world cries for freedom, and human gore 
 has saturated many lands in freedom's name. 
 But for the individual himself, true freedom will 
 never be tasted until personal rebellion against 
 the divine laws of bodily, mental and soul health 
 is lost in willing cooperation, until the fears bred 
 in ignorance are lost in the faith that would save. 
 
 Freedom is independence of external influences 
 and the only freedom worthy man 's high estate is 
 that which abides in the right choice between the 
 worldly and the eternal. This choice is man's 
 most solemn, it should be his most awful, reality. 
 Deliberately or passively it is faced by every liv- 
 ing soul — this final choice which stands for destiny. 
 Which will it be — self-denial, self-sacrifice, suffer- 
 ing if need be for right's sake, or the call of the 
 physical? To one who has wisely chosen, the 
 
202 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 strength will come to proclaim the valiant "No" 
 when desires would woo resolution into weakness, 
 when the tremendous powers of temptation would 
 tear away the last vestige of restraint. Stronger 
 only and more perfectly free is he who can an- 
 nounce the "I will" which is unquestioned, the 
 "I will" which stands for the unswerving purpose 
 of tried and proven character. 
 
 The inspiring power of freedom is manifest 
 when it faces disaster. In failure freedom knows 
 no vain regrets, no miserable alibis nor mournful 
 murmurings. Freedom falls to digging in the 
 very soil of defeat to find the buried better self — 
 for freedom is not concerned with what life has 
 for me, but is intent on contributing what I have 
 to life. Prosperity sets freedom to work even 
 more actively — ^not hoarding, spending, wasting, 
 but in beneficent giving. Prosperity brings its 
 possessor more time to spare, that real needs may 
 be sought, as well as the means to practically help 
 the less fortunate. Illness — even the prospect of 
 death, will never daunt the freed spirit, which 
 feels as certain of the hereafter with its liberation 
 from the limitations of the physical as of the dawn- 
 ing of to-morrow's morn. Freedom does not 
 close its eyes to the light of truth, and truth de- 
 mands goodness, and goodness exacts sacrifice of 
 feelings, of ambitions, of the ingratiating lesser 
 self. 
 
 Search for the highest law of our complex be- 
 ing will never be honestly made without some reve- 
 lation of our best self, the self of the spirit, the 
 self which has brought freedom to multitudes 
 
FREEDOM 203 
 
 through the ages. With such liberation we find 
 love — the love which fulfills the great cosmic law 
 of giving, the violation of which must stand for re- 
 lentless failure; and joy, the radium of character, 
 the element of life which adds zest and glad energy 
 to every undertaking without itself losing an atom 
 of its virtue. We find also peace, that product 
 of harmony of soul, with truth ; and faith, the ever- 
 repeated miracle of the ideal leading the real. 
 Finally, our liberty brings the blessing of temper- 
 ance, which is the corner-stone of the science of 
 sane living. "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, 
 peace, faith, temperance; against these there is 
 no law." Freedom unalterable, undeniable, un- 
 mitigated awaits nearby for each of us — that eter- 
 nal freedom of unqualified surrender to the su- 
 preme law of the spirit. 
 
 A nation prospered, isolated and protected from 
 her strongest neighbors by a thousand leagues of 
 sea ; a nation which had maintained from its birth 
 a policy of political independence; a nation at 
 peace, into whose treasury was pouring the gold 
 of a warring world; a nation which was certain 
 of world supremacy if it but continued furnishing 
 munitions with which foreign world-powers would 
 destroy each other. Political, financial, physical 
 freedom was never more certain. A few lives had 
 been lost, a dozen ships sunk, not in all, the toll of 
 a day's actual warfare. A century and a quarter 
 before, this nation in its weakness was struggling 
 against odds that seemed hopeless, when the spirit 
 of a lover of freedom, the spirit of Lafayette, 
 threw the weight of its influence and ability into 
 
204 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 the fight for liberty. Nineteen-seventeen found 
 France bleeding sorely and human liberty almost 
 gasping for life. What spectacle has the world 
 ever witnessed of the living presence of the spir- 
 itual in the heart of a great nation superior to that 
 of comfortable, prosperous, independent, protected 
 America turning every activity of her one hun- 
 dred million peace-loving people into the savagery 
 of war? What evidence more incontrovertible 
 that freedom of the spirit is more to be desired 
 than safety, ease and fine gold? Other ideals, as 
 well as gratitude, led America into the Great War, 
 but when did a people ever respond to a debt of 
 sentiment, whose payment could never be exacted, 
 with so unstinted a pouring forth of blood and 
 treasure? When was the everlasting freedom of 
 the spirit more vitally expressed than by General 
 Pershing, as at the head of the first American 
 troops to reach France he placed a wreath of 
 tribute at the tomb of our great co-patriot with the 
 words : ' ' Lafayette, we are here ! ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 FAITH 
 
 2fow Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen. 
 
 What is ahead? From out the inscrutable fu- 
 ture, with its unutterable possibilities, what visi- 
 tation will be yours and mine ? Inscrutable is our 
 future, and as certainly it is inevitable ; impending 
 ever, yet always in the process of realization. 
 Life 's hidden plans make the days of the most sim- 
 ple and lowly an ever-promising possibility, even 
 as they carry an hourly threat to the hand that 
 wields the scepter. Who can look into his future, 
 that yet unpeopled void, that vast uncharted sea, 
 without sensing the menace of its threat, or thrill- 
 ing with its promise? Who so untouched by the 
 immortal spark that does not look with dread 
 or hope beyond the span of time ? 
 
 The instinct of faith in some form is so uni- 
 versal among men that its absence practically 
 stamps one as essentially defective. The reign 
 of the invisible harks back to the earliest records 
 of human living. Worthy and saving, false and 
 wrecking, it has attended every step man has taken 
 upward or downward. The superstitions of the 
 benighted would fill volumes. The heathen with 
 
 205 
 
206 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 his idols, bowing down to wood and stone, the 
 machinations of witches, the midnight graveyard 
 parades of restless spirits, but initiate the long 
 catalog of man's superstitious beliefs. Closely 
 allied is the credulity of the ignorant, who through 
 the ages have been victims of the unscrupulous 
 through their susceptibility to the fantastic 
 guesses of the astrologer, the fortune-teller, the 
 clairvoyant. But education of high order has not 
 in the least deprived man of his belief in the un- 
 seen. Because of his studies he considers his trav- 
 els incomplete until he has visited the home at 
 Stratford where his hero of genius was born. 
 And the more he has studied Shakespeare, the 
 deeper his reverence for the man, the more hal- 
 lowed this birthplace. To him the very air he 
 breathes while under its roof seems strangely min- 
 gled with a life so many years extinct. The im- 
 mortal spirit of the immortal poet is to him an 
 almost tangible presence, invisible but filling his 
 life with a new respect, a new homage. The pil- 
 grimage to Mt. Vernon is century-old, yet the 
 tomb of "Washington draws increasing numbers 
 from increasing distances. What is the presence 
 pervading that simple pile of bricks, those plain 
 marble slabs, the inornate wrought-iron gates? 
 Why do the voices of pleasure, of the affairs of 
 corporations and nations, of ignorance and learn- 
 ing hush into whispers in that presence? Why 
 do strong faces set themselves into stronger lines, 
 why do sympathetic eyes flow full and why, after 
 these decades, are quiet sobs still heard before the 
 dust of one so long gone? Why indeed, unless the 
 
FAITH 207 
 
 • 
 heart of man believes that more than bricks and 
 marble and iron are enduring. Faith is an in- 
 stinct which in some form we all have, either an 
 attracting, compelling, positive faith, or a robbing, 
 losing, negative faith. 
 
 The spiritual instinct makes itself universally 
 manifest through its never dying craving for the 
 imperishable. Who, that has within his soul one 
 worthy conception, but rebels at annihilation I 
 Emptiness of soul, only, can look forward com- 
 placently to a future of nothingness. Is it not a 
 pity that, in our methods of education, we are so 
 chary in our references to the spiritual? Outside 
 of the unusual home, the child is exceptionally 
 blessed whose mind receives an hour weekly of 
 training in wholesome, practical teachings which 
 relate the kingdom of the invisible to each thought 
 and act, which bind the studying and the chores, 
 family and social relationships with the ever-pres- 
 ent, but unhappily ignored eternal. Example and 
 the personal influence which stimulates devotion 
 are faith's most certain teachers; for while the 
 capacity for faith is truly given us all, faith itself 
 cannot be forced. Like love, it is the reason of 
 the heart. It cannot be controlled by will for it 
 is the judgment of the soul. 
 
 Who would not be increased in faith? — and yet it 
 is a quality as capable of disintegrating character 
 as it is of saving souls. There is a faith that fails ; 
 there is a faith that destroys. Much religious 
 teaching has been in vain, yes, fraught with results 
 which ultimately demoralized, because it taught a 
 faith which ignored reason. Unreasoning zealots 
 
208 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 have in all periods of religious history retarded 
 the all-too-slowly advancing footsteps of true re- 
 ligion; zealots who teach a God of irresponsibil- 
 ity, a God of uncertainty, a God of irrationality; 
 zealots who would destroy the spirit by the letter, 
 who would close to a spiritually starving and 
 thirsting world all ways to the source of life but 
 their own. Reason is sight for mind and body, 
 as faith is sight for the soul. Reason's "Thou 
 shalt not" is just as divine as religion's. The 
 faith which ignores reason is the faith without 
 works, is the faith which dreams but does not 
 produce, is the faith which finds its lamps un- 
 trimmed when the bridegroom comes. 
 
 Much of serious nervous suffering finds its ex- 
 pression in depression, miserable unhappiness of 
 some form or in some subject. Manifestations of 
 wretchedness haunt the spirit of many of the 
 sick, and those who have been ill both in spirit 
 and body claim that the sufferings of melancholia 
 are not to be equaled. Impartially this dire dis- 
 order comes alike to the just and the unjust. One 
 of the most far-reaching developments in the sci- 
 ence of medicine during recent decades is found 
 in its increased capacity to reach back of the dis- 
 ease and lay hold upon its cause. The accuracies 
 of science to-day reveal that when the just man 
 suffers the damnation of depression, he is pay- 
 ing the penalty of a faith which ignored reason. 
 He has allowed some insidious, preventable in- 
 fection to enter his blood, or far more probably 
 by neglecting to maintain the balance between food 
 and drink and work and play he has allowed his 
 
FAITH 209 
 
 « 
 
 self-made poisons to plunge him into a worldly- 
 perdition. There are those, however, in whom 
 the cause of their unreasoning unhappiness is not 
 to be found by laboratory methods. It is not toxic 
 bodies, but a soul filled with emptiness which pro- 
 duces the most inveterate and incoercible melan- 
 choly. 
 
 But while faith can ignore reason at too often 
 only a fatal cost, neither may reason safely ignore 
 faith. The deeper the philosopher delves, the 
 more certain he is of the limitations of human 
 reason, the more tenaciously does he hold fast to 
 the certainties of faith. The conflict between 
 faith and reason comes to all who think, to all who 
 intelligently feel — a conflict in which youthful 
 knowledge, half-baked knowledge, conceited knowl- 
 edge have all too often deposed the faith that 
 would cheer, the faith that would go the whole 
 way, the faith that would save. We can have, we 
 should have faith with knowledge — but knowl- 
 edge is not faith. There are scholarly brutes, who 
 eat and drink and die, differing from the ox only 
 in that they think. Theology would reason God 
 into our lives, but reason can never bring God 
 from out his Heavens. The wings of faith alone 
 can carry us to Him. 
 
 We now approach the most serious of our faith 
 defects, a defect which will ever be the price of 
 low living and small thinking, a defect which has 
 caused millions to suffer and mourn and turn 
 away from the living God. Faith in the superfi- 
 cial is predestined to failure ; faith in appearances, 
 faith in the artificial, faith in error, faith in the 
 
210 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 imagined, faith whicli does not lay hold upon the 
 eternal. Whenever such faith is the soul's de- 
 pendency, only wreckage can come in the wake of 
 calamity. Faith of a generation goes up in the 
 smoke of a fortune-destroying conflagration, is 
 hopelessly submerged by ravaging floods, or con- 
 gealed by destroying frosts. The good even as the 
 evil are destined to suffer, and the faith which is 
 not stronger than calamity and suffering is cer- 
 tain to be wiped away. Do we not see in this the 
 Maker's interest in our soul's welfare? How 
 supinely we grow in self-satisfaction and self-suffi- 
 ciency, with their attending conceits, when success 
 is ours and all goes well. How contented we be- 
 come when our own plans go on year after year 
 uninterrupted — for such living the faith is un- 
 necessary that reaches deeper than success and 
 higher than wealth. Then Calamity comes to of- 
 fer a blessing which Eternity may not take away. 
 It would turn our hearts from the passing strength 
 of wilfulness to the lasting power of faith in the 
 Everlasting. And so each catastrophe, humanly 
 speaking, either distorts or enlarges faith, each 
 dire trial of soul either obscures or the more 
 clearly reveals those principles which change not. 
 Again let us realize that the faith in the super- 
 ficial is predestined to failure. 
 
 The Future reaches toward us with both her 
 hands. One holds the cheer of hope, the other 
 the menace of fear. Which proffered hand does 
 your faith inspire you to take ? All too many have 
 grasped the hand which gives them only a fear- 
 future. Millions utter fearsome prayers in be- 
 
FAITH 211 
 
 half of their self-neglected bodies, fearing the 
 progress of the known disease, fearing even more 
 the onset of the disease not yet come, fearing old 
 age, loss of mind, the breaking of family ties, fear- 
 ing above all a horrible eternity. There are a 
 few like the agnostic, whose faith is as negative 
 as that of the beast of burden. For them both, 
 the future is "unknown." 
 
 As we have already seen, knowledge in increas- 
 ing accuracy and power has been given us to util- 
 ize hourly for temporal well-being. He is neglect- 
 ing his duty in living who does not, as far as he is 
 capable, know the known, but forever man will 
 face an unknown and, without faith in a saving 
 Unseen, his unknowable must remain either a void 
 of emptiness or a hellish confusion. More and 
 more of life will become mathematically certain as 
 knowledge broadens and becomes more universal, 
 but none of the certainties is more inevitable than 
 life's uncertainty. It is here that faith will ever 
 be a lamp unto our feet, having which multitudes 
 have lived and died untouched by any harshness, 
 any agony of passing, any terror of the bourn un- 
 known. Faith is like that mysterious quality of 
 the seed which, when buried and apparently de- 
 stroyed, produces leaf and plant and flower and 
 fruit of its kind. It is through wholesome faith 
 that our lives are constantly gathering more and 
 more of the strength which makes fruitful, or 
 through ill faith that we grow but barrenness. 
 As we look out upon the sea of humanity, as we 
 look deeply into the faces of one and another, 
 we are astonished at the different uses men and 
 
212 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 women are making of life. Turn a modem ocean 
 liner over to a menagerie of animals and they 
 would make of it a mere rookery. A tribe of 
 savages would be delighted with it as a plaything, 
 but as each one bore away this or that shining or 
 novel part, the magnificent creation would soon 
 become little more than a junk heap. But to the 
 captain, who knows its every worth and power, 
 it is a living thing, responsive through the years 
 to his every wish, capable of coursing unswerv- 
 ingly across the tumultuous deep, absolutely ignor- 
 ing the assaults of wind and wave, yet able to slip 
 against its quay as gently as a swan against the 
 bank. What does my faith let me do with my 
 soul? Is it a mere rookery for animal desires, 
 do I use its magnificent equipment as tawdry 
 junk, making it a cheap plaything, or does faith 
 lead me to use its tremendous power to carry me 
 across life's seas, superior to calm or storm, and 
 enable me to make my final landing as gently and 
 as beautifully as the falling of sleep? Nobly or 
 ignobly, you and I will continue to meet life, led 
 ever upward or downward by the quality of our 
 faith. 
 
 The world's religions have been at one in assert- 
 ing our need of faith in God, but at what an un- 
 happy variance they have been as to the character 
 of that God! To some it is a God of law, order 
 and power, the so-called God of Nature. The God 
 of the Bible demands a belief in man's spiritual 
 being. The God of the Bible is the God of wis- 
 dom, the God of love, the God of forgiveness. But 
 the abstract God has always failed to satisfy, and 
 
FAITH 213 
 
 • 
 man has constantly been seeking for a personal 
 God, and so Allah has his inspired Prophet, and 
 the Jew his expected Messiah, while the Christ 
 of the Christian has been a saving faith in many 
 generations. The beautiful goodness of his 
 mother has stood for many a boy's conception of 
 the height of Divinity. The Chinese are not alone 
 in ancestor worship, for faith in the divinity of 
 loved ones who have gone before is as common as 
 life. 
 
 To one who has bound constructive faith to his 
 brow, the future is ever promising and growing 
 more eloquent with a greater fulness of living. 
 To such a one the conception of permanent injus- 
 tice is unthinkable. Only through faith, which 
 is life with a vision, do we attain the personal 
 philosophy which is f ootsure on the Rock of Ages. 
 The menace of the future cannot long withstand 
 that practical use of faith which in every work of 
 life is hourly seeking the better. If we bring to 
 each of our to-days the faith to make one small 
 step upward, the inspiration of the promising fu- 
 ture will soon grip us with a certainty just as im- 
 pelling as that of the old wretched fear-future; 
 the upward tug of right faith will certify to the 
 soul that "The best is yet to be." Ever believing 
 in the better than self, will draw that "better 
 part" to self. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 BIGHTEOTJSNESS 
 
 For the Kingdom of Seamen is not meat and drink hut righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 We have been told that we are the children of 
 God, but it falls out that this heirship shall not 
 come to us full born — a sudden possession — but 
 shall be a gradual becoming, an heirship which 
 shall be proven. We find ourselves in the midst 
 ' of a transient life and to such a life we give most 
 of our thought and attention — ^f or all too many of 
 us are living not as sons and daughters of God, 
 but as well-fed, comfortable animals. And this 
 is very natural. Our physical selves are here to- 
 day because we have responded a thousand times 
 to the deepset instinct of physical self-preserva- 
 tion, because our ancestors 'way down the line 
 have done the same. You and I have our being be- 
 cause some great-great forebear cracked his mur- 
 derous antagonist's cranium with a convenient 
 cobble, or with sure fingers strangled out his life's 
 breath. The instinct of self-preservation is more 
 deeply set and more clearly revealed to the ma- 
 jority than our divine heritage, which for many 
 proves a slow, painful process of evolution. 
 
 The instinct of hunger is probably the most per- 
 sistently assertive of the elements which go to ful- 
 
 214 
 
EIGHTEOUSNESS 215 
 
 fil the great law of personal preservation, and 
 most obviously do many of its expressions reveal 
 the mere animal in man. It is unnecessary for us 
 to visit the menagerie or the sty to see absolute 
 selfishness expressed by many in various efforts 
 to satisfy their appetites. This is not limited to 
 mere crudity of feeding. Niceties of refinement 
 take the edge and corners from much that is 
 coarse, but the epicure in his delicate way, with his 
 fine sense of artistic eating, is just as insistent 
 on having his fill of fine foods as the gormand. 
 There is culture which differs only in artifice of 
 expression from frank crudeness. One hardly be- 
 holds an ennobling vision when he visits a public 
 eating-place and observes his neighbor satisfying 
 his primal instinct of hunger. An aggressive el- 
 bowing for a well-placed table, an impatient in- 
 sistence for the waiter's attention, a rapid fire of 
 criticism of the menu, a restless waiting the meal's 
 preparation, a thankless beginning, a hurried, in- 
 discriminate emptying of dishes — thus multitudes 
 spend their meal hours, spend ten per cent, of 
 their waking hours, spend from three to four years 
 of their working lives. Three to four years of this 
 vital business of living surrendered to mere impa- 
 tience and self -gratification ! 
 
 The instinct of personal comfort is closely allied 
 to self-preservation. Each man has a certain limit 
 of strength. Such a load and no more can he 
 carry. Beyond this point the increase of his bur- 
 den results in damage. We know that work is 
 strengthening, developing, that it is truly right- 
 
216 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 eous ; and we know that it is given each to push his 
 margins of productiveness ever further and fur- 
 ther beyond mere useless existence. To protect us 
 from hurtful abuse, Nature has given us discom- 
 fort as a warning — an early warning for the fra- 
 gile child, a later warning for developing youth, a 
 rare warning for wholesome maturity with its 
 ready strength, with its earned and ever available 
 reserve. But the civilized majority know not the 
 strength nor the reserve. Their ears are keen to 
 the voice which bids them seek enervating safety 
 and comfort. "We recall the thinly disguised self- 
 ishness of the after-supper scene in "The Third 
 Floor Back. ' ' The boarding-home parlor offered 
 but one armchair — the strongest boarder got it 
 first. How unfortunately illustrative of our 
 crowding for the comfortable best in public and 
 even in many homes. The rush which we often 
 see, that the mere senses may be gratified, is a pe- 
 culiar expression of the law of self-preservation 
 which does not reveal much sonship of the Most 
 High. How prone we are to put the irksome upon 
 some other one, to get the lighter end of daily 
 household duties, to make a minor ache or a harm- 
 less weariness excuse for side-stepping our bed- 
 time intensive calisthenics, the unbroken allegiance 
 to which is the average man 's only certain protec- 
 tion from the weariness of weakness and the head- 
 aches and backaches of muscular disuse. Ability 
 of some sort is given each of us, and when we find 
 for our God-given qualities no higher use than 
 successful eating, drinking and the securing of 
 ease, we are indeed conquered by our senses. 
 
EIGHTEOUSNBSS 217 
 
 • 
 A home nestled cozily among the hills of central 
 Ohio, surrounded hy many productive acres, a 
 home in which the Bible was read regularly each 
 morning, and from which, through the years, the 
 entire family drove religiously through sunshine, 
 wind or snow to Sunday services. Grace before 
 each meal was an unremitted custom in this home 
 where the casual visitor would think "here is 
 peace, here is love, here is the perfect simple life." 
 The father Was a quiet man, who, when you knew 
 him well, you would find invariably had his own 
 way. The hired help, his children, his wife never 
 crossed his will the second time. A poor boy, 
 he had succeeded in all his ambitions, and at 
 fifty-eight he was in more than comfortable cir- 
 cumstances. He had made his thousands — an 
 honest, industrious, up-to-date farmer, physically 
 powerful. One morning he awoke and his left 
 hand would not move, his left leg would not move 
 — in fact, his entire left side was "out of busi- 
 ness. ' ' Suddenly this man of activity, this man of 
 unchallenged will, was a paralytic. The history 
 of the next ten years of the life of that family will 
 never be chronicled. The Great Day, only, could 
 reveal the details of the suffering through which 
 devoted wife and daughter passed. This wilful 
 man's religion seemed to go like tissue-paper be- 
 fore a bullet and his selfishness exacted an ever- 
 increasing attention. He demanded the presence 
 of at least one member of the family in constant 
 service night and day. That household of near- 
 peace became a home of fear, for not only were his 
 words hot and his anger instant, but the home 
 
218 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 which had never heard vile language became a 
 house of cursing. His every thought centered 
 around the gratification of his senses. You will 
 say, "But this was just an expression of his dis- 
 ease. ' ' Let us hope so — then what a blessing had 
 a teaspoonful more blood filtered into that brain 
 and put out life when the stroke first came, that 
 he might have been buried with the respect of all ! 
 Some who knew him recognized, however, that 
 those ten wretched, bed-ridden years but expressed 
 what the man always would have been, had his 
 will been crossed. He had been a religious man 
 — he never was a righteous man. ' ' For the King- 
 dom of Heaven is not meat and drink. ' ' When we 
 uncover this man's nature, we recognize that it 
 was meat, drink and the comforts of life which 
 he demanded, and which he continued to demand 
 until his soul was called for. 
 
 The other man started early with his "toddies." 
 He, too, was powerful physically, with no possible 
 need for the stimulant's false strength. At forty- 
 five it took a quart of whisky a day to keep him 
 decently speakable. Also in the rational course 
 of events his arteries had hardened so that a ves- 
 sel in his throat ruptured, from which he had a 
 rather sharp hemorrhage. His physician recog- 
 nized that the heart must be quieted and the blood 
 pressure lowered if he was to be rescued. Saving 
 heart sedatives were administered and the order 
 was given that his hourly drink be quartered. In 
 a few hours the hemorrhage stopped, he was bet- 
 ter for a day. He then began demanding more 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 219 
 
 • 
 whisky. His wife reasoned and plead, "The doc- 
 tor says you must not have so much, it is not quite 
 time yet — just wait a half -hour longer." "Damn 
 you, give me that whisky," he railed. He got his 
 whisky — he got his fill, and he died cursing his 
 wife, cursing his doctor, cursing his Maker — curs- 
 ing, that his body might be comfortable. 
 
 Paul says that the Kingdom of God is not meat 
 and drink, but righteousness — and righteousness 
 is but the right way to Eternal Life. Have we in- 
 stincts for soul-preservation? Does not the day 
 come to all, who are not inherently defective when 
 the moral sense awakens — that moral sense 
 through which we distinguish right from wrong 
 in thought or act? But will moral sense save the 
 soul? I take it, no. In a vague way have not our 
 animal friends the capacity for primitive moral 
 distinctions? Is not the realization of evil fre- 
 quently as strong in the criminal as in his Judge? 
 Something must be added to the mere discrimi- 
 nating sense of good from evil. To those who 
 listen will come the voice of the Spirit, which is 
 a moving desire ever to think the right, ever to 
 live the right. This revelation of the spiritual 
 does not come to all. Those who are content with 
 the program of eating, drinking and merrymak- 
 ing, with no desire above the comforts of living 
 and the physical, financial and social successes of 
 their day, will never have the impulsion of right 
 first. But when that power becomes the guide of 
 conscience, the spiritual has been bom, because 
 right is eternal. For him who listens and follows 
 
220 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 this saving instinct of the spirit there is a con- 
 viction of an expanding future, unlimited by any 
 possible heritage of the physical. 
 
 The spiritual has been manifested through many 
 more generations than is usually realized. Inter- 
 esting translations from the earliest Egyptian in- 
 scriptions tell of the princess who begged to give 
 her life that she might help her people. The Per- 
 sian cult of Mithros, centuries before our era, 
 taught baptism as cleansing for sin, communion, 
 with bread and wine, as tokens of the Divine ; 
 taught immortality of the spirit, and its followers 
 lived lives of denial for their souls' sake. The 
 Greek God of Music, the God of Harmony, was a 
 protecting Deity, and in China, India and even 
 primitive America there were religions which 
 stood for a belief in the Eternal Life, a belief that 
 there was something more than physical eating, 
 drinking and comfort-finding. William Penn 
 dealt with the Indians more successfully than regi- 
 ments of soldiers because he was the soul of fair- 
 dealing — that fair-dealing which stood, even to 
 the crude red-man, for a righteousness which they 
 could love and reverence. 
 
 There was another paralytic. She was a poor 
 woman who could not speak English well, even 
 her beloved Bible she read but haltingly — a widow 
 with two boys, for whom she toiled and saved. 
 But in face of the years of her unselfishness, these 
 sons went the way of small town influences in the 
 Texas of a generation ago. At sixty her stroke 
 came, and she was dependent on the neighbors, 
 who took turns visiting her. She had nothing but 
 
EIGHTBOUSNESS 221 
 • 
 her three-room cabin, and the Ladies' Aid So- 
 ciety collected funds for a wheel-chair and to keep 
 a negro woman with her. It was no task to so- 
 licit for the good old soul. If you had known 
 her and felt the benediction of her "God bless 
 you!," if you could have heard her tell her grati- 
 tude, if you could have felt the inspiration of her 
 faith in the Father, if you could have known her 
 perfect charity of thought and expression and 
 seen her eagerness to point out the way of the 
 life, which to her was so glorious, no contribution 
 you could have made which did not stand for de- 
 nial would have seemed adequate. You would 
 have been glad to have visited and ministered. 
 There was an old-time revival meeting. The min- 
 isters had fasted and prayed and labored — but 
 something was lacking. The hearts of those for 
 whom they were pleading did not soften. Some- 
 body said "Bring Mother E ," and she was 
 
 brought, and wheeled up to the altar. She began 
 praying in her ridiculous English, she poured out 
 her soul for her neighbors. Had you been in that 
 meeting, you could never have doubted that the 
 Spirit of The Eternal was in the midst. Strong 
 men, women who had lived thoughtlessly, crowded 
 to find a kneeling place about that altar. One of 
 the most notorious gamblers of the region, an over 
 six-foot giant, a three-times murderer, was the 
 first to ask for personal prayers. The memories 
 of that revival have outlived its generation. The 
 spirit of this paralytic woman was of righteous- 
 ness, rich in what art could not give. She was 
 just a straightforward soul who had lived her sim- 
 
222 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 pie life each day the very best she knew, and this is 
 righteousness. 
 
 The right way does not stop short — it does not 
 end at a sudden cliff on the banks of the Dark 
 River. A truly righteous man was ill. There 
 was little suffering, and life held much for him to 
 make welcome continued years. He did not real- 
 ize how close the end till his physician took his 
 hand and told him that the medicine about to be 
 given was the last. "So soon? " he gently queried. 
 "Wait a few moments, doctor; I wish to speak 
 with my son. ' ' There were a few minutes of whis- 
 pered conference, then, gently smiling, unper- 
 turbed, he said, ' ' Doctor, I am ready. ' ' And these 
 were his last words — the last words of a righteous 
 man. Suddenly facing his last hour, he was ready 
 as he had been for many years, ready, not for 
 meat and drink, craving not a final comfort, but 
 ready for the Everlasting. 
 
 Rightwayness is the key-thought for righteous- 
 ness. Whosoever earnestly follows truth in any 
 of its aspects toward its Source is living right- 
 eously. Ignorance, crudeness, coarseness cannot 
 defeat the ultimate progress of him who continues 
 on even one of the remote upward paths which 
 lead to the Highway of Truth. Far-a-way indeed 
 he may be — he is on the right path. Religion 
 and righteousness are frequently confused. Re- 
 ligion is an outward expression ; righteousness an 
 inward force. Religion exacts observance of the 
 letter of the law; righteousness is the orthodoxy 
 of the soul. It is not creed nor doctrine, not the 
 religion which excludes, but the righteousness 
 
RIGHTEOUSNESS 223 
 
 • 
 which, pervades one's relations with reality that 
 develops character. Eighteousness is inclusive, it 
 seeks to save the good in every man, it is the ful- 
 ness of our patience and sympathy, it is the ca- 
 pacity we have developed for service and self- 
 sacrifice. The measure of our righteousness will 
 ever be fixed in our attitude toward our fellow- 
 man. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 SERENITY 
 
 Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he 
 alloweth. 
 
 The Maker has planted deep in each human 
 breast a craving for happiness which follows him 
 from the cradle to the grave. All classes and 
 conditions and ages of mankind have sought this 
 goal considered the fundamental object of exist- 
 ence. To-day we and our neighbors are busy, 
 active, eager, impatient in its search. And it 
 would seem that each one in the journey of life is 
 trying some new path to this haven. The dazzling 
 Great White Way is thronged winter and summer 
 with searchers for happiness. The palatial re- 
 sorts dotting seashore and mountain-side cannot 
 accommodate them. Night after night the sci- 
 entist toils in his laboratory, the scholar delves 
 into his books, the poet dreams and agonizes, that 
 in the end happiness may be found. Most of the 
 children of men are seeking that happiness which 
 pleases the eye or caresses the hand or satisfies the 
 lips. Youth is a time in which physical pleasures 
 fairly throng experience, each one bringing its new 
 thrill, even as Springtime is redolent with the fra- 
 grance of new things. And youth has so much 
 
 224 
 
SERENITY 225 
 
 • 
 opportunity, unmeshed as it is by responsibility! 
 Has it been intended that in the early days of life 
 the children of men should drink deep of the physi- 
 cal and thus early learn the taste of the bitter 
 dregs at the bottom of this cup ? Even so, far too 
 many slip into maturity clenching more and more 
 tightly the things of the physical. Out of life's 
 infinite possibilities of ideals they grasp only the 
 fallacy that happiness is bound up in the posses- 
 sion of power without effort. Thus material 
 wealth is sought as the very end of existence, that 
 the comforts of ease, the luxury of an early re- 
 tirement, may be won. From this ideal has de- 
 veloped that menace to social order and stability, 
 that menace to the highest conceptions of civili- 
 zation — the classes of special privilege. 
 
 With all the joy places occupied by a pleasure- 
 mad youth, and financial and social, artistic and 
 political centers fairly swarming with elbowing, 
 self-seeking hordes, a great and far-reaching un- 
 rest has been humanity's chief dividend in this age 
 of unprecedented ease and wealth. This unrest 
 has been the basic defect in civilization's develop- 
 ment which made possible the breaking forth of 
 the world's most vast and devastating war in the 
 midst of her most perfect material prosperity. 
 
 But others seek happiness in the Unseen. Early 
 in humanity's history law was invoked that man's 
 relations to man might be so regulated as to in- 
 crease mutual happiness. To-day there are laws 
 and laws, but the very keenness of law-makers has 
 too often defeated the end intended. A great 
 gulf exists between man-made laws and man-found 
 
226 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 laws. The child of ignorance given power can 
 frame a law to which weakness must bend the knee. 
 The child of ignorance can only make, never dis- 
 cover law. True law is rarely revealed save to 
 him whose unselfish sacrifice has made possible in- 
 telligent, depersonalized effort. For centuries 
 humanity was thrown into periodic panic, cities 
 were deserted, shipping and traffic abandoned, 
 and the strictest quarantine laws enacted to bar 
 the progress of dread Yellow Fever. Yet the 
 legions of man-made laws were impotent to stay 
 his grim-visaged advance. But science with her 
 microscope, her eternal threshing of wheat and 
 winnowing of chaff — ^with the unflinching, unques- 
 tioning personal disregard of her workers for even 
 their own lives — ^uncovered the law underlying the 
 transmission of this disease, and in a day the 
 great, complex machinery of quarantine with its 
 demoralization of business and industries, and 
 the heart-searching dread which robbed life in the 
 tropics of any sense of security, were obliterated. 
 Thus when man discovered one law, his volumes 
 of self-made laws became only waste paper. 
 
 Philosophy seeks to show man his relation to 
 truth, and in its ample courts many of the world's 
 great have sought the boon of happiness. It can- 
 not be gainsaid that the one who diligently seeks 
 to associate each principle of his life's conduct 
 with truth must find a better road than he who 
 wanders aimlessly through his lapse of years. 
 But philosophies, like laws, may be true or false. 
 Centuries ago Plato wrote seriously and fervently 
 of the certain existence of the human soul. Since 
 
SERENITY 227 
 
 • 
 his time many philosophers have arisen insisting 
 that the cold abstractions of truth made impossible 
 the acceptance of such a conclusion ; and for years 
 materialism under such relentless leaders as Kant 
 and Nietzsche has kept the believers in the Unseen 
 on a most constructive defensive. But even as 
 materalism denied the metaphysical, we now 
 wrestle with Eddyism which, with equal fervor and 
 multiplied adherents, denies the Seen. And after 
 all the efforts of philosophers, ancient and mod- 
 ern, who can point to-day to a philosophy which 
 insures human happiness? 
 
 Associated with man's instinctive search for 
 happiness has been his inherent sense of worship. 
 Unquestionably the great majority of those who 
 have sought happiness in the Unseen have turned 
 to religion as the surest path. Religion seeks to 
 point out man's relation to God. Law would dic- 
 tate man's right relations to man. Philosophy 
 would decide man's conception of right. If the 
 student is perplexed by the entanglement of dif- 
 ferent schools of philosophy, he becomes utterly 
 bewildered when he attempts to ravel the snarl- 
 tangle of man's variegated religions. What at- 
 tribute of man has not found an expression in his 
 religious nature? Eeligions of indulgence, re- 
 ligions of cruelty, religions of self-exaltation, of 
 self-abasement, religions of hate, of love, of high- 
 walled exclusiveness, and religions of world-broad 
 charity — each and all the only and the true re- 
 ligion! Man has ever sought happiness through 
 worship. But many millions have slavishly trod 
 the path of religion as though it were but a Via 
 
228 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 Dolorosa. Abject and fearsome, facing the sod, 
 they have not known the ever-spreading canopy 
 of the heavens above. A religion which makes for 
 sadness and sorrow and self-abasement carries in 
 its very effect the undeniable mark of falseness. 
 "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that 
 thing which he alloweth. ' ' 
 
 In these prosperous days we see so much of the 
 tinsel and cheap glitter of conceit that it is re- 
 freshing to find one who is sufficiently sane and 
 honest to express a deserved self-condemnation. 
 But there is much self-condemnation which is as 
 detrimental to progress as the ball and chain at- 
 tached to the ankles of the criminal. Almost every 
 family has its ugly duckling who in an atmosphere 
 of constant reminder of her lack of physical charm, 
 comes to consider that beauty of face and form 
 constitutes the only desirable asset in life, and 
 impotently resentful of fate, surrenders to that 
 easier impulse which allows her character to be- 
 come as unattractive as her features. And what 
 a wretched failure to. make in this life of inex- 
 haustible possibilities for beauty ! Who turns to 
 physical beauty for counsel in illness or for help 
 in time of need? Is it the lines of beauty in 
 Mother's face that linger through a life time of 
 memories, or the lines of love? Possibly even 
 more dangerous than being an ugly duckling is the 
 handicap of near-beauty. "Now if it were not for 
 her nose!" And thereby hangs a tale of years of 
 anguish ! Had she been ' ' plumb plain, ' ' she would 
 have amounted to something, but the flaw of the 
 nose was her Nemesis. How tragically Haw- 
 
SERENITY 229 
 
 • 
 
 thorne portrays the fate of false emphasis upon 
 physical beauty! A physician of subtle power had 
 spent years in the laboratory delving into Na- 
 ture's close-kept secrets. Fame came to him. 
 He married a most beautiful woman, beautiful 
 save for the added blush of a birthmark on her 
 cheek. As the days went, the husband found him- 
 self wishing that this slight flaw, the only hint of 
 imperfection, might be obliterated. The desire 
 grew and became a menace to his happiness. The 
 shadowy fault seemed to spread and threatened to 
 obscure his vision to all the wondrous beauty and 
 charm otherwise so perfect. Desire became ob- 
 session, and he sought his laboratory to wring 
 from Nature another truth to satisfy his near- 
 sighted and dominating want. He told his wife 
 of his unhappiness and of the treatment he wished 
 to give that the spot might fade. His unhappi- 
 ness was hers, and in the face of her instinctive 
 conviction that this mark was rooted in the very 
 depth of her life, she took the potion. She slipped 
 into insensibility and her husband sat and watched 
 the ebb and flow of color in her cheek. As the 
 fateful mark slowly faded, the exultation of tri- 
 umph burst forth ! He clasped her to his bosom — 
 his now perfect wife! — a corpse! What fatal 
 blunders have we all made when we allowed the 
 incidental to separate us from the understanding 
 of the fundamental — as all physical defects must 
 be when compared with that which is everlasting. 
 Our early days may have been passed where ad- 
 vantages were meager, where the work of even 
 young hands was needed for family maintenance, 
 
230 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 and we find ourselves to-day handicapped — ^lack- 
 ing in education. Or it may be that in spite of 
 advantages we are slow of mind, we are awkward 
 or ponderous in conversation and lack every ele- 
 ment of social brilliancy. Shall we therefore scat- 
 ter our possessions in recklessness, or congeal our 
 natures into repelling hardness, or, because the 
 thoughtless laugh at us, grow vindictive and spite- 
 ful? If self-condemnation permits any of these 
 false adjustments to our lack of mental aptness, 
 such condemnation but assures shameful defeat. 
 The salt of the earth have often been men and 
 women lacking highest educational advantages, 
 slow of wit, but sound as granite in all that stood 
 for right, and kind to the core in time of need. 
 
 We condemn our lives as defective because we 
 have had no intensive, soul-searching, heaven-re- 
 vealing experience. Thousands avoid any claim 
 of religious worth because they have not been ele- 
 vated into Christian happiness by some explosive 
 experience which fairly shot them to glory. Are 
 they not refusing to recognize that the man who 
 reached New York afoot is just as truly there, and 
 with a more certain knowledge of the way than he 
 who has rushed into the Metropolis on the Twenti- 
 eth Century Limited? Or perhaps much which 
 should abide close and sacred in our daily life is 
 dropped when the weeks pass and we fail to find 
 the thrills of what we are wont to call religious 
 inspiration, making the "I don't feel right" a 
 ^weak and illogical excuse for "I won't do right. '^ 
 Usually, instead of condemning our religious emo^ 
 tions, we should investigate our diet and the con- 
 
SERENITY 231 
 
 • 
 dition of our livers. There is condemnation as 
 worthy and constructive as any influence may be, 
 and such is the condemnation of an unwholesome 
 body. Let us never forget that self-indulgent ease 
 in this decade invites disgraceful disease in the 
 next. We avoid the dentist and court the doctor. 
 We dodge the doctor and meet the undertaker. 
 
 One 's lot can never be the lot of another. Few 
 we meet but possess some thing or quality which 
 we lack, craving which the mind of many is as a 
 restless, discontented sea. Peace and calm and 
 serenity will never be found by such, nor by those 
 whose energies are spent in picking out and noting 
 their faults. Condemn in yourself viciously the 
 fault-accepting mind. Your friend, your neigh- 
 bor, your enemy, have virtues which it will help 
 you to know and bless you to emulate. 
 
 As we have been searching here, there and yon- 
 der, that we might discover that perfection of 
 happiness which can be called serenity, have we 
 not realized that when we make the quest of hap- 
 piness a motive, when that quest becomes the di- 
 recting force of our life 's efforts, we fail, even as 
 did Sir Launfal when he sought through many 
 lands for the Holy Grail. Serenity will ever be a 
 consequence, unconsciously evolved from our meth- 
 ods of doing, never an objective to be attained 
 through struggle. 
 
 The unthinking, the restless, and the impatient 
 will sneer at the serene self as though such a one 
 were merely a resistless, submissive child of fate. 
 They are but confusing serenity with inertia. In- 
 ertia is the rotting piece of driftwood floating slug- 
 
232 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 gishly, uselessly, down the River of Life. Seren- 
 ity is the water-bird which floats at will on the 
 bosom of the sea or rises above the storm-cloud 
 through faith in its God-given powers — that faith 
 which, in mankind, has outlived the calamities of 
 the ages; that faith which has steeled the hearts 
 of the million mothers as their sons went forth 
 to die that the rights of man might be preserved; 
 that faith which wrought for loyalty and unswerv- 
 ing courage on a thousand battle fronts. 
 
 Would we know happiness, then too must we find 
 the love which ever seeketh the best; only in the 
 heart filled with such love can the serene self abide. 
 
CHAPTEE XXV 
 WHOLE LIVING 
 
 Man shall not live hy bread alone hut iy every word . . . of Qod. 
 
 The well-rounded personality is rare. The 
 ease with which we all find faults evidences the 
 commonness of human fractions. So exceptional 
 is unity of character that in considering those we 
 know, our estimate will pause at one, perchance 
 two or three among them all, who are living the 
 fulness of life. 
 
 Physical fractions are seen everywhere. We 
 pass on the street the pinched, starved faces of 
 want, more often the pinched, sallow faces of food 
 self-poisoning, with a sprinkling of florid, phleg- 
 matic, waddling products of over-eating — the 
 starved, the wrongly fed, the over-fed. We pass 
 an army of the flat-chested, those who never take a 
 lung-filling, soul-helping chestfuU of God's pure 
 air; and at their sides are the stoop-shouldered, 
 wilted-spine chair-loungers who use each seat as 
 though it were a hammock and chronically crowd 
 their vitals into a hodge-podge which defies the 
 surgeon's skill to untangle. With more pity we 
 note the blind, those whose windows are darkened 
 for life, yet unsentimental Science asserts that 
 seventy per cent, of these innocent victims grope 
 
 233 
 
234 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 through life because of the violation of laws of 
 physical and moral cleanliness. In helpless pity 
 we note the growing ranks of the halt and crip- 
 pled, products of infantile paralysis. Science can 
 point only the cause ; to-morrow she will find meth- 
 ods to ward off this blight, so heartless in its de- 
 struction of youth, even as she has effaced dis- 
 figuring smallpox and death-breeding typhoid. 
 
 Mental fractions are still more common. For 
 ages mankind was ignorant because knowledge 
 had not been found ; for centuries the masses were 
 ignorant — they were given no chance to gain 
 knowledge. To-day, in a world of schools, libra- 
 ries and publications, ignorance is usually the 
 brand of indolence. Ignorance must grow more 
 and more relative as the mass of knowledge in- 
 creases, but the rounded mind will transform facts 
 into principles and thus encompass the fulness 
 of knowledge. Prejudice stands between many 
 minds and a fuller vision of truth. Indolence, 
 again, begging avoidance of effort, Conceit satis- 
 fied with cheap accomplishment. Obstinacy which 
 prefers standing to climbing, are counsellors of 
 Prejudice; Emotionalism, the submergence of the 
 reasoning by the feeling life, will rob any nature 
 of its absolute sanity, even as Willessness will 
 honeycomb productive efficiency. 
 
 To speak of moral fractions is to enter a maze. 
 Who shall say that this one is right and that one 
 wrong, that this one is morally defective or that 
 one morally perfect? Who shall say? Who does 
 not say? Every work suffers from careless, 
 thoughtless, happy-go-lucky workers, who avoid 
 
WHOLE LIVING 235 
 
 • 
 any strong stand, who make no effort to better 
 what they touch, who fritter away their days, 
 leaving no contribution worthy the name, leaving 
 only a wastage of years. Outnumbering the 
 careless are the selfish, those who even through 
 the success of accomplishment create want and 
 bitterness and whose lives go to the shattering of 
 faiths. A few of the fractions must be counted 
 vicious, unfortunates who openly or covertly stand 
 for destruction, those from whom society must be 
 defended, those whom law and order must deprive 
 of their liberty, which to them is but a license to 
 do damage. Physically, mentally, morally, who- 
 ever is willing to live below his best capacity of 
 expression is content to accept for himself an un- 
 wholesome level, is failing to find wholeness of 
 existence. The saving knowledge has not yet come 
 to these that life is a business to be learned here 
 that it may be used hereafter. 
 
 Thou shalt not live by bread alone. Bread, 
 food, is life's first thought and, with rare excep- 
 tions produced by certain diseases, is pleasure's 
 last desire. All other pleasures may wear out, but 
 the pleasures of the palate remain keen even in the 
 depths of years. But "bread" as here used 
 stands for all gripping desires of the senses — 
 those powerful factors in breeding man's lust for 
 self-indulgence. Tomes have been penned con- 
 demning these very senses and religion has too 
 often erred in trying to combat self-indulgence by 
 degrading the body. Too long there has been an 
 undercurrent of religious teaching that the physi- 
 cal should be neglected, that only through con- 
 
236 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 stant effort to put the body underfoot could the 
 spirit rise. And where one follower after these 
 teachings has wretchedly succeeded, thousands 
 have gloriously failed. It is a road to glory, but 
 a most rocky and ungodlike one; the body is 
 given to use, for, as we have before seen, the log- 
 ical conclusion of bodily abuse would be a certain 
 disappearance of souls. 
 
 Truly do we need a religion which brings some 
 sense of horror at the sins of physical neglect. 
 Man needs a physical conscience if he is to attain 
 whole living. He must realize, pi life's great 
 unity, he as truly transgresses by breaking the 
 physical as the moral law, that misuse of the body, 
 so far from being religious, stands only for un- 
 holiness.' We may easily illustrate this principle. 
 Nine-tenths of sufferers from the blues, chronic 
 depression, near-melancholia, show a lung capacity 
 of from fifty to seventy per cent, below that of the 
 athlete, oxygen-providing space one-half, even 
 two-thirds less than they could have developed 
 through correct physical habits. How rarely one 
 sees a man with deep, full chest, erect head and 
 squared shoulders, daubing life in gray-blue tones, 
 the color habitually used by those whose hollow 
 chests invite tuberculosis, and whose sagging 
 mouth corners can only with wasteful effort be 
 provoked into smiles. There is a righteousness 
 of pure air which, forced into the veins of many of ' 
 the unhappy, would bum out their joy-killing 
 toxins even as flooding sunlight purifies the 
 noisome pestilence. Yet man is gregarious and 
 huddles and crowds into inadequate quarters, and 
 
WHOLE LIVING 237 
 
 • 
 social unrest breeds in the choke of the factories, 
 physical and mental infections thrive in the stifle 
 of the tenements, while the bulk of the country's 
 crime emanates from sewage of the slums. Our 
 breathing sins are mortal sins. 
 
 There is a righteousness at the family table not 
 in the least remote from that at the Lord 's table. 
 Ten thousand families are hourly asking God's 
 blessing upon a conglomeration of food abomina- 
 tions which, through their certain decomposition 
 within, can make of the body at best but a whited 
 sepulchre. That man shall not live by prayer 
 alone, is annually proven by the hundreds of thou- 
 sands who turn their faces to the wall and invoke 
 J' 
 
 no more the impossible. The death certificates 
 say, hardening of the arteries, apoplexy, cirrhosis 
 of the liver. Bright 's disease, cardio-vascular dis- 
 ease and on down through the fatal list. Truth 
 says, a broken law of righteous eating, a broken 
 law of the vital food-exercise balance. The law of 
 sane eating is a sacred law. Let us not mistake 
 this teaching — nothing herein implies that the 
 physical should receive nine-tenths of our avail- 
 able time and energy. When physical soundness 
 is attained, a high plane of health may be indefi- 
 nitely maintained through a comparatively small 
 expenditure of wisely directed time and effort. 
 
 To achieve mental wholeness is to respond to 
 more exacting demands. We start, recipients, and 
 as we develop, the selfish pleasures of the mind 
 are prone to multiply, for the mind naturally seeks 
 its own, and we take-in just as the husbandman 
 of old filled his bams until they could hold no 
 
238 THE SOUL IN SUFFERING 
 
 more; then, indifferent to his neighbor's hunger, 
 he tore them down and built him greater. We 
 must have a care that ambition does not lead 
 us into the selfish acquiring of knowledge. We 
 are not infrequently startled, upon intimate inter- 
 course with those who stand high in the intellec- 
 tual world, to realize how few of the amenities, of 
 the graces of life, how little of the spirit of con- 
 sideration and generosity they have gained in the 
 midst of their learning. Thou shalt not live for 
 self alone, is the insistence of the world's greatest 
 teachers. The mind is a most fertile garden-spot 
 in which the weeds would choke the roses. Daily 
 attention to the sprouting, budding things therein 
 is exacted of the gardener. Accurate thinking 
 thus calls for an hourly weeding and is attained 
 only through years of painstaking care. Reso- 
 lute exactness of expression does rob us of many 
 ornaments of speech, does reduce much that we 
 relate for attention's sake to the plainly prosaic, 
 but exaggeration and distortion certainly grow 
 rankly and in the end destroy the garden's fruit- 
 fulness and beauty. In our thought life, the tend- 
 ency to error is most universal. The compass 
 needle points in 360 directions, but one way, only, 
 is due east. The temptations to modify truth 
 crowd into each hour, to add here a little and there 
 a little — multiplying, subtracting, dividing facts 
 for effect. If we would but realize the power 
 each newly appropriated truth adds to character, 
 we should have learned the lesson which would 
 hold us true to a determination to master ac- 
 curacy of thought, 
 
WHOLE LIVING 239 
 
 • 
 
 As we look into the intricacies of the mind we 
 can but recognize that an even more common de- 
 fect is emotional discord. Much of the world's 
 woe grows out of our failure to maintain a whole- 
 some emotional response to the successes and fail- 
 ures that are constantly affecting our emotional 
 weather. The details of humanity's emotional 
 weaknesses and defects have no end. The vari- 
 egated tales of woe, the sentimental sadnesses of 
 the self -pitying, maudlin suffering of the morbid, 
 the curtness, the discourtesy, the crudeness of the 
 emotionally coarse — these and countless other ex- 
 pressions of emotional discord greet us constantly. 
 As a result, the majority are putting happiness 
 away, ignoring it, postponing it, failing to recog- 
 nize it, when for all, there is good in the present. 
 Our feeling life is the most easily sickened, is the 
 most sensitive to the infections of look or word or 
 deed or tragedy. Harmony can only come through 
 deepening the wholesomeness and sweetness of our 
 emotional natures. 
 
 Finally, the rounding out of our mental powers 
 demands unselfish willing. Few have not known 
 selfish wilfulness, but that vital factor without 
 which good resolutions are but friable can only be 
 developed by a daily surmounting of difficulties. 
 Life's victory is within our grasp when we have ac- 
 quired the faculty of enjoying productive effort. 
 Herein abides the greatest help to harmony of 
 feeling, for with the power of productiveness 
 comes an augmentation of all powers of enjoyment, 
 including that which makes joy in the using greater 
 than the satisfaction in the mere having. 
 
240 THE SOUL IN SUPFBEING 
 
 Do we not glimpse the vision of unity? Do we 
 not see that there can be no wholeness which does 
 not relate us to all work, to all thought, and, above 
 all, to our kind? Is not such a vision the essence 
 of holiness, which is but an ecclesiastical term 
 for soul-wholeness? Can we conceive that man's 
 soul has not looked up through all the ages? Has 
 it not ever spoken through his faith in the perfect? 
 Has this faith not been reflected in his ideals, his 
 art, his laws, his philosophies, his religions? 
 Have not those bearing the title of manhood and 
 womanhood struggled for some expression of per- 
 fection? Have they not made the highest possible 
 use of their gifts, even though the gifts themselves 
 seemed mediocre? Has not this very struggle 
 for perfection enriched all of life's valuations? 
 The holiness of self has never been attained save 
 through those efforts which lead toward wholeness 
 of living. - Man shall live by every word of God, 
 which translated reads, every word of Truth. 
 Let us not forget that gravitation and inspiration 
 are alike divine. Equally so are the righteous 
 laws of wise eating, of deep and pure breathing, 
 of daily exercise honest and regular, the laws of 
 the mind which command clearness and accuracy 
 of thought, truthfulness and beauty of feeling. 
 
 But how unholy would be our wholeness, were 
 we satisfied to give obedience only to laws of body 
 and mind, ignoring, denying, rebellious to those 
 promptings which would lead us to the laws of the 
 everlasting spirit. What is man that he should 
 turn from the most beneficent of all his privileges, 
 those which insure the most perfect success in the 
 
WHOLE LIVING 241 
 
 life of to-day, those which hold out the only prom- 
 ise of life to-morrow. The spirit brings hope from 
 out the unseen, a leading which never commands 
 or demands but which, when followed, never fails 
 to strengthen the fainting self with rich pledges 
 of growth and undying progress. To him who be- 
 lieves, faith reaches unfailing arms from out the 
 invisible, bearing reality from the Great Beyond, 
 a reality which when known becomes more certain 
 to the soul than bread to the flesh. 
 
 Truth in the heart of man quickened by hope 
 and faith must lead him to reverence, the heart of 
 worship. For a few, abstract truth may prove a 
 satisfying deity; others adore a God too great 
 for any human conception, too all-wise, too omnip- 
 otent. But in most men and women, the spirit 
 of worship seeks and is content only when it finds 
 a personal God, a being who knows because herhas 
 felt the burdens of human temptation and suffer- 
 ing, the joys of having, the woe of losing, who has 
 sounded the depths and attained the heights of 
 man's experience, and who in uttermost giving 
 has risen victorious from the abyss of anguish and 
 humiliation. What words can reveal the power 
 of such worship to transfigure the foreordained 
 failure of body and mind by bringing to the soul 
 its surety of immortality, its peace which passeth 
 all understanding! 
 
 PBINTBD IN THE TTNITBD STATES OP AMBEIOA 
 
""HE foUovring pages contain advertisements of a few of tlie 
 ' Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Mastery of Nervousness 
 
 By ROBERT S. CARROLL, M.D. 
 
 Cloth, 12°, $2.00 net 
 
 The fact that it has been necessary to issue the third 
 edition of this book within eighteen months of its pub- 
 lication, is sufficient indication of its worth and popu- 
 larity. The man or woman suffering from nervous 
 debility, will find it an ever ready, practical help in the 
 way back to health. Dr. Carroll gives in simple, flu- 
 ent language, apt in expression, the causes of nervous- 
 ness, its relation to contemporary conditions of living 
 and efficient methods to overcome it. 
 
 The physician who recommends this work to his pa- 
 tient will find it a valuable assistant to supplemental 
 treatment. 
 
 " The modem man is to-day facing for himself or 
 his children the problem of nervous adjustment — 
 that problem which is becoming more complicated each 
 decade. In the complexity and intensity of modern 
 life, this question is more and more frequently pre- 
 sented to the individual : ' Shall I lower my stand- 
 ards, shall I surrender in whole or in part; or shall I 
 select wisely and train for mastery ? ' That the latter 
 decision is possible for the majority of serious-minded 
 men and women is the sole reason for the following 
 pages." — The Author. 
 
 " This book, written for the laity, is a most whole- 
 some presentation of the subject of nervousness and 
 how to master it by adjustment. It simplifies aston- 
 ishingly a highly complex domain of human life and 
 human ills." — Medical Times. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
IMPORTANT BOOKS BY RUFUS M. JONES 
 
 The Inner Life 
 
 By RUFUS M. JONES 
 
 J2°, $1.00 
 
 This book is a plea for religion, worship, prayer — 
 for the inner life. Darwin, James, Bergson and oth- 
 ers are discussed. The facts of science and of Bibli- 
 cal criticism are surveyed, and the conclusion that is 
 reached is that there is a world of spirit, and that 
 in this spiritual life Jesus is the best guide. The au- 
 thor's style of writing is vigo'-ous, eloquent and sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 " A book of unusually fine quality. The author has 
 a great message for such a time as this. The book 
 will help men to be efficient instruments of God in the 
 world."— Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 The World Within 
 
 Cloth. 12", $1.25 
 
 This is essentially a companion volume to The Inner 
 Life, a book which is finding increasing favor among 
 thoughtful readers. 
 
 Dr. Jones deals effectively with some of the more 
 essential aspects of the religious life, particularly of 
 prayer and faith. There is a good setting forth also 
 of the ethical argument for immortality. The book 
 begets confidence and persuades the reader to acknowl- 
 edge the importance of religion as a personal concern. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Pu1>lishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
RELIGIOUS HAND BOPKS 
 
 (New and Not Refrints) 
 Each Sixty Cents 
 THE NEW OPPORTUNITY OF THE CHURCH 
 
 By ROBERT E. SPEER Preparitig 
 
 This voUime very suitably follows Dr. Spear's The Chris- 
 tian Man, the Church, and the War, dealing as it does with 
 the present responsibility of the Church. 
 THE CHURCH FACING THE FUTURE Preparing 
 By WILLIAM ADAMS BROWN 
 
 Dr. Brown discusses four big questions : First, Where the 
 War Found the Church; second, What the Church did for 
 the War; third. What the War did for the Church; and 
 fourth. Where the War Leaves the Church. 
 DEMOCRATIC CHRISTIANITY; SOME PROBLEMS 
 
 OF THE CHURCH IN THE DAYS JUST AHEAD 
 
 By FRANCIS J. McCONNELL 
 
 " We have in mind the tasks of to-day as they confront the 
 Christian Church," writes Bishop McConnell. 
 GOD'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 
 
 By EDWARD S. DROWN 
 
 Dr. Drown discusses this very interesting question in terse 
 and vigorous prose. 
 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRUSADE 
 
 By LYMAN ABBOTT 
 
 Written by one who has an exultant faith that never in the 
 history of the past has there been so splendid a demonstra- 
 tion of the extent and power of the Christ spirit as to-day. 
 THE WAY TO LIFE By HENRY CHURCHILL KING 
 
 A discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, similar to that 
 in Dr. King's former book The Ethics of Jesus. Besides re- 
 writing them, he has added material on the war and the 
 teachings of Jesus. 
 THE CHRISTIAN MAN. THE CHURCH AND THE 
 
 WAR By ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
 Dr. Speer here discusses the essentials of a problem which 
 has exercised Christian men since the beginning of the war. 
 He deals with it sanely and in a manner that will be consid- 
 ered distinctly helpful. 
 NEW HORIZON OF STATE AND CHURCH 
 
 By W. H. P. FAUNCE 
 
 " Broad, profound scholarship, close relationship with pro- 
 gressive sentiment all over the land, and unusual powers of 
 keen analysis and graphic statement are forceful elements in 
 The New Horizon of State and Church." — Philadelphia 
 North American. —^—^—^^^—^ 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Fuhllshers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 
 
Christian Internationalism 
 
 By WILLIAM PIERSON MERRILL 
 
 Cloth, 12°, $1.50 
 
 " An army pushing its victorious advance finds one stubborn 
 stronghold which resists; and it realizes that it must capture 
 that one center of resistance or its advance is imperilled. So 
 Christianity, advancing to the control of the world's life, halts 
 before this great citadel of International Relationships where 
 pagan forces are still strongly intrenched; and it realizes that 
 the whole program and hope of Christian Redemption are held 
 back, thwarted, imperilled, until that fortress is reduced." 
 
 Christian Internationalism lays siege to this fortress and 
 marshals in force manifold considerations, political, social 
 and religious, in support of the case for an immediate end 
 of the old arbitrary conduct of nations toward each other 
 and a beginning of a new era of peaceful, ordered freedom. 
 
 CHAPTER HEADINGS 
 
 OEAPTBB 
 
 I. The Function of Christianity in the World. 
 
 II. The Old Testament and Internationalisin. 
 
 III. The New Testament and Internationalism. 
 
 IV. Christianity and Internationalism. 
 V. Democracy and Internationalism. 
 
 VI. America and Internationalism. 
 
 VII. Constructive Proposals for an International Order. 
 
 VIII. Problems Confronting Internationalism. 
 
 IX. Christian Principles Underlying Internationalism. 
 
 X. The War and Internationalism. 
 
 XI. The Church and Internationalism. 
 
 XII. Conclusions. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64r-66 Fifth Avenne New York 
 
Ml