BJ 1409 C319s 1919 01010140R ^jy^^L NLM050065775 ?Y OF MEDICINE NAIHJNAl LIBKAKT Ur (VlCLMV-ll TIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE k' NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ^ f . „%5, THE SOUL IN SUFFERING THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NKW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO The Soul in Suffering A Practical Application of Spiritual Truths BY ROBERT S. CARJIOLL, M.D. Medical Director, Highland Hospital Asheville, North Carolina Author or "The Mastery of Nervousness" I3eto gotfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 A.U rights reserved COPTRIGHT, 1919 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY V Bet up and electrotyped. Published, April, 1919 MAY 14 1919 ^ ICU525484 ^ ^ ^ ♦ '' TO THE BROTHER WHO SPIRITUALIZED THE SUFFERING OF SILENCE 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. INTRODUCTORY 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 PAGE I The Unseen..........1 II 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 SUFFERING IX Hindrances...........80 X Complaining..........91 XI Suffering...........101 XII Death............Ill XIII Deserts............116 MAN STRIVING XIV Contention...........126 XV Moods............138 XVI Endurance...........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 LmNG.......... 233 r'J THE SOUL IN SUFFERING CHAPTER I THE UNSEEN Things 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 1 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 the 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 offering 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 6 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 7 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 been 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 10 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 All flesh is as grass. Who has so poorly known the fulness of phys- ical life 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 the 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 officers 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. Rest 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 TEMPORAL 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 club, 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 paupers 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 time 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 immortality. 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. Fiye 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 REALITY He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever- lasting. 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 this 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. Slothfully 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- count for much of the pathos of individual failure. Reality 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 build 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 cliffs, and ignorantly murmur l' 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 that 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 Real? 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 modern 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 mournfuls 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 stern 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 in 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 his 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 corners, 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?" "I 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 inefficiency 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 which our already best self reveals. So only may we learn to know God, 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 God'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.'' CHAPTER 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, 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 man 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, but may sit in ample office chairs and scheme with brain, or even inertly drift and dream. To all, some things are easy. It is easy for the strong to be 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 through 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. Rare 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 the 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 shadow. 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, unoffending 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 souLtrying 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 Frau, 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 his 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 ways 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 home 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 fellowman 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 which 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 clothing, our food, our 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 ears 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, thoughtfulness, 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 the 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 . . . be 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 sufficiently 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 modern 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. Real 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 university 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, but 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-full 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 wholesomeness 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 obey the truth? Lacking in imagination or understanding is the man who, 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 HINDRANCES 81 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 be- 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 Robert 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 SUFFERING 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- HINDRANCES 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 SUFFERING his cans of fruit were found to be empty, his 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 near 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 COMPLAINING / complained and 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. Raiment 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