The Majesty of Calmness | Page 2

nature to bear upon them, and you will find that they will, one by one,
melt into nothingness, like vapors fading before the sun. The glow of
calmness that will then pervade your mind, the tingling sensation of an
inflow of new strength, may be to you the beginning of the revelation
of the supreme calmness that is possible for you. Then, in some great
hour of your life, when you stand face to face with some awful trial,

when the structure of your ambition and life-work crumbles in a
moment, you will be brave. You can then fold your arms calmly, look
out undismayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your hope, upon the
wreck of what you have faithfully built, and with brave heart and
unfaltering voice you may say: "So let it be,--I will build again."
When the tongue of malice and slander, the persecution of inferiority,
tempts you for just a moment to retaliate, when for an instant you
forget yourself so far as to hunger for revenge,--be calm. When the
grey heron is pursued by its enemy, the eagle, it does not run to escape;
it remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits quietly, facing the
enemy unmoved. With the terrific force with which the eagle makes its
attack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled and run through on
the quiet, lance-like bill of the heron. The means that man takes to kill
another's character becomes suicide of his own.
No man in the world ever attempted to wrong another without being
injured in return,--someway, somehow, sometime. The only weapon of
offence that Nature seems to recognize is the boomerang. Nature keeps
her books admirably; she puts down every item, she closes all accounts
finally, but she does not always balance them at the end of the month.
To the man who is calm, revenge is so far beneath him that he cannot
reach it,--even by stooping. When injured, he does not retaliate; he
wraps around him the royal robes of Calmness, and he goes quietly on
his way.
When the hand of Death touches the one we hold dearest, paralyzes our
energy, and eclipses the sun of our life, the calmness that has been
accumulating in long years becomes in a moment our refuge, our
reserve strength.
The most subtle of all temptations is the seeming success of the wicked.
It requires moral courage to see, without flinching, material prosperity
coming to men who are dishonest; to see politicians rise into
prominence, power and wealth by trickery and corruption; to see virtue
in rags and vice in velvets; to see ignorance at a premium, and
knowledge at a discount. To the man who is really calm these puzzles
of life do not appeal. He is living his life as best he can; he is not
worrying about the problems of justice, whose solution must be left to
Omniscience to solve.
When man has developed the spirit of Calmness until it becomes so

absolutely part of him that his very presence radiates it, he has made
great progress in lite. Calmness cannot be acquired of itself and by
itself; it must come as the culmination of a series of virtues. What the
world needs and what individuals need is a higher standard of living, a
great realizing sense of the privilege and dignity of life, a higher and
nobler conception of individuality.
With this great sense of calmness permeating an individual, man
becomes able to retire more into himself, away from the noise, the
confusion and strife of the world, which come to his ears only as faint,
far-off rumblings, or as the tumult of the life of a city heard only as a
buzzing hum by the man in a balloon.
The man who is calm does not selfishly isolate himself from the world,
for he is intensely interested in all that concerns the welfare of
humanity. His calmness is but a Holy of Holies into which he can retire
from the world to get strength to live in the world. He realizes that the
full glory of individuality, the crowning of his self-control is,--the
majesty of calmness.

II
Hurry, the Scourge of America

The first sermon in the world was preached at the Creation. It was a
Divine protest against Hurry. It was a Divine object lesson of perfect
law, perfect plan, perfect order, perfect method. Six days of work
carefully planned, scheduled and completed were followed by,--rest.
Whether we accept the story as literal or as figurative, as the account of
successive days or of ages comprising millions of years, matters little if
we but learn the lesson.
Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries. Every phase of her
working shows plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of hurry.