Thoughts I Met on the Highway | Page 5

we be loved. Thoughts are forces. Each creates of its kind. Each comes back laden with the effect that corresponds to itself and of which it is the cause.
"Then let your secret thoughts be fair--?They have a vital part, and share?In shaping words and moulding fate;?God's system is so intricate."
If our heart goes out in love to all with whom we come in contact, we inspire love and the same ennobling and warming influences of love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept--If you would have all the world love you, you must first love all the world.

It was only a glad "Good morning!"
As she passed along the way,?But it spread the morning glory
Over the livelong day.

By example and not by precept. By living, not by preaching. By doing, not by professing. By living the life, not by dogmatizing as to how it should be lived. There is no contagion equal to the contagion of life. Whatever we sow, that shall we also reap, and each thing sown produces of its kind. We can kill not only by doing another bodily injury directly, but we can and we do kill by every antagonistic thought. Not only do we thus kill, but while we kill we suicide. Many a man has been made sick by having the ill thoughts of a number of people centered upon him; some have been actually killed. Put hatred into the world and we make it a literal hell. Put love into the world and heaven with all its beauties and glories becomes a reality.
Not to love is not to live, or it is to live a living death. The life that goes out in love to all is the life that is full, and rich, and continually expanding in beauty and in power. Such is the life that becomes ever more inclusive, and hence larger in its scope and influence.

Give us men!?Strong and stalwart ones:?Men whom highest hope inspires,?Men whom purest honour fires,?Men who trample Self beneath them.?Men who make their country wreathe them
As her noble sons,?Worthy of their sires,?Men who never shame their mothers,?Men who never fail their brothers,?True, however false are others:
Give us Men--I say again,
Give us Men!
_The Bishop of Exeter_

_Not repression, but elevation._ Would that this could be repeated a thousand times over! _No, a knowledge of the spiritual realities of life prohibits asceticism, repression, the same as it prohibits license and perverted use. To err on the one side is just as contrary to the ideal life as to err on the other._ All things are for a purpose, all should be used and enjoyed; but all should be rightly used, that they may be fully enjoyed.
It is the all-around, fully developed we want,--not the ethereal, pale-blooded man and woman, but the man and woman of flesh and blood, for action and service here and now,--the man and woman strong and powerful, with all the faculties and functions fully unfolded and used, all in a royal and bounding condition, but all rightly subordinated. The man and the woman of this kind, with the imperial hand of mastery upon all,--standing, moving thus like a king, nay, like a very God,--such is the man and such is the woman of power. Such is the ideal life: anything else is one-sided, and falls short of it.

High thought and noble in all lands
Help me; my soul is fed by such,?But oh, at the touch of life and hands--
The human touch!?Warm, vital, close, life's Symbol dear,--
These need I most, and now and here.
_Richard Burton_

Thoughts of strength both build strength from within and attract it from without. Thoughts of weakness actualize weakness from within and attract it from without. Courage begets strength, fear begets weakness. And so courage begets success, fear begets failure. It is the man or the woman of faith, and hence of courage, who is the master of circumstances, and who make his or her power felt in the world. It is the man or the woman who lacks faith and who as a consequence is weakened and crippled by fears and forebodings, who is the creature of all passing occurences.
What one lives in his invisible thought world he is continually actualizing in his visible material world. If he would have any conditions different in the latter he must make the necessary change in the former. A clear realization of this great fact would bring success to thousands of men and women who all about us are now in the depths of despair. It would bring health, abounding health and strength to thousands now diseased and suffering. It would bring peace and joy to thousands now unhappy and ill at ease.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager