Thoughts I Met on the Highway | Page 3

of this sunset heaven

Into my soul has passed,--
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal, date or clime;

As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic
asphodels
Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
And new horizons flush and glow

With sunset hues of ours.
_Whittier_

Would you remain always young, and would you carry all the joyousness and buoyancy
of youth into your maturer years? Then have care concerning but one thing,--how you
live in your thought world. It was the inspired one, Gautama, the Buddha, who
said,--"The mind is everything; what you think you become." And the same thing had
Ruskin in mind when he said,--"Make yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. None of us
as yet know, for none of us have been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may
build of beautiful thought--_proof against all adversity_." And would you have in your
body all the elasticity, all the strength, all the beauty of your younger years? Then live
these in your mind, making no room for unclean thought, and you will externalize them
in your body. In the degree that you keep young in thought will you remain young in
body. And you will find that your body will in turn aid your mind, for body helps mind

the same as mind helps body.

There is a sacred Something on all ways--
Something that watches through the Universe;
One that remembers, reckons and
repays,
Giving us love for love, and curse for curse.
_Edwin Markham_

The power of every life, the very life itself, is determined by what it relates itself to. God
is immanent as well as transcendent. He is creating, working, ruling in the universe today,
in your life and in mine, just as much as He ever has been. We are too apt to regard Him
after the manner of an absentee landlord, one who has set in operation the forces of this
great universe, and then taken Himself away.
In the degree, however, that we recognize Him as immanent as well as transcendent, are
we able to partake of His life and power. For in the degree that we recognize Him as the
Infinite Spirit of Life and Power that is today, at this very moment, working and
manifesting in and through all, and then, in the degree that we come into the realization
of our oneness with this life, do we become partakers of, and so do we actualize in
ourselves the qualities of his life. In the degree that we open ourselves to the inflowing
tide of this immanent and transcendent life, do we make ourselves channels through
which the Infinite Intelligence and Power can work.

The robber is robbed by his riches;
The tyrant is dragged by his chain;
The schemer is
snared by his cunning,
The slayer lies dead by the slain.
_Edwin Markham_

This is the law of prosperity: When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but
make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more
prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent,
and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is
today merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and
rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions.
Never give a moment to complaint, but utilize the time that would otherwise be spent in
this way in looking forward and actualizing the conditions you desire. Suggest prosperity
to yourself. See yourself in a prosperous condition. Affirm that you will before long be in
a prosperous condition. Affirm it calmly and quietly, but strongly and confidently.

Believe it, believe it absolutely. Expect it,--keep it continually watered with expectation.
You thus make yourself a magnet to attract the things that you desire. Don't be afraid to
suggest.

They might not need me--yet they might,
I'll let my heart be just in sight.
A smile so
small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity.
_Emily Dickinson_

The grander natures and the more thoughtful are always looking for and in conversation
dwelling on the better things in others. It is the rule with but few, if any exceptions, that
the more noble and worthy and thoughtful the nature, the more it is continually looking
for the best there is to be found in every life. Instead of judging or condemning, or
acquiring the habit that eventually leads to this, it is looking more closely to and giving
its time to living more worthily itself.
It is in this way continually unfolding and expanding in beauty and in power; it is finding
an ever-increasing happiness by the admiration and the love that such a life is always,
even though all unconsciously, calling to itself