Thoughts I Met on the Highway | Page 7

master.
One thing is very certain--the mental points of view, the mental tendencies and habits at
twenty-eight and thirty-eight will have externalized themselves and will have stamped the
prevailing conditions of any life at forty-eight and fifty-eight and sixty-eight.

Who puts back into place a fallen bar.
Or flings a rock out of a traveled road,
His feet
are moving toward the central star,
His name is whispered in the Gods' abode.
_Edwin Markham_

We need changes from the duties and the cares of our accustomed everyday life. They are
necessary for healthy, normal living. We need occasionally to be away from our friends,
our relatives, from the members of our immediate households. Such changes are good for
us; they are good for them. We appreciate them better, they us, when we are away from
them for a period, or they from us.
We need these changes to get the kinks out of our minds, our nerves, our muscles--the
cobwebs off our faces. We need them to whet again the edge of appetite. We need them
to invite the mind and the soul to new possibilities and powers. We need them in order to
come back with new implements, or with implements redressed, sharpened, for the daily
duties.
We need periods of being by ourselves--_alone_. Sometimes a fortnight or even a week
will do wonders for one, unless he or she has drawn too heavily upon the account. The
simple custom, moreover, of taking an hour, or even a half hour, _alone in the quiet_, in
the midst of the daily routine of life, would be the source of _inestimable gain_ for
countless numbers.

I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.
_Whittier_

We need more faith in everyday life--faith in the power that works for good, faith in the
Infinite God, and hence faith in ourselves created in His image. And however things at
times may seem to go, however dark at times appearances may be, the knowledge of the
fact that "the Supreme Power has us in its charge as it has the suns and endless systems of
worlds in space," will give us the supreme faith that all is well with us, the same as all is
well with the world. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
Thee."
There is nothing firmer, and safer, and surer than Deity. Then, as we recognize the fact
that we have it in our own hands to open ourselves ever more fully to this Infinite Power,
and call upon it to manifest itself in and through us, we will find in ourselves an ever
increasing sense of power. For in this way we are working in conjunction with it, and it in
turn is working in conjunction with us. We are then led into the full realization of the fact
that all things work together for good to those that love the good.

Earth breaks up, time drops away,
In flows Heaven with its new day.

_Browning_
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