THINKING | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

THINKING.

The demand of the time is for consecrated and trained thinking.

There are thousands of people who have intense longings for usefulness, grievous repentings over their shortcomings, fitful arousings to new resolves, and corresponding lapses into unprofitableness. They "never are, but are always to be" of some account in helping on God's cause. This writing shall not be useless, if some of these are aided to find the why of their repeated failures, and the how of avoiding them.

An item of advice to seamen, given by the London admiralty, in regard to the conduct of a ship in a hurricane, begins with, "Stand erect, and look in the wind's eye." I would say, let those people who have the rotary motion hinted at, who are always planning, and always failing, stand erect, and look the difficulty in the eye. I think in nearly every case the trouble lies in the lack of consecrated, disciplined thought.

Much fine thinking is in the interest of selfishness, mammon, sin, and so under the ban of the good God. It may move men mightily, but it is down the inclined plane of sensualism. Such thinkers may be gifted with "The art Napoleon, Of wooing, winning, wielding, fettering, binding, The hearts of millions, till they move as one." Yet they are doomed by the inherent force of law to sure defeat. The children of their brain may go forth as beautifully clad as angels of light, but they bear only harm and hurt. The simple thoughts of very plain people, with the chrism of God's "well done" upon them, the vitality of his love pulsating through them, are often wonderfully potent in overturning dominant, evil forces, prying the race up toward heaven.

What if your thought force is very little! What if it cannot touch bottom in subjects of any considerable depth! What if it tires before it reaches the hights where strong people stand, enjoying a broad outlook upon the world of facts! So much the more need to insure its success, by bringing it into harmony with God's thought. His purpose is the only engine that moves steadily and surely. Fasten to that and you can not fail. Many consecrate their emotions to Christ, and reserve their mental powers. They sing and shout, praise and pray, perform duties and charities, any thing, every thing, but use their brain to work out the problems that affect the success of God's cause. They think energetically enough about other matters, but their religious life is left to work itself out in a hap-hazard way, as fancy or caprice may dictate. Hence, their efforts are narrow, often mechanical, and lacking freshness. They do good execution sometimes, but oftener they waste force, blunder, and fail. God has use in his service for the entire man, heart, brain, and all. And what is there so worthy our thought as the salvation of men, and our agency in it?

Look at your life, my friend. A regal purpose sways scepter over it—a love, an ambition, or selfishness. You intend to escape hell, and gain heaven; but you mean to have money, place, or power, on the way. You want Christ to save you, but he can not get the consent of your will to dethrone that regnant carnality. You think for it, plan for it, study modes of gratifying it, and the scraps of time left you devote to Him who bought you with his own blood. Perhaps you imagine that, sometime, God is going to send an immense passional force upon you that will bear you up to a higher plane—suddenly making your life what it ought to be, nobly consecrated to him. Not so. Upon your will rests the responsibility. When you decree, "I will consecrate all my powers to Christ," you will find him not "slack concerning his promises."

As the father holds the hand, and points the arrow of his little archer boy, so God will direct our consecrated thought to the mark, and supplement it with his own strength.

Mental faculties thus consecrated to God, must be cultured and developed to the highest possible power. Many mistake here. As if they should say, "yes, my mind is given to Christ. Let him strengthen and use it as he will. I will lie passive in his hands"—forgetting that true Christian passivity is intensely active. As well say, "My body is given to Christ. Let him care for it. His power keeps me alive any way, so I'll save myself the drudgery of eating—spend that time in prayer and praise." It takes but half a glance to see how suicidal such an idiotic conclusion; and yet some pious people starve and cramp their minds to strengthless emaciation, and then wonder at their narrow usefulness.

There is a close analogy between physical and mental hygiene. From the fall both body and mind are diseased, and the Bible remedies are the best possible for each—temperance, moderation, rest from care, activity, and the tonics of hope and joy. The best agencies to keep the body healthy, and to increase its vigor, are proper food and exercise. If a man's body is stout and athletic, it is not a mere happiness. He has grown up according to law. So of the mind. It is impossible to have it firm and robust if it is fed on trash and in idleness.

The unwashed masses, that fester in city lanes, are fattened for the maw of the pestilence by the foul air, decaying vegetables, and diseased meats. They go about with poison in their blood and rottenness in their bones. When the cholera comes it sweeps them into the grave by thousands. The cheap novels of the day, fulsome, sensual, vile, poison the mental life of the masses, and fit them for the pest-winds of free-lovism, Mormonism, spiritism, devilism. That the mind may be vigorous and healthy, let its food be books of history, of art, of science, of pure poesy, and, above all, as a staple, God's Book, that fountain and aggregate of all truth.

The racer in the Olympic games was subjected to the closest diet during his preparatory period. We are under drill for a spirit contest. We must avoid all mental food that can in the least impair our powers; for not the olive wreath, or the applause of excited men, awaits our success, but the crown of glory and the "well done" of God.

We cannot have reliable muscles without constant, judicious exercise. Kaspar Hauser, confined in a small room the first years of his life, was a man in stature, and yet unable to make any but the simplest muscular efforts. There are millions of mental Kaspar Hausers. So hurt are we by the curse, it is necessary to oblige a muscle to repeat a movement thousands of times before it can be done with ease or grace. So we have to force each mental faculty through a required task, again and again, before it can perform it quickly or well. Hence the utility of classical and mathematical culture. There is little in a college curriculum that can be put to practical use in common life; but, as a race-horse has to be driven under lash and rein, day after day, to bring every muscle into reliable action, so the mind has to be disciplined month by month, and year by year, before it can be trusted to attempt any high achievement. I know many drone through collegiate drills, substituting other men's work for their own, and are but little better for it; while others outside the schools have strength enough to hold themselves to the discipline that develops intellectual power.

By what processes shall we develop mental strength? Not by devouring books. Seneca said, "Read much, but read few books." Not by appropriating other men's fine thoughts. The memory is a noble faculty, but it is only one of a commonwealth, in which the rights of each member must be respected to insure the safety of the whole. Having dead men's mental coin rattling from the pen-point or tongue tip may make a clever quotationist, but never a rich, ripe thinker. It may excite the bravos of the crowd, but it shall go hard, if one find time from all this, to think out the mechanism that shall raise the race so much as a hair's breadth toward God. Any faculty of body or mind can be developed to almost superhuman energy. The Indian can track his enemy through forests and over prairies, where the white man could see not the slightest trace of a human foot. He is trained to it. The scholar can weigh the stars, and mark out their orbits, though the red man they are but specks of light that help him find his trail through the woods. The Indian's outer sense is trained, the thinker's inner sense; and each, by practice, doing the thing again and again, undiscouraged by failures, and that unwearied by repetitons, aiming at a mark that must be hit some time. Careful seeing develops sight. The long vision of the sailor, and the close vision of the watchmaker, illustrate this. Careful thinking develops thought. People think enough. We think constantly, and as involuntarily as we breathe. The trouble is, we do not think steadily—to a purpose.

"But my life is crowded with earnest work. I am a man of business—a woman of care. I can't take time for these thought exercises." Then you, of all people, most need them. As a farmer practices gymnastics at the plow handles, so do you exercise your thought upon your work, and you can find out how to lighten it. What makes the difference in the price of wages among people who go out to service? "Some work better." Rather they think more. You have a servant who never forgets how you like a thing done. She thinks. You will give her a dollar a week more than you give another who brings you just as pleasant ways, larger experience, and more muscle, but who does not think. A housekeeper who thinks has her affairs in a compact, manageable shape. Her planning, "executive force" men call it, and when they speak of the same ability used in what they regard more dignified work, adds

at least one-half to her strength. And no small item is this, for what worlds of home comfort come from the brain of a good, efficient housewife; and how many important failures are due to the ill-temper and nervous unhinging caused by a smoky breakfast room, burnt steak or muddy coffee! This calls up the old story of the blacksmith causing the loss of the empire by shoeing badly the general's horse.

Among farmers and mechanics the question of success seems to hinge upon the formula—less muscle and more thought. If a man thinks nimbly and strongly enough to keep another set of muscles at work, he becomes two men. If a hundred, he multiplies his producing force a hundred times; and just so far as he can think out the work of these men, better than they can themselves, he gains a profit on their muscle. This is the way honest men get rich. If I can plan so that a man's strength is worth as much again as it would be without my thinking, I am entitled to the extra gains. That is fair. The thought fields are open to all. If he wants the money and the fine home it will buy, let him learn to think. Thinking is work, but it pays. This holds good through all orders of workers, from the freedman, digging under illegal apprenticeship, to Napoleon and Bismark, who are playing their grand European game, with pope and princes for chessmen. The measure of a man's patient, incisive thinking, is generally the measure of his success. The speculating folk who think that the prizes of this world are set up to be gambled for, may ride the wave occasionally, but it is only the steady rowing that brings surely to port.

I suppose one of the most potent agencies for the perpetuity of the Christian church is family religion; and yet how little do good people understand and use its power. In many pious families the religious is done in church, and in prayer and class meetings, and the services of the domestic altar are gone through in a meaningless, mechanical way. A long chapter is read, with no explanations, and a long prayer ground out. Little feet fidget upon chair rounds until they are nervous enough to kick "prayers" out of the calendar. Big boys and girls rebel. Father scolds, and, of necessity lets them do as they please. Mother comes from her private devotions with red eyes, and a resolution to get the church to pray for, and the minister to talk to them, in hopes they'll be "converted this winter." Ah me, what blunderers! The power of music untried. The ability to interest by teaching the truth with note and anecdote—giving Hebrew eyes with which to see into this wonderful Hebrew book, which alone contains the way of salvation—all these unused, and the children growing up Bible-haters—going down from a formal family altar to the world of woe!

Sabbath-school workers need to think. Go to the public schools in our large towns; see what changes have been wrought in the modes of instruction; how object-lessons, pictures, blackboards are used to make truth simple and tangible. Here, again, "the children of this world are wiser than the children of light." Sabbath-school teaching has undergone a change, but there are only a few pioneer thinkers who bring the same acumen to these duties that are so useful in the public schools. Their wonderful modes, that seem to have such power in bringing the children to Jesus, did not come from the intuitions of genius, nor from a religious frenzy. The love of Christ constrained them to work, common sense held them to close thought, and thus they have matured these plans—upon the same principle that thinking wrought Robert Fulton's crude notions of steam navigation into the Great Eastern, a floating city. Probably your brain is as good as theirs. If you will so work it, you may accomplish similar results.

But of all men Christian pastors have the greatest need of earnest thinking. In every department of labor there ought to be improvement. Take, for instance, the prayer-meeting. Its outer mechanism is often left to adjust itself. The shallow and bold are allowed to crowd out the talented and timid, the prayers to be as long and mechanical, the hymns as badly sung and tedious, the exhortations as prosy and tiresome as dullness and formality can make them. One needs a deep degree of piety to attend some church prayer-meetings week by week. The young and moderately religious will not go. Of course they need to, but there's no use in scolding. The only way is to think and pray till you find how to make the meeting interesting and profitable. The people hunger for the bread of life. If they are fed at the prayer-meetings they will go to them. This holds good of all social means of grace. Some ministers run in deeply worn grooves, round and round, year in and year out, doing things just as they did a quarter of a century ago, though mechanics, art, science, teaching, everything has made marked advance in that time. Now and then a revival influence lifts them out of the ruts for a few weeks, but they soon fall back into the old tread-mill processes.

Random shots from the pulpit will never answer in place of well-matured plans, upon which kind common sense can bring all parties to agree. In officering the church the closest thought is necessary. It is an economy of time and force to think a whole day over the filling of an important office, rather than have to manage or piece out an unruly or defective incumbent. With his thinking powers consecrated to Christ, "leaning not to his own understanding," but trusting the divine guidance, let the pastor study his material, arrange and dispose it to the best advantage.

When the thought of the church is fully consecrated and thoroughly cultured, shall she move forth "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." —Mrs. J. F. Willing, in Ladies' Repository.