TRY IT JUST FOR ONE DAY.
By Laura Bethell
It is your thoughts that are working out in your character, in your destiny, and in the character and destiny of others. Yet you go on thinking soul-and-body-destroying thoughts and wonder why things go wrong. This is not a sermon, only a serious thought which we might together follow for a few moments. You know the good Book says, "As a man thinketh . . . so is he." Would you like to have all your thoughts for any one day of your life written out and brought for your reading? Yet not one of these has failed to write itself on your character, on your physical being, on your destiny. You are a person of average good qualities, but you are human, and in the course of the day some thought of impatience, vanity, spite, or other selfishness comes up for expression. You entertain it, express it. What are some of its certain fruits? Trace them to the selfhood, then to your actions, then to the actions of others. It would astonish you to see how awry is your point of view in every consideration with which you have to deal. It would alarm you to trace its effects out to the secretions of the various organs of your body, to the character of life-blood your veins carry. It would startle you to know that at your door lies the responsibility in part for the ill thought and ill conduct of every brother who has been reached by your selfishness. But to go back. Suppose the thought of impatience, vanity, spite, or other selfishness when it rises receives no recognition, is rebuffed, as it deserves. What then? Does it persist? Maybe, but if the will (and, thank God, He has given us free will, has put that stamp of His Fatherhood upon us) stands firm for the right, the evil thought drops away from the mind as if it had not been, and the would-be vacuum is filled with the rush of life that is ever flowing upward, and our day is a perfect peace, the glory shines 'round about, and every one near feels the warmth and glow of it—the inspiration to rise to higher levels. Is it worth while to guard the every thought? Try it just for one day—Laura Bethell.