Part 4

=YOU CAN WORK MIRACLES=: A miracle is a wonder, a marvel, a supernatural occurrence, a result obtained by suspension of natural processes. You can do that any day. The miracle is that so few do it.

You know Ibsen's play, "The Doll House." How the wife forged a note, raised the money to send her husband to regain his health. How he did regain it, returned to great prominence and wealth as a banker. Then the blackmailer threatened to reveal the crime. How the husband rushed to his wife in anger that she should have done such a thing, that it meant ruin to him in his high position. How the wife replied: "Why, I expected the miracle. That you would save me as I saved you. That you would say that you did it." If he only had, what a marvelous, what a wonderful, what a supernatural thing it would have been. Christ made whole and useful a withered hand. People say, "O, that I could do so wonderful a thing." Well, why don't you. See the withered hands around you. A young woman with a beautiful voice, but no means to cultivate it. You have a thousand or so in the bank? You can save that voice to a world that needs song. A young man with a fine mind, helpless to go thru college, you have means to give that mind to a world in power and usefulness. The natural thing is for you not to do it, the supernatural, the miracle, is that you are divine enough to do it. A man, a woman, is forsaken, friendless, cruelly judged by the world, their goodness blasted, their spirit crushed, their hearts bleeding, their lives made useless, withered. The natural thing is to avoid such, stand aloof, be quite scornfully indifferent. The miracle would happen if you went to them, lifted them up, restored them to society. I have said avoid useless people, I mean selfish, lazy, purposeless, aimless people. Sir Humphrey Davy worked a miracle when he took the boy Farrady out of a stable loft and gave him a chance to cultivate his genius. The Sistine Chapel is Angelo's miracle. When the band on the deck of the Titanic, under the pale light of the morning stars played "Nearer My God To Thee," to give hope and strength to men and women struggling to be saved, each player, as the voice of his melody was forever hushed behind the shining emerald gates, in the crystal tomb of the sea, went down crowned with the glory of a selfless miracle. The natural thing would have been for them to have frantically fought to save themselves. What superb opportunities to work miracles have passed you! What magnificent possibilities are still right before you! The cripple is always at your Gate Beautiful. Are you divine enough, wonderful enough, marvelous enough, supernatural enough to say: "Such as I HAVE, GIVE I unto thee"? Do it quickly. Do it, and you shall know daily the joy of hearing the Father say: "This is My Son in whom I am well pleased."

If there is any one person on this earth to whom I take off my hat and wait until they safely pass, it is a school teacher. The most obscure teacher, back in the country hills, unknown, unthought of, unpraised, but with loving patience unfolding the secrets of knowledge to little frowzy headed boys and girls, can look into her mirror at evening and behold the face of an angel.

Flowers cast their wealth upon the vacant air, and rich fathers oft cast their wealth upon the vacant heir.

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Some people are so sensitive that if you call them "Honey," they will break out with the "hives" the next morning.

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Do not divorce your husband because he has cold feet, perhaps he got them since you were married.

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Christ stopped every funeral that came his way and sent the mourners home singing. Funeral sermons were too sad for Him to preach. Every sick room He entered became a health resort. He made grave-yards unpopular.

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Many a lonely bachelor looking back over the stretch of years, recalls the charming moonlight nights, when the cool summer air was perfumed with old fashioned flowers, and he looked into the loving eyes of his sweetheart; recalls how the crimson glow of youth flushed her velvet cheeks as he took her warm hand in his; recalls sadly that if he had only given that hand "a square deal," played it in the game of life, he would have had "a full house" now.

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Would you like to become young? Then tap new reservoirs of youthful thoughts, irrigate your alkali desert from the fountains of youth, become youthfully active in some new field of work. Vanderbilt added $100,000,000 to his fortune after he was eighty. Wordsworth earned the Laureateship at seventy-three. Theirs established the French Republic and became its first president at seventy-two. Verdi wrote "Falstaff" at eighty. Sir Walter Scott was $600,000 in debt when he was fifty-five, but thru his own efforts he paid all and made himself a lasting name.

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Book knowledge is not all. A wealthy, fond father, fearing his son would be contaminated by college life, had him educated at home. When he was twenty-one, he took him to ride thru the streets of the city. They passed a female seminary just as the doors opened and a crowd of young women came out. The dear boy grabbed his father's arm and cried, "What are those?" His father replied, "They are only goslins." Later in the day, the fond father said: "My son, you have obeyed me, have faithfully completed your education, now I am ready to spend $50,000 to give you the highest ambition of your life." The boy looked up in glad wonder and said: "O, dad, give me a goslin."

=Lesson Second

SUPREME CONTROL OF AGE=

=YOUTH IS ETERNAL:= Nature never grows old. The flowers that bloomed in Eden are blooming to-day. Just as lovely, just as sweet, just as fresh and unchanged. The roses your life-mate brings home to you, have the same fragrance as the roses Adam brought to Eve, if he thought of it. The lovely stars that glitter in the azure fields above you tonight, have the same loveliness that gleamed in tremulous glory down upon the shepherds beyond Bethlehem. The radiant, life giving rays of the sun that ten thousand, thousand years ago warmed mother earth into vernal spring life, are the same life giving rays that shall bring again the spring-tide. Life never grows old, it only changes form. Your life is perpetual, then your youth may be perpetual. The human race is ever young, its units fall off. You should be younger at sixty, than at sixteen, because you have more of life. Growing old is a habit. People travel along the years up the hill of life, till they reach a certain point where they begin to THINK they must be growing old. Think its time to sag. Think its time to droop. Think its time to begin the process of decay. Then begin to talk about it. To write letters about it. To feel around for it. To look for it in others. Finally the habit they inherited from the race is on, and they are old. Life is endless, but you can think it short, "The power of an endless life," is within you, but by thinking you can turn it to the white ashes of old age. THINK YOUTH AND YOU STAY YOUNG.

=YOUTH IS GROWTH:= Keep growing and you keep young. A new idea will make you feel younger. Develop it and it will develop you. Quicken your mental throb with new ideas. Begin now. Stop talking about being too old to grow. You pass by trees daily, a hundred, two hundred years old, still they are growing. The rose bush on a wall in China is supposed to be over a thousand years old, it bears more roses now, than when it was a mere slip of a vine of only one hundred. Gladstone at eighty-two was a growing statesman, and elected prime minister of England for the fourth time. Cato at eighty began to study Greek, and renewed the youth of his mind. Donald Davis is a growing hunter at one hundred and three. Goddard Diamond was a growing teacher of health, when he was one hundred and eleven. I know a bright, cheery lady who is just beginning a new study for decorating china, along with her household cares, and she is eighty-eight. Also another woman who has taken up a new process of enlarging drawings into water-colors and she is eighty-one years young. The fig tree withered when the Master of Life found it not growing, producing, creating. When you stop growing you will wither by the same law. Grow something, create something, produce something and the law of youth will pervade your Being.

=YOUTH IS OBSERVING THE LAW:= Observing the law of health, the law of mind, the law of growth, the law of harmony, the law of production, the law of expression, the law of beauty, the law of selflessness. Keep your bodily forces up. Rebuild destroyed tissue. Keep the system free of waste. Stop poisoning your body with anger, hate, jealousy, fear. Keep your mind sweet. Think cheerfully. Avoid mental turmoil and excitement. Two great enemies of youth are worry and fear. The next is selfishness. Think every morning when you rise--"This new day is new life. It is fresh from the hand of God. It is mine to use. I will increase it unto the Perfect Day." Grow in each day, and make each day grow. Check discord. Quit useless discussion for it weakens and withers. Stop quarreling. Check complainings. Root criticism out of your life. You are bigger than these things. Get into harmony. You are of the world, upon worlds, universe unto universe. Study your words to make them have beauty, your walk to have grace, your personality to make it magnetic, your smile to give courage and comfort, your presence to have it healing, helping, inspiring. "If there be any virtue in whatsoever things are lovely, think on those things."

=YOUTH IS LOVING WORK:= Like what you do. Do what makes you and others happy. Enter your daily work with joy. Adjust it until you do like it. Learn to love work for the happiness it brings. Put joy into your work in the morning and you will find it multiplied into happiness at night. Work is a law of youth. Inaction is decay. Inertia is death. Men and women do not usually lose their positions, they drive their positions away from them. The law of work will not stand personal abuse, any more than the law of beauty will endure brutality. Form an ideal of your work, make a mental picture of it, simplify it, orderly it, beautify it, then glorify it. Start the process in the slightest degree and you will get a result. Put a new shock absorber on your disposition. Bring your fine sensibilities to your work, be big morally, be deep mentally, and work with confident expectation. Put rules and system into your daily task. Exercise your self-control, your self-possession, self-mastery, march up to your task with efficiency backed up by a dominant will. Realize your Supreme Personality in your work. Put the absolute "I AM," into your purpose of toil. Put dominating decision "I HAVE DECIDED," into your efforts. Put invincible determination, "I WILL," into your complex problem. Put irresistible confidence, "I SHALL ACHIEVE," into your ardent desires. You will then love work. When you come to love work you will not exhaust yourself in it, you will not tire your brain and body with its friction, because you will not work with selfish purposes, but work to enrich the world. "Love is the fulfilling of the law."

=YOUTH IS SUPREME CHEERFULNESS:= To be funless is to be lifeless. Good cheer is the tonic of youth. If you are so sad you cannot laugh at something, then laugh at nothing. "Laugh and the world"--you know it. An ounce of smiles will give you more real life than seven tons of solemncholy. Cheerfulness and prosperity go hand in hand. Bathe in mirth. Frolic in some sunshine daily, even if you live in Pittsburgh and have to make your own sunshine. Make fun, don't always buy it. You can cure disease and kill the Devil with laughter. Cultivate an infectious laugh. Mirth makes work easy. Read humor and learn to tell it. Practice telling a good, funny story. Be a quick wit. There is a bright side to everything in this world, even to a dark-lantern. The end of the film is sure to be jolly. Good cheer attracts good luck. Cheer up. If you haven't a smile get one of somebody and wear it as your own. "Let thine heart cheer thee." Give it out-let. Go to sleep with a smile on your face and you will awaken with a joy in your heart. Let your humor be rich humor. Laughter is the cipher-key to a man. It is one of the most delightful sounds of earth. Most utterly lost is the day you laugh not. Mirth clears the mirrors of the mind. A person who does not laugh is not healthy. "A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine." To forget your sorrow begin to cultivate joy. Keep away from sad people, or you will be sad. Stop rehearsing your grief, you only enlarge it. If you suffer grief, find someone in trouble and cheer them, encourage them, help them, and you will deliver yourself. You will comfort yourself when you comfort another. You cannot lose a loved one, tho absent from the earth plane they are nearer than ever. Life and love never change. Death is an unreality thought made. Our friends take on a new embodiment that is glorified in life and spirit. When you believe you were "created in His image," and "are a partaker of the divine nature," it is easier to believe, "you shall arise in His likeness." Some day we shall all believe we have not disfigured, morally broken natures, but Divine Natures, supreme in limitless power. Traditions, teachings, education, environment of generations of thinking have disfigured, morally broken, sin burdened humanity. All are thought created conditions. Thought made limitations. Thought made original sins. System cultivated human wrongs. Institutionalized teachings of error. But you should know the universe is one undivided Soul. You are a yoke-fellow with God. You are a part of One Complete Life. You are a lobe of the Infinite Brain. You are a Supreme Personality of Absolute Personality. Nothing that has life is God-damned.

Where love is only a dream, the marriage is an alarm clock.

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If you cannot endure your mother-in-law, you can begin your plans at once to live alone, when your children are married.

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A quarrel between two people to settle things, is a good deal like a dog fight in a flower bed, the only things that get settled are the flowers.