Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

The day of the parasite is fast passing. We are taught that Christ, in the carpenter-shop, dignified and consecrated labor. It is gospel, sound to the core, if its conditions be met; and in the training of youth for manhood and womanhood, it should be more the business of parents and society to see that the conditions are met.

Shakespeare teaches:

[ocr errors]

The labor we delight in physics pain. The chief danger that may come to us is to cease to strive to do things. We are only great in our failures. To be constant in active-good is the secret of progress. Listen to the mountain-stream, unchanging, ceaseless, determined, Constant! on, on until it becomes one with the deep sea. A frog pond smells; but a plow that worketh shines.

The human is the only being who is inconstant. Look around and see the walking-dead, the unemployed and idle. The 'dead' are not all in the graveyards. We call them 'dead'-but little we understand of their present evolution. For all we know, they may now be more alive than we are. The real dead-ones are walking all around us. We meet them everywhere,—in the home, in social gatherings, in the business-world. Our streets and highways are full of them. They seem to talk and laugh, and eat and drink, but it is all an illusion; they are 'dead-ones.' The body soon goes to decay,—dies,without self-consciousness. Death is a relative-term, applied to the condition where Nature, in a degree, has ceased to function. We see a man who is dead to Love. His soul has never awakened to the finer-forces. He is only a grinning-walking corpse. Another is consumed by the fire of lust and carnal desire. He is only a humananimal, the Soul-Man in him is dormant. Another is dead to the beauties of Nature. The Sunshine sings to him in vain. The exquisite charms of light and shade, of form and color, that play around us all, constantly, like a full orchestra, do not exist for him. These wonderbeauties to him are darkened cells. Many of us are dead to humanity. The appeal of things human does not interest us. We are too immersed in the worship of the idle gods of worldly-things. If by chance we get a glimpse

WORK-THE SECRET-DREAM

45

of the under crust, we see not. We are alive in proportion to our awakened consciences to meet the world of humanity as it comes to us, to make it part and parcel of our being, to give and gather strength and joy from others, in order that we can again give it out to our brother-sister. "Go to the Ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. "

We are not here to skylark, drift, dream and shun our burdens and crosses, but to work!-work out our own Karma and Glory. The material-world is a world of sin and sorrow, three tears to every joy. The only way out of this life of trouble is thru work-Work! We are healthier, happier, and holier when we love our work. Work is the vehicle which carries us to our chosen goal. The leisure class—the parasites, are the unhappy-the unvirtuous. It is only when we labor and love that we really live, not to pile up great worldly-wealth, but to serve mankind in humanity and justice. The highest possible form of work is the impersonal and unattachedservice for the emancipation of humanity from slavery of all kinds-physical, mental and spiritual.

Thomas Carlyle teaches: "Work is the noblest thing discovered under God's sky. Work is a blessing, because it opens the mind and you dig out the silver, gold, and other precious things with which the world of work is filled. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in Heaven, for in all True Work, there is something of Divineness. Blessed is he who has found his work." Longfellow says: "Work is my recreation, the play of faculty; a delight like that which a bird feels in flying, or a fish in darting thru the water. " Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote to a friend: "I know what pleasure is, for I have done good work today.

I Wish.

I Wish, I Wish!

The Secret-Dream of every heart is to learn how to make Wishes Come True Thru Work. Few are so dead in spirit as not to hope that there is somewhere a Golden

of

Key to the Knowledge Of Mental-Powers, and if we could only find it and learn how to use it, we could get many the good things we desire. The mystery of this hiddensecret is that even now it is more wonderful to us than we can dream-for it is that very desire which fires us on, in the delightsome work and makes us ever eager to know more of the secret meanings of Life.

Many of us respect The Law of CompensationKarma-seeing its workings in our daily lives. The more we know of this eternal and fixed law, the more we want to know, for we feel that if we could consciously know just what The Law requires, we would joyfully obey its teachings. Our greatest wish is to understand this lawto learn how to make our wishes come true-the good we inwardly desire and give out, the good we desire to

express.

"We must live in our work, to do it well;

We must dwell in its spirit and bow to its spell;
We must love it and know it to make it count,
We must feel it and trust it before we mount;
We must get from it comfort and pleasure and rest,
We must live in our work if we'd do it the best. "

Until we find real joy in doing good work, rest assured we have not found ourselves-the hidden-secret of Life— that which will carry us safely to the goal. When we are each in our right niche in life, we will work "like a house a-fire. "

Worship Work!

Work+Enthusiasm Happiness.

There is no good unless the Sun shines, no heat unless the fire burns. There is no real work unless the worker is on fire with enthusiasm and hope-a mad-mind! "Work, as Nature works in Fire!"

As I look out of my window, I see passing by with faltering steps, an old woman, wasted and worn-some one's dear old mother. Time has laid upon her its heavy hand. Her little old body is shrunken and bent, her skin is brown-spotted, yellow and deeply wrinkled, she is tooth

[blocks in formation]

less and almost blind. The fall of the curtain is near. Look at her and try to picture her as she once was-a little mite of sweet, pure humanity, clothed with beauty and love—just like my baby, My Diantha, will be. One involuntarily thinks of her as a sweet girl, erect, slender and graceful, straight and willowly as a young palmetto in the whispering moonlight. Her face, now so withered, was once round and full as the Moon; colored with the blushes of maidenhood; her ears now deaf, once full of love's whisperings. All her beauties are gone to decay

beneath December's blasts!

Why are we afraid of age?

Age should have all the reward and glory of youthdays well spent, should be the golden-time of a race well run, the crown of laurel in the three-score and ten.

"No, not afraid of Age, but afraid of Youth." How many do we see of these sad pictures of old age with its mental enfeeblement, with its hopeless and physical decay. Should not these pictures teach youth a great lesson?that youth is the vigorous and active season of life, the seed-time of untold possibilities!

Again, one turns his gaze across the street. In a cozy, happy home, lovingly cuddled in a young mother's arms, being loved into life, into Spring-time, by a thousand tender glances from her watchful eyes, is a laughing babe. Watch it! the active chubby-hands; the cooing and cooing! Wonder what it is thinking,-the innocent babe on its mother's bosom. Does it not seem the only being on earth that knows perfect peace? When a mother bends over her sleeping infant and watches its playing smiles, she feels that she is gazing on a supernatural being, something so unfathomly sweet, something so akin to, she knows not what-so pure and angelic, as if not of this world, but of another. So runs the world, and we go on our way-perhaps forgetting these pictures, perhaps learning from them lessons that lead to Wisdom's ways.

Amelia E. Barr helpfully teaches: "Be Serious In Childhood, that Ye May Be Joyful In Old Age. "

[ocr errors]

Education in Self-Government is the one essential thing in the early training of childhood. It is a far-reaching thot of some one that "Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity. ' And as Mark Twain says: "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education, " as pretzels are only doughnuts that never had a chance.

The first thing to teach a child is the Karmic-law or Self-Government. Seed-time, Harvest-time, from plantlife up to child-bearing. Teach it this law, then allow it to do its own thinking and choosing, developing its own natural gifts. Every child should be taught the Karmiclaw as it is taught the Nursery-Rhymes, the Santa Claus Story and the Home Songs. Knowledge gives depth to life and, like a beautiful painting, it must have foreground, middle distance and perspective, if it is to be called successful. Wasn't it our beautiful Sembrich, the prima donna, while yet a child of four years, whose dolls were taken away from her, she being put to piano-study, under scientific training? In after years she grew to master four of the great arts-voice, piano, violin and the singing languages.

I sometimes wonder if children should be allowed the foolish toys, mimicking many of the useless teachings of our fore-fathers, especially girl-toys, keeping Woman down as a "female and not allowing her to think as a human being. Everything that a child plays with molds its future. In the use of sex-toys may be found one of the strongest reasons why Woman has not been allowed to think for herself. To a mentally-undeveloped girl or woman, physical-sex is all she knows-it is her whole life. Let us pray that woman may outgrow female-ism. (which means faithlessness), and develop Womanhood,that which is faithful to all the Highest aspirations of the

race.

Physical-motherhood is not everything in life—it is only evolutionary-but to the average woman it is the only reason for being on earth. More important than

« ÎnapoiContinuă »