RADIANCIES OF JOY, INSPIRATION, AND SERENITY

I want to radiate the healthfulness of joy. Joy is the sunshine of the soul. Let it shine. If there is so much of it that it fills the soul, it makes of it a luminous body that must radiate light and warmth and health to others. The joyous man is the healthy man, and he that has health should joy to give it to others, whenever and wherever he can. My friend, Marshall P. Wilder, was a radiating center of joy as well as fun. He was funny, but he was more—he was joyous. There was no enmity, no malice, no unkindness, no cruelty in his fun; it was all healthful, kind, sane, and joyous.

A little girl once said of a certain man: "I like that man because he always shines at me." Don't you want to shine and make glad the innocent heart of a child, the striving heart of the young, the sorrowful and vexed heart of the middle-aged, and the weary heart of the old? Well did Robert Louis Stevenson say:

Make the most of your happiness, and the least of your sorrows. Use the telescope at the enlarging end for the former and at the reducing end for the latter, until you have learned what most of us have to learn—how foolish and wrong it is to make our joys mere incidents while we make our sorrows events.

I want to radiate a joy in the little things of to-day. Most people live in anticipation. The things of to-day are not enough. It is, "Oh, tomorrow—next week—next year—will surely bring me my heart's desire!" Let us learn that to-day is the fulfillment of the heart's desire. Take to-day all it brings, and it will make to-day so full that you will have no care for the joys of anticipation. Live now, so intensely, so fully, that life to-day will be compelled to deliver up all its treasures to-day. Hence every day becomes a perfect joy.

I want to radiate inspiration. I do not believe the idea that the saints of old who wrote "the Bible," are the only examples of inspiration. God inspires every good man and good woman, and all good in all people comes from Him, for He is the original source.

A self-centered life is a selfish life; a life that gives of itself freely and fully to all with whom it comes in contact is a life of inspiration—it is a radiating center of inspiration. It inspires to courage, to higher endeavor, to larger achievement. I need all this for myself, but I also long and desire to inspire it in others. Many a life seems to have inspiration for the carrying out of its own dreams, ambitions, desires, but none to give away. Yet the lives we touch may need just the impetus, the propelling force—light or vigorous—that we can give to enable the fulfillment in them of half dormant ambitions for good, the attainment of noble endeavor.

What would become of the chick in the egg if the mother hen did not brood over it? She forgets her own desires to move about in the stronger desire to bring into active being the hidden lives within the eggs. Let us "brood" over the souls of men and women, young men and maidens, boys and girls, and quicken to life the dormant powers of the weak, the tender. Aspirations may have begun in them that can only be quickened by warmth and love from outside. Oh, for wisdom, as well as love, to "brood" aright.

This implies a reaching out to others. It means an ability to feel even the hidden or only half-felt thoughts of others, and love and sympathy alone are delicate enough instruments to thus feel. The seismograph, that registers the oscillations of the earth's crust, is one of the most delicate of man-made instruments, yet the human heart that would respond unerringly to every beginning of aspiration and longing for good in every other human soul must be ten thousand times more sensitive than the seismograph. Such a sensitive instrument let each seek to become. We should hear the faintest beat of the human hearts near us and try to inspire those faint beats until they are strong, regular, powerful, certain.

Lives often possess, unknown to themselves, the germ cells of great powers and lofty ambitions that will never be developed unless some outside influence impregnates and vivifies them into existence. With thousands of people the seeds of good in their souls need to be quickened from the outside, and the help, the food, the desire to feed, must also be given from the outside, until they are born and nurtured into active, self-reliant existence. To be this outside quickening power is to be a radiant source of inspiration.

In this connection I have found that every life that is growing, expanding, enlarging, is a stimulation to every other life to grow, expand, enlarge. I seek, therefore, to radiate growth by my own growth. By being something, doing something, I want to help others be and do. Growth is the most natural thing in the world, but unfortunately, men and women are far from being natural. How then can I best radiate the inspiration for growth in them? By being natural myself—throwing off the artificialities, the restricting and restraining bands that prevent the best of myself from coming forth—by being real. This demands that I think for myself, that I decide for myself, that I act for myself. Once get into this habit and growth is certain and sure. The storms may beat upon such a life but, like the sturdy oak, it is thrusting its roots deeper into the soil in every direction—it is living for itself—and storms and tempests only make it the more sturdy and strong. This, in its turn, quickens other lives to growth, to self-thought, self-decision, self-action. Too long the leaders have tried to lull the power of thought in the masses. The church has said: "We will think for you on matters of religion. Accept what we teach or your immortal souls will be imperiled." The bar and bench have said: "In matters of law we will decide what you must think and do. If you differ from us your acts will be illegal." The colleges of physicians and surgeons have said: "We will think for you in matters of health. If you differ from us your bodies will become diseased and die." The schools and universities have said about everything: "Think as we teach you, for we have all knowledge and wisdom, and knowledge will die with us," and the result is that to find a being who dares to think and decide and act upon his own thoughts is as rare almost as to find a dodo. Thought is for you; growth is for you as well as for all the universe of God. Teach yourself to think for yourself as naturally and unconsciously as you breathe for yourself. Once and forever rise up in your manhood, or your womanhood, and say: "Henceforth I will think, and decide, and act for myself without reference to what other people think or say or do." And then you will begin to grow as you never grew before.

Doubtless at first you will grow "scraggly," and somewhat wild. But time and experience will prune you. Better do that than never grow at all. It is perfectly true that the way to learn to grow is by growing. We learn to do by doing. Do not be afraid to reach out for growth because you don't know how. If you reach out, and grow, you will soon learn the best way how.

There is another view-point to this question of growth. We have within ourselves the power to quicken or retard our own growth. Too many of us are lazy, physically, mentally, spiritually—yes, and cowardly. We don't want the trouble of thinking for ourselves. It requires energy and courage. It is so much easier for some of us to accept, to drift, to cast off all responsibility. But growth cannot so come. We must row against the tide to develop our muscles. If we accept what others say and do let it be because our best judgment, after due consideration and personal thought, has decided that it is the wisest and best thing for us to do.

Then, too, many of us do not grow because we are content with what we have. The hindrance to life of smug and ignorant contentment, the dwarfing power of self-complacent assurance, who can tell? This must be shaken out of every mortal before he can grow, and this spirit is by no means found in the ignorant and uneducated alone. Boston and New York, Chicago and Minneapolis, are as full of it as Podunk and Milpitas, Four Corners and Snigginsville. Indeed I do not know but that there is more of it per capita in the great centers than in the country villages. And how it retards growth. The complacent, correctly worded and phrased Bostonian, the haughty and self-assertive, successful New Yorker, is each assured that he has all there is of good to have, and that no good thing can come out of any other place than his. Yet God made other places and speaks to other people, and all should be humble and learn, reverent and grow.

Some do not grow because, having something, they are either too indifferent, too lazy, too cowardly, or too fearful to make extra exertion, to reach out after, to strive for more than they already have. The man who hid his talent in a napkin is a type of this class. Let us arouse from our indifference, our cowardice, our fearfulness, and seek to become something larger, better, more useful than hitherto we have been. To such there is no growing old. Gray hairs may come, wrinkles may seam the face, yet the heart is ever nourished from the fountain of perpetual youth. The life is ever fresh and full of exuberance, and therefore is a radiating center of youth and energy.

The older one becomes in years, the greater should become the growth of the mind and the soul.

said Rabbi Ben Ezra, and he spoke the truth. What radiating centers of spiritual growth in others are old men and old women, who have learned the simple secret of constant growth in themselves, which is the secret of perpetual youth.

Growth means fruitage, growth brings flowers. The fruit and flowers of life that nourish, refresh, and delight others come only to those who grow. Roses always come on the new growth; fruit buds best on the new branches; the best grapes are always on the new stems. And the older the bush, the tree, the vine, the more beautiful, the more rare, the more delicate the fruit and flowers.

The life that is growing is constantly searching for nourishment. The leaves of the tree absorb from the sun and the atmosphere, the roots from the soil. If the sun does not shine directly upon the leaf it reaches out, turns around, struggles until it puts itself in proper relation to receive all that the sun has to give. If the root cannot reach the nutriment, the moisture, it stretches and grows up, down, around, over, under, through obstacles until it gains that which it needs for life and growth.

Human lives are like trees. They must turn leaves to the sun, send out rootlets and tendrils in every direction, for moisture and nourishment, searching until they find, and demanding until they get all they desire. And the glory of this searching and demanding by the human soul is that there is a whole infinity of space and power, living, palpitant, energized for it to search in. If it search it cannot search in vain. If it demand it must receive, and receive abundantly.

Above all things, and in all things, at all times and under all circumstances I would radiate a calm serenity. There is a rich fullness to me that is wonderfully significant in that first line of John Burroughs' Waiting. Look at it and let it sink in:

Serene, I fold my hands and wait.

Few are serene, fewer still can wait. We are all in a hurry, we are all impatient, we are easily ruffled. How rare the man or woman of self-poise—the being who has full command of his soul, mind, and body. Anger, jealousy, misunderstanding, backbiting, lying, slander, hate, praise, blame—all alike have no effect in disturbing the beautiful calmness of the serene of soul, who are affable alike to friend and foe, helpful alike to each, sympathetic alike to each. There is no haughtiness in serenity, as some suppose, though there is much pride. Yet it is not the pride of conceit, the pride of power, of possession, of superiority, but the wholesome, joyous, happy sense of a full-flowing life, every good channel of which is healthily full—healthily flowing to healthy ends. That, to me, is serenity. The self-consciousness that "all things are working together for good," and working to the full. There is no walking delegate to dictate the length of the hours such a life shall work, or live. It lives for the very joy of mere living, and living means working, giving, doing for others, more than for self.

I can see, dream of, long for, anticipate the possession of, some such serenity, and my ideal of what it is and my reaching after it is what I would radiate, though as yet I am but as one who seeks after rather than as one who has already attained.

Personally I am naturally the very opposite of serene. Physically I used to be easily disturbed. A whisper in an audience of two thousand people would distress me greatly, and render me intensely nervous. I have many a time "called people down," in my own audiences and by sheer force of will compelled silence, and when at concerts, have asked people (not always either gently or kindly) to cease their rude whisperings, yet, at the same time, I never once lost my calmness, the possession of myself, without intense annoyance. I longed to be able to suppress the whispers without a ripple in my own mind or soul, by the sheer force of right, kindliness, courtesy, serenity. The more I possess serenity the more I shall radiate it. It is a priceless boon, to be desired more than great wealth, and, when possessed, to be prized and treasured more than all the jewels of the world.