other track of thought. Can we do the same occasionally without the help of another? Can we so switch off our whole train of thought from one subject to another? from one act to another? from considering how our house shall be built, to the proper sharpening of a lead pencil, without allowing a thought of the house to come in while sharpening that pencil? Can we sharpen a pencil for sixty consecutive seconds without thinking of something else? If we can, we have made great advance in concentrative power in doing what we have to do with all the might necessary, and reserving whatever of our might is not needed in the act for something else. If we can do this, we are possessed of a share of the greatest power in the universe, not only in making ourselves more and more happy, but also power for doing more and more of whatever we have to do, and doing it better and better. We then rule our minds. No one really rules until he or she rules him or herself.
If in any condition of mental distress you can turn, if but for a second, your whole thought on the sticking of a pin in your dress, you are for that second relieved of your trouble; you have in that second gained an atom of concentrative power.
We are then on the road to absolute rule over our minds and moods. At present, with many, it is the mood that rules the mind. We are as weathercocks,—turned by every passing breeze. We are not sure of a good-humored, cheerful condition of mind for an hour. It may be turned any moment into a state of discouragement, despondency, or irritation, by an event, an obnoxious individual, an unkind word from a friend, a message from an enemy, or even a passing thought. Thousands on thousands would rejoice to be able to forget what is disagreeable. Dwelling on it, be it trouble of debt, trouble of personal animosity, trouble of the affections, trouble of any kind, weakens body and mind, and weakens the person’s power to resist the trouble. Troubled thought is as muddy water. What you need is the power to turn this muddy water off and let clear water in. Troubled thought, mind racked with suspense and anxiety, literally bleeds you to death of your strength. To be able to forget, to turn thought into some more cheerful mood, is to stop this bleeding and get strength again.
To sum up the advantages derived from fixing our whole force on the doing of a single act:—
First, when a nail is driven with all the might of care, exactness, and precision, it is pretty sure to be well driven.
Secondly, in driving it, you have rested some, or many other departments, and are thereby the better prepared to exercise them. You can the better saw a board in two, if you have not been thinking board while driving the nail. Or if, while sewing, you have had your mind on that sewing, you will the better cut your cloth when the time comes to put your mind on your scissors. But to sew and “think scissors,” or to cut cloth and “think sew,” is to put one on the road to blunders and misfits.
Thirdly, focusing all the needed strength for driving the nail, pushing the needle, or handling the scissors, has, if so employed but for ten seconds, been giving you increased training in the power of concentration, and added, also, its mite to your stock of that quality.
Fourthly, it has added to your capacity for getting pleasure out of the doing of any and all things, whether such doing be of mind or body. Putting mind in muscle, brings pleasure from the exercise of muscle. It is the secret of all grace in motion, all skill and dexterity in action. The most graceful dancer is he or she who puts so much thought in the muscles to be used as to forget all things else, and so become entirely absorbed in the act and the expression of sentiment or emotion involved in it.
We can, by such exercise, add continually to our mental power, our executive power, our will power, our mental clearness. We speak of universal love as the consummation of happiness. Must not universal love extend to things and acts as well as persons? and if there is any act tending to our, or others, real good that is irksome to me in the doing, am I not, by so much, out of the domain of universal love?
We are fighting sin: but we can sin, too, when we fight. We can sin against body and mind, even when all their efforts are for the right. We can abuse body and brain, even in the performance of a benevolent act, just as much as in the performance of a wicked one; and the penalty is the same. Perhaps you say, “But I can’t carry out this idea in doing every thing, I have so many things at home to hurry me.” This makes no difference as to results. The laws of your being and mine, have no regard to the number of things we have to hurry us.
But how shall we gain the power of concentrating thought on any and every act, if through years of unconscious damaging habit in the other direction, we seem to have lost it entirely.
Pray for it, wish for it, demand it. Concentration is a quality: it is in the elements. Open your mind to it, and it will by degrees come to you. Think at times, or at regular intervals, if so you desire, on the word “Concentration.” A word is the symbol of a thought. So placing, if but for a few seconds, your mind on that thought, and you connect yourself with the current of concentrative or constructive thought in the universe; and as so you connect yourself with it, you draw the desired element from it. Every atom or accretion so drawn, is an additional stone in the solid foundation you are laying. It can never be lost, though it may require time ere that foundation is apparent to you.
“Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
You can ask when behind the counter. You can knock when walking on the street. You can make a genuine and profitable demand in a second; and seconds so employed are most profitable. If they do not bring the whole diamond, they bring diamond-dust; and it is such dust that builds up the gem within.
VII.
CONSIDER THE LILIES.
Thoughts are Things.
I want to preach a sermon to everybody, from the text, “Consider the lilies of the field,” because it has nothing in it disagreeable to anybody. It is not a sermon of threat or of warning, but of hope. The world to-day needs more hope. We are a hopeless lot. We are so, principally, because in so much of the past preaching we have been told how bad we are, and what would happen to us if we kept on in our badness. We are so little told that we have in us lots of goodness and power. We have been bad, largely because so many ministers have thought badly of us, and have so made us think badly of ourselves. People who think, badly of themselves are pretty sure to do badly. Scripture remarks, “As a man or woman thinketh, so is he or she.” It is when a man thinks poorly of himself, that he goes off and gets drunk, or does some mean thing. The pride that makes a man value himself is the pride that keeps from mean and degraded acts. Our race is now on the point of being woke up to the fact that every man and every woman are the possessors of more powers than now they dream of, and that, when they know how to use these powers, they will steer out of all evil into good. A lily, or any other plant or flower, grows and beautifies itself under the laws of the universe just as much as man or woman; and a man or woman grows and has grown all through the countless ages under such laws, just as much as the lily.
It is a grand mistake,—that of supposing that any man or woman of ordinary sense is the result of this one short life we live here. We have all lived, possibly, in various forms,—as animal, bird, snake, insect, plant. Our starting-point of matter in existence has been dragged on the sea’s bottom, embedded in icebergs, and vomited out of volcanoes amid fire, smoke, and ashes. It has been tossed about on the ocean, and lain, maybe, for centuries on centuries embedded in the heart of some post-pliocene mountain. We’ve crept up and crept up, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another, always gaining something more in intelligence, something more of force, by each change, until at last here we are, and we haven’t got far along yet. The lily has a life of its own and an intelligence of its own. You may differ with me here, and I expect you to do so. Most people think intelligence is confined to human beings, and every thing that looks
