moods of sad reminiscence I was drawing to me elements of decay sadness.
First becoming very much depressed, I was next taken strangely sick, and became so weak I could hardly stand. I was continually in a nervous tremor and full of vague fears.
Why was this? Because in going back into my past life I had drawn on me my old mental conditions--my old mind--my own self of that period. But since that time I had grown a new mind--a new self, which thought and believed very differently from the old.
The new self into which I had grown since leaving that locality would not accept the old. It shook it off. It was the shaking off process that caused me the physical disturbance. There was a conflict between these two forces, one trying to get in, the other to keep it out. My body was the battle-ground between the two. No battle-ground is a serene place to live on when the battle is going on.
It was necessary in this case that I should look backward and live backward for a season to show me more clearly the evil of doing so. For no lesson can be really learned without an experience. It was not merely the evil of living backward in that particular locality that I came to see clearly. I saw also for the first time, where I had unconsciously been living in the past, and living backward in numberless ways and thereby unconsciously, using up force, which would have pushed me forward in every sense.
I understood, also, after passing through this process, why weeks before visiting that place I had felt depressed, and experienced also a return of certain moods of mind I had not felt for years. It was because my spirit was already in that place and working through this change. The culminating point was reached when my material self touched that locality.
All changes are wrought out in spirit often before our material senses are in the least aware of them. Let no one imagine that because I write of these Spiritual Laws that I am able to live fully in accordance with them. I am not above error or mistake. I tumble into pits occasionally, get off the main track--and get on again.
Power comes of looking forward with hope--of expecting and demanding the better things to come. That is the law of the Infinite Mind, and when we follow it we live in that mind.
Nature buries its dead as quickly as possible and gets them out of sight. It is better, however, to say that Nature changes what it has no further use for into other terms of life. The live tree produces the new leaf with each return of spring. It will have nothing to do with its dead ones. It treasures up no withered rose leaves to bring back sad remembrance. When the tree itself ceases to produce leaf and blossom, it is changed into another form and enters into other forms of vegetation.
I do not mean to imply that we should try to banish all past remembrance. Banish only the sad part. Live as much as you please in whatever of your past that has given you healthy enjoyment. There are remembrances of woodland scenes, of fields of waving rain. of blue skies and white-capped curling billows, and many another of Nature's expressions as connected with your individual life, that can be recalled with pleasure and profit. These are not of the decaying past. These are full of life, freshness and beauty, and are of today.
But if with these any shade of sadness steals in, reject it instantly. Refuse to accept it. It is not a part of the cheerful life-giving remembrance. It is the cloud which if you give it the least chance will overshadow the whole and turn it all to gloom.
The science of happiness lies in controlling our thought and getting thought from sources of healthy life.
When your mind is diverted from possibly the long habit of thinking and living in the gloomy side of things and admitting gloomy thought, you will find to your surprise that the very place the sight of which gave you pain will give you pleasure, because you have banished a certain unhealthy mental condition, into which you before allowed yourself to drift. You can then revisit the localities connected with your past, remember and live only in the bright and lively portion of that past, and reject all thought about "sad changes," and "those who have passed away, never to return, etc." I have proven this to myself.
Is there any use or sense in admitting things to have access to you which only pain and injure you? Does God commend any self-destroying, suicidal act? Grief does nothing but destroy the body.
Chapter Six
GOD IN THE TREES; OR, THE INFINITE MIND IN NATURE
YOU are fortunate if you love trees, and especially the wild ones growing where the Great Creative Force placed them, and independent of man's care. For all things we call "wild" or "natural" are nearer the Infinite Mind than those which have been enslaved, artificial ized and hampered by man. Being nearer the Infinite they have in them the more perfect Infinite Force and Thought That is why when you are in the midst of what is wild and natural--in the forest or mountains, where every trace of man's works is left behind you feel an indescribable exhilaration and freedom that you do not realize elsewhere.
You breathe an element ever being thrown off by the trees, the rocks, the birds and animals and by every expression of the Infinite Mind about you. It is healthfully exhilarating. It is something more than air. It is the Infinite Force and Mind as expressed by all these natural things, which is acting on you. You cannot get this force in the town, nor even in the carefully cultivated garden. For there the plants and trees have too much of man's lesser mind in them--the mind which believes that it can improve the universe. Man is inclined to think that the Infinite made this world in the rough, and then left it altogether for him to improve,
Are we really doing this in destroying the native forests, as well as the birds and animals, which once dwelt in them? Are our rivers, many of them laden with the filth of sewage and factory, and our ever expanding cities and towns, covering miles with piles of brick and mortar, their inhabitants crammed into the smallest living quarters, honeycombed with sewers below, and resounding with rattle and danger above—are these really "improvements" on the Divine and natural order of things?
You are fortunate when you grow to a live, tender, earnest love for the wild trees, animals and birds, and recognize then all as coming from and built of the same mind and spirit as your own, and able also to give you something very valuable in return for the love you give them. The wild tree is not irresponsive or regardless of a love like that. Such love is not a myth or mere sentiment. It is a literal element and force going from you to the tree. It is felt by the spirit of the tree. You represent a part and belonging of the Infinite Mind. The tree represents another part and belonging of the Infinite Mind. It has its share of life, thought and intelligence. You have a far greater share, which is to be greater still— and then still greater.
Love is an element which though physically unseen is as real as air or water. It is an acting, living, moving force, and in that far greater world of life all around us, of which physical sense is unaware, it moves in waves and currents like those of the ocean.
There is a sense in the tree which feels your love and responds to it. It does not respond or show its pleasure in our way or in any way we can now understand. Its way of so doing is the way or the Infinite Mind of which it is a part. The ways of God are unsearchable and past finding out. They are not for us to fathom. They are for us only to find out and live out, in so far as they make us happier. There is for all in time a serenity and "peace of mind which passeth all understanding;" but this peace cannot be put through a chemical analysis or the operation of the dissecting room.
As the Great Spirit has made all things, is not that All Pervading Mind and wisdom in all things? If then we love the trees, the rocks and all things as the Infinite made them, shall they not in response to our love give us each of their peculiar
