BORROWED TROUBLE The question of the women on the way to the tomb is a picture of the way we worry about imaginary trouble. They asked: "Who shall roll us away the stone?" We say: "How can I bear the misfortune that I fear may come to me to-morrow?" We fret and worry and complain because of difficulties we think are in our path-only to find that our path is not blocked at all. We try to cross bridges before we come to themand we do not come to them; we never come to them. Our eyes are fixed on trouble and disaster-and the trouble and disaster are not for us. With the Psalmist we cry: "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?" just when our lives reveal that His goodness and mercy are following us, and that underneath us are the everlasting arms.

HAVE FAITH IN MAN'S GOODNESS

Have faith in the innate goodness of all men and all conditions. Do not condemn, no matter how great the provocation. What you think, you create in your own consciousness. Enlarge your range of vision, and you may see good in what now seems evil. God is good and God is All, hence there can be no real condition but the good. Why should we waste our time fighting the evil? If we build our character upon Faith, Understanding and Love, with the great I Am as the focal center, we shall become pillars in the Temple of God.

A friend whom you have been gaining during your whole life you ought not to be displeased with in a moment. A stone is many years becoming a ruby; take care that you do not destroy it in an instant against another stone.-Laadi.

LIVING IN POISE

To improve yourself, the first essential is to prevent all waste of energy by living in poise. The second essential is to use. your imagination in picturing those things that you want to accomplish now. And the most practical use that can be made of the imagination is to picture your talents and faculties larger, greater and more perfect. To imagine in mind. a larger and more perfect talent is to give the creative forces in mind a better model; and as these forces always create. after the fashion of the latest model, they will consequently create the larger and the more perfect talent.-Larson.

SHADOWS

When I go up to bed at night
My mother lets me take a light

To guide me up the stairs; And when I set my candle down I give a careful look around

Before I say my prayers.

I know that God is always near
And that I have no cause to fear
Those shadows on the wall.
But when I see them all around

I think some reason should be found

Why-they-are-there-at-all! -Inez Townsend Tribit, in the War Cry.

"The easiest way 'round a good many things is to go right through 'em," paradoxically remarked a shrewd old lady. When we have wasted our breath in complaints and our time in looking for ways. of escape, we usually find that the best way, if not the only way, out of our difficult tasks and unwelcome duties is right through them. Troubles are like fogs; they grow less dense as one plunges into them.

N the last fifteen or twenty years different cults and sects have arisen, which have tried to make the teaching of Jesus Christ practicable. They not only taught the precepts of charity, brotherly love and truth, and the self-evident virtues, but they have gone so far as to put the healing element into their religion and carry it into every-day life. These people are called metaphysicians (higher physicians, physicians above the physical, or physicians of the mind); they recognize that Mind is the source of all that is, and that Mind is not only the Creator, but the Restorer of that which has been created. It is evident that in order to put the principle of mind into a working relation one had to understand how mind worked, and the laws under which it expressed itself.

Gradually it has been found that one can, through a certain set or sets of words, wipe out, or erase the effects of past thoughts in the subconsciousness, or that mind in man which works automatically. It was also found that the converse of the proposition was likewise true; that affirmations of soul-qualities could be made a reality by holding that they were part of the consciousness of the individual. But it is a fact, paradoxical as it may seem, that a denial is an affirmation. In other words, one cannot deny a certain trait, characteristic or habit without subconsciously acknowledging or seeing the opposite. Thus the denial is a concrete, concentrated working principle of mind, which, when rightly employed, is indispensable to the un

foldment of the soul or spiritual growth. But in order to accomplish their work denials must be made in a manner which sweep or blot out all the undesirable qualities sought to be erased, not in a way which leaves a doubt as to their efficacy in the mind of the user, or a lurking suspicion that the phantom still remains in the consciousness; and that it cannot be wholly dislodged or resolved into nothingness.

In order to make denials, therefore, it is necessary for the student of metaphysics to gain a comprehension of himself as the Son of the Living God; to comprehend the extent of his Divine heritage as the heir to all that God is; to know that he contains and exercises all the Divine functions and qualities of his Father. To know one's self in that relation is to have attained a conscious union with the Source of all Creation; a perfection which cannot see imperfection in any form; a self-poise which passes through the turmoil of the common, every-day struggle serene and smiling, brushing aside, like a cobweb, the seeming darkness which impedes spiritual progress, and emerging into the sunlight of a fuller understanding upon the passing of each experience. Such a one is not sick; financial difficulties have no terror for him; strife and struggle play no part in his life, because the course is mapped out by a Greater Hand than his, and the way is made smooth and thornless.

And how have these attained? Simply by knowing and understanding their relation to God, their sonship-through

the realization that all that the Father hath is theirs. Perhaps their way has not always been pleasant; perhaps they have been buffeted about in the old thought, cuffed by one rough experience after another; but finally, little by little, they have seen the Truth even more clearly. Perhaps it may have been only as though through a crack or chink in the wall of their mind, but they have followed that thread of light until they have come to the place where they can look through the aperture, the source of their light, and catch a glimpse of that which was for them if they could attain. And gradually, step by step, they have climbed the ever-turning road until the clear sunshine of the summit smote their startled senses; until the vastness of their heritage, their attainable horizon, dawned upon them and stood out in bold relief, and they were awed by the magnitude of it all.

They had their lessons. They came to the place where they could see what was in store for them. They felt the thrill and surge of the Great Life in them. They experienced the expansion of the budding spiritual unfoldment-the urge, the struggle of the soul against the impediments and restrictions which it knows should not hinder its growth, its freedom, its blossoming forth into the full splendor and radiance of its perfect expression.

Little by little they have taken advantage of opportunities; they have made use of the knowledge they gained from experience that which they found to be true and good and pure, and the highest which they knew-and clung to that, until they have found something which they could use for their higher attainment. Life became bigger and stronger; love waxed warmer, and

through the ashes of the former love came the little spiral of smoke which indicates the tiny nucleus of fire, ever feeding and strengthening itself until finally it bursts out into open flame and consumes all the dross, leaving only the pure gold of character in the crucible. Through a recognition of their relation to the Great Ocean of All-Abundance, they know that they are in essence of the same material-limitless, unconquerable Masters.

Would it be possible for you to kick or throw a little imploring dog, which had just had its leg cut off by a street car, back under the car? Your hands fly up in horror, as they well might, at such a thought. You cannot even entertain such an idea. You know positively, deep down in your soul, that you would rather throw yourself under the wheels than even allow that poor suffering dumb creature to be crushed.

Are you given to fits of anger? Do your hands fly up with the same involuntary horror at the thought of that passion in you? If they do not; if you do not deny the thought of anger with the same. vehemence and understanding, with the same recognition of your superiority over that line of thought as you do the thought of cruelty, you are allowing those phantoms to haunt you, and making it possible for them, in an unguarded moment, to burst forth with their withering fires, and burn up your life forces.

Are you addicted to the thought of jealousy, greed, hatred, or those things which retard and hold you back in your development? Have you that same aversion; do you shrink back with dread at the very thought of harboring those destructive traits? Do you know, with absolute certainty, that those things are not a part of you-cannot in any way affect

or control your free thought, your thought of love and generosity, your appreciation of the beautiful; that they cannot oppress and congest the broad, free expansion of your lungs as you come into the exhilarating air and look at the glories of the sunset; that they cannot dim the joy of fellow-helpfulness, nor the happiness which comes of finding good in others?

Have you that freedom? Is there anything in your consciousness, your mind, your being, which is hindering your perfect growth-something which you know is binding you, and which you know you should loose and let go? If there is, you must shake yourself free. There is only one way to overcome the bondage of such conditions. You must know that that thought or habit cannot bind you under its thralldom; cannot prevent the full, free expression of your Divine Nature. Deny its dominion over you, and deny it in such a way that there will remain no doubt of your mastery. Then your mind will assert its freedom, and you will come out into the brighter light of the understanding with the overcomer's strength of victory buoying you up with the knowledge that you are indeed strong and able to attain. Deny the things you wish to let go by seeing yourself as the perfect creation of Mind, which you are-free from all hindrances of the material. The unseeming things are consumed like the frost before the rays of the sun, and vanish like vapor into the thin air. They drop away and never return. They show at once that they are not the real substance, but a shadow which you, through your thinking, have clung to and made real.

To overcome is to live. To live is joy. The life of the overcomer is the joy of victory, the discernment of the budding, awakening, new, wonderful faculties of

which he never before even dreamed. With the new strength comes a higher aspiration, and the resolution to do greater things towards individual perfection. This is not the material jostling of elbows with fellow-beings; not the struggle to wrest an advantage from another, but the calm, strong knowledge of that limitless selfhood which one attains through the silence. The worries, frets and irritations of worldly affairs cannot trouble such a one. Those things become merely as the struggles of a colony of insects. which one might view with equanimity, with a sense of the pettiness of such strife, with the understanding that such conditions are the result of a lack of knowledge of the real—a lack of understanding of inherent qualities, and can therefore not affect, hinder or retard one who has passed out of and above their plane of activity, and can now look down from the heights of soul growth and attainment along spiritual lines.

Life then is sweet. The honey of the Spirit permeates the whole being, and binds into one conscious unity-spirit, soul and body.

In making your denials, then, make them wisely and with understanding, and all things can be accomplished. All things are possible unto you, through the knowledge that man has the God-given power to inherit all that the Father hath-all that the Father hath is his.

Good night! Good night, beloved;
I came to watch o'er thee!
To be near thee-to be near thee,

Alone is peace for me.
Thine eyes are stars of morning,

Thy lips are crimson flowers!
Good night! Good night, beloved,
While I count the weary hours.
-Longfellow-The Spanish Student.

RAYER and the answer to prayer is governed by the law of action and reaction, impression and response. "Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not." "They shall call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, The Lord is my God."

Action and reaction presupposes something to be acted upon which is capable of response. This medium has been found to be the fundamental substance of the universe in which all live, move and have their being. It is more commonly known by the name of Spirit, the first Great Cause and Creator of all that is, ever has been, or ever shall be.

This Being, whome we name God, is intelligent life and substance. There is no place where it is not. There is no vacuum anywhere. It is a real, substantial something, not nothing. It is everpresent in each and all, never absent or apart from any place, body or thing. This truth must be realized in order to become free from the false beliefs in vacancy and nothingness and the consequent results in lack and insufficiency which follow.

Through faith and prayer comes the perception of this interior presence and reality, which is the origin and foundation of all things, and of which all things are made. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

When this inner substance is recognized it will respond and take form in any manner desired through the concentrated prayer or affirmative word spoken within it. The word is the idea or thought image of the thing that is desired and prayed for.

The creative energy, the Holy Spirit, begins to manifest immediately, after the likeness and in accordance with the character of the image formed in the mind. "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." That is, when anything has been formulated by the operation of mind, through the process of thinking or prayer, it has already become a fact in existence, and in due time it will appear in manifested form, in accordance with its kind and nature; if not neutralized or destroyed by doubt, which would cause the mind to act adversely to it by creating thoughts in opposition, and thus hinder its manifestation in answer to the prayer. "All things are possible to him that believeth." "For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith."

Scotch Sexton (who has shown old lady over church and followed her to the gate without getting a tip)-"Weel, ma leddy, gin ye find when ye gang hame ye've lost yer purse, ye'll mebbe mind ye didna hae it out here."