or it!"

"I have been very well all winter, but I must not boast. Touch wood!"

The inference here is that when we are healthy or happy or enjoying a
fine day, we are in an abnormal condition. We are getting away with a
bit of happiness that is not intended for us. God is not noticing, and
we had better go slow and keep dark about it, or He will waken up with
a start, and send us back to our aches and pains and our dull leaden
skies! Thus have we sought to sow the seeds of despondency and
unbelief in the world around us.

In the South African War, there was a man who sowed the seeds of
despondency among the British soldiers; he simply talked defeat and
disaster, and so greatly did he damage the morale of the troops that an
investigation had to be made, and as a result the man was sent to jail
for a year. People have been a long time learning that thoughts are
things to heal, upbuild, strengthen; or to wound, impair, or blight.
After all we cannot do very much for many people, no matter how hard we
try, but we can contribute to their usefulness and happiness by holding
for them a kind thought if we will.

There are people who depress you so utterly that if you had to remain
under their influence they would rob you of all your ambition and
initiative, while others inspire you to do better, to achieve, to
launch out. Life is made up of currents of thought as real as are the
currents of air, and if we could but see them, there are currents of
thought we would avoid as we would smallpox germs.

Sadness is not our normal mental condition, nor is weakness our normal
physical condition. God intended us to laugh and play and work, come
to our beds at night weary and ready to sleep--and wake refreshed.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!" No truer words were ever
spoken, and yet men try to define themselves by houses and lands and
manners and social position, but all to no avail. The old rule holds.
It is your thought which determines what manner of man you are. The
respectable man who keeps within the law and does no outward harm, but
who thinks sordidly, meanly, or impurely, is the man of all others who
is farthest from the kingdom of God, because he does not feel his need,
nor can anyone help him. Thoughts are harder to change than ways.

"Let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts," declared Isaiah long ago, and there is no doubt the
unrighteous man has the hardest and