lfare of the one you love.

Never was a slave in the South, though in the hands of a Legree,
more to be pitied than the slave of worry. He dogs every footstep, is
vigilant every moment. He never sleeps, never tires, never relaxes,
never releases his hold so long as it is possible for him to retain
it. When you seek to awaken people to the terror, the danger, the
hourly harm their slavery to worry is bringing to them, they are so
completely in worry's power that they weakly respond: "But I can't
help it." And they verily believe they can't; that their bondage is
a natural thing; a state "ordained from the foundation of the world,"
altogether ignoring the frightful reflection such a belief is upon the
goodness of God and his fatherly care for his children. Natural! It is
the most unnatural thing in existence. Do the birds worry? The beasts
of the field? The clouds? The winds? The sun, moon, stars, and comets?
The trees? The flowers? The rain-drops? How Bryant rebukes the worrier
in his wonderful poem "_To a Water Fowl_," and Celia Thaxter in her
"_Sandpiper_." The former sings of the fowl winging its solitary way
where "rocking billows rise and sink on the chafed ocean-side," yet
though "lone wandering" it is not lost. And from its protection he
deduces the lesson:

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.

And so Celia Thaxter sang of the sandpiper:

He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye.

And her faith expressed itself in a later verse:

I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky:
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?

There is no worry in Nature. It is man alone that worries. Nature goes
on her appointed way each day unperturbed, unvexed, care-free, doing
her allotted tasks and resting absolutely in the almighty sustaining
power behind her. Should man do any less? Should man--the reasoning
creature, with intelligence to see, weigh, judge, appreciate,--alone
be uncertain of the fatherly goodness of God; alone be unable to
discern the wisdom and love behind all things? Worry, therefore, is an
evidence that we do not trust the all-fatherliness of God.

It is also the direct product of vanity, pride and self-conceit. If
these three qualities of evil in the human heart could be removed a
vast