and are
steadily acting upon it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty
there grows a clear sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which,
while leaving us our own free will, is always tenderly guiding us.

No one ever really believed anything without experiencing it. We may
think we believe all sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any truth
be really ours unless we have proved it by living? We do not fully
believe it until it runs in our blood--that is--we must see a truth
with our minds, love it with our hearts and live it over and over again
in our lives before it is ours.

If the reader will think over this little book--he will see that every
chapter has healthy yielding at the root of it. It is a constant
repetition of the same principle applied to the commonplace
circumstances of life, and if the reader will take this principle into
his mind, and work practically to live it in his life, he will find the
love for it growing in his heart, and with it a living conviction that
when truly applied, it always works.

Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad
breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to
conquer his limitations--and a man to whom his limitations are
inevitable.

There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The first
comes from the achievement of personal character--the second is born
with us--to use or misuse as we prefer.

It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to
circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other people,
is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to every
action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer touch with
our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine love of all human
nature at the root of it--it is dead when it is merely a matter of good
form.

In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding cannot
be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious dependence upon
the Lord God Almighty.

End of Project Gutenberg's Nerves and Common Sense, by Annie Payson Call

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