Few are serene, fewer still can wait. We are all in a hurry, we are all impatient, we are easily ruffled. How rare the man or woman of self-poise—the being who has full command of his soul, mind, and body. Anger, jealousy, misunderstanding, backbiting, lying, slander, hate, praise, blame—all alike have no effect in disturbing the beautiful calmness of the serene of soul, who are affable alike to friend and foe, helpful alike to each, sympathetic alike to each. There is no haughtiness in serenity, as some suppose, though there is much pride. Yet it is not the pride of conceit, the pride of power, of possession, of superiority, but the wholesome, joyous, happy sense of a full-flowing life, every good channel of which is healthily full—healthily flowing to healthy ends. That, to me, is serenity. The self-consciousness that "all things are working together for good," and working to the full. There is no walking delegate to dictate the length of the hours such a life shall work, or live. It lives for the very joy of mere living, and living means working, giving, doing for others, more than for self.
I can see, dream of, long for, anticipate the possession of, some such serenity, and my ideal of what it is and my reaching after it is what I would radiate, though as yet I am but as one who seeks after rather than as one who has already attained.
Personally I am naturally the very opposite of serene. Physically I used to be easily disturbed. A whisper in an audience of two thousand people would distress me greatly, and render me intensely nervous. I have many a time "called people down," in my own audiences and by sheer force of will compelled silence, and when at concerts, have asked people (not always either gently or kindly) to cease their rude whisperings, yet, at the same time, I never once lost my calmness, the possession of myself, without intense annoyance. I longed to be able to suppress the whispers without a ripple in my own mind or soul, by the sheer force of right, kindliness, courtesy, serenity. The more I possess serenity the more I shall radiate it. It is a priceless boon, to be desired more than great wealth, and, when possessed, to be prized and treasured more than all the jewels of the world.
CHAPTER XIII
RADIANCIES OF THE WILL
There are three things I wish to radiate as to my own will. We speak of men being self-willed, strong-willed, weak-willed, and the like, but at the outset I wish to radiate my desire to be "Divine-willed." By this I mean I wish to recognize the world-wide—nay, the universe-wide—difference between the great, all-powerful, all-wise, all-beneficent, all-harmonious will of the Great Creator, and the oftentimes foolish, weak, wavering, irresponsible, ignorant, mistaken will of the human being. Every real man and woman wishes his, her, life to be a useful life, a life that accomplishes something, and that something must be "worth while." It is essential, however, if one would accomplish this that he start right. Now, here is the crucial question—How can you know that you are right? The answer to this question is what I would put into every young man's and young woman's heart—into every boy's and girl's heart—so that, at the start, he, she, may be sure a right start is being made. The only sure way is to drop your own will and become "Divine-willed." This by no means signifies that you become a nobody, a cipher, an insignificant ant in the world. It is just the reverse. It is allying yourself with the right, the only right, the perfect right, the unchangeable right. Suppose the case that a man starts out in life with the determination to be self-willed about the multiplication table. He insists upon his freedom, his individuality, his self-will, and refuses to be tied to any table made by any one else, be that one God, angel, or man. Who cannot see that such a man is a fool? It is impossible to reject, to "buck against" the multiplication table. Every man, sooner or later, has to swallow it, accept it wholly, completely, unreservedly, live by it, swear by it, die by it, and more than that he has to do it gladly, willingly, or it can never be a real part of himself. If he is all the time protesting against it, and declaring that it ought to be changed or abolished, or not quite so dogmatic in its assertions, he will all the time be worried, distressed, irritated, because it pays no attention to his wishes. Two times two make four, no matter who kicks, or is irritated, or wishes it to be changed, and so with every other statement of the whole table.
What I am getting at is this, that, though we may not always see it at first, or even at second or third sight, the moral world is governed by a multiplication table as sure and certain, as unchangeable and fixed as is the mathematical world. And it is the acceptance of the moral multiplication table that I call being "Divine-Willed." A man may live for years swindling his neighbors and giving them fourteen ounces for a pound, and think he has fooled the multiplication table as easily as he has fooled his customers, but the rate never changed; it was sixteen ounces all the time. A man may fool his neighbors and himself in regard to the moral multiplication table, but sooner or later, here or hereafter, in this incarnation or some other, he will have to learn to accept, love, and live by it in every act, thought, and word. It cannot be any other—there is no other door—this is the only salvation. This is accepting Christ—the Truth, the Way, the Life, living the Life He lived, filled with the Divine-Will, the Divine Spirit, that filled him. Whether you are a gambler, a sport, a liar, a cheat, a Sunday-school superintendent, a fool, a drunkard, a senator, a professor of religion, an agnostic, a wise man or a mere child in knowledge, you can never enter the Kingdom of Joy, Peace, Blessedness, that we call Heaven, unless you conform to the Divine Moral Multiplication Table. This is what I am endeavoring to radiate—that I am trying to set aside my imperfect human will, which sometimes kicks against the unchangeable and immovable, and accept the perfect, complete, and unchangeable.