"It is not so easily done though. To-day I met the most miserable looking cripple sliding along without any limbs. I held my skirts aside as he passed, and forgot to even think of him as God's child," confessed Kate, in a regretful tone.
"Anything takes time, and we can't expect to leap into perfection at once, but what did you do after he had passed?" asked Grace, with some curiosity.
"I pitied the poor creature and wondered what made him so."
"That was the very way to keep him in the same condition," said Grace, rapidly mixing some paint. "This last lesson very clearly explains that every thought has an influence, and that you help to make the body manifest whatever you think of it. If you think the real and true, you help to make that show forth, if you only think of the external or apparent trouble or defect, and regard it as the real, you are harming instead of helping."
"I can readily see that we may affect ourselves, but it seems hard to believe that we affect everybody," protested Kate, incredulously.
"It is because we cannot realize the law of thought transference. I was reading just last week about that. An instance of Stuart C. Cumberland's mind-reading was cited. It was wonderful. And then long ago I read an old book written by Cornelius Agrippa about it, but I was not very much interested, and did not understand nor believe it at the time, so my memory is not worth much concerning it."
"Then you really think I added another weight to that unhappy creature's burden of trouble?" cried Kate, in sharp surprise.
"It would be best for you to deny his apparent conditions and affirm his real ones, and instead of thoughts of pity, which are only weakening, you could think of happiness and contentment. I truly believe we can learn to think of people this way, if we only catch ourselves for correction every time we think wrong."
"How shall I ever learn to bridle my thoughts?" was Kate's despairing wail.
"By learning to bridle your tongue; I found a splendid text to-day on that very theme. It is in James iii: 2. 'If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able to bridle the whole body.'