Resolve with all the vigor you can muster that, since there are plenty of good things in the world for everybody, you are going to have your share, without injuring anybody else or keeping others back. It was intended that you should have a competence, an abundance. It is your birthright. You are success organized, and constructed for happiness, and you should resolve to reach your divine destiny.
CHAPTER LVII
A NEW WAY OF BRINGING UP CHILDREN
"Only a thought, but the work it wrought
Could never by tongue or pen be taught,
But it ran through a life like a thread of gold,
And the life bore fruit a hundredfold."
Not long ago there was on exhibition in New York a young horse which can do most marvelous things; and yet his trainer says that only five years ago he had a very bad disposition. He was fractious, and would kick and bite, but now instead of displaying his former viciousness, he is obedient, tractable, and affectionate. He can readily count and reckon up figures, can spell many words, and knows what they mean.
In fact this horse seems to be capable of learning almost anything. Five years of kindness have completely transformed the vicious yearling colt. He is very responsive to kindness, but one can do nothing with him by whipping or scolding him. His trainer says that in all the five years he has never touched him with a whip but once.
I know a mother of a large family of children who has never whipped but one of them, and that one only once.
When her first child was born people said she was too good-natured to bring up children, that she would spoil them, as she would not correct or discipline them, and would do nothing but love them. But this love has proved the great magnet which has held the family together in a marvelous way. Not one of those children has gone astray. They have all grown up manly and womanly, and love has been wonderfully developed in their natures. Their own affection responded to the mother's love and has become their strongest motive. To-day all her children look upon "Mother" as the grandest figure in the world. She has brought out the best in them because she saw the best in them. The worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant and ruined the life.
Love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts. All through the Bible are passages which show the power of love as a healer and life-lengthener. "With long life will I satisfy him," said the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me."