This, then, should be the spirit of those who have needed my caution and advice to quit their worrying about their loved ones and others—­Do not worry, but do not, under any consideration, become hard-hearted, careless, or indifferent.  Better by far preserve your interest and the human tenderness that leads you to the useless and needless expenditure of energy and sympathy in worry than that you should let your loved ones suffer without any care, thought, or endeavor on their behalf.  But do not let it be a sympathy that leads to worry.  Let it be helpful, stimulating, directive, energizing in the good.  Overcome evil with good.  Resist evil and it will flee from you.  So long as those you love are absorbed in the things that in the past have led you to worry over them, be tender and sympathetic with them, surround them with your holy and helpful love.

Jesus was tender and compassionate with all who were sick or diseased in body or mind.  He was never angry with any, save the proud and self-righteous Pharisees.  He tenderly forgave the adulterous woman, justified the publican and never lectured or rebuked those who came to have their bodily and mental infirmities removed by him.  Let us then be tender with the erring and the sinful, rather than censorious, and full of rebuke.  Is it not the better way to point out the right—­overcome the evil with the good, and thus bind our erring loved ones more firmly to ourselves.  Surely our own errors, failures, weaknesses and sins ought to have taught us this lesson.

In the bedroom of a friend where I recently slept, was a card on which was illuminated these words, which bear particularly upon this subject: 

The life that has not known and accepted sorrow is strangely crude and untaught; it can neither help nor teach, for it has never learned.  The life that has spurned the lesson of sorrow, or failed to read it aright, is cold and hard.  But the life that has been disciplined by sorrow is courageous and full of holy and gentle love.

And it is this holy, gentle, and courageous love that we need to exercise every day towards those who require it, rather than the worry that frets still more, irritates, and widens the gulf already existent.  So, reader, don’t worry, but help, sympathetically and lovingly, and above all, don’t become indifferent, hard-hearted and selfish.

CHAPTER XXV

WORRIES AND HOBBIES

Though these words are much alike in sound they have no sympathy one with another.  Put them in active operation and they rush at each other’s throats far worse than Allies and Germans are now fighting.  They strive for a death grip, and as soon as one gets hold he hangs on to the end—­if he can.  Yet, as in all conflicts, the right is sure to win in an equal combat, the right of the hobby is absolutely certain to win over the wrong of the worry.

Webster defines a hobby as:  “A subject or plan which one is constantly setting off,” or “a favorite and ever recurring theme of discourse, thought, or effort,” but the editor of The Century Dictionary has a better definition, more in accord with modern thought, viz., “That which a person persistently pursues or dwells upon with zeal or delight, as if riding a horse.”