Call, whose book on muscular relaxation I quoted a moment ago.  In her later book, entitled ‘As a Matter of Course,’ the gospel of moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not ‘caring,’ is preached with equal success.  Not only our preachers, but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects are also harping on this string.  And with the doctors, the Delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such writers as Mr. Dresser, Prentice Mulford, Mr. Horace Fletcher, and Mr. Trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start might be made in the direction of changing our American mental habit into something more indifferent and strong.

Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power.  Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know.  The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things.  The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.  This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, “The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."[C] I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse.  Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666.  “He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything.  That he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state....”

     [C] Fleming H. Revell Company, New York.

“That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it:  I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God.  I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him....  That since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.”

“That when an occasion of practising some virtue offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, ’Lord, I cannot do this unless thou enablest me’; and that then he received strength more than sufficient.  That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, ’I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself; it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.’  That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.”