The most perfect example we have of a quiet mind in a quiet body, guided by the Divine Will, is in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As we study His words and His works, we realize the power and the delicacy of His human life, and we realize—­as far as we are capable of realizing—­the absolute clearness of the atmosphere about Him.  We see and feel that atmosphere to be full of quiet—­Divine Human Love.

There is no suffering, no temptation, that any man or woman ever had or ever will have that He did not meet in Himself and conquer.  Therefore, if we mean to begin the work in ourselves of finding the quiet which will lay our own dust from the very first, if we have the end in our minds of truer obedience and loving trust, we can, even in the simple beginning of learning to do nothing quietly, find an essence of life which eventually we will learn always to recognize and to love, and to know that it is not ourselves, but it is from the Heavenly Father of ourselves.

Some of us cannot get that motive to begin with; some of us will, if we begin at all, work only for relief, or because we recognize that there is more power without dust than with it, but no one of us is ever safe from clouds of dust unless at the back of all our work there is the desire to give up all self-will for the sake of obeying and of trusting the Divine Will more and more perfectly as time goes on.  If we are content to work thoroughly and to gain slowly, not to be pulled down by mistakes or discouragements, but to learn from them, we are sure to be grateful for the new light and warmth and power for use that will come to us, increasing day by day.

CHAPTER XXIX

Plain Every-day Common Sense

PLAIN common sense!  When we come to sift everything down which will enable us to live wholesome, steady, every-day, interesting lives, plain common sense seems to be the first and the simplest need.  In the working out of any problem, whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex.  And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense.

When we stop and think a while, the lack of this important quality is quite glaring, and every one who has his attention called to it and recognizes that lack enough to be interested to supply it in his own life, is doing more good toward bringing plain common sense into the world at large than we can well appreciate.  For instance, it is only a fact of plain common sense that we should keep rested, and yet how many of us do?  How many readers of this article will smile or sneer, or be irritated when they read the above, and say, “It is all very well to talk of keeping rested.  How is it possible with all I have to do? or with all the care I have? or with all I have to worry me?”