Hindrances And Helps From Within

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Title:     Hindrances And Helps From Within
Author: Henry Frederick Cope [More Titles by Cope]

Worry
A Cure for the Blues
The Gospel of Song

Airing our aches will never heal them.

This would be a sad world but for our sorrows.

A merry heart kills more microbes than any medicine.

It is always a pleasure to boost another sinner down.

We make mistakes; other people commit sins.

Nothing worries worry worse than work.

A little modesty often hides a lot of vanity.

He whose life leads nowhere is never late in getting there.

Love runs over but it never gives over.

Never put off to-morrow the meanness you can put off to-day.

Happiness rests on thoughts and not on things.

He who has friends only to use them has them only to lose them.

To-morrow's burden is the only one that breaks the back of to-day.

WORRY

Worry is wicked because it causes weakness. It robs the life of its powers; it thwarts our possibilities. Anxiety is wrong, not because it indicates infidelity as to the wise and loving providence overruling life, but because it is a criminal waste of life's forces, it prevents our doing our own work, and it irritates and hinders others.

What a great cloud would be lifted from our world if all the needless fears and frowns were chased away. One scowling man, going to his work worrying over it, will spread the contagion of apprehension and cowardly fretfulness through almost every group with which he mingles. Our mental health has as much to do with our success and happiness as any other thing.

The fog that bothers us most of all is that we carry on our faces, that which rises from our heart fears. Once savage man lived in perpetual fear of innumerable malignant spirits; civilized man lives in fear of invisible and imaginary accidents. For every real foe that has to be faced we fight out hypothetical battles with a dozen shadows.

Worry is a matter of outlook and habit. It depends, first of all, on whether you are going to take all the facts into account and look on life as a whole, or see only the dismal possibilities. Then it depends on whether you will yield continually to the blue moods that may arise from apprehension or from indigestion until you have become colour blind to all but the blue things.

How trivial are the things over which we worry, by means of which we cultivate the enslaving habit of worry, whether we will catch the approaching car or the one that will come two minutes later, whether it will rain when we want it to shine, or shine when we want it to rain.

How ineffective it all is. Whoever by worrying all night succeeded in bringing about the kind of weather he wanted? More than that, it is fatal to successfully accomplishing those things that do lie within our power. The worry over catching a train or doing a piece of work so agitates the mind and unsettles the will that it reduces the chances of efficiency.

But there are larger causes of worry than these, sickness, loss, impending disasters. Yet how futile to help and how potent to increase these ills is worry. The darkest days and the deepest sorrows need that we should be at our best to meet them. To yield to fear and fretting is to turn the powers of heart and brain from allies to enemies.

No occasion is so great or so small that we can afford to meet it either with fear or without forethought. The imperative obligation to make the most of our lives is not met by apprehending the worst, but by doing the best we can. We have no right to give to forebodings the time and force we need for preparing for and actually meeting our duties.

The best cure for worry is work. In the larger number of instances if we but do our work well we shall have no need to worry over the results. Much of our fearful fretting is but a confession of work illy done and the apprehension of deserved consequences.

Then faithful work by absorbing the thought and energies cures the habit of worry. It is the empty mind that falls first prey to foreboding, and is most easily filled with the spectres of woe. Do your work with all your might; let it go at that, knowing that no amount of further thought can affect the issue of it.

No matter how dark the way, how empty the scrip, the cheerful heart has sunshine and feasting. And this not by a blind indifference, a childish optimism, but by the blessed faculty of finding the riches that are by every wayside, of catching at all the good there is in living. If you would dispel your gloom and depreciate your burdens, begin to appreciate your blessings. Do your best, seek out the best, believe in the best, and the best shall be.

A CURE FOR THE BLUES

There is an honest confession, and one that proved to be good for the soul of the man who made it, in the Seventy-seventh Psalm. Asaph, the singer of that song, had had a bad spell of the blues. He was nervous, sleepless, fretful, full of vague regrets and querulous complainings. He had reviewed the whole troop of his imaginary miseries, and wound up by wondering whether God really cared anything about him. One might well believe that he had been taking in altogether too many social functions. Whatever the cause, he had come to an exceedingly disagreeable condition.

Despite the fact that many suppose that saintliness is never fully achieved unless the whole nature be soured, it still remains true that of all the blights upon this earth, few are more contrary to the will of a God of love and sunshine than the disposition that abides in the chronic blues. It lives on regrets for the good things that might have been and dreadings of the evil things that yet may be. It is either complaining or criticising.

Their gall enters the hearts of such people. They who look within and see nothing but bitterness, when they look without find a film over their eyes that colours their whole world, until they lose faith in God and hope for man. Then they lay the blame on their circumstances, or, worse yet, on what they call an "All Wise Providence," whom they imagine to be as bitter against them as they are against the world.

This attitude soon becomes fixed. Unconsciously it is cultivated. Then friends and members of the family turn with loathing from the atmosphere of chronic pessimism; the habitué has become a cuttlefish among his fellows, only emanating floods of inky misery. He wonders why things do not come his way; why business associates desert him and troubles assail him more and more. The truth is that imaginary troubles tend to become real, and fortune never smiles on a man who turns a sour face towards her.

Character is contagious. Even if we had the right to enjoy our own misery we have no right to infect our neighbours with it. You are bound by social obligations as well as by selfish reasons to cure the blues every time you have them.

And there is a remedy. Asaph began to cure himself when, instead of saying, "All things are against me," he said, "This is my infirmity," my fault; I am enough to turn a beehive sour. His cure was almost perfect when he said, "I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The cure for the blues is simple, then. First, own up to it that the largest part of your miseries comes out of your own mind, out of your distorted views of things. Then begin to thank God for His goodness, call to mind the many things for which you should be grateful.

To remember our mercies is to bury our miseries. There is a lot of good in this old world and they get it who go for it. There is something good in every man; the best people find the best in people. After all, our lives are determined not by the things about us but by the things we invite into us. It is impossible to keep that man blue who persistently looks for the bright side of things, or to keep him poor or sad who is affording a welcome to every good thing, every happy, cheering thought. Soon the man who lives like that gets so busy keeping track of his own and other people's happiness that he forgets to think whether he is happy or not, just as a healthy man forgets to count his pulse or his respirations. So, if you are tempted to feel blue, remember it is a sin to nurse your sadness; it is a duty to cultivate happiness.

THE GOSPEL OF SONG

Singing cures sighing. Lift up a note of praise and you can raise the heaviest off and roll it clean off the heart. Christianity is a religion of song. Its forerunner, Judaism, left the ages the rich legacy of the Psalms. Its founder, when he knew that death was imminent, sang one of those ancient songs with his friends. His followers early gathered for worship in song. Peter beguiled prison hours with hymns. Meeting in the catacombs, the early Christians made the galleries echo with their praise.

To-day every revival is but a wave of song. The successful churches know the inspirational and the ethical power of good hymns. The decline of many a church may be traced to the exclusion of the people from their share in the worship, to the attempt to praise God by proxy, or to substitute an artistic exhibition for an act of exaltation.

Not only in public worship, but in private life, hymns and songs have a significant influence. It is always easy to remember rhymed forms of truth; happy the heart with a store of good hymns; it is provisioned for many a long voyage. When the light burns low the heart is illumined by the memory of choice thoughts expressed in poetry, by songs sung long ago. When the burden seems all too heavy, and the traveller would fain lie down in despair, he remembers some word of cheer, some stanza from another pilgrim's song, and he is strengthened for the road.

Christianity is a singing religion, because it is a happy religion. It came to end the gloom of this world. The song must take the place of the sigh. Happiness must rule the utterance. Even a hearty whistle may be a wonderful means of grace. Every natural expression of happiness becomes a religious act. The flowers praise the gardener by being beautiful and fragrant, and men praise God by being happy.

Song is a creator of happiness. You cannot sing songs of joy and nourish jealousy or hatred. A song of gratitude for things you have will often chase away the clouds of gloom over those you dread. It is a sin to be sad when you might as well be glad, and it is a sin to be silent when you might as well be singing.

One song may surpass many a sermon in its power over a life. Great songs have sung men into battle and stiffened their melting hearts. Great songs have touched our clay and thrilled it to the divinely heroic. Songs sung in the stillness of the evening over the baby's cradle have ever been the mother's consecration for all her sacrifice. Hymns bring back hallowed memories; a strain of song will touch a chord no syllogism could sound; the simple words of an old hymn bring comfort and new hope to hearts broken and crushed.

We may not all make sermons, but we can all sing songs. To make the good singer there is needed not the artist but the heart. Sing away the gloom; sing in the gratitude, the joy, and love, and strength; sing in the courage, the aspiration and hope. Men may reject our sermons, but they will rejoice in our songs, for they are theirs also. The creeds change, but the old hymns stand.

Store your memory with the songs that time has tried. The thoughts that were meat and strength to others shall be your bread in desert days, your light in darkness. Praise God by a life of happy praise.

[The end]
Henry Frederick Cope's essay: Hindrances And Helps From Within

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