away your depression and sadness, cause you to know the blessedness of communion with all the joyous ones who have gone through life singing hand in hand with God. Are you down-hearted, deserted of men, despised, hated, ostracized? Sing! Sing! And you will soon feel your oneness with another who was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, one whom men so hated that they hung him upon the cursed cross and left him there between two thieves. And just as angels came and ministered to him they will come and minister to you. Your faith expressed in your song will bring down Divine peace which shall possess your heart and mind, and it will be a peace that passeth all understanding.

Well do I recall a time when I myself was in this deserted, ostracized, hated position. Owing to misunderstandings, and misstatements of others, I had come under the condemnation of many people in the community where I then lived. For the time being I was not only persona non grata but was fiercely hated. This element that hated me was determined I should get out of the town. The usual process of cowardly intimidation was started against me. Leading citizens made veiled threats; or coldly asked me when I expected to move. Even the newspapers intimated that my absence would not be missed. One "good man" endeavored to scare me with a threat of prosecution on a criminal charge that he knew had

no foundation whatever in fact. In one way or another I was being very actively bedeviled.

Through it all, however, I determined to stand my ground. I knew I had done nothing that should have called down this universal animadversion upon my head; I knew that, some day, the people would realize they had misunderstood me, yet, all the same, the mental worry and distress of their immediate hostility was almost more than I could bear. Combined with other distresses that I was unable to remove I was driven to the verge of mental collapse. For months I had not slept more than one hour out of each twenty-four, for as yet I had not learned the secret of "casting all my care upon God." Suddenly, one morning, the final testing time came. I received a number of letters, all duly embellished with vivid pictures of skull and crossbones, definitely threatening that, unless I left immediately, I should be waited upon that night by a vigilance committee, tarred, feathered, and ridden on a rail out of town.

In my extremity I turned to the Divine for help, comfort and protection. Doubtless my songs of trust and confidence were very feeble, very quavering, very untuneful, very unsatisfactory to every ear but the Divine. I well remember the burden of some of the songs. One of them was to the effect that "Though I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there."

Then, with new confidence born of the consciousness that I was actually in tune with the Divine, I

opened every door and every window in the houseso that there could be no obstruction to anyone who wished to enter-lit a light in every room, and lay down upon my bed. Was it to roll and toss and think and agonize as I had done in the past months? No! For the first time in seven long months I slept for nearly twelve hours, the sweet, peaceful, dreamless sleep of the infant, and had it not been for my steady and regular pulse and respiration the very perfection of my sleep would have startled my loved oneswhose hearts so long had been wrenched by my agony -into the dread that I had taken poison in my mental aberration. From that night my recovery of health, strength and serenity began. That night of song-begun in woe, agony and desperation-laid the foundation for a new life in which all worry has been eliminated, all fear, all dread, and nearly all sorrow and sickness, where peace, joy, serenity and thanksgiving are ever present, and every day hears my songs of soul and mind, or voice ascending heavenward.*

As I now look back upon that long period of anguish I ask myself why need it have been? Why did I not throw myself into the protecting arms of the Divine Father earlier? Ah, why did I not? I now know that every hour of that agonizing was unnecessary. God finds no delight in the pain of His

See Quit Your Worrying, by George Wharton James; Radiant Life Press, Pasadena, Calif.

children, but, alas, I did not know and there was no one to teach me. I had an entirely different conception of God then from the one I hold now, and it is to help save others the unnecessary woes that spring from our false conceptions of God and life that this book is written.

What God's ultimate plan for man is I do not know; I have neither the knowledge, wisdom nor foresight to enable me to tell. But it is a self-evident proposition that whatever I may be, whatever I am to be, I now have an animal body, subject to the same conditions that other animal bodies are, save that I am a spiritual being and can more fully control and guide my animal body than can the so-called lower animals. Yet does man control his body as do the lower animals? I have watched the deer and antelope bound down a hilly slope, or run over the plain. Ten, twenty, thirty feet at a bound. What man can equal it? I have seen bear-great, lumbering creatures we regard them-bounce down a mountain side as if made of India rubber and with a speed that is incredible. Who that has watched the squirrels run up and down the trees, co-ordinating the clutch of their claws upon the bark in a manner little short of magical, has not longed for their tireless energy, boundless muscularity and electric-like speed? The fish in the rivers, lakes and oceans move with an ease that is little short of marvelous and that no man can equal. The birds fly through the air with a speed,

power, grace and knowledge of which man's greatest aviation achievements are but feeble and poor imitations.

Yet man possesses the higher mental faculties! Granted that he was not intended to run as swiftly or as long as the deer, antelope or bear, or climb trees as does the squirrel, swim as do the fishes, or fly through the air as do the birds-surely it was intended that he should keep his body in as perfect order as possible that every muscle should respond to the call of his mind, his spirit, that every organ should be in perfect health, that his every movement should be one of grace, power and satisfaction.

How docs man meet this reasonable supposition? Look at him, male and female, and what do you find? Crippled toes, ankles, feet covered with corns and bunions because of his desire to make his feet look smaller than they are, or to case them in fashionable shoes; legs seamed with varicose veins because of the wearing of tight garters; abdomen bulgy, swollen, disfigured, bloated with fat and wind, owing to laziness, bad habits of eating or equally bad habits of drinking; waist-line, ribs, the lower vital organs compressed and squeezed out of shape in conformity with a fashion as idiotical and senseless as it is hideous; the skin of face and bust ruined by the perpetual application of powders, lotions, creams and other trash, nearly all of which are injurious; the natural bloom of the skin destroyed by these same lotions,