etc., and the scalp diseased with dandruff, the hair thin and scant through the wearing of too tight hats, switches, rats and other falsifications.

Half the people in the civilized world are compelled to wear glasses owing to some wrong habit of life in the use of the eyes; hundreds of thousands are mouth-breathers and must have adenoids and tonsils removed; countless thousands are more or less deaf-and then, when it comes to general health, there are but few-so few as to be hard to find-who do not suffer from some ailment, temporary or permanent, as the result of a violation of spiritual, mental or physical law.

Every man, woman and child should be as healthful as every animal. We should be as radiant of life, energy, magnetism, buoyant enthusiasm as the squirrels, mocking-birds and flying fish. We should be superb, happy, beautiful physical beings, or why was our superior intelligence given to us? It appears to me we have used it very poorly. We have nothing to boast of. Our superiority would better be manifested than bragged about, and if we have surpassed the animals in our mental achievements that is because of our superior mental endowments, our possession of qualities the animals do not possess. Had we at the same time used our intelligence to keep us in the same style of health and radiant physical vigor as the lower animals, then, indeed, should we be happy and ever able to sing through life with God.

Is there, then, no hope that man can regain what he has lost physically? Can he master the evils that beset him and overcome the diseases that curse him? With all my heart I believe he can. But in order to do so, he must seek to know God and His ways, he must listen to God's own song of health and then, setting aside his own notions, must sing with God. Then, and then only, will new life and health be given to him.

I have no quarrel with the churches, nor the creeds that other men accept. But, for myself, I know definitely what I cannot and will not believe. I refuse any and all assent to certain ideas about the Infinite, and cannot be induced or compelled to believe in a God who makes a hell for His children, here or hereafter, nor whose will it is that they should suffer continuously from disease, failure, poverty or sin in this life. My God is one of love, justice, mercy, compassion, tenderness, health, abundance, joy, success, beauty, completeness, who wants me-His child-to enjoy His provisions for my happiness. And while I have not yet been able fully to free myself from my old habits of belief and all my fears, and demonstrate fully what I now believe, I am on the way, rejoicing, singing happily as I go.

Therefore I would help lighten the burdens of men, take away much of the gloom, help dissipate the sorrow, lead them to forget their woes; substitute the joy of song for the sadness of mourning, the

eternal hope of the sons of God for the despair and gloom of those who deem themselves forgotten of Him, the blessed optimism that all is well, for the hateful pessimism that nothing is well.

I do not pose as a reformer; nor do I long to be one. All I know is woefully little. Yet in sixty years of life I have sought, patiently and persistently, to know something of what I believe must be the Divine plan of health, happiness and the rational life. From continuous sickness I have been led into a fair degree of health, with its consequent enjoyment. Life has grown marvelously richer with the years-happiness, peace and a large content flowing into me in increasing ratio.

Yet I am no unreasoning or blind optimist. There are times when my talk might lead a listener to believe that I am a confirmed pessimist. I see the wrongs of the world, its needless woes, its monstrous injustices, cruel maladjustments and wicked impositions. And I know that the warring soul of the reformer-the Savonarola, the Luther, the Servetus, the Cromwell, the Stephen Langton, the Voltaire, the Patrick Henry, the Thomas Jefferson, the Tom Johnson, the "Golden Rule Jones," the Theodore Roosevelt, are essential to the purification of the world. I even believe in the need of the "muckraker," for I know that where muck is it must be raked up, shoveled into barrows or carts and wheeled away to where it will do no harm. Homer saw the need of the

cleansing of the Augean stables, and the need is no less-indeed, far greater, in our more populous civilization, than it was in his day.

In spite of all these things, however, there is another side to my nature more insistent upon recognition, more real to me, more potent to arrest my attention and permanent interest than the gloomful phases of life. I see the Beauty, the Glory, the Wonder, the Passion, the Potentialities of Life so marvelously spread out on every hand from horizon to zenith, from clod to star, by telescope and microscope; I feel the Thrill of Life so keenly, have reveled in the Joy of Life so intensely, and known the tingle of health so perfectly, that I have come to realize that men and women-ordinary every-day men and women-are missing a whole lot of their inheritance. Without a thought that I have any universal panacea for all the ills that human flesh and mind are heir to or bring upon themselves, I do want to call their attention to what seems an attainable happiness, a rational health, a joyous state of daily life.

To state these things and modestly point the way to their accomplishment is the aim of these pages. Naught is set down in ill-will, dogmatism or conceit, I hope, but all in the one desire of friendly helpful

ness.

I would help men and women to get rid of the gloomy pessimism, bitter cynicism and sour melancholy that curse every one who yields to their de

moniac possession. Surely no devil that was ever imagined could be more hateful to those it controlled than are these devils when they once are allowed to enter one's life. Clear them out at any price. Turn in the sunlight; let the water in; aye, be thankful for an earthquake, a storm, a tornado, a torrent, a cloud-burst so long as you can wash out, clear out, those infernal thieves of your happiness and joy. Get rid of them.

Equally so do I long to help free men and women from the curse of the old-time hell-fire and damnation theology that was taught and believed by practically all the churches. There can be no such God as that theology taught. It is all based upon man's own gloominess and his hateful, selfish cruelty, backed up by the arrogant conceit of his own judgment. God is not jealous, exacting, hatefully watchful, spiteful and vengeful. Such a God was the creation of minds that were influenced by similar thoughts and feelings. Browning's Caliban upon Setebos is a wonderful analysis of such a God, and the mental processes that created him. The God that Nature and my own heart have revealed to me is full of personal love and tenderness, shown to every creature that exists-hence an all-pervading Spirit of wisdom, power, knowledge, foresight, and love, Who never, for a moment, fails you though He supports, guides and controls not only our tiny solar system but all the unconceivable systems of the vast