take unnecessary
responsibilities so seriously that we overreach ourselves and defeat our
own good ends.

I would make my little world more blessedly careless--with an _abandon_
that loves life too much to spoil it with worry. I would cherish so
great a desire for my child's good that I could not scold and bear down
upon him for every little fault, making him a worrier too, but,
instead, I would guide him along the right path with pleasant words and
brave encouragement. The condemnation of faults is rarely constructive.

We had better say to the worriers, "Here is life; no matter what
unfortunate things you may have said or done, you must put all evil
behind you and live--simply, bravely, well." The greater the evil,
the greater the need of forgetting. Not flippantly, but reverently,
leave your misdeeds in a limbo where they may not rise to haunt you.
This great thing you may do, not with the idea of evading or escaping
consequences, but so that past evil may be turned into present and
future good. The criminal himself is coming to be treated this way. He
is no longer eternally reminded of his crime. He is taken out into the
sunshine and air and is given a shovel to dig with. A wonderful thing is
that shovel. With it he may bury the past and raise up a happier,
better future. We must care so much to expiate our sins that we are
willing to neglect them and live righteously. That is true repentance,
constructive repentance.

We cannot suddenly change our mental outlook and become happy when grief
has borne us down. "For the broken heart silence and shade,"--that is
fair and right. I would say to those who are unhappy, "Do not try to be
happy, you cannot force it; but let peace come to you out of the great
world of beauty that calmly surrounds our human suffering, and that
speaks to us quietly of God." Genuine laughter is not forced, but we may
let it come back into our lives if we know that it is right for it to
come.

We have all about us instances of the effectiveness of the lighter touch
as applied to serious matters. The life of the busy surgeon is a good
example. He may be, and usually is, brimming with sympathy, but if he
were to feel too deeply for all his patients, he would soon fail and
die. He goes about his work. He puts through a half-dozen operations in
a way that would send cold shivers down the back of the uninitiated. And
yet he is accurate and sure as a machine. If he were to take each case
upon his