A Christmas Thought.

White Ribbon, Volume 7, Issue 79, 1 December 1901, Page 11

A Christmas Thought.

PEACE. And here is another word ; and what a word ! It is one of the gentlest of all words, and yet its power reiches to the outskirts of heaven. A lady to me one morning radiant—she had often come before, and always with a face heavy and opaque, and with eyes full of repressed grief and resentment. She w r as one of the fine, sensitive, tender souls, who for twenty years had hourly been outraged and tortured by a brutal husband. Just before she came to me that morning so radiant some one had given her a word to think about ; to analyze : to live in until she should become saturated with it. The word was “ Peace.” She had been repeating it, and trying to get its sweetest, purest and noblest understanding for more than an hour, when all the time the lash of her husband’s scorpion tongue was seking the most vulnerable part of her long tortured spirit. “ Peace,” she kept saying to herself; “ Peace,” and a soothing something seemed to pour balm into her many wounds. “ Peace,” she repeated, and a sense of superiority to his power to hurt gradually st le over her. “ Peace,” and a triumphant feeling of conquest began to fill her breast. “ Peace,” and what was this strange joyousness? Surely the day of jubilee was dawning in her soul! “ Peace,” and, oh, the thrilling fact of conscious mastery was adding to her stature, brimming over in her eyes in strength, and diffusing itself from her very presence until it filled the house full, and quieted and silenced the self-tortured spirit of the man whose only safety valve had been the infliction of torture upon her! In the upward climb towards selfccrquest there is no more helpful word

than “ Peace.” If the mother would use it when her nerves are torn in shre Is by the thoughtless little, turbulent little, reckless little “tousle pates,” with their powerful and clashing individualities creating havoc in the household, she would bring order out of ch ios of her own feelings first, and then out of their conduct. For the potency of the spoken word lies in the fact that the spirit of it, or the meaning of it goes forth to make its impression silently upon every soul within range ot its sphere.

In ihe higher life there is no justification for anger; an 1 bear in mind that anger represse 1 is not anger conquered. When anger would find its bitter and burning lodgment within us we can turn it aside by admitting another guest in its place. 1 hat guest is “ Peace.” The power of this guest is simply indescribable. Hpld the word in your thought for a few moments and let its meaning filter through every ptrt of your body. \ou may be outraged, or woriied, or disappointed, or anxious about money matters, or anything else ; you may be where a smile is the farthest thing imaginable from your thoughts; and yet, if you hold this word for only a few minutes, trying to understand it, trying to realise its meaning, it will take possession of you; it will relax the muscular tension wrought by anxiety or anger, and you will be surprised to find a warmth kindling in your bosom and a smile pulling at the corners of your mouth. Oh, friends, self-conquest comes by such little things as these ; and selfconquest is heaven on earth. — Helen Wilmans in “ Freedom.”