How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Francis Bacon was right when he said, three hundred and fifty years ago: "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

I can remember the days when people talked about the conflict between science and religion. But no more. The newest of all sciences-psychiatry-is teaching what Jesus taught. Why? Because psychiatrists realise that prayer and a strong religious faith will banish the worries, the anxieties, the strains and fears that cause more than half of all our ills. They know, as one of their leaders, Dr. A. A. Brill said: "Anyone who is truly religious does not develop a neurosis."

If religion isn't true, then life is meaningless. It is a tragic farce.

I interviewed Henry Ford a few years prior to his death. Before I met him, I had expected him to show the strains of the long years he had spent in building up and managing one of the world's greatest businesses. So I was surprised to how calm and well and peaceful he looked at seventy-eight. When I asked him if he ever worried, he replied:

"No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me.

With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?"

Today, even psychiatrists are becoming modern evangelists. They are not urging us to lead religious lives to avoid hell-fires in the next world, but they are urging us to lead religious lives to avoid the hell-fires of this world-the hell-fires of stomach ulcer, angina pectoris, nervous breakdowns, and insanity. As an example of what our psychologists and psychiatrists are teaching, read The Return to Religion, by Dr. Henry C. Link. You will probably find a copy in your public library.

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 99

Yes, the Christian religion is an inspiring, health-giving activity. Jesus said: "I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly." Jesus denounced and attacked the dry forms and dead rituals that passed for religion in His day. He was a rebel. He preached a new kind of religion-a religion that threatened to upset the world. That is why He was crucified. He preached that religion should exist for man- not man for religion; that the Sabbath was made for man- not man for the Sabbath. He talked more about fear than He did about sin. The wrong kind of fear is a sin-a sin against your health, a sin against the richer, fuller, happier, courageous life that Jesus advocated. Emerson spoke of himself as a "Professor of the Science of Joy". Jesus, too, was a teacher of "the Science of Joy". He commanded His disciples to "rejoice and leap for joy".

Jesus declared that there were only two important things about religion: loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves. Any man who does that is religious, regardless of whether he knows it. For example, my father-in-law, Henry Price, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He tries to live by the golden rule; and he is incapable of doing anything mean, selfish, or dishonest. However, he doesn't attend church, and regards himself as an agnostic. Nonsense! What makes a man a Christian? I'll let John Baillie answer that.

He was probably the most distinguished professor who ever taught theology at the University of Edinburgh. He said: "What makes a man a Christian is neither his intellectual acceptance of certain ideas, nor his conformity to a certain rule, but his possession of a certain Spirit, and his participation in a certain Life."

If that makes a man a Christian, then Henry Price is a noble one.

William James-the father of modern psychology-wrote to his friend, Professor Thomas Davidson, saying that as the years went by, he found himself "less and less able to get along without God".

Earlier in this book I mentioned that when the judges tried to pick the best story on worry sent in by my students, they had so much difficulty in choosing between two outstanding stories that the prize money was split. Here is the second story that tied for first prize-the unforgettable experience of a woman who had to find out the hard way that "she couldn't get along without God".