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instead of being adverse to them.

Everyone knows how strong thoughts of fear or grief have turned hair white in a few hours, how great fear makes the heart beat so rapidly as to seem about to "jump out of the body"; this result not being at all dependent on whether there be any real cause of fear or whether it be a purely imaginary cause. Just so, strong negative thoughts may render the blood acid, causing rheumatism. Bearing mental burdens makes more stooped shoulders than does bearing heavy material loads. Believing that God regards us as "miserable sinners," that He is continually watching us and our failures with disapproval, brings utter discouragement and a sort of half-paralyzed condition of mind and body, which means failure in all our undertakings.

Is it difficult for you to understand why, if God lives in us all the time, He does not keep our thoughts right instead of permitting us through ignorance to drift into wrong thoughts and so bring trouble on ourselves?

Well, we are not automatons. Your child will never learn to walk alone if you always do his walking. Because you recognize that the only way for him to be strong, self-reliant in all things --- in other words, to become a man --- is to throw him on himself and let him, through experience, come to a knowledge of things for himself; you are not willing to make a mere puppet of him by taking the steps