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to say or think of an intemperate man, ''Oh, he's gone to the dogs. It's no use doing anything more for him!" because, when we do this, we put hopeless, discouraging thought out in the air. It meets that person. He or she will feel it; and it is to them an element retarding their progress out of the slough they are in, just as some person's similar thought has retarded us in our effort to get out of some slough we were in or are in now, -- slough of indecision; slough of despondency; slough of ill-temper; slough of envious, hating thought.

Yet the spirit of man becomes the stronger for all it struggles against. It becomes the stronger for struggling against your censorious, uncharitable thought, until at last it carries a man or woman to a point where they may in thought say to others, "I would rather have your approbation than your censure. But I am not dependent on your approbation or censure, for my most rigid judge and surest punishment for all the evil I do comes of my own mind, -- the god or goddess in myself from whose judgment, from whose displeasure, there is no escaping." Yet as the spirit grows clearer and clearer in sight, so does that judge in ourselves become more and more merciful for its own errors; for it knows that, in a sense, as we refine from cruder to finer expression, there must be just so much evil to be contended against, fought against, and finally and inevitably overcome. Every man and woman is predestined to a certain amount of defect, until the spirit overcomes such defect; and overcome it must, for it is the nature of spirit to struggle against defect. It is the one thing impossible for man to take this quality out of his