themselves the best possible preventives against worry.  They dignify life above worry.  Worry is undignified, petty, paltry.  Where you know you have something to do worth doing, you are conscious of the Divine Benediction, and who can worry when the smile of God rests upon him?  This is a truism almost to triteness, and yet how few fully realize it.  It is the unworthy potterers with life, the dabblers in life-stuff, those who blind themselves to their high estate, those who are unsure of their footing who worry.  The true aristocrat is never worried about his position; the orator convinced of the truth of his message worries not as to how it will be received; the machinist sure of his plans hesitates not in the construction of his machinery; the architect assured of his accuracy pushes on his builders without hesitancy or question, fear, or alarm; the engineer knowing his engine and his destination has no heart quiver as he handles the lever.  It is the doubter, the unsure, the aimless, the dabbler, the frivolous, the dilettante, the uncertain that worry.  How nobly Browning set this forth in his Epilogue: 

      What had I on earth to do
  With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? 
  Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
    —­Being—­Who? 
  One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
    Never doubted clouds would break,
  Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
  Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
    Sleep to wake. 
  No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s worktime
    Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
  Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
  ‘Strive and thrive!’ cry ’Speed,—­fight on, fare ever
    There as here!’

And this is not “mere poetry.”  Or rather it is because it is “mere poetry” that it is real life.  Browning had nearly seventy years of it.  He knew.  Where there are those to whom “God has whispered in the ear,” there is no uncertainty, no worry.  The musician who knows his instrument, knows his music, knows his key, and knows his time to play never hesitates, never falters, never worries.  With tone clear, pure, strong, and certain, he sends forth his melodies or harmonies into the air.  Cannot you, in your daily life, be a true and sure musician?  Cannot you be certain—­absolutely, definitely certain—­of your right to play the tune of life in the way you have it marked out before you, and then go ahead and play!  Play, in God’s name, as God’s and man’s music-maker.

CHAPTER XIII

RELIGIOUS WORRIES AND WORRIERS

Misunderstandings, misconceptions, and ignorance in regard to what really is religion have caused countless millions to mourn—­and worry; indeed, far more to worry than to mourn.  Religion should be a joyous thing, the bringing of the son and daughter into close relationship with the Father.  Instead, for centuries, it has been a battle for creeds, for mental assent to certain doctrines, rather than a growth in brotherhood and loving relationship, and those who could not see eye to eye with one another deemed it to be their duty to fight and worry each other—­even to their death.