Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-12-13
Sunday Morning Talk.
Fixed Ideas.

We are hearing frequently today OF
fixed IDEAS" The term usually has an
unpleasant SAVIOR. 1t stands for GER
tain unfortunate notions that take pos
session of mems minds and hold them
captive Doctors and ministers are con-
stantly thrown in contact with people
thus unhappily obsessed. A clergyman
told me the other day that man had
been to him to try and get relief from
the thought that the spirit of certain
dead drunkard had gotten hold Of him.
Other nervous sufferers brood over this
or that real or fancied trouble. This
man, who now has money in the bank.
is sure that he is going to die in the
poorhouse That woman thinks her hus-
band has stopped loving her. That man
grieves over a sin committed twenty
years ago.
The usual method of treating these
victims Of painful fixed ideas is to try
and inject into the mind a counter-irri-
tant in the form of some cheerful, hope
laden thought, trusting that 1t VIII in
time drive out the evil spirits. May it
not be q good plan for all of us before
we become neurasthenics and while we
are in a normal physical and mental
condition to establish in our minds GER
tain ideas Of such positive strength and
worth that they will pre-empt every
nook and Granny and make 1T impossi-
BILE for malign and distressing thoughts
to find an entrance. much less lodgment?
Now we do not have to manufacture
such ideas or to search far and wide
for them. We need not start an indie
pendent intellectual factory and store
1t with notions purely of our own pro-
duction. that will not bear the test of
the worlds scrutiny. We have bat to
recognize and accept what has approved
~ tho ind.rD1nnf Of the centuries.
what at the bar Of reason today stands
forth as the truest and finest thought
that the human mind can cherish. Some
glorious ideas may be said to be fixed
every individual holds them tenaciously,
but that they are widely and increasingly
current and that they are held most
strongly by the prophets, the poets and
the moral leaders Of the race.
fixed idea. Men almost universally
recognize the sharp line between good
and evil. They believe that the clean,
straight life Is vastly to be preferred
to its opposite. They have come to
Frederick w. Robertson. when he says:
Were there no God and no future life,
even then it would be better to be true
than to be false. to be pure than to be
impure, to be generous than to be sell
fish Wild horses cannot drag from
the mind of man the idea that goodness
is the great. the supreme test of human
life.
The idea of Immortality has also fixed
itself in the thinking of mankind. We
revolt from the materialsm that regards
death as extinction of personality.
Whenever We lay our dead away it Is
with the confident hope that they have
not been resolved into nothingness.
When we look forward to our own GER
tain end we believe that it will be but
the beginning OF an ampler existence.
Prove it we cannot. 1t is enough to feel
that I'VE are mightier than We know"
Another fixed idea is the idea of God.
1t is vastly harder to believe in no God
at all than to believe in some kind of a
God. Without Him the universe is unin-
telligible and human life mystery and
a mockery. You may burn men at the
stake. You may strip them OF all their
possessions. but you cannot keep them
from believing in God.
The pre-eminence of Jesus Christ is
still another fixed idea. However the
cries of His person may differ the mod
ern world is practically at one in its
appreciation OF the character of Jesus
and Of the bearing of His teachings and
example on all our modern problems.
Science and invention register great ad-
vances from year to year. but Jesus
retains His mastership Of the race.
Such are few of the ideas that cling
to countless human minds the world
over. Why not fix them firmly in our
own thinking and act upon them?
THE PARSON.