MENTAL EXERCISE.
By G.W.S.Ware.
June,11,1939.
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Mental–Pertaining to the mind.
Exercise–To train by use.
This Sabbath morning at breakfast table I thought: What subject shall I write on next?
and I decided on Mental Exercise. O yes, you want to know what I ate for breakfast? Two
pieces of whole wheat bread, toasted, sandwich with poached egg, butter and a bowl of corn
flakes in milk, finished off with a cup of postum, as I had quit coffee, about 30 years
ago, for my health sake. I have an appetite for three meals a day, but apply the brakes
before I get enough? Why, do I do this? Why, to have an appetite for the next meal. I am
85, and Mrs. Ware is 54, she exercises by various gymnastic maneuvers and household work,
but my method is moderate manual labor of some kind, in addition to regular early and
late, long or short walks, without a stick, holding my body erect and shoulders back to
give my lungs room to breathe all the air I need. The bones of my feet and legs are in
shape and condition for walking, like they were of yore; which is rare, with those of my
age. To give me health, my stomach demands my body to take, daily, lots of exercise. When
these conditions are maintained, mental forces will marshal themselves to do you service,
if you will be their judicious guide. When this is done and mental exercise returns from a
jaunt, and looks at the mental picture you have enabled it to make, it is delighted to be
the mind of a person like you, and is eager to do greater things for you, the result of
yet more strenuous mental exercise. Without it, it rebels against the person to whom God
gave it. When a man’s mind is at war with him, unless he yields, the result, is
disastrous to both. The human mind is God’s great gift to man. Without it, man is a
nonentity. The mind, like the body, must exercise, or die. To exercise in sin brings
death, but in righteousness, eternal life.
