HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 971, 14 May 1930, Page 10

HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

ELSIE BENEDICT OPENS FREE LECTURE SERIES THE SCIENCE OF LIVING “In the last IS years I have not had an hour of illness, and I am never tired. If you’ve learned how never to get tired, you’ve forestalled every disease and ailment there is,” said Elsie Lincoln Benedict, in her introductory address to a packed audience at the Concert Chamber last evening. This perfect health she attributed entirely to the tenets about which she is to lecture while in Auckland. When she first commenced the practice of these teachings she was unhappy, only slightly successful, and an invalid. “A long time ago,” she said, “two young people grew up in their little old country towns. They tried hard to live up to the things they had learned in Sunday School and in a good home. But they did not find the happiness they were told they would. Then came courses at the university colleges. These two thought that college would give what prayer and religion could not. They found that they had placed too much faith in colleges, which could not give them happiness or a job. This was a great disappointment, as they had struggled against big handicaps and received high academic qualifications, trying so hard for the great things of life “Those two persons were Mr. Benedict and myself. When we met each other we compared notes. After four years I ‘got’ him. We went on and on. still trying to be healthy, happy and successful. But we found the same disappointments, the same discouragements, the same hardships; so, when tv© came to the end of our rope, we decided we would find out what the doctors, the researchers, the laboratory investigators and great university people really knew. Yet we found that very little had been written by great professors and scientists, and what was written was not understandable. Even in lectures these great men were too academic and technical for us to be able to apply their knowledge to our lives. “One of the greatest psychologists that ever lived taught me how to make a change in my life and living. Our friends asked us how we did it. TV© then decided to give a public lecture, and a remarkable interest was shown in this subject of mental, physical and material improvement. “Out of every city’s population there is only a small number who are aspiring, ambitious and earnest enough to take any interests in the subjects with which we deal. I am not giving any religious lectures, although I am a very religiously-minded woman. To do good is my religion. Neither is this teaching mysticism or occultism. It is a revelation of the ways in which the great thinkers afford us the opportunities of living in the greatest heights of success, health and happiness. “There ax-e six divisions of our subject. The first and most important thing is health. Without that we can do little in any other direction. The second is friendship, which comes right next to health. One of the greatest ways to happiness is by the co-opera-tions and friendship of our fellowbeings. “Third is the right mate, and fourth the right work. The right work is the work that is play. Neither drudgery nor idleness is the thing to make people happy.” One of the many objects of the lectures was to find the suitable vocation for individual training and inclinations. This was the greatest factor in attaining happiness in work. The? series of free lectures is to be continued until next Wednesday.