ceive that he is
his own enemy. Such a man's work crumbles away, for it is divorced from
Truth and power. All effort that is grounded upon self, perishes; only that
work endures that is built upon an indestructible principle.

The man that stands upon a principle is the same calm, dauntless,
self-possessed man under all circumstances. When the hour of trial comes,
and he has to decide between his personal comforts and Truth, he gives up
his comforts and remains firm. Even the prospect of torture and death
cannot alter or deter him. The man of self regards the loss of his wealth,
his comforts, or his life as the greatest calamities which can befall him.
The man of principle looks upon these incidents as comparatively
insignificant, and not to be weighed with loss of character, loss of Truth.
To desert Truth is, to him, the only happening which can really be called a
calamity.

It is the hour of crisis which decides who are the minions of darkness, and
who the children of Light. It is the epoch of threatening disaster, ruin,
and persecution which divides the sheep from the goats, and reveals to the
reverential gaze of succeeding ages the men and women of power.

It is easy for a man, so long as he is left in the enjoyment of his
possessions, to persuade himself that he believes in and adheres to the
principles of Peace, Brotherhood, and Universal Love; but if, when his
enjoyments are threatened, or he imagines they are threatened, he begins to
clamor loudly for war, he shows that he believes in and stands upon, not
Peace, Brotherhood, and Love, but strife, selfishness, and hatred.

He who does not desert his principles when threatened with the loss of
every earthly thing, even to the loss of reputation and life, is the man of
power; is the man whose every word and work endures; is the man whom the
afterworld honors, reveres, and worships. Rather than desert that principle
of Divine Love on which he rested, and in which all his trust was placed,
Jesus endured the utmost extremity of agony and deprivation; and today the
world prostrates itself at his pierced feet in rapt adoration.

There is no way to the acquirement of spiritual power except by that inward
illumination and enlightenment which is the realization of spiritual
principles; and those principles can only be realized by constant practice
and application.

Take the principle of divine Love, and quietly and diligently meditate upon
it with the object of arrivi