om the tyranny of custom, tradition, conventionality, and the
opinions of others, until you succeed in walking lonely and erect among
men. Rely upon your own judgment; be true to your own conscience; follow
the Light that is within you; all outward lights are so many
will-o'-the-wisps. There will be those who will tell you that you are
foolish; that your judgment is faulty; that your conscience is all awry,
and that the Light within you is darkness; but heed them not. If what they
say is true the sooner you, as a searcher for wisdom, find it out the
better, and you can only make the discovery by bringing your powers to the
test. Therefore, pursue your course bravely. Your conscience is at least
your own, and to follow it is to be a man; to follow the conscience of
another is to be a slave. You will have many falls, will suffer many
wounds, will endure many buffetings for a time, but press on in faith,
believing that sure and certain victory lies ahead. Search for a rock, a
principle, and having found it cling to it; get it under your feet and
stand erect upon it, until at last, immovably fixed upon it, you succeed in
defying the fury of the waves and storms of selfishness.

For selfishness in any and every form is dissipation, weakness, death;
unselfishness in its spiritual aspect is conservation, power, life. As you
grow in spiritual life, and become established upon principles, you will
become as beautiful and as unchangeable as those principles, will taste of
the sweetness of their immortal essence, and will realize the eternal and
indestructible nature of the God within.

No harmful shaft can reach the righteous man,
Standing erect amid the storms of hate,
Defying hurt and injury and ban,
Surrounded by the trembling slaves of Fate.

Majestic in the strength of silent power,
Serene he stands, nor changes not nor turns;
Patient and firm in suffering's darkest hour,
Time bends to him, and death and doom he spurns.

Wrath's lurid lightnings round about him play,
And hell's deep thunders roll about his head;
Yet heeds he not, for him they cannot slay
Who stands whence earth and time and space are fled.

Sheltered by deathless love, what fear hath he?
Armored in changeless Truth, what can he know
Of loss and gain? Knowing eternity,
He moves not whilst the shadows come and go.

Call him immortal, call him Truth and Light
And