n electricity--sets up a certain rate of vibration in the spiritual
atmosphere and works as with irresistible sway. The individual who is
held to possess great strength of will is, really, simply the one
capable of holding the thought, of keeping a certain tenacity of
purpose. This power alone redeems one from living on shifting sands, and
being perhaps, at last, engulfed and swallowed up in the quicksands of
his own shattered visions and ideals, which never grew to fulfilment
because of his infirmity of will and his closing his eyes to the star
that had shone in his firmament.

The very pain and trial and multiplying obstacles that one may encounter
who definitely sets his steps along a certain way, are only helps, not
hindrances. One gains the strength of that which he overcomes. He
transforms obstacles into stepping-stones. For we live and move and have
our being in an ethereal atmosphere, which is universal, and which
unerringly registers every thought and every energy, and transmutes
these into living forces. Thought is creative, and if the thought be
held with sufficient intensity, it acts upon every element that has to
do with the final achievement. Imagination--which is simply clairvoyant
vision--discerns the ideal in the dim distance, and thought is the
motive force by means of which it is achieved. To be "infirm of will"
is, therefore, the greatest of misfortunes, as it inevitably produces
complete failure in all the affairs of life. However hopeless a certain
combination of events may look, it really is not so. Nothing is ever
hopeless, because nothing is final. Conditions are forever flowing like
a river, and may be modified and transformed at any moment.

Failure or success is optional with the individual, for each lies in
character, and is not a matter of possessions or external conditions. To
become cynical, despondent, indifferent, is failure, and one has no
moral right to fall to that level. Associations that induce these
feelings should be abandoned. The happy conditions of life are to be had
on the same terms. The fretful, the ill-tempered, the selfish, the
exacting, must, somewhere and some way, learn their lesson and grow
toward the light; but their influence should not be allowed to poison
the spiritual atmosphere. It is neither a moral duty, nor is it even
true sympathy to share the gloom and depression generated by these
qualities. The inward whisper of the Spirit is the summons to a nobler
plan