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.