The Way of Peace | Page 9

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 arriving at a thorough understanding of it. Bring its searching light to bear upon
all your habits, your actions, your speech and intercourse with others, your every secret
thought and desire. As you persevere in this course, the divine Love will become more
and more perfectly revealed to you, and your own shortcomings will stand out in more
and more vivid contrast, spurring you on to renewed endeavor; and having once caught a
glimpse of the incomparable majesty of that imperishable principle, you will never again
rest in your weakness, your selfishness, your imperfection, but will pursue that Love until
you have relinquished every discordant element, and have brought yourself into perfect
harmony with it. And that state of inward harmony is spiritual power. Take also other
spiritual principles, such as Purity and Compassion, and apply them in the same way, and,
so exacting is Truth, you will be able to make no stay, no resting-place until the inmost
garment of your soul is bereft of every stain, and your heart has become incapable of any
hard, condemnatory, and pitiless impulse.
Only in so far as you understand, realize, and rely upon, these principles, will you acquire
spiritual power, and that power will be manifested in and through you in the form of
increasing dispassion, patience and equanimity.
Dispassion argues superior self-control; sublime patience is the very hall-mark of divine

knowledge, and to retain an unbroken calm amid all the duties and distractions of life,
marks off the man of power. "It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is
easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the
crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
Some mystics hold that perfection in dispassion is the source of that power by which
miracles (so-called) are performed, and truly he who has gained such perfect control of
all his interior forces that no shock, however great, can for one moment unbalance him,
must be capable of guiding and directing those forces with a master-hand.
To grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power; and
you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle. As a child, after
making many and vigorous attempts to walk unaided, at last succeeds, after numerous
falls, in accomplishing this, so you must enter the way of power by first attempting to
stand alone. Break away from 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