Page 9

[fol. ix.]

9

It does not depend so much upon opportunities as it does upon
the man. Let each man & woman do perform their sacred duty
quietly and fearlessly & and unswervingly and the bitterness of life
will be sweetened by many & many a gleam ray of God's light .
There Remember, there is no Evil one cannot face or flee from
but the consequences of duty disregarded. A sense of
obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the
Deity. If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell
in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty
violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery.
If we say that darkness shall hide us, in the darkness
as beneath the glare of the noonday Sun, our obligations are
are yet with us. We cannot escape their power or fly from
their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with
us when the last breath of life is about to be extinguished,
to pain us, to make us wretched if they have been violated
and to console us so far as God has given us the
grace to perform them. Thus virtue is and always has
been its own reward, although from our material
point of view, this does not seem to be invariably true.