SERVICEーTHE COIN OF THE SPIRIT

　NEVER refuse any opportunity for service, no matter in what field you are called upon to labour. Is not that the lesson we have been striving to teach you for so long? Have we not sought to demonstrate that service is the coin of the spirit, the only wealth that it possesses, and that it desires to share with all? Knowledge always brings responsibility. How often have you heard that said by me? The responsi-bility is that you shall use this knowledge wisely and well. Those who live in my world do not come back to you only so that it should gladden your hearts, but that this return from another life should act as a spur, an incentive, that it should quicken you and make you feel the desire to render service to others. Not all are called on to speak from platforms, to demonstrate the gifts of the spirit to multitudes, to a few, or in the privacy of their homes. The opportunities for service come to all those who desire to help. The love which com-pels those who live in our world to manifest to you is the same love that they seek to kindle in your hearts so that, expressing it, you too can manifest its qualities, its beauties, to others who need it badly.

　Look around your world of to-day and see the many aching, troubled, sorrowing hearts, those who shed tears of sadness, those who are weary and perplexed, those who have lost their　way, those who find that the foundations of their faith have been shattered, those who have lost all their possessions, those who know not where to turn, those who think they are without guidance, without help and without hope. Realize that the field of labour is large and the opportunities for service are many. Then, too, look at all those who still wear their fetters, who still live in their self-erected prisons of creed, dogma, ritual and ceremony. We have to teach them how to find freedom, how te liberate themselves.

　There is a countless number of human beings spread through-out your whole world who badly need the service of the ones who possess knowledge. Wherever there are individuals cling-ing to falsity, to blindness, to superstition, to intolerance, to the dross of materialism, there is a field of service. As long as there are children of the Great Spirit ignorant of spiritual truth, you know there is work for you and for us. That is the mission on which we are all engaged. We seek to spread truth, so that all may live in the beauty of its splendour and cast the darkness caused by foibles and superstition and ignorance behind them.

　There are many enemies to be destroyed in this battle, which has raged for centuries.  But we are victorious, for the hosts of those who oppose us dwindle year by year. Man cannot be kept prisoner, for ever in the darkness.  His soul yearns for the light.  The spirit which is divine within him is restless; it demands freedom, liberty; it finds bondage irksome. That is why you must continue to present spiritual truths with all your vigour.

　That is why you must hold the ideal of truth, knowing that in the end it will be accepted. That is why you must bear with the taunts of your foolish enemies, the persecution that they seek to impose on you, the ridicule and the sarcasm which are directed against you. These cannot touch you, unless you allow them to do so; they should pass you by.  For with malice towards none, but with love towards all, you must conquer and you must triumph.

　That is the key-note of all spirit teaching, and you must get it implanted in your minds. Whether it is a book that you write, whether it is a word of sympathy or kindness, whether it is a handshake, whether it is helping a lame dog over a stile, whether it is a silent gift that smooths someone's diffi-culties—the coin of service must always be yours to give.