Daily meditation, Mar. 5th: James Allen

Without the right performance of Duty, the higher virtues cannot be known.

MARCH FIFTH

ALL duty should be regarded as sacred, and its faithful and unselfish performance one of the leading rules of conduct. All personal and selfish considerations should be extracted and cast away from the doing of one’s duty; and when this is done, Duty ceases to be irksome, and becomes joyful.

Duty is only irksome to him who craves some selfish enjoyment or benefit for himself. Let the man who is chafing under the irksomeness of his duty look to himself, and he will find that his wearisomeness proceeds, not from the duty itself, but from his selfish desire to escape it. He who neglects duty, be it great or small, or of a public or private nature, neglects Virtue; and he who in his heart rebels against Duty rebels against Virtue.

The virtuous man concentrates his mind on the perfect doing of his own duty.