A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 15 May 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

ARE YOU A THIEF? Havhvoii robbed yourself off your birthright, your charaeLer, your freedom? Have you rohiied yourself of your faith by seofting, mocking, and sneering? Have you robbed yourself of your honour by lying, cheating, and tricking? Have you robbed yourself off your happiness by whining, whimpering, and fa ult-finding? Have von robbed yourself of your health by hating, hurting, and fearing? Have you robbed yourself of'your vision hv burrowing, bartering, and compromising? Have von . robbed yourself of your strength by conforming to your weakness? If you have, then you are a thief—the worst kind of thief—not the kTnd who steals bread because he is in need, luit a trustee who embezzles assets with which lie is entrusted for those not yet of age; and you are as much a thief as if you had robbed another of his character, liberty, health, happiness, property, and liis chance in life. You have put yourself in bondage. Unless you pay hack to yourself the price of the assets of which you have robbed yourself, you have built the walls, doors, chains, locks, and bars of the prison in which you must spend the rest of your life. Your own hands must remove every brick and bar of that house, for the house you erect you must occupy or destroy. i-low many there are in every walk of life who daily and hourly “let go”; who glide along with the current of popular opinion ; who give way on this principle, compromise on that; who conceal their convictions on this for the favour of powerful friends; shade their opinions on that for fear o' powcrlul enemies; who keep silent when they should speak, because the company is adverse; who scoff at fine emotions because they are not good form; who laugh at scruples because the others do; and who resort to any weapon to win in business and in affairs! It is only a few years, and they find they have hound, gagged, and manacled themselves in an actual prison. They had just drifted, forgetful of the if act that each thought we think is a link in the chain of our own destiny—each action a nail, bolt, bar, or brick in the house in which we must live for ever, —M. PItESTON STANLEY