and dutiful. And the conscience in the depths of the soul, if it awakens and life envelops it with its luminous spirit, is the leader to all the duties required.

Then man will not mistake the path. Then the communities of mankind will come to their duties drawn by their magic, intoxicated with the pleasure of performing them, as things are drawn to a magnet, without resistance or obstinacy or stubbornness.

There will then be no occasion for sophistry, for the lights are lit, illu-minating meanings in their proper colors and their true qualities, and showing them in their real and settled truths.

Zayd ibn Thabit held the office of judge in the days of Umar, may God be pleased with him. Once Ubayy ibn Ka'b and Umar ibn al-Khattab, Caliph of the Muslims, came before him that he might judge between them in a case. When the judge saw the Commander of the Faithful, Umar, he rose at once and yielded to him the best place in the room. Umar grew angry and said: "This is the first injustice in your judging! It is right that I should sit beside my adversary!" And when Zayd had finished hearing the case, Umar said to him: "O Zayd... a judge is not just unless chief and subject stand equal before him!"

Is there not, in Umar's alertness to duty, that which lifted injustice and set up the foundations of right and justice?

In a man's alertness to duty lies the awakening of truth in the hidden places of the soul, and the triumph of righteousness within it, so that a man may be upright, master of his soul's whims, holding the reins of his own affairs.

For Umar was not beguiled by pomp of appearance away from the call of duty; the flattery of the moment and its softness did not distract him from the approval of conscience; and he did not accept the judge's partiality toward him — he, the Caliph, who ruled over the necks of mankind.

If every man, great and lowly alike, listened to this voice, which is from God, injustice and hatred would not be found among men.

In the year 1870 it happened

in North America that the sky suddenly darkened, red tongues like flame appeared in the heavens, and a stormy wind blew up with them, so that people imagined the Day of Judgment had come. The American House of Representatives was then in session. Most of the members left their places, and those remaining demanded that the session be adjourned. The Speaker said to them: "The Judgment may be at hand this hour, or it may not. If it is not, there is no sense in adjourning the session; and if it is, then I prefer that we meet our Maker doing our duty."

If every individual awaited the meeting with his Lord while per-forming his duty, mankind would not fall into confusion in their dealings. The performance of duty is according to individual capacity, and the higher an individual rises, the greater his responsibility

toward his duties, the wider their horizon opens before him, and the greater their weight becomes.

Therefore the great man bears duties under whose load weak souls would stagger, and ordi-nary individuals — the vast majority of mankind — cannot match their strength against the gravest of duties.

And I do not wish to end before reminding woman that among the duties of greatest moment in life is the mother's duty toward her children. It is a personal duty, a patriotic duty, a human duty — a sacred duty with which God has singled her out. She must listen for its call at every moment of her life, for its effect passes beyond personal bounds and goes beyond the family to the wide world, in which the child will one day fight his battle as a man, and makes ready, sooner or later, to deal with its affairs.