Text of the meditation
Whoever masters the small becomes the rightful possessor of the great. The foolish person thinks that little faults, little indulgences and little sins are of no consequence; they persuade themselves that so long as they do not commit flagrant immoralities they are virtuous, and even holy; but they are thereby deprived of virtue and holiness, and the world knows them accordingly; it does not revere, adore and love them; it passes them by; they are reckoned of no account; their influence is destroyed.
The efforts of such a person to make the world virtuous, their exhortations to their fellow human beings to abandon great vices, are empty of substance and barren of fruit. The insignificance they attach to their small vices permeates their whole character, and is the measure of their manhood.
Whoever regards their smallest delinquencies as of the gravest nature becomes a saint.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
