And the freedom of youth means freedom to be one’s self, to be a law unto one’s self, not to be one’s self in lawlessness. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,—remembering that the responsibility of decision rests with you and that, in the despite of all the lives that have been lived and all the maps that have been drawn and all the plans that have been sketched and all the precedents that have been set, you must live your own life, and, if it be not your own life, it is not life at all. Cherish the counsels of loved ones but remember that neither mother nor father, uncle nor cousin nor any kinsman or kinswoman whosoever can choose whom you are to serve. You cannot serve God unless yours be the choice. Young men and women require to be warned against a thousand and one influences ever lurking near at hand to deter youth from the hazard of the spirit’s pioneering. Despise the counsels of the over-wise and over-mature, the sum of whose low wisdom is that a man can make no graver mistake in life than to wander from the paths which all men else have pursued. The fear of seeming unusual obsesses the soul of too many of us. Not a few men and women would rather be wrong than seem different. Difference, variance, distinctiveness are not ends in themselves, but may become and ofttimes are the means that must be used by him who is not fearful of moral distinction. Outward differentiation is nothing, but inward distinction is everything,—is the counsel I ever urge upon my fellow-Jews. We are not to seem different for the sake of seeming, but we are to dare to seem to be different in order to be distinguished, in order to achieve spiritual outstandingness. When nice and refined and timid people say to you, “Remember to be like everybody else, don’t attempt anything new, don’t run the risk of seeming peculiar, don’t dream of venturing upon novel courses whether in things great or small,” remember that there is a possible invasion of the soul’s integrity that no man need endure. To the counsels of the timorous fling back the command to the brave: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” When men seek to affright you by their counsels of prudence, remind them of the rule of one of the knightliest of Americans, the founder of Hampton Institute, who laid upon one youth’s soul the burden: “doing what can’t be done is the glory of living.” And when men seek to degrade you to the level of their own base timidity, bid them to remember the courage and nobleness that were in the act of Higginson in leading a negro regiment touching which he said: “We all fought, for instance, with ropes around our necks, the Confederate authorities having denied to officers of colored regiments the usual privileges if taken prisoners and having required them to be treated as felons.”