Deakin - A Man of Character. Prayer No 10
Deakin - A Man of Character.
On one of Deakin's official Government trips to London he was given £1000 to cover his expenses. He shocked and disgruntled his traveling companions by choosing to stay at very modest lodgings, walking when he could and not spending public funds unnecessarily. The archives of the Auditor General shows that upon his return to Australia he returned £450 of the original £1000.
£1000 would be worth $35,000 AUD in todays money. So Deakin returned approx $15,800 AUD to the Australian Commonwealth, because he truely understood that it was the peoples money! "He behaved throughout as a man of scrupulous honor" Walter Murdoch Alfred Deakin: A Sketch page 236
It is interesting that the note above clearly shows that the paper note was fully redeemable in Gold coin, a sad indictment of today's fiat currency system!
Deakin Prayer No 10 "Not triumph, O God, but truth, not platitudes but conviction, not laurels but light, be the aim ever before my eyes, the impersonal goal, towards which shall move all my efforts for the blameless ideal. To seek the truth, to speak the truth, to love the right, to serve the right, to forget the self, to erase the self, to devote the self absolutely and unremittingly to the highest and best, to see my life sink like water in the sand content that it nourish the roots of a purer social life, to strive
ever putting aside success as foreign to the end and indifferent to the spirit in which I work, to preserve patience and humility and amidst the temptations of public and private life; to be a good citizen and help others to be good citizens, without phrases, honours, gains or glory in aspiration and in self-reliance and faith in Thee." Alfred Deakin 17th June 1894
It is important to note that Deakin lived by what he prayed here "without phrases, honors gains or glory" as he resisted many offers of peerage and knighthood.
Previous Prayers in the series are available in the Alfred Deakin Blog section www.alfreddreakin.com blog
