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Book Excerpts:
Romans vii. 21: Overcome evil
with good.
The Battle of Life is an ancient
phrase consecrated by use in Commencement Orations without number. Two
modern expressions have taken their place beside it in our own day: the
Strenuous Life, and the Simple Life.
Each of these phrases has
its own significance and value. It is when they are overemphasized and
driven to extremes that they lose their truth and become catch-words of
folly. The simple life which blandly ignores all care and conflict, soon
becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous.
The strenuous life which
does everything with set jaws and clenched fists and fierce effort, soon
becomes strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm.
Somewhere between these
two extremes must lie the golden mean: a life that has strength and simplicity,
courage and calm, power and peace. But how can we find this golden
line and live along it? Some truth there must be in the old phrase which
speaks of life as a battle. No conflict, no character.
Without strife, a weak life.
But what is the real meaning of the battle? What is the vital issue at
stake? What are the things worth fighting for? In what spirit, with what
weapons, are we to take our part in the warfare?
There is an answer to these
questions in the text: Overcome evil with good. The man who knows this
text by heart, knows the secret of a life that is both strenuous and simple.
For here we find the three
things that we need most: a call to the real battle of life; a plan for
the right campaign; and a promise of final victory.
I. Every man, like the knight in the old legend, is born on a field
of battle. But the warfare is not carnal, it is spiritual.
Not the east against the west,
the north against the south, the "Haves" against the "Have-nots"; but
the evil against the good,—that is the real conflict of life.
The attempt to deny or
ignore this conflict has been the stock in trade of every false doctrine
that has befogged and bewildered the world since the days of Eden.
The fairy tale that the old
serpent told to Eve is a poetic symbol of the lie fundamental,—the theory
that sin does not mean death, because it has no real existence and makes
no real difference. This ancient falsehood has an infinite wardrobe
of disguises. |
