"Lo I am with you alway" What ill can then betide? From death hast Thou redeemed me, Th' Alpha Thou of all my faith, Yea Lord! for Thou art worthy, My heart would fain adore Thee, CHAPTER XIV. VICTORY. But, however successful the warfare, that is not the condition which you would deliberately choose as your abiding destiny, nor is it intended to be so by your everlasting Friend. In the spiritual warfare, as in any other, individual victories are helpfully inspiring. "Each victory will help you Some other to win." But individual victories, even, grow monotonous and your soul would tire of them were the necessity laid upon you to continue winning them unceasingly. We recognize the duty of warfare and we are grateful for the grace which has not only called us to engage in it but has also furnished us with all needed equipment and promised continued help in its prosecution. We rejoice in the opportunities thus afforded for glorifying our Lord. Yet it is our privilege not to deem all this as "our destined end or way." While it may be that through much tribulation you are to enter the Kingdom of God and while, with Paul, you may "glory in tribulations also," yet you are not called upon to do so for their own sake, but the rather for the sake of the precious something beyond to which they are instrumental in leading you. "We glory in tribulations also❞—but why? "Knowing that tribulation worketh"-many desirable qualities. It is not then your duty to regard the warfare unto which you are called and in which you are now engaged, as a condition in which to delight for its own sake, but the rather for the sake of the results to be achieved thereby. That it is not required of you to rest in battling, as the end to which you are called, even though you were uniformly victorious, which you are not, but that all individual victories are to end in a triumph which will be final-this is the great and sustaining inspiration which is to animate you. The word declares it. The command and example of Christ enforce it. "Be not weary in well doing." And well doing is, of necessity, well fighting. But why not be weary? "For in due season we shall reap." The otherwise flagging energy amid life's burdens is sustained by an inspiring Beyond to which they lead. In "due season" there will be an end of all strivings and you will enter into the final and abiding fruitions of all antecedent individual efforts and victories. This encouraging hope is implied in the command of your Lord, "Occupy till I come." "O watch and fight and pray, And help divine implore." Assuredly this is your purpose and your loyal daily endeavor. But the query will still return, "How long Lord, how long must I battle? Am I to be watching and fighting and praying for ever? Is there to be no end, even to the winning of victories? Will there not come a final victory when the enemy will be forever vanquished and the disturbing presence of evil from thenceforth be a thing eternally unknown?" And the sufficient answer is "Occupy till I come." Your fighting occupancy of life's battlefield is thus limited. This is encouraging, although variously appreciated amid this life's allurements. With your life tides flowing strongly and the sanguine and generous impulses of your physical and spiritual youth bathing your chivalrous endeavors in the roseate hues of high hopes, you are willing, yea even eager, to "renew it bold 13 And this Shall we ly every day" and that too, indefinitely. is well. Well for you and the work. query is still legitimate-"how long?" say a century? After the day's toil people find it needful and pleasant to rest. Will there ever a time come when the thought and fact of rest from the conflicts and wearying toils of the spirit will be welcome? Under the burdens of the present, which may have naught to do with strivings against sin and a seeking for conformity to God, there are yet those who would gladly welcome the grave and would fain be at rest "under the clods of the valley." Many there be who are weary of the present and who at times hasten to be rid of it by self-destruction without an assured hope of a restful Beyond. But you are enabled, amid life's ills, "to do and endure as seeing him who is invisible." Yea even to rejoice amid tribulations through the sustaining grace and high hopes of the gospel. But amid it all, as, daily and continuously, you are finding "a law in your members warring against the law of your mind and bringing you into captivity to the law of sin which is in your members," will there never a time come when there will be a growing fascination for you in the fact that "there is a rest that remaineth for the people of God?" If you do not so feel at present perhaps at the end of a century you might |