The Witness of Difficult Enterprise

“*T can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”’ — Puit. iv. 13.

Tue Christian believer is to give witness of his communion with Christ by his ability to do difficult things. The power of the resurrection must be attested in. chivalrous enterprise. There must be a certain quiet and sunny assurance in doing impossible things. It must be given naturally, spontaneously, unconsciously, and with all the quietness with which a strongly engined motor-car takes a precipitous hill. To a sixty-horse-power motor a stiff gradient does not exist. To a soul which is strengthened with the grace which is in Christ Jesus impossibilities are wiped out. “I can do all things in Christ.”

John Smith, of Harrow, the man whose sacrificial piety has left such a firm seal upon hundreds of Harrovians, was once speaking of some display of moral courage to an old pupil, who remarked: ‘‘ That was very difficult. I wonder he could do it.” ‘“* Difficult?’ answered John Smith — “Difficult? He was a Christian!” That is the apostolic tone, as that is the apostolic spirit. The apostles faced the changing road in the faith that they had sufficient equipment for every encounter, and that every frowning difficulty would be only a privileged opportunity for additional conquest. Difficulty became an occasion for the unlocking of larger resources in the unsearchable riches of Christ. And so every difficulty came to be interpreted as a promise, and the promise was always redeemed. Where difficulty abounded grace did much more abound.

The world is always arrested by the quiet and splendid achievement of difficult things. To see sorrow borne with hopeful courage, to see prosperity worn with thoughtful tenderness, to see disappointment met with sweetness, to see the long, uncertain day endured with patience, to see personal injuries received in unrevenging meekness, to see kindness in the garish day, and to hear Songs in the night — all these make the world stand still and wonder. Thus do our very difficulties become the missionaries of redeeming grace.