The Fight of Faith

il By little and little I will drive them out from before thee.” — Exod. xxiii. 30.

Is my life, then, to be a perpetual warfare Js it only by little and little that I am to conquer my spiritual foes? I thought that in coming to Christ I was coming to the end of straggle; did He not say, “Come unto me all ye that labour, and I will give you rest “? Yet here it would seem as if the coming to Him were the promise of war. Yes, but the two promises do not contradict each other. The rest which He offers thee is a rest not from struggle but in struggle. He has a higher gift for thee than the mere cessation from life’s battle: His gift to thee is the power to fight. Knowest thou not that the first fruit of the Divine life within thee is the sense of struggle and the power of struggle. There is no warfare in spiritual death any more than in natural death; it is the calm of the sepulchre. But the rest of God comes to break the calm of the sepulchre. The rest of God is love, and love is labour. Perfect love is perfect power of labouring; completed love is complete strength for ladenness. Thy struggle is itself thy victory. Hast thou pondered the meaning of these words of Paul, “In all these thing we are more than conquerors “? What tilings is he speaking of? “Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.” Should we not have expected him to have said, “Over all these things we are more than conquerors “? Yes, had he meant to say so; but that was not the thought in his mind. Paul was not thinking of how we should get rid of tribulation and persecution, but of how tribulation and persecution would make us strong. It was not the freedom from the struggle, but the moral exercise of the struggle that caused his heart to triumph; therefore he was not afraid to say, “In all these things we are conquerors.” “Blessed are they that are persecuted,” says a greater than Paul. Why does He close the beatitudes with such a blessing as this? Just because it is the fitting crown of all. It is much to be poor in spirit, to be meek, to be merciful, to be peaceable, to be pure in heart — but to be all these things through struggle, this is holiness indeed. Therefore by little and little God will drive out thy foes. He will not rob thee’ of the moral health of struggle by granting thee a sudden triumph. Day by day He shall renew the exercise of thy patience, the trial of thy faith, the proof of thy love, the test of thy temper, the training of thy will. Day by day He shall grant thee a fresh field to conquer, a new victory to win, till in the calm of conscious strength thou shalt be able to say, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”