The Eagle Life

“They shall mount up with wings as eagles.”

ISA. xl. 31.

I HAVE been reading a recently published Life of Roosevelt and I think that the outstanding sentence in the book is one spoken by Mrs. Roosevelt when the last of her four boys had enlisted in the service of his country. Mr. Roosevelt was just a little daunted when the last, and youngest, left for the Front; but Mrs. Roosevelt said to him, “You must not bring up your children like eagles, and expect them to act like sparrows.” It is a royal word: it links itself with some of the great sayings of the Roman mothers, which are still ringing through the years. Her boys had been created for great ventures, and when the call came they went forth as naturally as eagles when they leave their eerie for hazardous flights. And Mrs. Roosevelt’s word unveils the

152 true ideal of discipline and training. We are to rear our boys and girls in such largeness and quality of being that they will instinctively do the big thing because they are made and moulded in big ways. They are not to turn to the path of venture with trembling and reluctant choice, but because it is their nature to do it. They are eagle in spirit and they are to take to the vast ways as naturally as they breathe.

And this, too, is the teaching of our Lord. In all His teaching the primary emphasis is on the state of being, and only secondarily upon the issues in conduct. Create an eagle, and you may look for eagle flights. Make the tree good and good fruit will appear in sure sequence. The teaching is expressed in many different ways. “Ye are of your father the devil.” Christ lays his finger upon the very substance of their souls, the fibres of their nature, ^’the works of your father are absolutely sure” What is in will come out. We cannot weave fine robes from rotten fibre. We cannot have pure streams from foul springs. We cannot have exploits from cowards. The sparrow will not take the path of the eagle.

There are three verbs of very different degrees of value. There is the verb *Ho have.’’ What a swaggering place it fills in the speech of men! It denominates a man’s material possessions. And there is the verb ‘’to do,” a word of much more vital significance. It dominates a man’s activity and services. Thirdly, there is the verb ‘Ho be,” which is incomparably more vital than the other two. It denominates the essential nature and character of a man, and its contents reveal his inherent work. Not in what we have, and in what we do, but in what we are is found the real clue to the value of our life. Are we sparrows or eagles? Who is the father of our spirits? Are we partakers of the divine nature? What am I, who am I? a child of dust or a son of God? It is the glory of redeeming grace to change the character and quality of our beings. We can be re-created in Christ Jesus. We can be endued with the powers of endless life. We can have the eagle spirit, and then we shall “mount up with wings as eagles, we shall run and not be weary: we shall walk and not faint.”