Who has not cried out, in haste but still in anguish: "Alas! All
things are against me; foes are many and friends there are none!" The
roads to pessimism are many; but surely this is the shortest one, to
get to think that life is but a conflict waged single-handed against
great odds, a long story of struggle, difficulties, pains,
disappointments, temptations, failures, wounds, ending only in death.
Even though you escape that chronic jaundiced view of life there are
seasons of depression when it seems easy to get out of bed on the wrong
side and to plow all day into stumps instead of in the good, clear
ground. Ever we need the vision that Elisha of old gave to his young
man, to see the hills about us alive with our allies. Otherwise it is
easy to conclude the fates fight against us.
How slight is the evidence on which men base their gloomy conclusions!
The pessimist always argues from a single instance to a general law.
If he strikes a poor peach on top he throws the whole basket away--or
sells them as soon as he can. He insists on sitting square on the
cactus bunch when there is only one on the whole bench-land. He then
becomes an authority on cactus. If he can discover a few foes on the
horizon he is blind to a regiment of friends close at hand.
But the seers, our poets and teachers, have a wider vision; they seek
the glory rather than the gloom and they tell us that every man has
more friends than foes. This is the song of those who told us long ago
of Providence, the one who backs a man up and fights on his side and
furnishes him in the hour of need. This is the song of Lowell,
Tennyson, Whittier, and Browning. Life is not a lone-handed fight
against unnumbered foes; it is not a losing fight to any who will fight
it well.
Every force in this world works with the man who seeks the good. This
is a right world and only he who fights the right faces the
unconquerable. A man may meet rebuffs, battle's tides may sweep back
and forth, but in the end, as it has ever been in all the long story of
man's conflict with nature, so in the conflict with every other foe, he
is bound to win. This is as true in the individual life of every
fighter as nature and history show it to be in universal life.
On our side there is the great world of the unseen. Little do we know
of it, but still that little gives us confidence to believe it is
peopled with our allies. Our fairest hopes of good angels may be
delusions as to details, but they are essentially true, being born of
an eternal verity.
The gospel of good hope declares there is One over all, the friend of
all; greater is He that is with you than any against you; greater is He
than your temptations, your adversaries, your difficulties, and your
sorrows. This was what the great Teacher came to tell men, that God
was on their side, seeking to help them, loving, caring, coöperating,
leading them into the life of victory over every enemy.
Let a man face life in this confidence and he is invincible. He goes
forth and an unseen army goes with him. He gains the seer's vision to
see even the plotting of the enemy and the forces that fight against
him all working for his good. From many combats he gains strength for
the decisive struggle. All things work together for good. He serves
the right, the truth, the things that are eternal; he fights for
character, for manhood, and the good; and the eternal forces that rule
the universe fight by his side. He beholds the hills full of the hosts
of heaven; though he has no time to enjoy the vision he knows they are
there, his allies, his assurance of ultimate victory.