We have most of us, at one time or another of our lives, passed
through trying ordeals, the memory of which we can by no means dwell
on with pleasure. Times they were of blinding and driving storm, and
howling winds, out of which voices as of evil spirits spoke close in
our ears—tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild
beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts—now, “Rouse up! art
thou a man and darest not do this thing;” now, “Rise, kill and eat—it
is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy scruples of this
teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way and balk thee of
thine own? Thou hast strength to have them—to brave all things in earth
or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength, and be a man!”
Then did not the wild beast within us shake itself, and feel its
power, sweeping away all the “Thou shalt nots,” which the Law wrote up
before us in letters of fire, with the “I _will_” of hardy, godless,
self-assertion? And all the while, which alone made the storm really
dreadful to us, was there not the still small voice, never to be
altogether silenced by the roarings of the tempest of passion, by the
evil voices, by our own violent attempts to stifle it;—the still small
voice appealing to the man, the true man, within us, which is made
in the image of God, calling on him to assert his dominion over the
wild beast—to obey, and conquer, and live. Aye! and though we may have
followed other voices, have we not, while following them, confessed in
our hearts that all true strength, and nobleness, and manliness was to
be found in the other path. Do I say that most of us have had to tread
this path and fight this battle? Surely I might have said all of us;
all, at least, who have passed the bright days of their boyhood. The
clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and heavy; the weak, the
cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and passionate of body. The
arms and the field have been divers—can have been the same, I suppose,
to no two men, but the battle must have been the same to all. One here
and there may have had a foretaste of it as a boy; but it is the young
man’s battle, and not the boy’s, thank God for it! That most hateful
and fearful of all relatives, call it by what name we will—self, the
natural man, the old Adam—must have risen up before each of us in early
manhood, if not sooner, challenging the true man within us, to which
the Spirit of God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.
Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and take up the
pledge which was made for you when you were a helpless child. This
world, and all others, time and eternity, for you hang upon the issue.
This enemy must be met and vanquished—not finally, for no man while on
earth, I suppose, can say that he is slain; but, when once known and
recognized, met and vanquished he must be, by God’s help, in this and
that encounter, before you can be truly called a man; before you can
really enjoy any one even of this world’s good things.