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VII.

Defeat: the Victory of It.

VERY MAN LONGS for complete victory. He desires victory in the world and victory in himself. In the literature of religion not much is said, especially in later times, after the God of Battles had been superseded by the God of Love, about the victory without. The stress is upon the victory within.

In the words of that brilliant but defeated Colossus of the spirit, Paul, you get the thing epitomized. He writes a second letter to his young friend, the preacher Timothy. He is presumably at Rome, as he writes, and is about to go for the second time before Nero, by whose order, according to tradition, he was decapitated in 67 A. D. He gives what may be called technical counsels to the man who was to become a bishop, and tells him of his tragic disappointment, his defeat. "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. Only Luke is with me" the man who went with Paul and did with him great works of healing. "Alexander, the coppersmith, did me much evil." "At my first answer"-probably before Nero in defense of the faith, in Rome "no man stood with me, but all men forsook me." Nevertheless he could declare, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown."

On the outside, defeat; on the inside, victory. So has it ever been with men like him. Who wins a tithe of the outside victory he set before him in planning the battle of life? No man. There is no such thing as a successful person, in his own estimation. has amazed the world by the sweep of his vast enterprise, he has also no less amazed the world by saying, as Cecil Rhodes said in the last hours: "So little

If he

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done, so much to do." The victory must come from elsewhere. Yet it were foolish to stay ambition, or to say the least thing to distract from the achievement which we should like to bring upon the world.

To prepare ourselves without a flinch for the outside defeat, and yet for the inside victory,—that is our task. To know that we succeed and yet appear to fail, that is the enlightenment which bringeth a . great light to the dark places of our lives.

We cannot find better words for our guidance than the tremendous declaration of victory in the midst of defeat. The first phrase runs, "I have fought a good fight." What is a good fight? It is the fight that promises victory, no, it is nothing of the kind. It is the fight with the odds on my side, shame on such a fight; not even a pugilist would call it a fight. It is a good fight when the odds are against me. When many an outward token spells defeat, many a prejudice opposes my plan. Here is the first thing for a man in a good fight.

The second thing is to enter the arena with willingness to go down in honor rather than to stand in dishonor. It is not quite on the level to play or to fight only to win. A crooked gambler, a crafty merchant, may fight such a make-believe fight. But a man,never! It is the fight which maintains resolve like a rock inside no matter what come outside. For it is better thus to fight and fail than to win a tainted victory.

A good fight is fidelity to a cause of such supreme good that a man loses himself, loses his life. There are tens of thousands of such men and women all over the world. I do not mean yielding their self-interest in a spectacular and sudden display. Not heroics do I mean. Such things sometimes pass for a good fight; sometimes they have the outward appearance of a good fight. Dr. Jesse Lazear studied yellow

fever at its deadly source, in Cuba, died by it, a victim of his own good fight; died that you and I might live. But the obscure, the ordinary people, whose name is legion, and who for the children's sake, for their Church, their city, give their fidelity heedless of the lesser victory which can be gauged in the stocks one owns or the social position one enjoys.

This is the good fight which goes on without heralds, and without the laurel for the victor's brow. But even broken and at the death, here is victory, true to the heart of the world, to the heart of God. It is the good fight whose victory has been in the struggle itself. Stevenson says that he who has meant good work with his whole heart has done good work, though he may die before he sign it. He has fought a good fight who has fought. The fight may be lost-might and majority are not always rightbut the fighter is victorious.

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"I have finished my course. Not to press the letter, let us nevertheless see that he says my course. I think of the man who is on the wrong course, but who cannot swing out of it into the right course. Oh, the tragedy, from the outside view, and hardly less from the inside, of the man who is on the wrong job, and whose life as he works is rasped by the constant unfitness. His father led him into the wrong vocation; or he himself made the wrong choice; or at any rate, he is not where he ought to be, and cannot get there. Yet,

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a

silent and desperate part.

Let him

If he can, let him change, by all means. know the joy of fitting the task. Yet always the greater victory is to finish. Though a man come in last, among those who in youth started with him, and though he be hopelessly beaten, and well-nigh undone, let him finish. The victory-we have seen it-of the

plucky incompetent who stumbles in last, exhausted, across the line! What a victory! And though he be ill-equipped, with lack of strength of body and brain for the great vision and dream of his soul; though his tools be dull-edged, and broken; his personality unprepossessing; though, as the Poet of the Sierras has sung, he be

A pale-faced fellow who dies in shame,

And lets God finish the thought sublime, his is, just the same, victory within, if he finish his

course.

If the times be behindhand, and the surroundings also, according to one who sets his mark, he must needs see defeat and its wretched train. A decade ago a young man wrote a nasty novel, so the excessively refined said, about the putrifying things in certain branches of the meat-packing business. It brought upon him a mountain of criticism. A man there was in Washington, however, who believed in it. He set machinery to work, and today we have a better food law. Less than five years ago another young man wrote a story crammed with ugly facts about the sisters and daughters of our land, whose bodies and souls were trafficked in. Prurient propriety was sicklied. But last week the President told a Commission from Chicago that the Government would be interested-for the Government is human, thank God. The young men in these instances are thrice happy to see the fruit of their victory. But the victory again it seems a paradox-was deepest and most real when they were thick in the surging opposition, yet kept on and finished their course.

So is it true all around us. If you could see revealed the hearts of men who are gathered into the inextricable machinery of low, mean, brutish, crafty standards, you would know such anguish as has rarely been spoken in the world. They are finishing as best they may their course. It is a grim fight, and

as sure as we are alive a defeat is at hand, or aheadthe outward result. The only victory that can come is that which swells the "man's amount." The world's coarse thumb and finger, as Browning tells us in Ben Ezra, is able to plumb, to estimate, only the material "vulgar mass called 'work'." The "instincts immature, "the purposes unsure," these are beyond efficiency engineers and the card-index. And so are thoughts that cannot be put into visible acts, and fancies that escape language, so fine, spiritual they are. Ah, how truly he cries,All I could never be,

All men ignored in me,

This I was worth to God, whose
wheel the pitcher shaped.

What else can all this mean than these five words: "I have kept the faith"? Faith, please in what? Faith in myself; faith in the surety of a God whose law brings us defeat, but brings us also victory past all reckoning. That is, if I do not sell out. If I know not the domination of the dollar. If I yield not to the prevailing standards of a social, business, or political kind. If I am inflexible, yet neither "look too good nor talk too wise."

It is great if a man can be agreeable as well as faithful unto death. But if he must choose between losing his faith and losing his agreeableness, God knows the choice must be made for faith. It does mean enemies, traitors, deceits, and inflictions; that leave one scarred and broken-hearted. But keep the faith. For then you keep the soul. With fortune shattered, the outward things fallen like a house of cards, how victorious to say stoutly and truly, "I am still whole."

Mary looked upon the body of her broken Christ, and though her heart was crushed, something stayed her. Read this from Mr. A. W. Stevens, who has

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