^ Every earnest man grows to two strong convictions : one, of the victory to which a life may come; the other of the obstacles and wounds which it must surely encounter in coming there. Alas for him who gains only one of these convictions
GENESIS III. 15 109
Alas for him who learns only confidence in the result, and never catches sight of all that must come in between — the pains and blows and disappointments ! How many times he will sink down and lose his hope ! How many times some wayside cross will seem to be the end of everything to him ! Alas also for him who only feels the wounds and sees no victory ahead ! How often life will seem to him not worth the living ! There are multitudes of men of this last sort; men with too much seriousness and perception to say that the world is easy, too clear-sighted not to see its obstacles, too pure not to be wounded and offended by its wickedness, but with no faith large enough to look beyond and see the end ; men with the wounded heel that hinders and disables them, but with no strength to set the wounded foot upon the head of the serpent and to claim their triumph.*
^ I do not doubt that many of you noted, as I did, the description given in the newspaper dispatches of the visit of Theodore Koosevelt to the tomb of Napoleon, and you perhaps noted how he took up the sword which the great warrior carried in the battle of Austerlitz, and waved it about his head and examined its edge, and held it aloft, seeming in the meantime to be profoundly impressed. And we may well imagine and believe that the hero of San Juan Hill was stirred in every drop of his soldierly blood as he stood on that historic spot with that famous sword gripped in his right hand. But if we could gather together all the famous swords kept in all the capitals of the world, in memory of princes and warriors and heroes who have carried them on historic battlefields, they would be insignificant in comparison to that " sword of the Spirit," of which Paul speaks in his letter to the Ephesians — a sword by which millions of humble men and women, and even boys and girls, have put to flight the alien armies of hell and maintained their integrity against odds as the faithful children of God.^
The far winds brought me tidings of him — one Who fought alone, a champion unafraid,
Hurt in the desperate warring, faint, fordone; I loved him, and I prayed.
The far winds told the turning of the strife;
Into his deeds there crept a strange new fire. Unconquerable, the glory of his life
Fulfilled my soul's desire.
> Phillips Brooks. ' L. A. Banks, The World's Childhood, 344.
no THE CONFLICT OF THE AGES
God knows what mighty bond invisible
Gave my dream power, wrought answer to my prayer; God knows in what far world our souls shall tell
Of triumph that we share.
I war alone; I shall not see his face,
But I shall strive more gladly in the sun,
More bravely in the shadow, for this grace: " He fought his fight, and won."
The Tree of Lifb.
Literature.
Brooks (P.), Seeking Life, 161. Brown (J. B.), The Divine Life in Man, 1. Lewis (E. W.), The Unescapeable Christ, 214. Matbeson (Q.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 165. Vaughan (G. J.), The Two Oreat Temptations, 44.
„ (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. No. 325 ; ix. No. 759. Winterbotham (R.), Sermons in Holy Trin'Uy Church, 76. Christian World Pulpit, liL 101 (Boyd Carpenter) ; Ivii. 109 (Maver) ; Ixiii. 269 (Ralph).
The Tree of Life.
So he drove out the man ; and be placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. — Gen. iii. 34.
1. Thb recent discussions about, and criticisms of, the first chapters of the Book of Genesis have left a certain vague and uncomfortable feeling in the minds of many men. Not a few people, probably, think in a dim sort of way that geology, or something else, has made those chapters of very doubtful worth. The worst part of this feeling is that it robs the early story of our race of the spiritual power that it possesses. Apart from the question of its historic character, the account of man's origin which is given in Genesis is profoundly true to man's spiritual experience, and its imagery ia representative of perpetual and universal trutL
2. Let us briefly recall the story. In the garden where God first placed man, the scene of his earliest experiences, it is said that God, his Creator, planted two trees. There are many others, but these two are noticeable and distinct. One of them is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the other is the Tree of Life. There they stand side by side, both beautiful, both tempting. But on one of them — the most tempting — a prohibi- tion is laid. Of the tree of knowledge man must not taste. But man rebels, wilfully, independently, against God's word, and does eat of this tree. The consequence is that he ia not allowed to eat of the other tree. He is driven out of the garden where it stands, and is forbidden to return ; and his return is made impossible by " Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of Hfe."