| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 13 |
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An old man said that in reviewing his life he discovered to his great surprise that the best things in his character and in his career were the fruits of what he regarded as his failures and follies. These defeats had wrought in him new wisdom and had led to repenting and renewals of faith in God, and had thus proved sources of richest blessing and good. Probably the same is true in greater or less degree of every life. We owe more to our defeats, with the humbling of the old nature, the cleansing of motive and affection, and the deepening of trust in God, than we owe to the prouder experiences which we call our successes.
When we begin to recall the names of the men who have most influenced the world for good we discover that many of them at least seemed to be defeated men and their life a failure.
“God forbid that I should do this thing and flee away from them!” said Judas Maccabaeus, when with only eight hundred faithful men he was urged to retire before the Syrian army of twenty thousand. “If our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren, and let us not stain our honor.”
“Sore was the battle,” writes the historian, “as sore as that waged by the three hundred at Thermopylae, and the end was the same. Judas and his eight hundred were not driven from the field, but lay dead on it.”
That seemed a defeat, but there was no dishonor in it. It ranks indeed among the world’s noblest achievements. In no victory recorded is there greater glory. The eight hundred died for freedom, and the untold blessings came to the nation and to the world from their work that day. Their defeat was but a mode of victory.
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