p. 1 | The Struggle and the Victory by Phillips Brooks

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 30, 1916

The Struggle and the Victory

By Phillips Brooks

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! 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.

—Phillips Brooks.