p. 10 | Shall It Be Victory? by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 24, 1910

Shall It Be Victory?

By C. M. S.

It would please our Maker to write “Victory” after the life-work of every soul upon the earth. He himself says that he has “no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.” Life is God’s purpose for us over all the agencies and all the ways that lead to death. His desire is expressed in these words: “Turn yourselves, and live.” Turning from our own ways to God’s way, puts us in the channel of life, in the highway of hope. And that done, the powers of heaven are then enlisted in our behalf. Self dies, hope revives, and the purpose of God is accomplished.

From day to day we meet men and women whose hopes seem to have fallen in upon one another like the walls of a ruined house. The bright light of faith and hope no longer beams out of the windows of the soul. Its casements are barred, and only dissolution and hopeless despair stare out at the passer-by. Every ruin has its history, and the history of the ruined life is written on the soul.

There are storms on every sea; there are shoals or rocks or quicksands on every shore, and they all take toll of the human harvest this world produces. Waters that are the pathway of progress for some furnish the graves for others. The hopes that lie confined in the mighty deep are a numberless host; and the souls that have gone down beneath the waves of disappointed hope are as many as the cries that go up to the gods of wealth to-day from the sea of unrequited toil.

But there is no purpose of our Maker that can not be fulfilled in us to-day. We have only to let him take the helm, and he will guide our bark out of every storm that rages around us. “Without me,” he said, “ye can do nothing.” But men to-day are saying in their hearts and by their acts, “I can accomplish what I will by my own efforts;” and when the storm comes down, the source of their power, the fountain of their dependence, is shaken and shattered, storm-tossed, engulfed; and with that gone, their all is gone. Like the ships upon the sea, their only dependence is in themselves, and the storm is often stronger than the ship.

There is a better source of strength and protection than self,—a source which no storm can shake, no power of earth destroy,—and it is open to every voyager upon the sea of life. “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Isa. 41:10.

There is no necessity for the wrecks that strew the shores of the sea of life. There has been ample provision made for the safe voyage of every soul that has set out upon that sea. God can not save the soul that flees from his power and his protection. Such a soul must go down; for the powers that wrestle for its ruin are greater than the powers to which it looks for succor.

There is a chart and compass for every voyager, and a light to dispel every fog and to shine through the darkest night that shuts its curtains down upon the sea. That chart and compass are found in the Word of God, the Bible. But in the confidence of self, many have chosen to trust to the will-o’-the-wisp of their own reason, have set their course into the fog-bank of doubt, and so have crashed upon the rocks of eternal ruin. These are the saddest wrecks that strew the sea of life to-day, and they outnumber a hundred to one the wrecks that stud the bottom of the sea.

The shipwrecks of the sea are sad events. But how much more sorrowful than the wreck of a ship, how much more terrible, is that life, loaded with a perfect wealth of possibilities, that lies mangled upon the rocks of unbelief, or lies loaded with the seaweed of miscarried purposes on the shore of life’s sea—all because unbelief was at the helm and self upon the bridge, and God and his great purpose were shut out of the mind and heart.

The wrecked ship lies in its cold bed at the bottom of the sea; but the life wreck, like a floating derelict, is often found moving about among us, hopeless, purposeless, drifting with the ebb and flow of the tides of doubt, a menace to other voyagers, and a sad reminder of the folly of unbelief.

There is hope for every voyager upon life’s sea; but that hope is not in self. God must be the pilot; God the protector; God the help and refuge in every stress of trial; the comforter in every sorrow; the power that wafts the vessel onward and homeward; and his Word the light to dispel every cloud of gloom and every fog that would enshroud the ship. He will do all that for you; his Word will be all that to you. Let us take him then for all that he has promised to be, and let his purpose be wrought out in our lives, and our destinies be wrought out in his hand. There can be no sad wreck in such a life; but the light of God’s blessing will shine out through the windows of the soul, and they that see it will learn to hope and trust in him who can not fail.

C. M. S.