No Armor for the Back

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 17, 1877

No Armor for the Back.

Let me advise you to wear no armor for your back when you have determined to follow the track of truth. Receive upon your breastplate of righteousness the sword-cuts of your adversaries; the stern metal shall turn the edges of your foreman's weapon. Follow truth for her own sake; follow her in evil report; let not many waters quench your love for her. Yield to no established rules if they involve a lie. Do not evil that good should come of it. “Consequences!” this is the devil’s argument. Leave consequences to God, but do right. If friends fail thee, do the right. If foemen surround thee, do the right. Be genuine, real, sincere, true, upright, godlike. The world's maxim is, Trim your sails and yield to circumstances. But if you would do any good in your generation, you must be made of sterner stuff, and help make your times rather than be made by them. You must not yield to customs, but like the anvil, endure all blows, until the hammers break themselves. When misrepresented, use no crooked means to clear yourself. Clouds do not last long. If in the course of duty you are tried by the distrust of friends, gird up your loins and say in your heart, I was not driven to virtue by the encouragement of friends, nor will I be repelled from it by their coldness. Finally, be just, and fear not; “corruption wins not more than honesty;” truth lives and reigns when falsehood dies and rots.—Spurgeon.