Small Causes of Defeat
By Dr. Alex. Maclaren
I BEGIN my day's work some mornings perhaps wearied, perhaps annoyed by the multiplicity of trifles which seem too small to bring great principles to bear upon them. But do you not think there would be a strange change wrought in the petty annoyances of every day, and in the small trifles which all our lives, of whatever texture they are, must largely be composed of, if we began each day and task with that old prayer: “Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered”? Do you not think there would be a quiet in our hearts, and a victorious peace to which we are too much strangers? If, into the trifles as well as into the sore struggles of our lives, we carried the assurance that there is One who fights for us, we should have peace and victory. Most of us will not have many large occasions of trial and conflict in our career; and if God's fighting for us is not actual in regard to the small annoyances of home and daily life, I know not for what it is available. There are more deaths in skirmishes than in the pitched field of a great battle. More Christian people lose their hold of God, their sense of his presence, and are beaten accordingly by reason of the little enemies which come down on them like a cloud of gnats on a summer's evening, than are defeated by the shock of a great assault or a great temptation, which calls out their strength, and sends them to their knees to ask for help from God.—Dr. Alex. Maclaren.