The Constant and Heroic Conflict
By Mrs. B. Shanks Chaney
The Christian, like the Soldier, Must Live for One Purpose— He Must Overcome or Go Down No figure was better known to Paul than the Roman soldier. From boyhood days he had heard the tread of the legions, and seen their glittering eagles, as they marched from city to city, or camped on the hillsides of Asia, everywhere upholding the iron authority of Rome’s emperor. Two hundred of them had been his escort from Jerusalem to Cæsarea. On the dangerous winter voyage to Rome, the shipload of prisoners were guarded by legionaries; and after the perilous shipwreck, they camped together for three months on a small island. Many a time the Roman soldier was a better friend to Paul than the Jewish rabbi. With his true greatness of mind and broadness of sympathy, Paul saw the splendid discipline of the army; and to him there could be no fitter representative of what the Christ follower ought to be, than the soldier with his body hardened to endure the weariness of long marches, the coarsest and plainest of food, the frost of Gallic winters, or the heat of African summers. Often does this, the greatest of the writers in the early church, use this figure of the soldier’s life to show his readers what a strenuous life must be that of the Christian. “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier,” he urges the young man Timothy. But there is more than endurance to the soldier’s life. He is not worthy the name who is not ever ready to battle with the enemy, and to fight to the death. Again and again Paul refers to the armor, so carefully planned, so well adapted to protect the body in fighting. From Isaiah’s prophetic picture of Christ’s work, the apostle borrows the figure of righteousness as a breastplate, and salvation as a helmet; but he carries the figure out fully, and in the wonderful letter to the Ephesians is described the Christian’s armor complete—the headpiece of salvation, the girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the invincible shield of faith, the sandals prepared of the gospel of peace, the sword of the Spirit. The greatest work that any one in the world has to do is to overcome. It is preeminently the life work of the soldier. He may have to march long distances to reach the enemy; he has his accoutrements to keep in order; he must prepare his food and get his rest; but these are all side issues. Fighting is his life work, and he must overcome or be overcome. The life of the Christian must be the strenuous life of the soldier, all the more difficult because the foe is a hidden one. The work by which we gain our livelihood may be hard101. The body and the brain are weary at the close of the day. But this work is easy compared with the inner striving, which may never cease in any waking hour of a Christian’s life. Behind every soul is an overwhelming heredity. Paul urged his Ephesian children to “stand,” “and having overcome all, to stand.” Eph. 6: 13, margin. Neither one defeat nor a thousand conquers the archenemy. The disciplined soldier pulls himself together, fastens again more securely the girdle of truth, which is so likely to slip in a struggle, grasps with more dogged determination his shield, and is ready for the next encounter. But though the strife must be unceasing, the rewards of victory held out for the overcomer are precious above and beyond any human comprehension. The lonely exile on Patmos saw them—the fruit of the tree of life; the power to be unhurt of the second death; the hidden manna; the white stone revealing the character that has been developed; the white raiment; the name unblotted from the book of life; and the unspeakable privilege of being seated on the triumphal throne of Christ. All these are for the overcomer. “Strive, endeavor! It profits more
To fight and fail on earth’s dull shore,
Than to sit an idler ever.
But to him who bares his arm to the strife,
Firm at his post in the battle of life,
The victory faileth never.”