p. 27 | The Life Struggle

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 11, 1871

The Life Struggle.

The world knows no victory to be compared with victory over our own passions. The struggle of life is between the flesh and the spirit, and one or the other finally gain the ascendancy. Every day and every hour of the Christian's life, is this contest going on, and sad it is to think how often victory is declared in favor of this earth with its sinful passions. The apostle Paul, after having labored long and earnestly in his Lord's service—after having done more for the spread of the truth than all the other apostles, still felt that he was a human being and liable at any time, through the weakness of the flesh, to lose all. “I keep under my body,” says he, “and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” If this watchfulness was needed on the part of this aged and long-tried servant of God, what care and diligence ought we to exercise, lest we should lose all in an unguarded hour! Our pathway through life is thickly set with snares for our feet. The seductions of passion, the allurements of vice, things to arouse our anger and stir up our heart's feelings, await us at every turn of life's devious ways, and blessed indeed is that man or that woman who meets them all without harm.—Sel.