LOOK UP AND NOT DOWN

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 14.

LOOK UP AND NOT DOWN.

BUNYAN'S unfailing instinct showed itself nowhere more clearly than in his introduction of Giant Despair into the immortal allegory of man's progress through life. Many of the giants with whom men have to contend select as their victims the weakest and the meanest, and are satisfied if these alone become their prey; but Giant Despair is not content with inferior men; he lays his hand quite as often upon the most aspiring and noble, finding in these a sensitiveness, or refinement, or tenderness of feeling, which makes them susceptible to his power. Many a man has been slain by Despair, who would never have succumbed to any other enemy. And the most singular thing about the power of this giant is that it lies mainly in an illusion skillfully thrown over its victims. Often a little longer fight, a little more courageous resistance, would have placed the strugglers forever beyond the reach of Despair.

Nothing is ever accomplished by despair. It means always and only rout and defeat. No man was ever spurred by it to attempt to change the fortunes of the day or to recover a lost position; no man was ever inspired by it to raise himself out of the mire in which he had fallen and renew a struggle in which he had been beaten; its one word is surrender; its only end, final defeat. Many have borne up in the midst of their despair, and while under the shadow of it recovered that which they had lost; but this swift reversal of fortune has always been due to some ray of hope which has bid the wounded heart pluck courage out of danger and light out of darkness. For despair is, at bottom, cowardly; a brave man dies, but never surrenders; a brave ship sinks, but never strikes her colors. The surrender of despair has always a cowardly element in it. It is not a question of the odds against one; it is simply a question of having courage enough to hold out to the end, whatever that end may be. In most cases despair is an illusion, and not a reality; in other words, it bases its demand for surrender on a preponderance of forces which do not exist, or which further resistance may scatter into thin air. Many a man has turned in the midst of his despair to make one struggle more, and has suddenly found himself a final victor in a field which he had supposed hopelessly lost. Many a man looks back in his life to some experience which held for him the bitterness of despair, and sees that it was the beginning of his great prosperity. There is a truth in the old adage, that it is darkest just before the dawn, and a greater truth in the still more ancient adage, that man's necessity is God's opportunity.

In all great struggles an hour of something like despair inevitably comes, and that is the decisive hour in the whole conflict; if they who fight yield to the illusion of defeat, then the battle is permanently lost; but if in that moment the pressure of what appears to be final disaster makes their purpose all the clearer, and their will the more resolute, then despair itself becomes the forerunner of success. Its dark and terrible lessons are seen to be the inevitable preparation through which the soul of a man or of a nation wins its hardest triumphs. The world has nothing to learn from the gospel of despair, except to shun it. To listen to it debilitates, demoralizes, and defeats. It is the song of the siren which has a certain pathetic and appealing note, but which leads always to wreck and death. The greatest natures are never preachers of despair. There is a sanity in them which saves them from the touch of this disease, and which makes them always the teachers of hope. A world which has a God over it, and a life which has a God in it, has no place for despair. Loss, calamity, grief, are not excluded, but these do not bring the message of despair. Despair comes only when there is no longer any hope, and no possible issue out of adversity but permanent and eternal loss. Despair may be the necessity of atheism; Christianity, which makes the cross of shame and death the symbol of triumphant immortality, has no place for it. "For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave."—Christian Union.