Not Conscious of Doing a Great Thing.
By Editor
It may be set down as a general rule that the moral decisions made on which events hung, the pivotal decisions of great crises, were not made with a consciousness that they were great, or that upon them hung great events of history. In the vast majority of cases these decisions "never showed the choice momentous till the judgment had passed by." Back of these decisions was a sense of duty, a divine impulse which demanded sacrifice, self-abnegation, doing just what God said. Oftentimes it is but the speaking of a word in trembling of heart, yet believing it to be duty. There is none of self in such an act, and God can use it. But when man feels that he has done some great thing, there is usually so much of self in it that God can not consistently use it. And if some consciously great thing is done, it is frequently but the fruitage of some prior obscure thought of duty on the part of some lowly soul. The following words of recent unknown human utterance express a great truth: "We breathe freely when our lungs are sound. We live freely when our life is sound. And the sound life is that alone which steers its course by the never swerving compass of the moral law. Thus God's law is man's liberty." That is worth all the volumes of sophistry and casuistry now-a-days which endeavor to prove that whatever our moral condition we have the life of God. The life of God is a sound, whole life, flowing out from the great Fountain in harmony with His moral law, and if man possess it at all, he must receive it in harmony with the same law.