You cannot drive a long nail in to the head by hammering around all over the board. You must hit the nail on the head and keep on hitting it on the head until you have sent it home. You cannot sink the shaft of a mine by digging all around over the mountainside. You must dig in one place and keep on digging in one place persistently until you have sunk your shaft to the vein of ore. You cannot build a life that is worthy to be the life of a child of God unless you gird yourself for that persistent effort which lies between you and the goal upon which you have set your heart. It cannot be done in an hour, or in a day, or in a year. The hard task of presenting to Him a life which will bear His own eye and win His approval will mortgage the best strength of all your best years.
You may have the body of an athlete. You may have a mind with splendid capacity in it for real achievement. You may have a heart which reacts as promptly as gunpowder when a spark of genuine aspiration is applied to it. You may have all these—I hope you have—but unless you have learned the high art of staying by, of holding on, of keeping at it no matter what comes, you are doomed to defeat.
How often you see a young man of generous impulse, of kindly disposition, like Esau, faltering and failing as the years come and go until at last he is little better than a vagabond upon the face of the earth. How often you find a man of purpose and persistence, like Jacob, with many an unfortunate trait in him, with a heavy moral handicap to overcome, finally winning out by the sheer force of his spiritual tenacity. "Be thou faithful unto death," the promise has it, "and I will give thee the crown of life." The crown is held in reserve for those who persist clear through to the end.
This young man failed because he lacked the favour of God. In the early stages of his career we read of a divine element in his life. "The woman bare a son and called his name Samson, and the Lord blessed him. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him" for those deeds of valour.
However we may interpret these expressions the fact is plain that so long as he kept his life clean and true he had the sense of divine reinforcement making him equal to the tasks which fell to his lot. Then there came a time when by his own actions he forfeited all this. He became as weak as a rag in the face of temptation, in the presence of duty, in some great opportunity for valiant effort which opened before him. And he did not realize how weak he was until he went down in defeat. "He wist not that the Lord had departed from him."
The spirit of self-indulgence, I care not whether it goes straight for the coarse sins of the flesh or moves in more refined ways towards the life of selfish ease and barren culture, will take the iron out of a man's blood. It will take the vim out of his muscles, the power to hold fast out of his will.
The man who saves his life for his own personal gratification will soon find that he has no life to save. That which makes life life is gone. It is the habit of self-control, the spirit of self-surrender to the will of God, the purpose of self-dedication to the highest ends in sight, which puts power into the thrust of each man's effort.
The circular letter which Lord Kitchener, head of the War Office, sent to every British soldier when the English troops were ordered to the Continent reads like a classic:
"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King. The honour of the British Army depends upon your individual conduct. You have a task to perform which will need courage, energy, and patience. Be on your guard against excesses. You will find temptation both in women and in wine. Resist both and do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.
"(Signed) KITCHENER."