The world to a higher level moves,
But grates and grinds with friction hard
On granite boulder and flinty shard.
The heart must bleed before it feels,
The pool be troubled before it heals.”
All this we know. We know that the stem battle makes the veteran. But this prayer is the childlike cry, the shrinking fear, which are always safer than the bold dash, the impetuous plunge. It is the utterance of an instinctive wish to keep where safety lies, and, humanly speaking, it is right, though, in a world whose highest fruit is character, we may expect that bitter cups and hard baptisms will be a part of our experience. Like all that has gone before, it is an effort at co-operation. It is a sincere aspiration for green pastures and still waters joined with a readiness to be fed at the table in presence of the enemy, if need be, readiness for the perilous edge of conflict, for “high strife and glorious hazard.”
Last of all there rises the cry for deliverance from the power of evil. Once more we realize that this is not an occasion for magical interference, no call for a fiery dart out of the sky to pierce a black demon who is pushing us into sin. The drama is an inward one and the enemy, called of many names, is a part of our own self. Each soul has its own struggle with the immemorial tug of brute inheritance—the sag of lower nature.
“When the fight begins within himself,
A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,