Defenders of Democracy: Contributions from representative men and women of letters and other arts from our allies and our own country, edited by the Gift book committee of the Militia of MercyMilitia of Mercy (U.S.). Gift Book Committee
History
Defenders of Democracy: Contributions from representative men and women of letters and other arts from our allies and our own country, edited by the Gift book committee of the Militia of Mercy
Militia of Mercy (U.S.). Gift Book Committee
Gift books; World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Gift books
Well, where are we? Amid all these violations of our ideals, and
the quenching of our hopes, in this riot of barbarism and unutterable
sorrow, where are we? Where can we find a footing? Where can
we stay our souls? Where can we set our feet as upon solid rock?
Amid the many things which are shaking what things are there which
cannot be shaken?
"Things which cannot be shaken." Let us begin here: THE SUPREMACY
OF SPIRITUAL FORCES CANNOT BE SHAKEN. The obtrusive circumstances
of the hour shriek against that creed. Spiritual forces seem to
be overwhelmed. We are witnessing a perfect carnival of insensate
materialism. The narratives which fill the columns of the daily
press reek with the fierce spectacle of labor and achievement.
And yet, in spite of all this appalling outrage upon the sense, we
must steadily beware of becoming the victims of the apparent and
the transient. Behind the uncharted riot there hides a power whose
invisible energy is the real master of the field. The ocean can
be lashed by the winds into indescribable fury, and the breakers
may rise and fall in crushing weight and disaster; and yet behind
and beneath all the wild phenomena there is a subtle, mystical
force which is exerting its silent mastery even at the very height
of the storm. We must discriminate between the phenomenal and
the spiritual, between the event of the hour and the drift of the
year, between the issue of a battle and the tendency of a campaign.
All of which means that "While we look at the things which are seen,
we are also to look at the things which are not seen." Well, look
at them.
THE POWER OF TRUTH can never be shaken. The force of disloyalty
may have its hour of triumph, and treachery may march for a season
to victory after victory; but all the while truth is secretly
exercising her mastery, and in the long run the labor of falsehood
will crumble into ruin. There is no permanent conquest for a lie.
You can no more keep the truth interred than you could keep the
Lord interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you
cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! You may burn up
the records of the truth, but you cannot impair the truth itself!
When the records are reduced to ashes truth shall walk abroad as
an indestructible angel and minister of the Lord! "He shall give
His angels charge over thee," and truth is one of His angels, and
she cannot be destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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