This is that never-ending conflict between good and evil which every single human being must fight out in his own life, although the final issue is reached only at the end of all things and in a manner to us unknown. “On the advance post of a man’s individual experience the question is the same as in the great battle of the hosts, namely this: whether a faith that is anchored in God is not the highest of moral forces, able to overcome the ever-present power of evil, especially the fundamental sin of self-seeking; for if the victory is gained at the advance post, it may be gained all along the line.” Perhaps this is truer than we know, or ever experience on earth. That there is no higher power in the world than comes from association with God, every single human life must by trial discover. But for that very reason such association must be sought of one’s own free will, and of one’s own free will always cling to; and that makes the problem of life. In order to gain, in this warfare, a spirit of joy quite different from the moroseness and half-despair of many Christians, the means closest at hand is this: to try to battle, not according to our own ideas, but, as in military service, punctiliously as commanded. Such means, however, is external; there is an inner basis for the right spirit of joy, without which that joy can not be enduring, and that inner basis is the abiding of God in the heart. When all opposition to God disappears, then appears the real joy of living and the great consolation he gives on earth. This peace with God, which in time may even grow, as it were, into an enduring and genuine friendship, the human soul must experience, else it shall not know what inward happiness is. And outward happiness is only the easy sequence of the inward; God gladly does nothing but good to men as soon as he finds it possible. Here, also, lies the real cause of the philosophical atheism that makes up the religion of many excellent people, who suppose they can not think otherwise, though they would gladly like to. A man’s simple logic will tell him that it is not consistent to say one believes in God, and yet not allow God to dwell in him and rule him absolutely; and it is a noble trait of many doubters that they do not dare to serve God with mere phrases, but they see that if once he should be taken up into the account of life, he would be a “consuming fire” for much that exists in their lives, for much that they would be obliged to give up, but do not want to give up. Faith is a matter, not of the reason, but of the human will; and the difficulty lies in just this resolution to serve God, with all its consequences--a resolution the man himself must make, for no divine mercy can wholly take its place.