The world will be saved. Righteousness shall ultimately prevail. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Christ. There are no failures in God’s mighty plans. We may vary in our beliefs, and differ greatly as to the process by which he shall accomplish his wise designs, but this is true: when this world is brought ultimately to the feet of Christ, it will have been accomplished not by prayer alone but by work and prayer, not by the scholar as a scholar but by the men, learned or unlearned, who have discovered the compelling and transforming power of a boundless, undying love. XIV THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS An old man was once opening the treasury of his experience to enrich the young people of Corinth. Youth ever needs such a benefactor, for life’s most difficult problem is to definitely determine upon which element or elements of life the emphasis should be placed. Like a river, life has so many contributing streams of large volume that it is difficult to decide unto which one we are most indebted for our power. There is only one way to ascertain this fact, and that is to trace the current of life-power to its source and stand, with reverent feet, at its utmost gurgling spring. But this task is hard and is fraught with danger. What youth, standing at the joining of the currents, can tell to a certainty which is the real current and which the contributing stream of influence? Among the most pathetic incidents of history are those portraying some of our richest and most favored sons of genius mistaking a contributing element of life for life itself and spending their days within the narrow winding ways of mediocrity. Youth needs the open treasury of the past, therefore it is a rare privilege to have Paul thus open the treasure chest of his varied and triumphant experiences and tell us what is the secret source of life’s richest endowment. Looking over a life of many years, covering an intense and diversified experience, enriched with mental and spiritual training, he declared to the young people of Corinth that the source of personal power is weakness. That is the last place in the world that we would naturally look for strength, for we have always been taught that weakness is the absence of strength. To be enduring we believed that we should possess the rigidity and firmness of the rocks, forgetful that long after the red stone walls of Kenilworth have tottered into complete ruin the fragile ivy, planted by unknown hands, will still live to cover the rough, broken heap of weather-beaten stones with the graceful folds of its swaying branches. We have believed that stability depended upon rigid strength, not realizing that, in nature, the strong are the most fragile, while the weak are the most enduring.