The Warriors | Page 2

heat and winter's frost,--how to fear nothing
but ill-fame." They courted danger, and asked only to stand as Victors
at the last.
Hence we read of old-world warriors,--of Gog and Magog and the
Kings of Bashan; of the sons of Anak; of Hercules, with his lion-skin
and club; of Beówulf, who, dragging the sea-monster from her lair,
plunged beneath the drift of sea-foam and the flame of dragon-breath,
and met the clutch of dragon-teeth. We read of Turpin, Oliver, and
Roland,--the sweepers-off of twenty heads at a single blow; of Arthur,
who slew Ritho, whose mantle was furred with the beards of kings; of
Theodoric and Charlemagne, and of Richard of the Lion-heart.
There are also Victors in the great Quests of the world,--the Argonauts,
Helena in search of the Holy Rood, the Knights of the Holy Grail, the
Pilgrim Fathers. There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of
the world,--the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows, who
conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which arise
from heroic human grief,--Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia, Perseus,
Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his
penitential psalm. And there are the Victors in the yet deeper strivings

of the soul--in its inner battles and spiritual conquests--Milton's Adam,
Paracelsus, Dante, the soul in The Palace of Art, Abt Vogler, Isaiah,
Teufelsdröckh, Paul. To read of such men and women is to be thrilled
by the Titanic possibilities of the soul of man!
The world has come into other and greater battle-days. This is an era of
great spiritual conflicts, and of great triumphs. To-day faith calls the
soul of man to arms. It is a clarion to awake, to put on strength, and to
go forth to Holy War. If there were no fighting work in the Christian
life, much of the intense energy and interest of the race would be
unaroused. There are apathetic natures who do not want to undertake
the difficult,--sluggish souls who would rather not stir from their
present position. And there are cowards who run to cover. But there is
in all strong natures the primitive combative instinct,--the
let-us-see-which-is-the-stronger, which delights in contests, which is
undismayed by opposition, and which grows firmer through the warfare
of the soul.
It is this phase of the Christian life which is most needed to-day,--the
warrior-spirit, the all-conquering soul. In entering the Christian life,
one must put out of his heart the expectation that it is to be an easy life,
or one removed from toil and danger. It is preëminently the
adventurous life of the world,--that in which the most happens, as well
as that in which the spiritual possibilities are the greatest. It is a life full
of splendor, of excitement, of trial, of tests of courage and endurance,
and is meant to appeal to those who are the very bravest and the best.
There are two forms of conquest to which the soul of man is called--the
inner and the outer. The inner is the conquest of the evil within his own
nature; the outer is the struggle against the evil forces of the world--the
constructive task of building up, under warring conditions, the spiritual
kingdom of God.
The real world is far more subtle than we as yet understand. When we
dive down into the deep, sky and air and houses disappear. We enter a
new world--the under-world of water, and things that glide and swim;
of sea-grasses and currents; of flowing waves that lap about the body
with a cool chill; of palpitating color, that, at great depths, becomes a

sort of darkness; of sea-beds of shell and sand, and bits of scattered
wreckage; of ooze and tangled sea-plants, dusky shapes, and fan-like
fins.
Or if we look upward we reach an over-world, where moons and suns
are circling in the heights. What draws them together? What keeps a
subtle distance between them, which they never cross? How do they,
age after age, run a predestined course? We drop a stone. What binds it
earthward? Under our feet run magnetic currents that flow from pole to
pole. In the clouds above, there are electric vibrations which cannot be
described in exact terms.
Thus also, in spiritual experiences, there are currents which we cannot
measure or describe. The psychic world is the final world, though its
towers and pinnacles no eye hath seen. If we try to shut out for an hour
the outer world, and descend into the soul-world of the life of man, we
find ourselves in a new environment, and with an outlook over new
forms and powers. We find ourselves in a world of images and
attractions, of impulses and desires, of instincts and attainments. It is
not only a world of separate and individual souls, but each