Democratic enquirer. [volume] (M'arthur, Vinton County, Ohio) 1867-1873, 1871-01-18
Ihc enquirer.
j. w. BOWEN, Editor.
.ELEGTOUS READING.
The Fight of Patience.

Scme one says: "Men vii
wrangle' for religion; write fol
It; fight for it; die for it;
fnything but-live for it. "
true, One has only to look
nto a chapter of his own life
20 see how incomparably easier
t is to oppose wrong than to
Iuietly follow right.
Wrangling, and even fight,
inc, for religion is extremely
easy for most people. 1t is an
opportunity for serving God
and Satan both at once, which
is too congenjal to human ma
tme to be easily resisted, To
speak ofreligion as u "bat'le," "
is to put it in its most attract
i've light to many. They may
he really good people, but
combatsvencss Graves some
thing to oppose, and destruct
iycncss something to destroy.
The Church is fuller Of Peter"
with drawn swords ready to
cut off HIGH priests servants
ears, than Of Marys to wash
Christ'8 feet with tears.
Men will write for religion;
and this is very easy, for, aside
from any inspiring Influence of
the Holy Spirit, religion op-
pcals strongly to the @'thetic
part Of our nature; ideality,
sublimity aad veneration, here
find their widest field Of happy
exercise. Whether men deal
sledge- hammer blows at vice
and crror-blows which, to
the ccstatic sense Of the hour,
resound like echoes from Sinai;
or follow the divine Thought
through the written poetry OF
revelation, or the unwlitten po,
ctry Of nature; they have a
sense of growing up into some
thing grander than themselves,
Of thinking the thoughts of
God, and clothing themselves
i'll garments that all men know
came from the looms Of heaven.
Men will fight like Peter,
and die like Paul, write visions
like the Evangelist, or valedic.
tories like the apostle to the
Gentiles, and yet be too weak
to transcribe into their lives
Christ's Sermon on the Mount,
and altogether too weak and
cowardly to endure the severe
drill Of Peter and the long
marches of Paul rs soldiers Of
the cross, The reason of all
this is plain. There is an incr.
tia about human nature, as in
the material word; all forces
spend themselves.
Given q life to which the
Holy Spirit has given a mo-
mentum and started it heaven
ward first, the temptations Of
the "wolld," like the attrac.
ton Of grayitation, draw it
downward; then comes the
friction Of the air, OF the devil
"the prince Of the power of the
air"-and lastly, the inertia Of
human flesh.
no wonder, then, that the
Christian, with. these three
powerful and subtitle agencies
arraycd against him, finds an
hours enthusiasm, or a moment.
Of supreme solf,sacrifice, easier
than life Of simple patience.
A spiritual impulse potent
enough, for an hour, to make a
hero or a martyr, will ebb
away and be lost in a lifetime.
There are lives recorded for the
triumph Of day-the lives Of
men who died in the flush Of
an immortal victory, Or lived
alterward, as a Frenchman said
Of Lamartine, to survive them.
selves. And there are lines
uurecorded, in whose quiet, un.
eycntful flow, there was hero
ism enough to have led the
forlorn-hope Of an army, or
have opposed a Spanish Inqui.
sition. There is nothing so
sublime as patience, and moth
ing so common place. There
is nothing.of which men take
so little note, and perhaps moth
ing which the angels so care
fully record. From page to
page the holy writings are
spinkled with eXhortations to-
4biu o,y,y.n,,,. .;I r a. re