The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1900-12-04

There T few sights as essentially
tragic as the spectacle of a soul,
who has struggled more or less
valantly for spiritual mastery during
many years, finally succumbing to
the influence of environment, hered-
ity, or the animal p~rOpensities of
nature, and then ceasing to battle,
under the deluSiOn that victory can
not be attained. Believing, as I do,
that nothing is settled until it is set
tied in conformity with the underly-
ing laws of right, justice, truth, and
virtue, and that there can. be no
abiding place of peace, no rest for
the soul, or true happiness for the
spirit until the heights are attained,
the spectacle of a life sinking into
the night is unutterably sad for
before such a n I believe there
stretches a long wandering in the
wilderness, seeking, and often blind
ly cropping and stumbling to reach
once more the highway of happiness,
holiness, virtue, and love. The false
idea that n who has fallen many,
many times in any special tempta-
ton can no longer successfully bat
tie against his besetting sin is some
thing to be combated at all times.
The divinity within is stronger than
any power of evil which comes from
without, or which may have rise in
the animal nature. I care not how
many times a man has Stumbled,-I
care not how low he may have fall
len,-he has not reached, he cannot
reach-the point where victory is no
longer possible. This is a thought
that should be sent sounding
throughout the thought atmosphere
of the world. Hope, courage, vic
tory, these are the words for which
thousands are perishing to-day, and
they are the words which must more
and more be taken up by the advance
guard who seek to ennOble and dig
My mahAOON. IL IL q S1OlI JUS llllbS
to be able TO pass through life
strong in the might of self-mastery,
and uninfuenced by the multitu-
dinOus temptations that environ
every child on earth. But there IS
something still more thrillinglY in
spring, and that is the spectacle of
Il soul that began the journey of life
hampered by hereditary appetites
and desires, or surrounded by a
death-dealing moral atmosphere, and
who after falling many times after
years of cropping, stumbling, and bat
thing in a conflict that often seemed
Il losing contest, finally makes a last
ditch stand and holds the fort during
the long hours of temptation and
depression, until the soul has been
reinforced sufficiently for the on
ward march. and who thus battles
on with the firm resolution to win,
until the power of the old has fallen
away and the emancipated spiritual
nature has assumed mastery of the
earthly tabernacle. I believe that
not one in ten, who to-day gives up
the struggle to reach the heights of
spiritual self-mastery, would be lost
to the forces, of progress if friends
and teachers of truth, probity, and
right living sought at all times to
inspire them with hope and courage.
1t is the function of the true teacher
to hold up the hands of such wav-
ering ones, to strengthen and encour-
age them throughout the dark hours
when temptation assails the spirit
and this suggests a fact never to be
overlooked: There comes into all
lives periods of depression, as well
as hours of ~exaltatiOn. Peter on the
Mount of TRANSPORTATION, Peter in
anguish after the cock crew, and