| The Building of Character |
Chapter 13 |
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On the other hand, when the lesson of being victorious is learned in childhood, all is different. Studies are mastered; exercises are played over a hundred times, if need be, till they are played accurately; games are not indolently lost for want of exertion. Later in life, when the lessons are larger and the discipline is sorer, and the tasks require more labor, and the battles test the soul to its last particle of strength, the habit of overcoming still avails and the life is ever victorious. The thought of giving up is never entertained for a moment. The Indians say that, when a man kills a foe, the strength of the slain enemy passed into the victor’s arm. In the weird fancy lies a truth. Each defeat leaves us weaker for the next battle, but each conquest makes us stronger.
Pitiable indeed is the weakness of the vanquished spirit in the face of temptation, duty, toil, or sorrow. But it is possible for us always to be overcomers. We may meet duty with a quiet confidence that shall enable us to do it well. We may be victorious in our struggles with temptation, keeping ourselves unspotted from the world. We may so relate ourselves to our conditions and our circumstances that we shall be masters, not slaves; that our very hindrances shall become helps to us, inspirers of courage and persistence.
“Stone walls do not a prison make.”
Nothing makes a prison to a human life but a defeated, broken spirit. The bird in its cage that sings all the while is not a captive. God puts his children in no conditions in which he does not mean them to live sweetly and victoriously. So in any circumstances we may be “more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
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