And it was
because the man had not made himself his own enemy, in the past or in
the present, that he could look this devil in the face and tell him
that he was the devil.

This is how one man came out of an encounter with an enemy outside him;
take another case where the enemy of a man was the man himself. He
came to me, this man, when I was working in the South of England. In a
bitter temper he told me that he had been dismissed from a business
house in the town. He had left a good situation six months before he
entered this house, and was now ousted to make room for one who had
resented his appointment from the first, and had been his enemy. I
spoke, as I promised to do, to the employer, with whom I had some
influence, and in whose integrity I had implicit confidence. "It is an
absolute misrepresentation of the facts," he assured me. "The man," he
said, "got his situation on no better than false pretences. He had not
been with us a week when it was evident that he was quite unequal to
the duties of the position he had professed himself competent to
fulfil. It is nonsense to say that any one has ousted him; the truth
is, that he has wasted his time, and thrown away his opportunity, so
that in what should be his own line he has neither training nor
proficiency to be other than a low-placed man."

This is a single line in a large literature. It was a foolish use of
the past that became the man's enemy the moment his present required
something better. And this is an instance of how we can so become our
own enemy, as to make it impossible for God to be our friend, in the
sense we imagine God should be our friend. It would be, not the law
which is the deepest expression of divine thought and love, but immoral
force, if we could waste the time sacred to the preparation for a
better position, and yet be ready for the position when it comes our
way. God can forgive the waste, but God cannot give us back what the
waste has lost out of our life. We must never lose sight of the fact
that divine forgiveness cannot be vulgarized into impunity. I do not
say for a moment, in the case of a middle-aged man, that the enemy he
has made of himself is irredeemable and hopeless. I believe that a
man's own effort and the grace of God can change this enemy into a
valuable friend, if a man is man enough to accept and honour the cost
of the great transformation. But how few people, past a given age,
ever do quite conquer the