strike the foe, to sleep on the bare ground, to bear
hunger and toil, summer's 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 Beowulf, 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, Teufelsdroeckh, 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-con