WHO HAVE FAILED

TO the student of human nature the fact that man so often fails to
respond to the highest ideals set before him comes with no shock. In the
early Church men who had run well were easily hindered, and in the
greatest series of biographies we possess, we see portrayed faithfully
the faults and failings of those who now form the great cloud of
witnesses, and are shown at the same time the possibilities of such
lives when brought into vital touch with the Divine.

The generous, impulsive David, the man God's own heart, was capable of a
tragic fall; Peter and John, privileged to personal intercourse with the
Lord, in the hour of crisis were amongst those who forsook Him and fled,
and Demas, "who loves this present world," is ever a disappointment to
Evangelist, who hoped that for him such dangers were over.

For the fact remains that the natural characteristics of the man are
strong forces, and that while Grace can, and does, make possible the
"new man in Christ Jesus," we remain each in our own order, and perhaps
no point is so vulnerable as that wherein has taken place greatest
change.

The emergence from heathendom is a difficult process, during which time
habits, vices, and superstitions cling to a man's soul with a tenacity
that would cause us to abandon all hope, were it not that monuments of
grace abound to prove that the power and dominion of sin has been
shattered.

Sometimes the enemy will entrap a young Christian when there is illness
in the home, and under pressure he will fly to magic incantations and
heathen practices, in order to get deliverance from the malignant spirit
which he still believes has power to torment him. Many a convert has
fallen on the occasion of a funeral. It takes more faith than a
Westerner can realise, to defy the legions of _gwei_ which at that time
threaten your home and its inhabitants with numberless ills; and
strength of mind is required to resist heathen relatives who accuse you
of slighting the deceased.

The test is a severe one and may well make a strong spirit quail,
especially when, as so often happens, several members of one family will
die in rapid succession, quite evidently to us by reason of the agency
of natural laws which govern physical life, but to the Chinaman, a clear
manifestation of the power enjoyed by demons whose pleasure it is to
torment men. Even the very dead may rise from the grave to confront you
with horrid vengeance, should the b