SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN OUR SPIRITS

WE have come to know that spiritual things are as real as material things. Love is as real as the building in which you live, and sometimes more real than material substance. When we realize the reality of spiritual things, so that we will take account of them, plan on them as we do on material things, life will cease to be excursions in the dark. Courage is a spiritual force. It is born of the spirit. It is not associated in any way with our reasoning faculties. Reason cannot understand courage which can face defeat and still rise from the mat fighting.

You have heard of the fighting heart, that is a fighting spirit, a conquering spirit, a dominating spirit that cannot he whipped or defeated. Reason says, “It is all over, you might just as well throw in the sponge.” Sense knowledge has given up the fight altogether, but you are just beginning. Your spirit has taken the count again and again, but it keeps on fighting. It cannot he whipped. I remember in the early days of my life when everything was going dead wrong. Death would have been a sweet escape, but I could not die, and I could not be whipped.

At times I wanted to be whipped, would rather have been than not. If I could have been defeated and floated out with the wreckage that I saw on the stream of life, I would have been glad, but I could not give up. Somehow or other, it seemed utterly impossible to conceive of being defeated. I must succeed. My tired brain, my worn-out body cried for rest, but that something inside refused to give way to the desire of the Senses.
That is in every man if he will only cultivate it. You see, courage is a spiritual reality that rises above circumstances, rises above Sense Knowledge facts, and dominates.
Faith is another great spiritual force. It is not born of Sense Knowledge. It is nursed in the bosom of the spirit.

It embraces failure and breathes victory into it. It uses the defeat of this morning, and the failures of yesterday, to build a foundation on which the superstructure of Success stands. Faith is the creative force in the human spirit. Bolstered by wisdom, it cannot fail. The will to win is a spiritual force. It is the dominating general in the council of your spirit nature. It rallies the weak and tired body. It drives the exhausted senses in the council of your spirit nature. It builds sinews into the Senses. It stands invincible in the heart of man; the will to win, the will to conquer.

Joy is a spiritual thing. Joy is not happiness; Happiness belongs to the Senses. You are happy if things are beautiful and satisfactory to the mind and to the body; but joy flourishes, fills the soul with laughter and song when every beautiful thing is destroyed and every pleasing flower has lost its fragrance. Joy fills the whole being with heaven’s own music. Hope is of the spirit. Hope seems to spring out of the dead embers of a thousand failures, lifts its petals and its beautiful flower into the sunlight. It is filled with fragrance and laughter. Hope does not belong to the Senses. Sense Knowledge never produced a single member of the Hope family.

Wisdom is not a product of knowledge, schools, teachers or libraries. Wisdom springs forth in all its beauty from the human spirit. Wisdom is the cunning artificer, the creator of every beautiful thing, the inventor of every labor-saving device. It has taken the commonplace and made it luxuriant with beauty. Endurance is that quality that makes certain types of men outstanding in the world’s history. They plod on month after month, year after year, with a sturdy self-reliance that thrills.

They bear the burdens of hundreds. Pain and disease may wrack their bodies, but they cannot be conquered. This is one of God’s richest endowments of the spirit. Faithfulness stands out in the business marts of the world. How we see it in the nurses in our hospitals. But in no other place does it grow so luxuriantly as in the home, in the heart of the wife and mother. Through all the testings, the trials, the heartaches, the sufferings of life, it reigns a victor; faithfulness, a mighty force that makes the character strong.