Editorial October 3, 1908 Issue

MAKING WAY DESPITE DIFFICULTIES

John B. Willis

The story of the three Hebrews who were cast into the "burning fiery furnace" gives us a tragic picture of the enmity of material sense toward every manifestation of Spirit, its self-disclosing, self-defeating endeavor to destroy all that is not amenable to its attempted rule. It also brings to our thought the inspiring fact that, when Christianly met, the fires of trial serve only to burn away the fetters which false sense has fixed upon us, and bring us that larger freedom which is always realized when we are defeating asserted material law and human destiny and are companioning with the angels of the divine appearing, a freedom which was most interestingly described by the astonished king when he cried out, "Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God."

In all history the furnace has been heated "seven times" for those who have dared to be loyal to their highest concept of Truth, and in ten thousand instances these have proved that the question whether human experience shall advance or retard spiritual growth is determined not by the nature or the severity of experience, but by the way in which experience is met and mastered. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews was evidently seeking to impress this thought when he declared that "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

It is safe to say that the humble heroes who stood by their conscience against the machinations of Nebuchadnezzar's courtiers had no idea whatever as to the way their problem was going to be worked out. They had, however, an imperturbable confidence in the ever-presence of God and His power to save, and they proved what every other disciple may prove, namely, that the struggles and sufferings which mortal beliefs bring in some form to every aspiring heart, and which seem to be especially abundant in the path of those who in their loyalty to the ideal offend present-day prejudices,—that all such painful experiences may be made to yield a continuous increment, not only of spiritual gain, but of spiritual joy.

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