Editorial August 26, 1911 Issue

"THE BATTLE IS NOT YOURS."

John B. Willis

The daring of David when but a boy he faced the mighty man of the Philistines, would seem presumptuous, illy authorized, were one to judge with respect to their disparity in physical prowess and fighting equipment, but its sufficient warrant is recognized when he is heard to say to the giant boaster: "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts ... for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands." Young as he was, uplooking faith and intuition had brought to David a consummate grasp of the truth of being, so that it was not hard but easy for him to rely upon the divine presence and power alone.

This is the lesson for all aspiring souls, and it was abundantly impressed upon the people Israel. In unnumbered experiences during their forty years of wandering, and thereafter, the fact of the inadequacy of their own strength for what they thought their struggle, had been made apparent. With the story of Gideon and the overthrow of the Midianites, in proof that God hath no need of human help; with the word spoken to Jehosaphat when Moab threatened Judah, "Be not afraid ... for the battle is not your's, but God's, and with his mighty triumph in its fulfilment, even as Hezekiah triumphed over Sennacherib, the Jewish people were perfectly familiar, and yet when Christ Jesus came teaching and demonstrating the present availability of Truth, even the chief priests cried out against him! They were still hoping, as they avowed, for an arm of flesh which should redeem Israel.

This forgetfulness of the divine relation to the human overcoming, this association of the struggle against error with personality, still remains the chief explanation of human weakness and defeat. Practical reliance upon God for the overcoming of the enemies of our physical and spiritual welfare, is yet so much of an anomaly that even the assertion of its possibility is subject to ridicule at the hands of a great many Christian believers. The teaching of the apostle Paul that God is "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think" is openly repudiated in this twentieth Christian century. True, Christians no longer expect to be saved by the sword; nevertheless, they still pray and trust that God may make one material force sovereign over another material force, that the divinely-enacted law of a drug may triumph over the divinely-consented-to law of disease, and in some respects this later expression of unfaith in God is more lamentable than the earlier. The belief of being too wise, too well versed in the processes and powers of materiality, to have any need of reliance upon spiritual truth for healing, has proved itself to be disastrous beyond compare.

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