The
history of the adventurous years of struggle in the wilderness through which the children of Israel passed in their journey out of bondage into the liberty of the freeborn, contains many lessons that have come down to present generations, full of meaning to those having eyes to see and ears to hear.
A belief
almost as old as the tradition of mortal man—made from the dust of the ground, as the account in Genesis has it—is to the effect that man was cursed, sentenced, as it were, to a life of hardship and struggle; and that this experience was imposed upon mortals as the price of maintaining the false sense of life, which constitutes the whole fabric of material existence.
The
author of that familiar saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," expressed a truth applicable to many situations in human experience,—no doubt to many more than were recognized by him at the time of its utterance.
