The Battle of Life
Sermon by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Sunday Evening, Jan. 9th, 1881
Plymouth Church
Brooklyn Heights, NY
Lesson : Eph. vi: 10-20
“Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” — Eph . vi : II - 18.
This is the representation of a literal state of facts, although it is thrown into a dramatic form. There has been a line of division running through the human family from the very beginning to this day. Right and wrong have been in conflict from the very first developments of human existence. The conflict has not died out, and is not likely to die out for ages. Where the two sides come together there is a wide belt of uncertain and varying elements, yet the two extremes are never to be confused or mistaken. There appears in the religious philosophy of every age some sort of explanation of them.
The basis of one form of the ancient philosophical heathenism was the notion that there were two gods, or two great principles, one representing the good and the other the bad. They presented two opposing affections in the reigning powers of the universe.
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| The Last Judgement |
The same element, in a less distinct form, is found in the Jewish theology. A dramatic representation of it is given in the book of Job, as between Jehovah and Satan. In the time of Christ, without losing the root element, it took on the form of two dynasties — the Lord and the Devil, with their respective kingdoms — at war with each other. They have been represented as two great parties existing in the universe, and in collision.
Modern science gives another version of it, and declares that the nature of evil, or sin, arises from the very method of divine creation. It presents the theory that the human family, by a decree of God, was brought into life originally in a low condition of animal development, with preponderant appetites and passions. It declares there was, in the process of time, the development of reason and moral sense and that evil consists in the conflict, in each man, between the superior and the inferior; between those tendencies which are working toward a spiritual and rational being; and those animal tendencies that are drawing men down toward their appetites and passions. Sin is a kind of remainder or residuum of the animal life.
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| Henry Ward Beecher Reasons with a Frustrated Crowd |
One school of philosophers think that at one step backward men were animals; that at one step forward there were developed in them and upon them the germs of the higher faculties; and that these nascent germs of intelligence, morality, and religion have been steadily striving to work upward. As corn is choked by weeds, these higher elements, it is asserted, are choked by the interference of people's lower instincts. It is declared that this royal battle, which began at the outset, and has kept on through the ages, has been simply the conflict in people between reason and passion; between moral sense and appetite; between benevolence and selfishness; and that it has sprung from the very method of development appointed by God.
Now, all philosophies, all religions, all sects, and all churches agree as to the fact that this life is not a life into which people are born perfect. It is a life of struggle. It is a life of such struggle that without it we are zeros. We are born zeros; and education consists adding numerals to our zero figure.
No child can have more than a tendency to develop by reason what his ancestors were. The hereditary tendency gives a certain aptitude, but the development of that aptitude lies in the child. No person is born great, If someone becomes great it is that struggle in life which develops them.
The same struggle runs into society, and becomes a conflict there; and it goes on developing more and more until it is actually warfare. A man's life may be called a battle. It is a campaign of battles. Some people, like some soldiers in an army, are more, and some are less exposed; but all are fighting somewhere, on the one side or the other.
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| Beecher Fighting Mr. Tilton Slinging Mud |
For instance, look how this battle develops itself in the individual. Each man struggles for knowledge. That is not a birthright. There may be varying aptitudes for knowledge but it must be struggled for if it is possessed. A man can transmit pride to a child, he can transmit selfishness to him; but he cannot transmit to him knowledge or habit. This belongs to each individual.
Knowledge is gained by struggle. The way to it is a way of self-denial. It is putting aside, for the sake of learning, things that may be more pleasant. It is the reduction of a your time, for a period at any rate, to a state of bondage, that afterwards you may have that which is more than a compensation for the drudgery through which you must go.
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| Beecher Hangs on to a Branch |
We are struggling for condition in life. We are struggling for character. We are struggling for reputation. And, we are met with struggle all the way through. As in war, different people have different arms and different positions; but all are engaged in a great struggle if they are engaged in developing themselves.
People are fighting against ignorance, against indolence, against poverty, against opposition, against that fortune which would keep them under. The whole individual life of a human is a perpetual contest with something exterior to thyself, or something in thyself. There is not one person living, probably, who will not acknowledge that they are obliged to fight in order to maintain their ascendancy of reason in their affairs.
There is not a woman or man who does not know that she is constantly tempted to violate her own ideal and the wisdom of her own experience when the passions rise, such as envy and jealousy. There is not a woman or man who can deny that when temptations of self-indulgence are very strong, the reason stands over on the other side and lets the conflict go on, and allows the animal desires to prevail over the sober sense of what is wisest and best.
Every woman and man knows that she is defeated many times, while she gains a victory only here and there. The sun does not go down on any woman or man who will not say, if she is candid, that with many events her reason is put down so that less noble parts of her may triumph. A woman or man looking through her whole life must adopt the apostle's declaration, “That which I see and pursue I attain not; that which I would I do not; and that which I would not I do.”
The more a woman looks at herself, the more she has a sense of character and personality, and the more she attempts to develop them — the more conscious she is of this struggle, that goes on between her upper self and her under self; between herself at her best and herself at her worst; between the flesh woman, and the spirit woman.
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher I'm his Early 40's |