There never comes a day when we can live nobly and worthily without
effort, without resistance to wrong influences, without struggle
against the power of temptation. It never gets easy to be good.
Evermore the cross lies at our feet, and daily it must be taken up and
carried, if we would follow Christ. We are apt to grow weary of this
unending struggle, and to become discouraged, because there is neither
rest nor abatement in it.
But here again we learn that it is out of just such struggles that we
must get the nobleness and beauty of character after which we are
striving. One of the old Scotch martyrs had on his crest the motto,
_Sub pondere cresco_ ("I grow under a weight"). On the crest was a
palm-tree, with weights depending from its fronds. In spite of the
weights the tree was straight as an arrow, lifting its crown of
graceful foliage high up in the serene air. It is well known that the
palm grows best loaded down with weights. Thus this martyr testified
that he, like the beautiful tree of the Orient, grew best in his
spiritual life under weights.
This is the universal law of spiritual growth. There must be
resistance, struggle, conflict, or there can be no development of
strength. We are inclined to pity those whose lives are scenes of toil
and hardship, but God's angels do not pity them, if only they are
victorious; for in their overcoming they are climbing daily upward
toward the holy heights of sainthood.
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