Fight the Good Fight of Faith - Complain Not

December 4.

Fight the good fight of faith,
lay hold on eternal life,
whereunto thou art also called.

1 TIMOTHY 6, verse 12.


Oh, dream no more of quiet life;
Care finds the careless out; more wise to vow
Thy heart entire to faith's pure strife;
So peace will come, thou knowest not when or how.

LYRA APOSTOLICA.


Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil?
Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother;
see thy fellow workmen there, in God's Eternity;
surviving there, they alone surviving; sacred
band of the Immortals, celestial body-guard of
the empire of mankind. To thee Heaven, though
severe, is not unkind; Heaven is kind, as a noble
mother; as that Spartan mother, saying while
she gave her son his shield,
"With it, my son, or upon it."
Thou too shall return home in honor;
to thy far-distant Home, in honor;
doubt it not, if in the battle thou keep thy shield!
Thou, in the Eternities and deepest death-kingdoms
art not an alien; thou everywhere art a denizen.
Complain not.

T. CARLYLE.