Tempered Steel
There is a clause in the Divine Charter of our Race which says – ”If his children forsake My law and walk not in My judgments: If they break My statutes and keep not My Commandments, then will I visit their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.” Psalm 39:30-34.
Whom God selects for service He prescribes a hard schooling. All the heroes and great leaders in Israel’s history were people of super physical and spiritual might, obtained in the university of hard knocks. They were the kind of human steel of which Henry Ward Beecher sang in these words: “The steel that has suffered most is the best steel. It has been in the furnace again and again: it has been on the anvil: it has been tight in the jaws of the vice: it has felt the teeth of the rasp: it has been ground by emery: it has been heated and hammered and filed until it does not know itself, and it comes out a splendid knife.
“And if men only knew it, what are called ‘misfortunes’ are God’s best blessings, for they are the moulding influences which give them shapeliness and edge, durability and power.”
The world is in dire need of such leaders today, for surely, everyone knows that the globe is balancing precariously on the edge of the most fearful catastrophe in its history. It is not merely that everywhere there is strife and unrest; that the Ship of State, having discarded its navigational apparatus, is wallowing in the most degrading corruption and ineptitude; that evil of all kinds is straining the resources of authority – it is that the whole corporate body is poisoned at the springs of its existence.
And what shall be said about the secret enemies that infest the land? – that a strong anti-British, anti-American spirit exerts a powerful influence in the governments of our day – the anti-national, anti-social, anti-Christian, defying God Himself, to whom, like traitors, we open wide our gates. Many have been given key positions in government. There is not an infidel cynicism or a foul blasphemy that has not been received with deferential attention by our leaders, who should have been the guardians against such adulteration that has sickened and polluted the entire body politic.
Everywhere – judges, ministers, educationists, and all public-spirited men and women stand helpless and appalled at the flood of evil. The reason is that the most important factor has been brazenly ignored, viz: the paramount necessity of a right relationship towards God. It is as though a diver, equipped in every respect, should descend to the depths, but having his connection with the living air choked off. We have tried every man-made expedient, but they have all failed miserably, as they were bound to do. Pray God the tempered leaders of Israel come forward, in humiliation, to lead us out of the present mess.